November 10, 2022

Remaking the Wall

NEED TO KNOW Remaking the Wall CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] Chinese Communist Party Congresses are usually scripted affairs that befit totalitarian states. Delegates are expected to reach decisions that leaders have already prescribed. Surprises are discouraged. So the bizarre episode where a functionary escorted the 79-year-old former president of China, Hu...

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November 03, 2022

The Fifth Estate

NEED TO KNOW The Fifth Estate SOUTH KOREA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96aac4ab-2540-4b79-8f3f-2a21e22e27fe.png"] More than 90 percent of smartphone users in South Korea use the Kakao suite of apps to do everything from instant messaging and banking to watching videos and locating nearby beauty salons. When a data center fire recently caused...

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October 24, 2022

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

NEED TO KNOW R-E-S-P-E-C-T CENTRAL ASIA/ RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2e2ef13c-a42d-db72-25cb-edaa084a6043.png"] Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are clashing on their border. Kazakhstan is poised for a “color revolution”. Uzbekistan is welcoming Russians fleeing conscription while its neighbors are wondering how to cope with the sheer numbers of these new arrivals. For years, Russia was...

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October 11, 2022

Pushing and Pulling

NEED TO KNOW Pushing and Pulling NORTH KOREA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/081c0373-fb17-4e7d-af63-346faaef42b7.png"] North Korea recently fired an intercontinental ballistic missile over Japan, one of five such launches in the region over a week-long period despite the crippling sanctions against the autocratic Asian country. The missile fell harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean,...

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October 05, 2022

Little Islands, Big Games

NEED TO KNOW Little Islands, Big Games SOLOMON ISLANDS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3c7e70b3-a24d-4f3a-95d2-795b0355ebe6.png"] Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare of the Solomon Islands distributed almost $2.5 million to 39 out of 50 lawmakers last year. Sogavare arguably wasn’t spending taxpayers’ money, however. He was doling out cash that China gave him specifically to...

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September 28, 2022

A Good Day

NEED TO KNOW A Good Day CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] While Russian President Vladimir Putin suffers international condemnation and internal dissent, US President Joe Biden faces a test in the upcoming midterm elections, and major European leaders are either new or lack significant power globally, Chinese President Xi Jinping, 69,...

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September 22, 2022

Treading Water

NEED TO KNOW Treading Water PAKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eaf17bc7-6468-493e-bfe1-86954ffb120a.png"] Record floods have turned lowland farms in Pakistan into lakes, highlighting the fragility of an unstable developing nation in the era of climate change. “We are living on an island now,” farmer Muhammad Jaffar said in an interview with the New...

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September 01, 2022

Choosing Forgiveness

NEED TO KNOW Choosing Forgiveness INDONESIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ec0c6f24-24ad-434b-bf1d-56e472da6e67.png"] Indonesian officials are considering granting early release to Hisyam bin Alizein, also known as Umar Patek, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked terrorist group that killed 202 people in a bombing at a tourist spot in Bali in 2002. The officials...

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August 23, 2022

Door Fees

NEED TO KNOW Door Fees SINGAPORE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7975032b-ee5e-4c38-bc1f-27c01a1778c5.png"] In the 2013 novel (and 2018 hit film) “Crazy Rich Asians,” the ingénue travels to Singapore and realizes that her boyfriend is so fabulously wealthy that their backgrounds might be too different for them to share a life together. Spoiler alert –...

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August 19, 2022

Two Diamonds

NEED TO KNOW Two Diamonds INDIA/ PAKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/70dcc710-39f9-4d07-a37e-84a4eff885c5.png"] India and Pakistan had the rare experience of separating from one another at the same time they achieved independence from Britain, 75 years ago this month, on Aug. 15, 1947. Both countries appear to still be in search of themselves...

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August 16, 2022

Terror, Redux

NEED TO KNOW Terror, Redux AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] On Monday, the Taliban marked the first anniversary of their takeover of Afghanistan with a national holiday, small victory parades and televised speeches boasting of their “great achievements” over the past year, the Associated Press reported. “We fulfilled the obligation of jihad...

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August 11, 2022

The Girls Next Door

NEED TO KNOW The Girls Next Door BANGLADESH [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/46a3120a-34a1-40f2-8221-240a899a0fd0.png"] Indian investigators recently busted an alleged human trafficking ring that was smuggling ethnic Rohingya girls into India from refugee camps in Bangladesh. It’s just the latest misfortune to befall members of this ethnic group who have been forced from their...

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August 03, 2022

The Bidding War

NEED TO KNOW The Bidding War CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] American and Chinese ships and planes are more frequently encountering each other in the western Pacific Ocean, according to General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff during a recent visit to Indonesia. “The message is the...

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July 27, 2022

Huffing and Puffing

NEED TO KNOW Huffing and Puffing THAILAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9aed0fb0-f5eb-4eda-ae64-69e423143eb5.png"] Thailand recently decriminalized marijuana, becoming the first country in Asia to embrace a new attitude toward the plant that the locals refer to as ganja. The Southeast Asian country will likely not become a pot-focused tourist haven anytime soon, however, the...

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July 22, 2022

The Trains To Nowhere

NEED TO KNOW The Trains To Nowhere LAOS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2c88ac81-3523-4a3b-b94d-88479d0a30a0.png"] When Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt in May, as the BBC reported, the resulting loss in confidence in the government led a mob to occupy the presidential palace and mansion. Photos in National Public Radio captured Sri Lankans...

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July 19, 2022

The Widening Sinkhole

NEED TO KNOW The Widening Sinkhole SRI LANKA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d469a690-58fa-4bcb-9cd4-16e56a24386f.png"] Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was once a war hero, known for crushing the Tamil Tigers and putting an end to a brutal 26-year civil war and setting a course to make the country another Asian Tiger. But last week,...

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July 15, 2022

Crimes, Public and Domestic

NEED TO KNOW Crimes, Public and Domestic PAPUA NEW GUINEA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/dbe527fc-305d-4a67-99b3-558321dd4d0f.png"] Police in Papua New Guinea recently detained the son of the country’s prime minister and some construction company executives as they were traveling to a province where parliamentary elections were about to start. The executives were carrying...

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July 11, 2022

The To-Do List

NEED TO KNOW The To-Do List JAPAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ab764327-df98-4918-badd-17c2c79d5685.png"] On Friday, a gunman murdered former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a towering figure in Japan. The seismic impact of that killing will linger for years to come, a Bloomberg opinion piece noted. This is a country where violence is so rare...

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June 30, 2022

The New Opium

NEED TO KNOW The New Opium INDIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1ac703d1-8192-40be-95ea-427a8f7ed9ee.png"] Does India have a problem with Muslims? Many say yes, after a recent political firestorm caused by high-ranking Hindu nationalists. Earlier this month, Nupur Sharma, a spokeswoman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and other party officials...

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June 28, 2022

Crackdown, Meet Backlash

NEED TO KNOW Crackdown, Meet Backlash MYANMAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9ef34308-9cd1-4a8e-a2b3-e7a7ab6846ed.png"] The military junta that controls Myanmar recently put deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi into solitary confinement. She has been imprisoned since February 2021 when the junta overthrew her elected government, the BBC reported. Suu Kyi, 77, is a Nobel...

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