December 20, 2022

Rule By Chaos

NEED TO KNOW Rule By Chaos PERU [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7d13971f-19d8-4bc2-ac9e-119d2f349be4.png"] Foreign tourists were recently stranded at Machu Picchu, the 15th-century Incan citadel and UNESCO World Heritage Site, CNN wrote, amid a major political crisis in Peru. Officials declared a state of emergency, reported the Associated Press, shutting public transportation amid...

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December 07, 2022

Quitting, Loudly

NEED TO KNOW Quitting, Loudly CHILE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/baed026e-8c02-42fc-8c27-383b8bf87a6c.png"] Irina Karamanos recently resigned from her position as First Lady of Chile. She is still Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s partner. The 33-year-old Santiago-based anthropologist, feminist and political organizer simply didn’t want a public position based on that personal relationship. Writing in the...

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December 01, 2022

Inviting Locusts

NEED TO KNOW Inviting Locusts GUATEMALA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db73a011-021f-466b-9b89-77add155facc.png"] Guatemalan authorities recently detained two Americans for attempting to steal scores of Mayan artifacts – “stone spheres, mortars, sphinxes, yokes, anthropomorphic figures – loaded on a truck,” according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. The arrests were an unfortunately...

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November 21, 2022

Voting with the Feet

NEED TO KNOW Voting with the Feet NICARAGUA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b1f74445-4296-4463-949d-e92d66c3e3b1.png"] Jose Galeano, 35, has a degree in veterinary medicine. In his home country of Nicaragua, however, where poverty, corruption, and the suppression of political dissent are commonplace, he has worked as a farm laborer. So recently he took out...

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November 09, 2022

Peace in the Household

NEED TO KNOW Peace in the Household BRAZIL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b4df2610-e790-44f6-bec1-f859c705ae8b.png"] Brazilian truckers and other supporters of conservative President Jair Bolsonaro blocked roads in the South American country recently in protest at the victory of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the leftist ex-president who served previously from 2003 to 2010,...

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October 20, 2022

The Quiet Bienvenue

NEED TO KNOW The Quiet Bienvenue CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] Politicians in Quebec usually use secession from the federal union of Canada as a wedge issue when seeking votes. Incumbent Québécois Premier Francois Legault, however, opted to forgo talk of breaking from the rest of the country for the provincial...

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October 12, 2022

No Joy in Mudville

NEED TO KNOW No Joy in Mudville BRAZIL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b4df2610-e790-44f6-bec1-f859c705ae8b.png"] Supporters of left-wing Brazilian politician and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or simply “Lula,” suffered a rude awakening recently when, rather than easily winning his country’s presidential race, he now must face the incumbent right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro...

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October 04, 2022

Rinse, Repeat

NEED TO KNOW Rinse, Repeat PUERTO RICO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/20e7440e-baf0-4e4c-8dd8-699b2e71c3b0.png"] Five years after Hurricane Maria knocked out Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, it’s déjà vu. Hundreds of thousands of residents of the US territory are without power because of Hurricane Fiona, reviving memories of when Maria killed thousands, turned off the...

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September 14, 2022

The Time To Choose

NEED TO KNOW The Time To Choose BRAZIL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b4df2610-e790-44f6-bec1-f859c705ae8b.png"] Tanks rolled and soldiers marched through the streets of the Brazilian capital of Brasilia recently. They were ostensibly celebrating the 200th anniversary of the South American country’s independence from Portugal. But the military parades on Sept. 7 had a different...

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September 06, 2022

Pinned Down

NEED TO KNOW Pinned Down ECUADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7dbfcec9-d17b-43ce-97b7-0ce48bb12d1f.png"] Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, managed to drag his country out of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, however, he might be too embattled on two fronts to solve the other major problems facing his South American country. On the one hand, he is trying...

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September 02, 2022

Out of Touch

NEED TO KNOW Out of Touch CHILE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/baed026e-8c02-42fc-8c27-383b8bf87a6c.png"] Technocrats, scientists, environmentalists, and other experts and policymakers love Chile’s proposed new constitution. As Nature detailed, the new founding document for the South American nation would “boost science, expand environmental protection and improve the nation’s education system.” Problem is, few Chileans...

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August 15, 2022

Suffer the Monkeys

NEED TO KNOW Suffer the Monkeys WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] What’s in a name, Shakespeare once wrote. Well for monkeys these days, everything. Since May, monkeypox has been spreading exponentially around the globe, with countries that have never seen a case now reporting surges. Unfortunately, fatigue and anger stemming from the...

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July 29, 2022

A Grand Companion

NEED TO KNOW A Grand Companion HONDURAS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5e2a67ee-c113-425a-b7dc-9cb08a72f95e.png"] A judge in Honduras recently sentenced Roberto David Castillo, a top business executive and graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, to 22.5 years in prison for his role in the 2016 murder of Berta Caceres, an indigenous...

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July 26, 2022

Cycles of Despair

NEED TO KNOW Cycles of Despair HAITI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/49e3c059-ec02-49d2-b8d4-2a7e10c83ff3.png"] The gang warfare that has claimed more than 230 lives in Haiti recently has also threatened to cut off energy imports vital to transportation and electricity generation. As Agence France-Presse reported, the black market in gasoline in the Caribbean nation...

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July 13, 2022

Still They Come

NEED TO KNOW Still They Come CENTRAL AMERICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/60d6d301-be5e-f358-1b91-da2b679671d6.png"] Fernando José Redondo Caballero, 19, and Alejandro Miguel Andino Caballero, 22, could “barely contain their excitement” about migrating from Honduras to the United States, the Daily News wrote. One had almost completed his degree in business. The other had...

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July 06, 2022

Petro-fied

NEED TO KNOW Petro-fied COLOMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/80e582e1-1ef0-4fb5-a86a-699a8cf7cddf.png"] The president-elect of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, was in jail when his leftist guerilla movement, M-19, stormed the Palace of Justice in the South American country’s capital, Bogotá, in 1985. They launched the attack with the financial backing of drug lord Pablo Escobar...

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June 29, 2022

Back to the Future

NEED TO KNOW Back to the Future BOLIVIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8ed01a1e-5cea-4b63-b4c0-c3727f7de51c.png"] Bolivian President Luis Arce and dozens of others recently attended a ritual at the Tiwanaku pre-Inca religious complex near La Paz, one of the South American country’s two capitals. Dressed in the traditional, alpaca-and-llama-wool multicolored ponchos of the indigenous...

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June 15, 2022

New World Order

NEED TO KNOW New World Order MEXICO/ LATIN AMERICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96171786-dbde-0ef3-51b8-efb48e2520c3.png"] The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, skipped the recent Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. The move was considered a snub against American leaders who convened the summit to tackle migration and other serious issues...

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June 10, 2022

The Makeover

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...

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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...

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