Archive

June 10, 2022

The Makeover

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW The Makeover CHILE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/baed026e-8c02-42fc-8c27-383b8bf87a6c.png"] Chilean President Gabriel Boric recently apologized to thousands of women who were forcibly sterilized over the years because they were HIV positive. As Al Jazeera reported, activists greeted the apology with a massive sigh of relief and a sense of vindication. The...

Read full story →

June 09, 2022

All In

NEED TO KNOW All In DENMARK [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/19f78c1e-e0c6-49d6-b264-eb1779028db9.png"] Two important developments in Denmark illustrate the new geopolitical landscape in Europe. Because Danish officials refused to pay for Russian gas in rubles, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently cut off natural gas supplies to the Northern European country. As the Associated Press...

Read full story →

June 08, 2022

Stumbling Ahead

NEED TO KNOW Stumbling Ahead UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b04f8892-ad2c-9be1-f2b6-ab5ebd3fe894.png"] The residents of Bucha, the Ukrainian town where Russians allegedly committed some of the worst war crimes of the conflict, have been cleaning up their streets. They’ve hauled ruined tanks, military vehicles and civilian cars and trucks to a lot on...

Read full story →

June 07, 2022

Too Many Cooks

NEED TO KNOW Too Many Cooks MALI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1f6bfc52-cbc4-4acf-9a51-d98604de3d93.png"] Armed men riding motorcycles shot and killed two Red Cross workers in western Mali recently, according to the international humanitarian organization. Their killers were not identified. Still, for the past decade, Islamist militants with ties to Al Qaeda and also...

Read full story →

June 06, 2022

Dairy and Dictatorship

NEED TO KNOW Dairy and Dictatorship CUBA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/934b8716-56c1-487d-ba72-11a855fa10c6.png"] Years ago, the late Fidel Castro promised that Cuba’s communist government would subsidize a liter of milk a day for every child under the age of seven. He even showcased a prized Cuban milk cow, Ubre Blanca, to highlight his...

Read full story →

June 03, 2022

Closing the Circle

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Closing the Circle NATO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c767d49-d4bd-b3d7-9222-6eec1d541361.png"] If Finland joins NATO, the Western Alliance will have opened a potential 800-mile-long front in a war against Russia. What’s more, as the Washington Post illustrated, this new front would come very close to Russia's nuclear submarine and Arctic navy...

Read full story →

June 02, 2022

Moving Out

NEED TO KNOW Moving Out NORWAY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/65102137-137a-414d-a10e-0cd0d00c7aa4.png"] Norway has become a key supplier of energy as Europe seeks out alternatives to Russian oil and gas. As the Financial Times explained, the EU imported 40 percent of its gas supplies from Russia before the war in Ukraine erupted. Now that...

Read full story →

June 01, 2022

But First, Trust

NEED TO KNOW But First, Trust IRAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/aa73e799-3df4-4d8a-8ec5-35a9feeb2bb4.png"] An Iranian engineer recently died and another employee was wounded in an “unexplained incident” at the Parchin military complex where International Atomic Energy Agency officials previously believed the country had been conducting research on nuclear weapons. As CBS News explained, the...

Read full story →

May 31, 2022

The Old Malignancy

NEED TO KNOW The Old Malignancy WEST AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8bda180e-c600-c3ec-d2fb-e8dfad709a2d.png"] Sixty alleged terrorists on motorcycles attacked a military checkpoint in Kpinkankandi on the Togo side of the border with Burkina Faso recently, killing eight soldiers and wounding 13. The troops were there to stop al Qaeda, Islamic State and...

Read full story →

May 30, 2022

The Grim Reaper’s Harvest

NEED TO KNOW The Grim Reaper’s Harvest UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b04f8892-ad2c-9be1-f2b6-ab5ebd3fe894.png"] The Russo-Ukrainian War has now crossed the three-month mark. So far, it’s a stalemate. At the Brookings Institution, researchers see “a war of attrition, with neither side capable of a decisive military breakthrough.” How the war will end remains unclear....

Read full story →

May 27, 2022

Return of the Repressed

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Return of the Repressed COLOMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/80e582e1-1ef0-4fb5-a86a-699a8cf7cddf.png"] A Colombian rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN) announced a 10-day, unilateral ceasefire with government forces to allow voters in the South American country to cast ballots for a new president on May 29. As Al Jazeera reported, the...

Read full story →

May 26, 2022

A Faustian Bargain

NEED TO KNOW A Faustian Bargain CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7e5325a-3ac2-4df5-8925-90bdfbdaf0d9.png"] Soldiers with links to Russia recently beat, tortured and executed civilians in the Central African Republic. The soldiers included mercenaries employed by the Wagner Group, a Russian private military security contractor, said Human Rights Watch. The United Nations...

Read full story →

May 25, 2022

Cutting Edge, Blunted

NEED TO KNOW Cutting Edge, Blunted EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] American serial entrepreneur Elon Musk’s proposed purchase of social network Twitter has garnered a lot of headlines lately. But Musk’s plan could hit serious roadblocks if he expects Twitter to operate in the European Union, among the world's three...

Read full story →

May 24, 2022

The Jig is Up

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,...

Read full story →

May 23, 2022

Payback

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...

Read full story →

May 20, 2022

The New Guard

[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...

Read full story →

May 19, 2022

Guns and Crypto

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...

Read full story →

May 18, 2022

The Forever-war

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...

Read full story →

May 17, 2022

All Hot on the Cyber Front

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...

Read full story →

May 16, 2022

Home Alone

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...

Read full story →