NEED TO KNOW IRAQ Waiting on a Comeback The ascent of Muqtada al-Sadr is the latest bizarre turn in Iraq’s tumultuous politics, […]

NEED TO KNOW SPAIN Checkmate Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is in the throes of a political migraine – and it’s not […]

NEED TO KNOW IRELAND A New Country Today Irish voters decide whether they keep the eighth amendment of their constitution, which bans […]

NEED TO KNOW COLOMBIA The Way We Were The Colombian government’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) […]

NEED TO KNOW ITALY It’s Alive! German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron may have been able to stave off […]

NEED TO KNOW GAZA Dreaming a Different Day Ahmad Abu Artema describes himself as a dreamer. “I looked up at the birds […]

NEED TO KNOW MALAYSIA A Shimmering Light Just days before Malaysians took to the polls to elect a new parliament this month, […]

NEED TO KNOW VENEZUELA Force and Change Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro learned politics under Hugo Chavez, the socialist firebrand who served as […]

NEED TO KNOW CHAD Off the Blacklist Citizens of Chad are able to once again enter the United States after President Trump […]

NEED TO KNOW NICARAGUA ‘We Are Nicaragua’ When the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua overthrew President Anastasio Somoza in 1979, ending […]

NEED TO KNOW ARMENIA From Prisoner to Premier Armenian journalist Nikol Pashinyan was kicked out of college in 1995 for his political […]

NEED TO KNOW UNITED KINGDOM The Ties that Bind The Sackler family of London derives its wealth from manufacturing OxyContin and other […]

NEED TO KNOW IRAQ A Different Song and Dance As if geopolitical happenings in Iraq weren’t complex enough, Sunday’s parliamentary elections – […]

NEED TO KNOW WORLD The Unending Debate Members of the Irish rock band U2 recently came out in favor of repealing abortion […]

NEED TO KNOW EUROPEAN UNION The Grass of Elephants Just before they were scheduled to expire, US President Donald Trump extended stays […]

NEED TO KNOW ARGENTINA Pendulum Swing When Equity International, Goldman Sachs and Centaurus Capital announced an Argentinian real-estate deal worth $300 million […]

NEED TO KNOW NORTH KOREA A Nobel Idea North and South Korean troops have removed loudspeakers that blared propaganda at each other […]

NEED TO KNOW SAUDI ARABIA Cognitive Dissonance It’s hard to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind simultaneously. Yet that is what […]

NEED TO KNOW INDONESIA Motion Sickness Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, is developing at breakneck speeds. Since the ouster of longtime dictator […]

NEED TO KNOW IRAQ Mystic Chords of Memory The financial crisis, the rise of the Islamic State and the success of right-wing […]

NEED TO KNOW COLOMBIA More Than Words 2018 hasn’t been the best year for the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better […]

NEED TO KNOW AZERBAIJAN The Birth of a Nation When it was founded in 1918, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was one of […]

NEED TO KNOW JAPAN On the Sidelines At their meeting in President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo […]

NEED TO KNOW UZBEKISTAN On Defrost For 27 years, Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov regularly jailed and tortured dissenters, threatened citizens with a […]