NEED TO KNOW SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/de0fc83e-2e7f-46a0-aca4-c509ed1cb6a4.png"] Moving Forward Sudan appears to be turning a corner. After years of war and famine in the East African country, Sudan’s so-called “transitional authorities” recently announced they would send the dictator they replaced last year, Omar al-Bashir, 76, to the International Criminal Court in...
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NEED TO KNOW EL SALVADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9d16e98f-6fe6-4329-b9c8-47184d56b2ce.png"] The Politics of Impunity Since 2013, US officials have deported 138 people to El Salvador who were later killed in their crime-ridden Central American country, according to a recent Human Right Watch report. Writing in the Conversation, Emerson College political scientist Mneesha Gellman...
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NEED TO KNOW HONG KONG [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ed89ce6f-df7c-493b-809a-681d51fa4904.png"] Public Health Hong Kong officials recently evacuated some residents from an apartment block because they feared the deadly new coronavirus was spreading through its plumbing. A fascinating story in CNN told of two people in the high-rise contracting the virus. They were...
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NEED TO KNOW IRAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/aa73e799-3df4-4d8a-8ec5-35a9feeb2bb4.png"] Freedom of Choice Iranian voters will elect a new parliament on Friday. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged people to turn out, saying Iranians exercising their franchise would “disappoint the enemy,” reported Chinese news service Xinhua. Presumably, the enemy is the US. Following the American...
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NEED TO KNOW CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] Homefront The Red Braid Alliance for Decolonial Socialism is proving to be a headache for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. The activist group recently shut down Canada’s busiest port, in Vancouver, British Columbia, for a day. “We’re part of a nationwide movement to...
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NEED TO KNOW GUINEA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/963d6fc3-90db-4090-ad9a-da882d906f12.png"] Mining for a New Leader International mining companies are circling around massive, high-quality ore deposits in Guinea. As Bloomberg reported, if the companies have their way, the small West African country could become the third-biggest exporter of iron ore in the world after...
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NEED TO KNOW VIETNAM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3f17a3ec-f2fd-42ee-b8c2-dd23d117cb41.png"] Uncharted Waters Vietnam has been a success story for globalization. The communist Southeast Asian country has become a magnet for foreign investment and a hub for manufacturing in recent years. Economic growth has been around 6.6 percent since 2000. But Vietnam has also become remarkably...
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NEED TO KNOW CHILE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/baed026e-8c02-42fc-8c27-383b8bf87a6c.png"] Contest of Our Time Free marketeers have long considered Chile a darling among South American countries due to its reputation as conservative, pro-business and stable. But recently one of the country’s best-known exports has been a feminist protest song called “The Rapist Is You,”...
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NEED TO KNOW EASTERN EUROPE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ddbd2c82-2ca6-4014-b1ec-624b21d6be95.png"] Skepticism of Liberty Judging by the success of so-called “illiberal,” populist governments in Hungary, Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, some Americans might wonder what went wrong as these countries transitioned away from communism in the years after the Berlin Wall fell...
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NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] Grand Plans Peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have stalled. The former insists on a complete cease-fire before the talks can restart, while the latter has only agreed to a “reduction of violence,” explained Al Jazeera. The US, meanwhile, wants...
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NEED TO KNOW CAMEROON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6863deda-11be-43e3-9033-4bec4b249409.png"] A Question of Legitimacy Around 50,000 Cameroonian refugees have been flooding into Nigeria in recent weeks. They fear violence will flare up in the run-up to Cameroon’s local and parliamentary elections on February 9, wrote Voice of America. Four years ago, civil unrest overtook the...
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NEED TO KNOW HAITI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/49e3c059-ec02-49d2-b8d4-2a7e10c83ff3.png"] From The Rubble Ten years ago this month, a powerful earthquake struck Haiti, reducing Port-au-Prince to rubble. As many as 300,000 people died and 300,000 were injured in the disaster, according to French humanitarian group ACTED. Today, the island – one of the world’s...
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NEED TO KNOW ROMANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9aaceeea-9490-44fc-a4ad-151c831adffc.png"] Losing Hope Bucharest is supposedly the Paris of the East. Citing the French influence on the Romanian capital’s Beaux-Arts architecture, the Daily Beast recommended a “flânerie,” or aimless walk, through the city to experience a “surreal sense of dislocation” between the City of Light...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SOMALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c56dd5fb-c2b6-48fc-91de-fc8608ae6104.png"] Spinning One’s Wheels Climate change is wreaking havoc in Somalia. People are making it worse. Massive locust swarms are plaguing the East African country and its neighbors. That’s a problem in a region where many sit on the precipice of famine. A swarm can...
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NEED TO KNOW INDIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1ac703d1-8192-40be-95ea-427a8f7ed9ee.png"] Heart and Soul An unstable man with right-wing tendencies took a gun to a student protest in India recently, eventually wounding one demonstrator. A remarkable Reuters video shows a chaotic scene as crowds surround the man with the gun. In a Facebook post, the...
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NEED TO KNOW NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] Getting It Together As many as 3 million people died in the Nigerian civil war that ended 50 years ago this month. The war kicked off in 1967 when leaders in the country’s southeast declared an independent Republic of Biafra. This CNN story has...
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NEED TO KNOW VENEZUELA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f52c66cd-9299-42e6-acd8-f970f62c524b.png"] An Exit from Crisis Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido recently defied a travel ban to attend an international conference in Colombia, where he met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the BBC reported. The two men had plenty to discuss. The speaker of Venezuela’s...
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NEED TO KNOW AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3d9c9459-9302-4fc1-a060-e8206615789c.png"] The Next Big Thing Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is bullish on Africa. The continent has 1.3 billion people. Forty percent are younger than 16. Six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies are in Africa. The upside is astronomical. “Each time I go, I...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW OMAN [map url="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/879a3e5a-a617-49b5-abb4-fdbfe94fec95.png"] Loss and Change In early 2017, the late Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman invited Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, to his palace in Muscat. A year later, he held an audience with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Arab rulers usually don’t have...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW UNITED KINGDOM [map url="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8c238c0e-e370-4880-bc53-0ac24ba71887.png"] Details JPMorgan Chase recently purchased a second building in Paris for hundreds of employees moving from London to the French capital due to Britain’s exit from the European Union at the end of the month. As the Financial Times reported, the new...
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