NEED TO KNOW SPAIN A Tear in the Seams The insurgent-cum-terrorist group Euskadi ta Askatasuna – “Basque Homeland and Liberty,” or ETA – disbanded earlier this year after six decades of fighting. But violence still flares around the group’s demand for an independent country in northern Spain. Attackers seriously injured...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TUNISIA The Spark that Changed the World Eight years ago this month, a Tunisian fruit vendor finally had enough of the low wages, corruption and indignities he and his family had suffered for years. A female police officer had slapped him in the face in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW HUNGARY Cross-border Hate When Yugoslavia descended into civil war in the early 1990s, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and others in the communist republic weren’t the only ones to fight. Arab jihadists journeyed to the Balkans to defend their Muslim brothers. Employing lessons they learned from Afghanistan, they...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MYANMAR Ignorance and Consequences A gunman murdered Ko Ni while his two-year-old grandson was in his arms. A member of Myanmar’s ethnic Rohingya minority, Ko Ni was a legal advisor to the government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. He had been trying...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TOGO A Big Message from a Small Country At least four people died as protesters clashed with police last week in Togo. Among them was a 12-year-old boy. The violence continued regardless. “Even after a child was killed, Togo’s authorities continue to fuel the violence by deploying...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW JAMAICA Emergencies, and a Calm Groove The United Nations added reggae music to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity last month. “Reggae, which rose to prominence in the 1960s, often celebrates Jah, or God; ganja, or marijuana; and Ras Tafari, also known...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW WORLD Huffing and Puffing Solar power might someday make polluting fossil fuels unnecessary, but only if pollution from these clears up sufficiently first. A last-minute deal that will make the Paris climate pact operational in 2020 saved the meeting from total failure, but as world leaders met...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ARMENIA A Hopeful Revolution A revolution was hopefully cemented in Armenia recently. On Dec. 9, voters in the small ex-Soviet Republic in the Caucasus Mountains gave the My Step alliance over 70 percent of the vote, a clear mandate for reform. Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian founded...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CANADA Civility, Overrated Most Americans think of French-speaking Canadians as exclusive to the province of Quebec. But, in reality, Francophones live throughout Canada, especially in Ontario, where around 500,000 people speak French as their first language. Ontario Premier Doug Ford might have considered that number before he...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHINA Great Empires, Small Neighbors Chinese leaders are learning from the great powers that came before them. Sometimes the Athenians, Romans, Persians, Ottomans, British and Americans fought wars to advance their interests. Sometimes, they just bought people off. That’s China’s strategy in the Philippines. Chinese and Philippine officials...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TAIWAN In the Strait, All Politics is Local Who won elections in Taiwan last month? China, said business news channel CNBC. In local elections on Nov. 24, the opposition Kuomintang Party (KMT) swept the important offices, delivering a humiliating defeat to President Tsai Ing-wen’s ruling Democratic Progressive...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CAMEROON Radical Possibilities Civil rights activists in Cameroon recently rejected the authority of a military court as they faced charges of terrorism and secession. They claimed they were citizens of “Ambazonia,” the name of their self-declared republic in English-speaking regions of the mostly Francophone country, Agence...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MAURITANIA The Master and the Mother Slavery is alive and well in Mauritania. Unfortunately, there is a very personal reason for that. "People think that God created them to be slaves," Brahim Bilal Ramdhane, an anti-slavery activist in the West African country, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, speaking...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHINA Pacts and Proxies One might compare the recent détente in the trade war between the United States and China to the nuclear arms control pacts between the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War: unadulterated good news, a sign of diplomatic progress between...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MEXICO Holding Up the Sky Andrés Manuel López Obrador became president of Mexico on Dec. 1. He is a nationalist and populist, not unlike US President Donald Trump. But whereas Trump is right-leaning, AMLO, as the new Mexican president is known, is an unrepentant leftist. One might say...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW FRANCE Marianne's Fury Imagine if the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street teamed up against the American ruling class. The result might resemble the so-called “yellow vest protests” in France, where citizens are staging protests over tax hikes and government policies that appear to help elites...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW UNITED KINGDOM What Now? Nearly everyone in the United Kingdom seems disappointed with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal with the European Union. The question now is, what happens if members of parliament reject the deal when they’re slated to vote on it on Dec. 11? "There...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PERU A Swamp to Drain Corruption scandals linked to the Brazilian construction and engineering firm Odebrecht have caught up politicians throughout Latin America. But the rot might be worst in Peru. Former Peruvian President Alan García recently sought asylum in Uruguay, saying claims that he took bribes...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CAMBODIA Foxes and Free Birds Pol Pot died before he could face justice for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians under his brutal communist regime. Now others might escape, too. Cambodian officials recently announced that they were winding down the work of the Extraordinary Chambers in the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW YEMEN Fighting for Peace Fighting broke out in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah recently, even as both sides agreed to meet in Sweden to discuss a truce to Yemen’s bloody three-year-long war. “We are facing indiscriminate bombing from both sides,” Hodeidah resident Ibrahim Seif...
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