Essential Questions

• From whose viewpoint are we seeing or reading or hearing? From what angle or perspective?
• These current event summaries are based on news articles that come from various sources. Most of these are secondary sources, articles written by those who have witnessed or examined in detail events having to do with the interactions of separate nations. Some primary sources, such as the leaders of the countries involved in these events, may give biased opinions.
  

• How do we know when we know? What's the evidence, and how reliable is it?
• Some articles are purely factual, giving specific details and evidence, often in the form of quotes. However, some articles are just interpretations of current events. These will usually give little evidence and are usually just opinions and observations, and so they may be less reliable.
  
• How are things, events, or people connected to each other? What is the cause and what is the effect? How do they fit together?
• While foreign policy is the focus of these current event summaries, many nations' actions in foreign policy are based around the events within the nations themselves. These nations are sometimes in situations that require them to deal with other countries to help their own interests.
  
• What's new and what's old? Have we run across this idea before?
• Countries have always interacted with each other, often trying to come to an agreement so that they may reach a mutual goal. One focus of these goals is to improve situations such as the conflicts within and between South Asian countries. These conflicts are not, for the most part, new, having very old roots.
  
• So what? Why does it matter? What does it all mean?
• The interactions between nations in South Asia are very important to know about. Some major conflicts or significant deals and agreements could potentially affect the rest of the world. In some cases, they have already begun to do so.