Archive

February 17, 2023

Les Misérables

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Les Misérables FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d78d9fd2-f0df-4e59-9bd4-334bffdc4974.png"] It’s an age-old battle in France: French leaders want more work out of their constituents. Workers, meanwhile, say “non.” “We’re worn out by work,” pensioner Bernard Chevalier said in an interview with Reuters. “Retirement should be a second life, not a waiting...

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February 16, 2023

When the Earth Moves

NEED TO KNOW When the Earth Moves TURKEY/ SYRIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0f15500b-d13e-4a44-afc8-f426e94eea1f.png"] Two brothers rationed protein drinks to survive under the rubble of a collapsed building in the city of Kahramanmaras in Turkey, wrote the New York Times. In the northern Syrian city of Afrin, hospital staff named a new-born baby...

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February 15, 2023

The Other Front

NEED TO KNOW The Other Front UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b369e5e7-6255-18ce-c4c4-f081d330ee03.png"] As their fellow citizens battle the Russian army on the eastern front, Ukrainian authorities recently displayed the mounds of cash, luxury watches and cars that a corrupt chief tax collector in the capital of Kyiv acquired as he overlooked $1.2...

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February 14, 2023

The Puppetmasters

NEED TO KNOW The Puppetmasters ZIMBABWE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/32d2805e-affb-4474-9ba4-8fc5eae44e98.png"] Police in Zimbabwe recently arrested more than two dozen members of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) opposition political party during an “unsanctioned gathering.” It was the latest example of “a wave of politically motivated violence against opposition supporters,” reported Reuters. That...

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February 13, 2023

Revolt of the Incas

NEED TO KNOW Revolt of the Incas PERU [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7d13971f-19d8-4bc2-ac9e-119d2f349be4.png"] The Peruvian city of Juliaca recently felt like a warzone. “Burning pyres of rubbish and bullet-pocked walls … troops holed up in the airport with AK-47s and riot shields, waiting for a truce that has no date to come …...

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February 10, 2023

Lights Out

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Lights Out SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] André de Ruyter launched investigations into corruption and organized crime at South Africa’s state-owned energy company, Eskom, where he was CEO. Soon after he tendered his resignation in December, he says someone slipped cyanide into his coffee, Quartz reported. He...

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February 09, 2023

Rumbles in the Household

NEED TO KNOW Rumbles in the Household CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] French-speaking Canadians concentrated in the province of Quebec have long sought more autonomy from the central government in Ottawa and the rest of the mainly English-speaking North American country – to the point of wanting to secede from the...

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February 08, 2023

Tanking Diplomacy

NEED TO KNOW Tanking Diplomacy RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] A Russian company that makes materials for oil fracking, Fores, is offering more than $70,000 to the first Russian soldiers who capture or destroy any of the tanks given to Ukraine by the US and Europe. The announcement of the bounty...

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February 07, 2023

Dirty Laundry

NEED TO KNOW Dirty Laundry THE PACIFIC [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ca74ef83-91bb-5485-7145-653b9834523b.png"] Since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melted down in 2011 after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out its power generators, officials have been running water through the nuclear fuel in the damaged reactor, then storing the irradiated water in more...

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February 06, 2023

Straddling a Divide

NEED TO KNOW Straddling a Divide SERBIA/ KOSOVO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f6afaae5-7d10-5af0-76bc-7a515c553cc0.png"] Late last year, Serbia and Kosovo, the former Serbian territory whose majority ethnic Albanian citizens declared independence in 2008 less than a decade after a bloody war to achieve just that, looked as if they were on the verge...

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February 03, 2023

Held Hostage

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Held Hostage CYPRUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/880db9d5-aa98-4e2b-a4f2-fec3d1a85ab9.png"] Workers in Cyprus went on a three-hour strike recently. The demonstration was a warning to the government and business elites on the Mediterranean island that public sector workers, educators, and construction workers could bring the Cypriot economy to a halt unless...

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February 02, 2023

Murder, and Other Disasters

NEED TO KNOW Murder, and Other Disasters ECUADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7dbfcec9-d17b-43ce-97b7-0ce48bb12d1f.png"] Under the conservative government of President Guillermo Lasso, Ecuador’s economy grew 3.2 percent last year, inflation today is relatively low compared with the region, employers have hired 500,000 people and 750,000 fewer Ecuadorians now live in poverty. In an interview...

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February 01, 2023

Playing Charades

NEED TO KNOW Playing Charades MYANMAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9ef34308-9cd1-4a8e-a2b3-e7a7ab6846ed.png"] Two years ago, Myanmar’s generals staged a coup that ousted the Southeast Asian country’s civilian leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Recently, in a show of force to prove that he is firmly in control, Prime Minister...

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January 31, 2023

Silent Gestures

NEED TO KNOW Silent Gestures RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Muscovites recently have been laying wreaths of flowers, stuffed animals, photographs and other mementos at the feet of a statue dedicated to the early 20th century Ukrainian writer, Lesya Ukrainka. The makeshift memorial, appearing after a Russian missile hit a residential...

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January 30, 2023

Sharp Elbows

NEED TO KNOW Sharp Elbows MOROCCO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/51ed502f-b616-bdda-8769-e407c1a0bb69.png"] Moroccan lawmakers recently voted to “reconsider” their North African country’s relationship with the European Union. The origins of the diplomatic shift began with Morocco’s alleged persecution of journalists, as Reporters Without Borders recounted. The triggering event, however, was the European Parliament’s...

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January 27, 2023

Interior Thoughts

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Interior Thoughts AUSTRALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/81d62805-bef8-41fd-9c0c-ed93ea461226.png"] Almost everyone ranks the Amazon, the Sahara and Siberia as among the world’s greatest, most gigantic and most remote wildernesses. Many might forget to add one of the planet’s vastest untouched regions, though – the Australian Outback. The Outback covers nearly two...

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January 26, 2023

The Morning After

NEED TO KNOW The Morning After ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] The war between Ukraine and Russia has understandably garnered much attention over the past year. While that carnage has unfolded, however, another bloodbath recently was to end in the Horn of Africa. Approximately 600,000 people died in the two-year-long war that...

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January 25, 2023

The Virtual Front

NEED TO KNOW The Virtual Front RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] In the 1990s, many world leaders failed to understand the threat that cyberattacks posed to their governments, societies and economies, argued journalist Matt Potter in a recent interview with ABC News. Today, the war between Russia and Ukraine has...

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January 24, 2023

Twixt the Bear and the Dragon

NEED TO KNOW Twixt the Bear and the Dragon MONGOLIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d44c27c0-8811-4785-9bf7-c8eb1cb78277.png"] In Mongolia, Dulamsuren Demberel worries about her family’s budget. The price of coal has increased by 40 percent in recent months as post-pandemic inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have roiled energy markets. Nomadic herders like...

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January 23, 2023

The Celtic Conundrum

NEED TO KNOW The Celtic Conundrum IRELAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7cea72cc-1559-4005-a6ad-f3350418bc77.png"] Three years after the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, officials in Brussels, London and Dublin still haven’t fixed the rules governing the border between Northern Ireland, a member of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland...

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