Archive

July 07, 2023

Community Policing

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Community Policing HONDURAS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5e2a67ee-c113-425a-b7dc-9cb08a72f95e.png"] The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has earned plaudits from many of his people – and brickbats from human rights activists – for his crackdown on the gangs that have long run rampant in the Central American country. Now El Salvador’s...

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July 06, 2023

Humbled but Unbowed

NEED TO KNOW Humbled but Unbowed RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has survived Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group’s apparent coup attempt, the world is wondering what happens next. Charges against Prigozhin, who supposedly is in Belarus, and the Wagner military contractors who marched on Moscow...

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July 05, 2023

Come Visit

NEED TO KNOW Come Visit HONG KONG [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ed89ce6f-df7c-493b-809a-681d51fa4904.png"] Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, is giving out 700,000 plane tickets to folks who would like to visit the former British colony on the South China Sea. Would-be visitors must apply to receive the tickets, Time Out...

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July 04, 2023

Gassed

NEED TO KNOW Gassed NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] One of Bola Tinubu’s first actions, when he became president of Nigeria in May, was eliminating the oil-producing country’s fuel subsidy. As the Economist explained, the subsidy that in 2022 reached $10 billion a year has long been a drag on the...

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July 03, 2023

Western Outpost in the East

NEED TO KNOW Western Outpost in the East LITHUANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e7852ed7-2760-4e7e-a300-0fc715ec1ca8.png"] One of Lithuania’s first post-independence leaders after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Vytautas Landsbergis, recently had some choice words for officials in Moscow. “Victory will come when there’s no Russian empire,...

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June 30, 2023

AI, Meet Europe

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW AI, Meet Europe EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] The European Parliament recently overwhelmingly passed the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act. While the legislation must overcome more hurdles to become a law, it’s an example of European lawmakers charging forward with regulations to control technology that thinkers like...

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June 29, 2023

Cracks in the Foundation

NEED TO KNOW Cracks in the Foundation SENEGAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3676cf10-2f23-4295-b085-c86147830390.png"] Senegalese opposition politician Ousmane Sonko has filed a 170-page-long court complaint in France against Senegalese President Macky Sall and top members of the West African country’s security forces for alleged crimes against humanity. The charges stemmed from the Senegalese government’s...

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June 28, 2023

A Voice, a Divide

NEED TO KNOW A Voice, a Divide AUSTRALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/81d62805-bef8-41fd-9c0c-ed93ea461226.png"] After a recent historic parliamentary vote, Australians will vote on a constitutional amendment to dramatically expand the protections of their Indigenous communities. As a government website showed, the question will ask voters whether to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait...

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June 27, 2023

Pugachevshchina

NEED TO KNOW Pugachevshchina RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] In the 1770s, a Cossack named Emelian Pugachev rebelled against Catherine the Great. As described in Alexander Pushkin’s novel, “The Captain’s Daughter,” peasants furious at the Russian army’s corruption fueled the rebellion. But Pugachev’s uprising failed. He was captured and publicly executed in...

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June 26, 2023

Backroom Chats

NEED TO KNOW Backroom Chats CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] American diplomats claimed that the autocratic president of China, Xi Jinping, had no clue that one of his spy balloons had been shot down over the US in February. As CNN noted, Xi’s potential ignorance of a major international story illustrated...

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June 23, 2023

The Fix Is In

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW The Fix Is In GUATEMALA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db73a011-021f-466b-9b89-77add155facc.png"] A Guatemalan court recently convicted newspaper publisher José Rubén Zamora of money laundering and sentenced him to six years in prison. His newspaper, El Periódico, regularly investigated Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, the New...

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June 22, 2023

Pushing For Normal

NEED TO KNOW Pushing For Normal SIERRA LEONE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fa024dc5-dbe7-d0c9-dd70-64d5fc0b96a9.png"] Samura Kamara, the leader of the All People’s Congress (APC) party and the main opposition candidate in Sierra Leone’s presidential election on June 24, recently called for every member of the small West African nation’s electoral commission to resign,...

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June 21, 2023

Contextual Legacies

NEED TO KNOW Contextual Legacies BELGIUM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/46999ca2-dabf-15d8-3505-820844e95828.png"] History has been stirring passion in Belgium as the country prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2030. When authorities announced they would spiff up the triumphal arch in the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels – a monument built in 1880 to...

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June 20, 2023

End Game

NEED TO KNOW End Game RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Commemorated on June 12, Russia Day celebrates the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic’s declaration of independence in 1990. Festivities in Moscow this year lacked much patriotic fervor, however. “For me, it’s a holiday of bureaucracy,” an anonymous Muscovite told the Moscow...

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June 19, 2023

Hot Stuff

NEED TO KNOW Hot Stuff CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] In an example of climate change arousing an international effort, firefighters from around the globe have rushed to help put out the Canadian wildfires that have burned 13 million acres of forest and choked the US Midwest and Eastern seaboard with...

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June 16, 2023

Pride and Pressure

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Pride and Pressure KYRGYZSTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/766aa12d-4910-4bb3-a204-adba72f724f9.png"] D Billions is a quartet of Kyrgyz singers whose performances for kids on YouTube have received 31 billion viewings, more than pop star Taylor Swift or South Korean sensation, BTS. As Global Voices explained, D Billions could be Kyrgyzstan’s biggest...

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June 15, 2023

Intrigue in the Palace

NEED TO KNOW Intrigue in the Palace COLOMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/80e582e1-1ef0-4fb5-a86a-699a8cf7cddf.png"] Leftist leaders from around the globe recently issued an open letter to the Colombian public, saying that the opponents of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who assumed office a year ago, were planning a “soft coup” to oust him from...

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June 14, 2023

When the Levee Breaks

NEED TO KNOW When the Levee Breaks RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1fcd4036-786d-9ce0-309a-14f74105b898.png"] Theories abound about the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. As CNN reported, Russian officials said the Ukrainians destroyed the dam in order to starve the Crimean Peninsula of water. The region is a former...

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June 13, 2023

Direction: Hopelessness

NEED TO KNOW Direction: Hopelessness CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7e5325a-3ac2-4df5-8925-90bdfbdaf0d9.png"] Fighting in the civil war in Sudan has prompted 14,000 refugees to flee across the border to their neighbor to the southwest, the Central African Republic (CAR). As Africa News wrote, however, the CAR is not a safe haven. The...

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June 12, 2023

Settlement of Evil

NEED TO KNOW Settlement of Evil POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] A mile-long mass of hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, recently. The demonstration wasn’t only to mark the 34th anniversary of the country’s first democratic election after the fall of communism...

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