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September 22, 2021

Not Yet Convinced

NEED TO KNOW POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] Not Yet Convinced Around half of the people in Poland are fully vaccinated. The other half are leery of heeding the pleas of public health authorities and getting their shots. “We get all the information from the internet, from the TV here, and nothing...

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September 17, 2021

How to Win Big

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] How to Win Big Boris Vishnevsky was shocked when he saw the names and faces of his two opponents in the upcoming elections to the Russian lower house of parliament, the Duma. His rivals were both named Boris Vishnevsky. Both were around his age...

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September 13, 2021

Eco Election

NEED TO KNOW NORWAY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/65102137-137a-414d-a10e-0cd0d00c7aa4.png"] Eco Election Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg might become the first top politician to be ousted due to climate change. Polls forecast that Solberg and her Conservative Party will lose the Sept. 13 general election in the Scandinavian country to Labor Party leader Jonas...

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September 08, 2021

Human Weapons

NEED TO KNOW LITHUANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e7852ed7-2760-4e7e-a300-0fc715ec1ca8.png"] Human Weapons Lithuania is building a 315-mile-long fence on its southern border. The structure has two functions: keeping refugees and asylum seekers out and snubbing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, whom Lithuanian leaders say is trying to foist the unfortunate migrants on them in...

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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 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 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 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 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 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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August 02, 2021

Papers, Please

NEED TO KNOW EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] Papers, Please Imagine a lamp-lit cobblestone street on a dark, foggy night in Paris. As an innocent civilian walks down the street with the intent of boarding a bus out of the city, a uniformed man approaches from the shadows. “Your papers,...

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July 22, 2021

Offshoring Humans

NEED TO KNOW UNITED KINGDOM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db250264-45f9-48fa-be6e-ab4d2ef0d6a5.png"] Offshoring Humans Nigel Farage, the former British member of the European Parliament who masterminded his country’s exit from the European Union, recently called the Royal National Lifeboat Institution a “taxi service for illegal immigration” when it picks up migrants in danger at...

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July 15, 2021

No Borders

NEED TO KNOW EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] No Borders Leaders at Volvo, ArcelorMittal, BASF, Daimler, Iberdrola, Orsted, Thyssenkrupp, Titan Cement, Siemens, Shell and other storied and gigantic European companies recently issued a public letter in the run-up to the European Union unveiling new measures for the bloc to reach...

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July 14, 2021

Alphabet Pandemic

NEED TO KNOW WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Alphabet Pandemic Just when the world thought it was safe to go inside without a mask again, the delta variant of the coronavirus showed up. Luckily, many vaccines protect against the delta, which CNBC predicted would cause high infection rates in the US in...

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July 09, 2021

New Normal

NEED TO KNOW BULGARIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1eb16295-db95-4ff1-8e0b-8bdc4e81cb9c.png"] New Normal Bulgaria could be at a turning point. Voters are scheduled to go to the polls on July 11 to elect a new parliament after Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and his Gerb political party failed to form a coalition despite three attempts since...

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June 25, 2021

Thrust and Parry

NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Thrust and Parry After meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland recently, American President Joe Biden said Russia would face consequences if the country continued to encourage or ignore ransomware and other cyber espionage attacks launched from its territory. Asked what those consequences might...

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June 15, 2021

Repression By Grammar

NEED TO KNOW WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Repression By Grammar Traditional Czech speakers add "ova" to the last names of females. The suffix literally means “belonging to” a husband, father or another male relative, explained a Cox News Service story that noted how “ova” in English refers to female egg...

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June 08, 2021

The Laws of Air

NEED TO KNOW BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3dffa11e-ac63-436f-a4ed-735a6dabc4a6.png"] The Laws of Air Ryanair flight 4978 was over Belarus on a trip from Greece to Lithuania when an air traffic controller announced that they had a bomb on board. Soon after, a MiG fighter jet suddenly appeared to escort the commercial flight to...

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June 01, 2021

Alpine Exceptionalism

NEED TO KNOW SWITZERLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2b943183-27c5-4545-a4cd-06237a4dff08.png"] Alpine Exceptionalism Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset recently admitted that he should have been more skeptical about the advice of scientists during the coronavirus epidemic. A year ago, for example, Berset advised against wearing masks after scientists told him they could prove ineffective....

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