December 16, 2021

Tits, Tats, Tragedies

NEED TO KNOW Tits, Tats, Tragedies UNITED KINGDOM / FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e8e29128-01ba-0e46-6f25-9ee1467659cc.png"] British novelist and Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was born in Zanzibar but came to the United Kingdom as a refugee in the 1960s, recently decried the UK and France's policies towards the desperate African, Middle Eastern...

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December 14, 2021

Face-Off

NEED TO KNOW Face-Off RUSSIA AND UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] Russia is amassing troops on the Ukrainian border. Ukrainian leaders say they can’t repel an invasion without American and European help. The potentially biggest battle on the continent since World War II is in the offing, Business Insider wrote. It...

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December 09, 2021

Mining Discontent

NEED TO KNOW Mining Discontent SERBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fd16e594-c67c-41ff-beb7-977236001063.png"] Lithium is a crucial component in the batteries that power electric vehicles. But many Serbs don’t think that makes the shiny metal green. That's why thousands of protesters took to the streets of the Serbian capital of Belgrade recently to call on...

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December 07, 2021

Backfire

NEED TO KNOW Backfire BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/40d35092-1c13-4975-b330-a9331d06a01d.png"] Children are sleeping in the woods on the border between Belarus and Poland. Many haven’t eaten in days. Instances of hypothermia are increasing, prompting the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to scale up aid amid a rising death count. The children, their parents...

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November 29, 2021

Auf Wiedersehen, Mutti

NEED TO KNOW Auf Wiedersehen, Mutti GERMANY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96d66e57-2644-40b9-aed7-fc66370c3077.png"] Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently warned her fellow Christian Democrats that the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the Central European country could be “worse than anything we’ve seen,” as Bloomberg wrote. The situation, she said, was already...

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November 22, 2021

A Spoon Full of Salt

NEED TO KNOW A Spoon Full of Salt EUROPE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f9c83d42-7d43-4e2f-a6d6-f7bf04744b7d.png"] Austria recently instituted a nationwide lockdown for the unvaccinated, forbidding anyone without a shot over the age of 12 to leave their home unless they’re working, shopping, exercising or seeking a vaccination, the BBC reported. Violating the lockdown...

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November 17, 2021

Cold Truths, Hot Air

NEED TO KNOW Cold Truths, Hot Air WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] World leaders, diplomats, environmentalists and fossil fuel industry executives who attended the COP26 climate change summit were tasked with forging an agreement to save the planet. In the end, they created a new deal that broke new ground in...

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November 16, 2021

The Marlboro Men

NEED TO KNOW The Marlboro Men MONTENEGRO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/4b30f1e1-b1f1-4c0b-8877-a8d9773d57e4.png"] The US and other international observers have turned a blind eye over the years to cigarette smuggling in Montenegro, a small former Yugoslav republic on the Adriatic that achieved independence from Serbia in 2006 and joined NATO nine years later. Montenegrin...

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November 15, 2021

The Vanishing Villages

NEED TO KNOW The Vanishing Villages ROMANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9aaceeea-9490-44fc-a4ad-151c831adffc.png"] The bodies of Romanians who perished in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have been placed in black plastic bags and lined up in a hallway in a hospital in Bucharest, the capital of this eastern European country. Hundreds of people die...

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November 12, 2021

Round and Round We Go

NEED TO KNOW Round and Round We Go BULGARIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1eb16295-db95-4ff1-8e0b-8bdc4e81cb9c.png"] Bulgarians will vote in a total of four elections this year. Even so, confidence in the Balkan country’s government is still lacking. As Balkan Insight explained, citizens of the European Union’s poorest member voted for new parliaments in April...

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November 08, 2021

Eastern Front

NEED TO KNOW Eastern Front POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] Last month, the European Court of Justice ordered Poland to pay $1.2 million a day for failing to prevent political interference in its judicial system. As CNN reported, the Polish government under the control of the Law and Justice Party has...

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November 03, 2021

Fed Up

NEED TO KNOW Fed Up SWEDEN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3c7156af-17ce-455f-85b2-83980fe2f678.png"] A gunman shot and killed Swedish rapper Einar recently in Stockholm. The 19-year-old, award-winning entertainer was the most streamed artist in Sweden on Spotify in 2019, Agence France-Presse reported. Einar’s songs feature drugs, crime and violence. He had public feuds with...

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October 29, 2021

Blah, Blah, Blah

NEED TO KNOW Blah, Blah, Blah WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Recently, Larry Fink, the chief executive of Black Rock, one of the world’s biggest asset managers, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times with a surprising call to arms. To curb climate change, he wrote, the richest countries in...

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October 28, 2021

Justice’s Clock

NEED TO KNOW Justice's Clock GERMANY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96d66e57-2644-40b9-aed7-fc66370c3077.png"] Seventy-five years ago, the victorious allies of World War II concluded the trials in Nuremberg that resulted in 12 Nazis receiving death sentences for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Holocaust, or the extermination of six million Jews...

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October 18, 2021

Tiny Enclave, Loud Roar

NEED TO KNOW Tiny Enclave, Loud Roar SAN MARINO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f4cb4597-3f1d-1ab4-a09c-641d5d88eafe.png"] One of the smallest countries in the world – its population is around 33,000 – San Marino is a relic of a time when city-states dominated the Italian peninsula. As an enclave within Italy, the republic can be isolated....

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October 13, 2021

Box Opened

NEED TO KNOW Box Opened WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Svetlana Krivonogikh grew up working odd jobs in St. Petersburg, Russia. Today, however, she lives in Monaco near a Monte Carlo casino with a view of the Mediterranean that one might expect in a James Bond movie, reported the Washington Post....

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October 11, 2021

The Iberian Model

NEED TO KNOW The Iberian Model SPAIN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9867eeee-5129-4a23-af3d-b9c85aeb55a9.png"] Spain has decided to give third doses of coronavirus vaccines to seniors and others who might be vulnerable to the deadly virus. The move specifically targets folks living in nursing homes as well as Spaniards undergoing cancer treatment and others...

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October 07, 2021

Dissonance and Dreadlocks

NEED TO KNOW Dissonance and Dreadlocks CZECH REPUBLIC [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/4e23e22d-26c3-4ed5-88d4-a441c2b9d079.png"] The dreadlock-sporting leader of the Pirate Party in the Czech Republic, former software engineer Ivan Bartos, was once a frontrunner in his Central European country’s parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct. 8 and 9. “Given the Czech electorate’s deep cynicism toward...

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September 29, 2021

The Unwelcome

NEED TO KNOW The Unwelcome GREECE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/29c83f8b-bf10-474d-8514-5af3443c9a4a.png"] Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is vowing to “break and smash” the smuggling networks that are bringing migrants to the country via Turkey. He especially wants to block Afghan refugees seeking safety in Europe, the Associated Press wrote. Critics say Mitsotakis is...

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September 24, 2021

Succession

NEED TO KNOW GERMANY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96d66e57-2644-40b9-aed7-fc66370c3077.png"] Succession When German Chancellor Angela Merkel steps down from office after parliamentary elections on Sunday, she will leave behind an impressive legacy. Germany is the fourth-largest economy in the world. It is the European Union’s most powerful member. The country has weathered economic crises,...

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