NEED TO KNOW Myanmar’s Shame Hopes were high in 2010 when Myanmar’s military junta freed Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after 15 years of house arrest. When her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory last year in Myanmar’s first real democratic elections in a...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Once More Unto the Breach In recent years, it’s been common to hear that, while violence in the far-flung provinces of Afghanistan has ebbed and flowed, Kabul was safe under the umbrella of the US-supported central government. That’s not true anymore. On Wednesday, Taliban fighters...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Drip, Drip, Drip “Berlin Loses Its Innocence” read the headline in the global edition of the German business daily Handelsblatt on Tuesday, a day after a terrorist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 50. Germany had been...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Zuma’s Rocky Years This year was rocky for South African President Jacob Zuma. Next year could be rockier. On Monday, for instance, labor leaders claimed that Zuma conspired “like a gangster” with his security agencies to create a rival trade union to undermine workers holding...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Disasters Ending and Beginning The fall of Aleppo was a humanitarian disaster that will likely go down in history as a shameful failure of the international community to prevent mass carnage and the destruction of an ancient city. Now the escape from Aleppo is prolonging...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Unnatural Disaster The fall of Aleppo was a humanitarian disaster that will likely go down in history as a shameful failure of the international community to prevent mass carnage and the destruction of an ancient city. Now the escape from Aleppo is prolonging the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Concentrating Power Kyrgyzstan became the latest country to upend its internal politics by holding a referendum over the weekend on a range of constitutional issues. Citizens in the mostly Muslim country voted on 26 proposed amendments that required a simple yes or no answer on...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Italian Baggage New Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni is already facing a gauntlet of political obstacles to his hastily assembled government's success – and he hasn't even received a vote of support in parliament yet. Gentiloni, 62, was foreign minister before he took over the prime...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW China Under Trump Could President-elect Donald Trump be rehearsing to perform "Nixon in China" backwards? Whereas Nixon reached out to China during the Cold War to undermine the Soviet Union, Trump appears to be improving relations with Moscow but letting the American relationship with Beijing...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Growing Mire An Irish High Court will be considering an important question next year: whether Britain can reverse its decision to leave the European Union once Prime Minister Theresa May invokes the infamous Article 50 of the EU treaty that allows members to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Smiling Kim Amid the ongoing world conflict between democratically elected leaders who appear fated for humiliation and emboldened authoritarian strongmen who just won’t go away, North Korean Great Leader Kim Jong-un is likely smiling at the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in South Korea. The Hermit...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Of Diseases and Cures India is now one month into a unique experiment: radical demonetization. On Nov. 8, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi abruptly announced that the country's 500 and 1,000 rupee notes – roughly 86 percent of its cash in circulation – would cease...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Game Almost Over The end may be nearing for disgraced South Korean President Park-Geun-hye. In the latest twist, technology giant Samsung recently admitted to gifting a horse to Park's down-and-out confidant, Choi Soon-sil – who also happens to be the daughter of the late South...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Dangerous Spin It took a couple days for China’s propaganda machine to respond to President-elect Donald Trump’s supposed slights. The Hill on Tuesday cited a sharp-elbowed opinion piece slamming Trump in the People’s Daily: “Provoking friction and messing up China-US relations won’t help ‘make America...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Biting the Dust Gambians took to the streets Monday. This time the excuse was to celebrate the freedom of Ousainou Darboe and 18 other political prisoners, the BBC reported. But the real cause for merriment was days old but still sweet for many Gambians. The...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Zig and Zag The defeat of far-right Austrian presidential candidate Norbert Hofer could become the high-water mark of the populist gains in Europe and the United States. “We are all, equally, Austrians, no matter how we voted at the ballot box,” wrote Norbert Hofer, the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Too Big To Fail Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is the next world leader going into battle with anti-establishment voters – and the results could be grim for the eurozone. On Sunday, Italy will hold a public referendum on constitutional reforms designed by Renzi and...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Wobbly Dominoes Austrians will take to the polls for the third time on Sunday to elect their next head of state. The largely figurehead presidency of a Central European nation of 8.7 million people may seem inconsequential. But in a politically cacophonous year defined by Brexit...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Dignity and Tedium Diplomats are rarely blunt in public. But on Tuesday German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier didn’t mince words after he and his colleagues from France, Russia and Ukraine admitted they had failed to end the insurgency in eastern Ukraine. "It was very tedious again...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Low Peak Not too long ago, everyone was talking about peak oil – the tipping point where rapacious humans would finally run out of carbon-based fuels to operate their polluting cars and power plants unless they embarked on a wholesale shift to solar,...
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