Archive

September 03, 2021

A Country Named Despair

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW HAITI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/49e3c059-ec02-49d2-b8d4-2a7e10c83ff3.png"] A Country Named Despair In July, the president of Haiti was assassinated. In mid-August, an earthquake in the south killed more than 2,200 and left a million injured, homeless and destitute. Then came a hurricane. And in between it all arrived an interim government...

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September 02, 2021

Avoiding Sinkholes

NEED TO KNOW MOROCCO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5456929d-d2a4-4505-94be-29745678ea3d.png"] Avoiding Sinkholes Moroccan King Mohammed VI recently denounced “methodical attacks” on his country, alluding to critics abroad who have raised questions about the kingdom’s policies in the disputed territory of the Western Sahara, the alleged use of Israeli spy software in civil rights...

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September 01, 2021

When the Levee Breaks

NEED TO KNOW ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] When the Levee Breaks Rebels seeking to separate their region from Ethiopia, the Oromo Liberation Army, have been on the rampage in the East African country, killing around 150 people in one recent incident alone, the Associated Press reported. The rebels and their affiliated...

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August 31, 2021

RealPolitik

NEED TO KNOW UKRAINE & RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] RealPolitik Erfan Kudusov and many other Tatars fled Crimea when Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014. To many in Kudusov’s community, the Russian takeover evoked Josef Stalin’s mass deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944. Their fears were not overblown. Tatar friends of...

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August 30, 2021

No Vacancy

NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] No Vacancy Airbnb will offer 20,000 Afghan refugees free, temporary housing around the world as they seek to reestablish new lives after the militant, theocratic Taliban reasserted control over their Central Asian country, reported TechCrunch. Unfortunately, however, the platform can’t offer a sustainable solution...

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August 27, 2021

Brother, Can You Spare a Wage Hike?

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Brother, Can You Spare a Wage Hike? An Iranian immigrant, Zahra Hossein Zadeh, earns $19 an hour cleaning hotel rooms in Sydney, Australia. “Honestly, I don’t have any financial problems,” Zadeh told the Washington Post. When she learned about the US federal minimum wage...

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August 26, 2021

Fighting the Undertow

NEED TO KNOW AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8aca45b-1687-4d5b-b62c-09186470d8a2.png"] Fighting the Undertow Zambian opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema was sworn in as president Tuesday after a stunning defeat of an incumbent bent on staying put and using all the powers of his office to do so. What's remarkable, though, is that former President Edgar...

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August 25, 2021

Recall Rage

NEED TO KNOW TAIWAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/dab1143a-8514-4f63-8098-bd36050d9680.png"] Recall Rage Is too much democracy a bad thing? If you ask some progressive politicians in Taiwan these days, they would likely answer yes. That's because a mechanism that was intended to deepen democracy is now being wielded as a weapon in "partisan revenge...

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August 24, 2021

The Overachiever

NEED TO KNOW ICELAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/05c4ecf9-d048-43ef-9046-22a7f3c10f03.png"] The Overachiever Iceland has long punched above its weight in tourism, scientific prowess, the arts and other realms – you could call this small country of 368,000 an overachiever. The pandemic has been no exception. Nature noted last year "How Iceland hammered Covid with science,"...

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August 23, 2021

The Winners of Nothing

NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] The Winners of Nothing A week ago, the Taliban toppled the Afghan government and took over the country. Thousands have fled and many thousands more are trying to. Most of the international community is holding back diplomatic recognition. The US has frozen billions...

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August 20, 2021

Weaponizing Passports

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3889a598-67d0-4b0d-b019-11292382b589.png"] Weaponizing Passports Russian officials have been issuing Russian passports to residents of eastern Ukraine, a region that has declared independence and affiliation with Moscow in a strategy the Atlantic Council called 'the weaponization of citizenship." They plan to distribute about 1 million. Russia annexed the...

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August 19, 2021

Truth & Consequences

NEED TO KNOW THE PHILIPPINES [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/76f74898-7b3b-4fc1-b7d7-88cadfea2fdf.png"] Truth & Consequences Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court want to investigate whether people died unjustly in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. “Information…suggests that state actors, primarily members of the Philippine security forces, killed thousands of suspected drug users and other...

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August 18, 2021

The Crypto Fiat

NEED TO KNOW EL SALVADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9d16e98f-6fe6-4329-b9c8-47184d56b2ce.png"] The Crypto Fiat Bitcoin has fascinated and frightened investors who love to watch its value rise (one bitcoin is worth more than $45,000 now) as well as skeptics who keep reminding cryptocurrency advocates that their beloved virtual money is exceptionally risky because...

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August 17, 2021

Weaponizing Secularism

NEED TO KNOW FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d78d9fd2-f0df-4e59-9bd4-334bffdc4974.png"] Weaponizing Secularism Ever since French officials banned Muslim women from wearing face veils at schools in 2004, the French have debated the limits they can place on Islamic dress and expression in order to preserve the secular nature of French culture. There is little...

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August 16, 2021

The Fall

NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] The Fall Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country Sunday as Taliban fighters entered Kabul, leading to the collapse of Afghanistan’s democratically elected government and the takeover of the country. For anyone watching the country over the past few weeks, it was no surprise. In...

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August 13, 2021

Problem Child

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] Problem Child From the headlines, one would think Poland is at war with the European Union. The Central European country is “fighting” bureaucrats in Brussels. Local pundits call on the EU to be “tougher.” Newspapers described the 27-nation bloc, the most important conglomeration of...

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August 12, 2021

A Storm Is Brewing

NEED TO KNOW ZAMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b35b30bb-8281-f4fe-f15c-397cafc083d1.png"] A Storm Is Brewing Zambian President Edgar Lungu deployed the army after clashes between members of his ruling Patriotic Front and the opposition United Party for National Development resulted in the deaths of two Patriotic Front supporters in the capital of Lusaka. Assailants...

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August 11, 2021

A Page, Borrowed

NEED TO KNOW BRAZIL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b4df2610-e790-44f6-bec1-f859c705ae8b.png"] A Page, Borrowed Protesters staged events throughout Brazil recently after far-right populist President Jair Bolsonaro, citing baseless claims of fraud, suggested he might need to postpone elections next year due to potential vote-rigging in the country’s electoral system. His comments stoked fears that he...

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August 10, 2021

Energy Chess

NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Energy Chess The US and Germany recently reached a deal wherein the US would agree to drop its opposition to Nord Stream 2, an approximately 750-mile-long pipeline through the Baltic Sea that would allow Russia to export natural gas to Europe, as the...

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August 09, 2021

Hunting Equilibrium

NEED TO KNOW EUROPE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f9c83d42-7d43-4e2f-a6d6-f7bf04744b7d.png"] Hunting Equilibrium Italian officials recently banned massive cruise ships from the fabled lagoon of the City of Canals. The ships’ hastened erosion and polluted the ancient lagoon’s sensitive ecosystem, said critics who welcomed the move. Others worried that the absence of the floating behemoths...

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