NEED TO KNOW MONTENEGRO The Fate of a Nation Since the end of the Yugoslav Wars and the accession of a handful of Balkan states to the European Union – Croatia was the last to join in 2013 – much of Southeastern Europe has appeared to move on...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ETHIOPIA A New Day in an Old Country Ethiopia’s economic growth has been miraculous, according to Quartz. In 2000, the nation’s per capita gross domestic product was only $650 and it had one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Today, it has one of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW UK/RUSSIA Cheeky Disbelief Russian officials recently suggested they help British investigators trying to get to the bottom of the March 4 poisoning of an ex-Russian spy and his 33-year-old daughter in the southern English town of Salisbury. Unsurprisingly, the British rejected the idea. “To do so would...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MYANMAR Puppet Politics Following the surprise resignation of President U Htin Kyaw late last month on account of poor health, Myanmar's parliament overwhelmingly selected former parliamentary speaker U Win Myint to assume the post. Similar to his predecessor, Win Myint is an ardent loyalist of Myanmar's...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PAKISTAN Out of the Ditch Last month, Pakistan, a Muslim majority nation, elected its first Hindu woman from the country’s "untouchable" caste to the Senate. The victory is being called an example of the nation's work to elevate women and religious minorities into public life,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AFRICA The Most Tragic of Corners Over the last century, as economies and democracies flourished, governments have been able to respond more quickly to humanitarian catastrophes, Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRAN The Long Game Iran has been playing a long game behind the scenes. Iranian operatives have built up proxies in the Middle East using the same model that created Hezbollah, a militant political party in Lebanon that the United States and others consider a terrorist...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ITALY Same Same But Different When the populist Five Star Movement and a coalition of far-right political parties garnered sufficient votes in Italy’s parliamentary elections to form a government a month ago, they ballyhooed their victories as a new epoch for the country. “Today, for us,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CARRIBEAN A New Breeze Residents of Barbados should follow the example of pop star and fellow islander Rihanna and support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people’s rights, Human Rights Watch argued recently. In Barbados, the activist group wrote in a dispatch, “same-sex activity between consenting adults...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHINA/NORTH KOREA Lips and Teeth Mao Zedong once said that even in the worst of times, China and North Korea were as close as "lips to teeth." After a trying few years, that credo is showing itself to be true once again, as evidenced by North...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SRI LANKA Pass the Buck On the day before anti-Muslim violence broke out in Sri Lanka's Kandy district earlier this month, the leader of a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist group strolled through a district town with a clear agenda, Al Jazeera reported. "This town has come to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PANAMA The Devil is Green It’s easy to be ambivalent about Panama. The nation exists because Europeans and Americans wanted to build a shipping canal through the isthmus that separates the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. There are few better examples of late imperialism in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SOUTH AFRICA Running on Empty Day Zero – the moment when water supplies in Cape Town, South Africa, are scheduled to run dry – has been postponed until 2019. Previously, city officials thought the city’s reservoir would tap out around April 21. City residents have been living...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GERMANY Follow the Leader It took six months and two rounds of brutal negotiations with almost every political party the nation has, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel finally formed a government earlier this month with allies she’d partnered with twice before, the center-left Social Democrats. The...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TURKEY Operation Standoff Two months after Turkey launched a ground offensive against Kurdish strongholds in northern Syria, it claimed victory over Afrin, a western province that had been squarely under Kurdish control. But as Turkey continues to flex its muscles in Syria, pushing across the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MEXICO Bombs on the Beach Spring breakers were avoiding Playa del Carmen in Mexico after the US State Department issued a security warning about the popular Caribbean resort. “Passengers are definitely steering away and concerned,” Olga Ramudo, who runs a Florida travel agency, told USA Today. Mexican...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BORNEO Got a Light? A video of an orangutan smoking a cigarette in an Indonesian zoo went viral recently. It’s funny to see a great ape smoking, of course. But anyone who doesn’t second-guess their amusement needs to consider the abuse occurring here. Many have already done so....
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Emperors and Old Clothes Nawa Punyo joined a rally recently with other Roman Catholics in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to demand that President Joseph Kabila resign. “Kabila has been playing around for long enough; it’s time for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NETHERLANDS The Inconvenient Voice Hopeful in their aspirations but fearful of humankind’s darkest instincts, America’s founding fathers were suspicious of democracy. They opted, therefore, to create a democratic republic, mixing the franchise with a government of checks and balances. Today, the Netherlands is grappling with similar...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA No Nail-Biting Here In a shockingly close vote, Russian President Vladimir Putin narrowly won reelection on Sunday, suggesting he will be a diminished leader in the coming years. That was a joke. Or Fake News. Nothing about the above sentence is true. The reality is that...
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