Archive

May 14, 2021

Historic Violence

NEED TO KNOW ISRAEL/ WEST BANK & GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] Historic Violence We've seen it before, all too often. Hamas fires rockets at Israel. Israel launches airstrikes at Gaza. Dozens or hundreds or even thousands die when it is over – for a moment. The present violence between Israel and...

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May 13, 2021

Truth and Consequences

NEED TO KNOW ARMENIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/291ba8a2-3105-41e3-a793-e28cc6a9282e.png"] Truth and Consequences President Joe Biden recently phoned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to say that the US was going to recognize the Ottoman Empire’s genocidal campaign against Armenians in 1915. The conversation was tense, reported CNN. Erdoğan often paints Turkey as the heir to...

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May 12, 2021

Middle Eastern #MeToo

NEED TO KNOW KUWAIT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/4005272d-9b09-43b0-93d1-c53d7db8e01b.png"] Middle Eastern #MeToo Farah Hamza Akbar and her family told police that she feared that a man whose marriage proposal she rejected was going to kill her. The police arrested the unnamed man on harassment charges but he made bail. Shortly after, Akbar...

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May 11, 2021

New Leader, Old Torch

NEED TO KNOW CUBA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/934b8716-56c1-487d-ba72-11a855fa10c6.png"] New Leader, Old Torch It was the end of an era when Raúl Castro resigned as chief of the Cuban Communist Party last month. Castro and his late brother, Fidel, had ruled the island since the 1959 revolution. “Nothing, nothing, nothing is forcing me...

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May 10, 2021

The Consequences of Contretemps

NEED TO KNOW HONG KONG [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ed89ce6f-df7c-493b-809a-681d51fa4904.png"] The Consequences of Contretemps Chinese filmmaker Ying Liang, 34, became stranded in Hong Kong in 2011 when Beijing officials banned him from returning to the mainland for making a film about the Chinese criminal justice system. Now he’s watching as the same officials...

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May 07, 2021

The Middle Child

NEED TO KNOW JORDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8e349f45-1adc-4062-b298-9fdf38aa8f40.png"] The Middle Child Angry Jordanians regularly call into Rainbow Street, a talk radio show, to gripe about unemployment and lack of economic opportunities. In recent weeks, however, the tone has changed. Callers are blaming King Abdullah II, an ally of the West and...

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May 06, 2021

Eviction Notice

NEED TO KNOW KENYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/042c2340-7f46-4be6-b8d2-b99757193837.png"] Eviction Notice Kenya intends to close the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps that together host more than 430,000 refugees mostly from war-torn Somalia and South Sudan. They are havens for terrorism, it says. Setting a June 30, 2022 deadline, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told the...

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May 05, 2021

Politics and Plague

NEED TO KNOW CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] Politics and Plague The Canadian military recently deployed to Ontario amid a scary surge of the coronavirus that has seen the rate of infections surpass that of the US for the first time. The move came after Ontario Premier Doug Ford issued new...

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May 04, 2021

Dharmic Democracy

NEED TO KNOW TIBET [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ee543dae-dc0e-497c-b1b2-51199c631b8c.png"] Dharmic Democracy In 1959, nine years after China occupied Tibet, the Dalai Lama and other Tibetans fled to the town of Dharamshala in India, where they established a government in exile that is now called the Central Tibetan Administration. And a decade ago, the...

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May 03, 2021

Vaccines for Sale

NEED TO KNOW WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Vaccines for Sale Indians were desperately searching for vaccines as the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic struck the world’s largest democracy and second-most populous country. Over the weekend, officials said the  Covid-19’s death toll in India topped 400,000 even as most researchers believe...

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April 30, 2021

Walking Backwards

NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] Walking Backwards Farahnaz Forotan is an Afghan journalist who was granted an interview with Taliban leaders during peace negotiations in Doha, Qatar last year. “The experience reinforced my sense that postwar Afghanistan, dominated by the Taliban, was bound to be a bleak place for...

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April 29, 2021

Bullies: 1; Voters: 0

NEED TO KNOW MYANMAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9ef34308-9cd1-4a8e-a2b3-e7a7ab6846ed.png"] Bullies: 1; Voters: 0 American oil giant Chevron is lobbying Congress hard to stop the US government from slapping new sanctions on Myanmar after United Nations officials said the southeast Asian country “is now effectively controlled by a murderous criminal enterprise,” the New...

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April 28, 2021

Embarrassment of Riches

NEED TO KNOW MONTENEGRO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/4b30f1e1-b1f1-4c0b-8877-a8d9773d57e4.png"] Embarrassment of Riches Montenegro is lucky, in some ways. The Balkan region of Europe has long suffered a brain drain as citizens migrated for jobs in Amsterdam, London, Paris and elsewhere. But recently it seems as if highly educated young people have been returning...

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April 27, 2021

Messy House

NEED TO KNOW NEPAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a519ab91-7b87-4ef0-a6df-573c03bc0303.png"] Messy House Gray smog is cutting off the air of the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu amid a rash of wildfires. The Himalayan nation has counted more than 2,000 forest fires since November 2020, with a quarter of those spewing dust, smoke and ash...

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April 26, 2021

After the King

NEED TO KNOW CHAD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b08925fb-4623-40c3-9563-de5bd3009fa5.png"] After the King President Idriss Deby recently won reelection to a sixth term to continue his grip on power in Chad, which began more than 30 years ago when he seized control in an armed uprising. A day later, rebels killed him. "Faithful to the...

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April 23, 2021

Tickets to Never Never Land

NEED TO KNOW ALBANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0b3746d6-a585-4423-a6b9-37ef4ae614bb.png"] Tickets to Never Never Land Facebook knowingly allowed Albanian officials to spread lies on the social network. When an investigator discovered the posts, Facebook failed to act, a Guardian investigation found. Misinformation online and a government attempt to manipulate voters are only a few...

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April 22, 2021

Problem Child

NEED TO KNOW HAITI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/49e3c059-ec02-49d2-b8d4-2a7e10c83ff3.png"] Problem Child Haitian Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe resigned recently. He served for around a year, wrote Al Jazeera, a period that saw a spectacular rise in murders, kidnappings and insecurity in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. In an illustrative example of the...

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April 21, 2021

Denier-In-Chief

NEED TO KNOW TANZANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7819ef2-af28-4877-8ca5-9689142b709a.png"] Denier-In-Chief The president of Tanzania, John Magufuli, denied that Covid-19 was real. The virus likely proved him wrong. It may have claimed his life on March 17. As CNN explained, the late 61-year-old president officially died from heart failure, which officialdom maintains he had been...

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April 20, 2021

Intimidation Games

NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Intimidation Games Around 10 years ago, the Atlantic Council recalled, American leaders scoffed at those who viewed Russia as America’s greatest geopolitical foe. Now it seems as if the Russophobes may have been prescient. Fisherman plying American waters off the coast of Alaska recently...

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April 19, 2021

Hunger Games

NEED TO KNOW ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] Hunger Games Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago for his hand in bringing a border war with neighboring Eritrea to an end. Now Abiy’s military crackdown on Tigray, a region in northern Ethiopia where rebels are seeking...

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