NEED TO KNOW INDONESIA Hard Rise The leader of the fourth-most-populous country in the world, Indonesia, has big plans. President Joko Widodo […]

NEED TO KNOW CHINA Changing Partners As American politicians disparage international free trade deals, Asian leaders are moving forward with them. Late […]

NEED TO KNOW CHINA Bursting at the Seams China is on track to double its gross domestic product, compared to ten years […]

NEED TO KNOW TAIWAN Amid Chaos, a Shoo-in Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is almost sure to win re-election on January 11. That’s […]

NEED TO KNOW NORTH KOREA False Alarms An American military base near the North Korean border mistakenly sounded air raid sirens rather […]

NEED TO KNOW WORLD The Desperate Ones The specter of despair appears to be haunting the world’s democracies. Electorates and politicians are […]

NEED TO KNOW MYANMAR About Face, About Grace Ye Thein went to Rakhine state in western Myanmar around Christmas to show support […]

NEED TO KNOW CHINA & UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Champagne Still On Ice The US-China trade war appears to be over. Long […]

NEED TO KNOW INDIA Made In India Indian opposition politician Rahul Gandhi is facing sedition charges for a small rhyme that refers […]

NEED TO KNOW CHINA Cultural Revolution Redux An Afghan-American teenage girl in New Jersey thought of a novel way to spread the […]

NEED TO KNOW HONG KONG A Landslide for Democracy Pro-democracy candidates in Hong Kong won nearly 90 percent of the seats in […]

NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA & CHINA Friends, but not Besties An alliance between China and Russia has long worried American strategists. But […]

NEED TO KNOW MARSHALL ISLANDS A Tsunami of Disenfranchisement In the 1940s and 1950s, the United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs, conducted […]

NEED TO KNOW SRI LANKA The Politics of Greed Gotabaya Rajapaksa helped crush a nearly 30-year-long insurgency in Sri Lanka in 2009 […]

NEED TO KNOW BOUGAINVILLE, PAPUA NEW GUINEA Where Bombs and Bullets Could Not Go The civil war between Papua New Guinea’s central […]

NEED TO KNOW WORLD Back to the Future Lately it’s been feeling a lot like 1968. Fifty-one years ago, Americans took to […]

NEED TO KNOW THAILAND The Price of Righteousness Fewer tourists these days are reserving hotel rooms, enjoying the nightlife, riding elephants and […]

NEED TO KNOW INDONESIA Reformers 0, Radicals 1 Indonesia’s security minister was stabbed recently in an attack that authorities blamed on Islamic […]

NEED TO KNOW PAKISTAN & INDIA Coming Last Most of the focus on Kashmir lately spotlights India’s crackdown in the disputed region […]

NEED TO KNOW JAPAN The Half-Life of Fear International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach wants to reassure athletes that radiation won’t taint their […]

NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN We the People A Taliban suicide bomber recently killed at least 26 people at a presidential campaign rally […]