NEED TO KNOW The Jig is Up NORTH KOREA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/081c0373-fb17-4e7d-af63-346faaef42b7.png"] For more than two years, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un insisted that the coronavirus had not pierced his country's population, even as health experts and media worldwide found evidence that the illness had spread throughout the globe. Recently,...
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NEED TO KNOW Payback UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/976a1d06-3172-737e-86b7-6adaae2bcc0d.png"] Officers with Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) recently seized a man in Sloviansk, a city in the country’s Russian-dominated eastern region, for allegedly collaborating with Russian forces that have invaded the East European country. "What did he ask you for?" a security officer asked...
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[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW The New Guard AUSTRALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/81d62805-bef8-41fd-9c0c-ed93ea461226.png"] Australia is experiencing its most raucous federal elections in years as outsiders seemed poised to disrupt the placid pace of leaders in Canberra after polls close on May 21. Voters in North Sydney, a wealthy, multicultural district of the continent-country’s largest...
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NEED TO KNOW Guns and Crypto EL SALVADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9d16e98f-6fe6-4329-b9c8-47184d56b2ce.png"] Crime and Bitcoin are the two most powerful forces in El Salvador. The question is whether those forces will be centripetal and bring people together or whether they will be centrifugal and pull the country apart. In March, a record...
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NEED TO KNOW The Forever-war WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Some Ukrainian women in Poland, refugees from their country’s war against Russia, want to have abortions. But Poland has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Poland’s rules fall short...
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NEED TO KNOW All Hot on the Cyber Front RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] On May 9, as Russian soldiers, tanks and other vehicles paraded through the Red Square to celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, the Russian news website Lenta.ru was running headlines like...
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NEED TO KNOW Home Alone CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] A 13-year-old Chinese boy was home alone for 66 days in Kunshan in eastern China while his parents got caught up in a coronavirus lockdown in Shanghai. As the South China Morning Post reported, the boy took care of himself as...
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[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Shattered LEBANON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a353fadd-2d2a-41b3-b0c1-951b96702e16.png"] Lebanese expatriates took to the polls recently before parliamentary elections in their homeland on May 15. Their role in the ballot is important because of the enormous size of the diaspora due to the economic crisis. According to the National news outlet, the...
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NEED TO KNOW When the Show Doesn't Go On SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] Environmentalists on the Wild Coast, a region of South Africa, are demonstrating and litigating against a proposed seismic survey that would help Shell’s oil offshore explorations. The activists said the survey will include loud sound waves...
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NEED TO KNOW The Boogeymen UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9ab09fcd-a2f6-3da1-f121-d5fa811d9ebd.png"] Ukraine’s Azov Battalion started off eight years ago as a group of far-right activists who launched attacks against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, they have been incorporated into the Ukrainian military. Russia has...
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NEED TO KNOW Outsourcing Futures UNITED KINGDOM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db250264-45f9-48fa-be6e-ab4d2ef0d6a5.png"] Hundreds of migrants are crossing the dangerous English Channel to start new lives in Britain even as authorities in London unveiled a plan last month to permanently settle them more than 6,000 miles away in the African country of Rwanda. Described...
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NEED TO KNOW It Runs in the Family PHILIPPINES [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/76f74898-7b3b-4fc1-b7d7-88cadfea2fdf.png"] Boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, a senator in the Philippines who is now running for the president, recently called on authorities to release Filipino Senator Leila de Lima from jail. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer explained, de Lima is one...
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[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Law & Order HONG KONG [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ed89ce6f-df7c-493b-809a-681d51fa4904.png"] Gangsters beat up and robbed John Lee Ka-chiu when he was a boy growing up 50 years ago in Hong Kong public housing. Now the man whom Chinese leaders in Beijing have tapped to lead the free-market-oriented metropolis recalled...
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NEED TO KNOW Batons and Bucks NORTHERN IRELAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e1fa23fe-bd64-4526-9f49-8430fef05250.png"] Sinn Fein, with a history as the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, a militant organization, is now poised to win the largest share of seats in Northern Ireland’s regional parliament when voters in the British territory go...
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NEED TO KNOW No Free Lunch ANGOLA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e580f12f-c318-4898-ba82-0cb1373117e3.png"] Angolans traditionally offer meals of cornmeal or cassava porridge and beans with palm oil in honor of a recently departed loved one. Now hunger and high unemployment have led desperate Angolans to hang around cemeteries and then follow the families...
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NEED TO KNOW A Troubled Land AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] At least nine people died and 13 were injured in Afghanistan recently when bomb blasts blew up their mini-buses in Mazar-e-Sharif. "The targets appear to be Shiite passengers," a police spokesman told Agence France-Presse. "The enemies of Afghanistan are creating...
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NEED TO KNOW No Vacancy POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] The number of Ukrainian war refugees who have fled to Poland has surpassed the population of the Central European country’s capital, Warsaw. They’ve largely received a warm reception, a stark contrast to how Polish officials welcomed migrants who have fled the...
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[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW The War Without a Name MEXICO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fcd100e2-d1bb-4cd7-b9f4-53a07a70e41c.png"] A Mexican drug gang recently left six severed heads on a car roof in order to intimidate rival dealers who might try to infringe on claimed turf in the southern Mexican town of Chilapa de Alvarez. "In Chilapa selling...
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NEED TO KNOW The Comeback Kid PAKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eaf17bc7-6468-493e-bfe1-86954ffb120a.png"] Tens of thousands of Pakistanis attended a recent rally in support of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in Lahore. A former jet-setting cricket star who allied with religious conservatives, Khan told his supporters that he was the victim of a...
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NEED TO KNOW Guns & Butter MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7000f0bb-c02b-4438-87c6-002be2c0dfc6.png"] Observers in Tunisia are wondering how much higher food prices can go before civil unrest breaks out. Supermarket shelves in the North African country have been bare for weeks. Staples like eggs, flour, rice and sugar...
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