NEED TO KNOW New and Shiny NETHERLANDS King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands recently visited Albany, Atlanta, and New York […]

NEED TO KNOW Let the Games Begin FRANCE French officials are only fairly sure that the opening ceremony for the upcoming summer […]

NEED TO KNOW Eye of the Beholder RUSSIA Russian-American historian Yuri Felshtinsky recently told Times Radio that Russian elites are in a […]

NEED TO KNOW Rightward Ho EUROPEAN UNION Expect right-wing parties to win big when 400 million voters in 27 countries elect new […]

NEED TO KNOW Irreconcilable Differences BELGIUM A few years ago, Belgium famously had no elected government for more than 600 days, as […]

NEED TO KNOW Hands Off SWITZERLAND Around 60 years ago, when rabies was widespread in Europe’s fox population, Switzerland invented an innovative […]

NEED TO KNOW An Open Race ICELAND A 700,000-year-old glacier called Snæfellsjökull almost appeared on Iceland’s presidential ballot for June 1. “It’s […]

NEED TO KNOW Fronts and Faults MOLDOVA A few months ago, photos surfaced of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko standing next to a […]

NEED TO KNOW Proximity Politics LITHUANIA Few countries have supported Ukraine’s fight against Russia more than Lithuania, a former Soviet republic on […]

NEED TO KNOW Wish You Weren’t Here EUROPE International tourism is arguably the fundamental building block of globalization. Visiting a foreign country, […]

NEED TO KNOW Staying in the Ring UKRAINE More than two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops to invade his […]

NEED TO KNOW Silent Treatment KOSOVO Responding to a request from Serbia for a boycott, only around 1 percent of the ethnic […]

NEED TO KNOW Goodbye, Utopia DENMARK In 1971, hippies began squatting on an abandoned naval base in Copenhagen, Denmark, creating a community […]

NEED TO KNOW Finding a Foothold NORTH MACEDONIA A symbol of international solidarity, University Hall, recently burned down in the North Macedonian […]

NEED TO KNOW Gangland Elections CROATIA Zoran Milanović caused a stir last month when he announced his candidacy for Croatia’s parliament as […]

NEED TO KNOW The Return SPAIN A plan to forgive Catalan separatists in Spain might have seemed like a political masterstroke when […]

NEED TO KNOW Up for Grabs SLOVAKIA Thousands of Slovaks took to the streets of their capital of Bratislava recently to protest […]

NEED TO KNOW Vladimir the Determined RUSSIA Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, is urging Russians to […]

NEED TO KNOW Being There EUROPEAN UNION Saxon State Minister for Economic Affairs, Labor, and Transport Martin Dulig recently said that Germany’s […]

NEED TO KNOW The Masterful Player ITALY Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been confronting twin crises. The first is low economic […]

NEED TO KNOW Stinky Politics PORTUGAL In November, investigators searched the official residence of Portugal’s Socialist Prime Minister António Costa, as well […]

NEED TO KNOW The Language of Families IRELAND Irish voters will cast ballots in a nationwide referendum on March 8 – International […]

NEED TO KNOW Family Feud HUNGARY Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs and others have described […]

NEED TO KNOW Forced Predictability BELARUS Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko recently claimed that his security forces had captured Ukrainian and Belarusian “saboteurs” […]