January 25, 2023

The Virtual Front

NEED TO KNOW The Virtual Front RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] In the 1990s, many world leaders failed to understand the threat that cyberattacks posed to their governments, societies and economies, argued journalist Matt Potter in a recent interview with ABC News. Today, the war between Russia and Ukraine has...

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January 23, 2023

The Celtic Conundrum

NEED TO KNOW The Celtic Conundrum IRELAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7cea72cc-1559-4005-a6ad-f3350418bc77.png"] Three years after the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, officials in Brussels, London and Dublin still haven’t fixed the rules governing the border between Northern Ireland, a member of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland...

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January 19, 2023

A Reformer’s Fumble

NEED TO KNOW A Reformer’s Fumble SLOVAKIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/def5a447-d17d-4b18-8656-a0934b7c83eb.png"] Thirty years ago, the former communist country of Czechoslovakia split in two. The event was called the “Velvet Divorce” because it was an amicable divorce between two nations whose association dated back to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in...

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January 12, 2023

Power, Corruption and Fireworks

NEED TO KNOW Power, Corruption and Fireworks CZECH REPUBLIC [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/4e23e22d-26c3-4ed5-88d4-a441c2b9d079.png"] Andrej Babis is a billionaire agricultural magnate and former Czech prime minister who is currently a leading candidate for the presidency of his central European country when the first round of voting starts on Jan. 13. At the same...

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January 10, 2023

Buying Power

NEED TO KNOW Buying Power EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] Belgian authorities have arrested a vice president of the European Parliament and jailed her, detained almost a dozen others and raided parliamentarians’ apartments and offices, seizing $1.6 million in cash. All this is part of a major scandal known as “Qatargate”...

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December 28, 2022

Handshakes and Bombs

READERS’ CHOICE Handshakes and Bombs TURKEY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c729e5f1-8c42-44f8-a040-a59baad60df0.png"] In mid-November, a 23-year-old Kurdish woman from Syria planted a TNT-laden bomb in a flower bed on Istiklal Avenue, the lively Istanbul commercial thoroughfare that draws even more crowds than the renowned Grand Bazaar. The resulting explosion claimed six lives and injured...

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December 26, 2022

No Cards Accepted

READERS’ CHOICE No Cards Accepted ITALY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/13ef7d88-e231-4aaa-9970-c3480223c0d5.png"] Over the last decade, Italian authorities have opened new fronts in the battle against tax cheats, including scouring posh Alpine ski resorts for the owners of Lamborghinis and Maseratis claiming poverty wages on their tax returns. They used special canine units...

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December 19, 2022

Creating a New Chapter

NEED TO KNOW Creating a New Chapter UKRAINE/ RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] Russian soldiers have been building trenches on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula, a Ukrainian territory Russia invaded and illegally annexed almost nine years ago in a move that now clearly presaged the wider war. The trenches...

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December 14, 2022

Greening Pains

NEED TO KNOW Greening Pains FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d78d9fd2-f0df-4e59-9bd4-334bffdc4974.png"] The European Union plans on banning new non-electric cars starting in 2035. This big shift in the international auto market is part of an effort to reduce new vehicular carbon emissions to reduce the impacts of climate change. As Yale Environment 360...

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December 12, 2022

The Invisible Victims

NEED TO KNOW The Invisible Victims UKRAINE/ RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] Earlier this year, doctors in Kherson, Ukraine immediately took action when they heard that Russians were invading their city. They quickly began making fake documents for orphans that claimed the children were too sick to move. “We deliberately wrote false...

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December 06, 2022

Royal Flush

NEED TO KNOW Royal Flush EUROPE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f9c83d42-7d43-4e2f-a6d6-f7bf04744b7d.png"] The fifth season of the Netflix show, “The Crown,” depicts the British royal family in the 1990s, a “famously turbulent time” for the late Queen Elizabeth II and her family, wrote People magazine. Three out of four of Elizabeth’s children separated...

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December 05, 2022

Might and Right

NEED TO KNOW Might and Right UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5abbd8c9-acff-2450-0a94-2b5a85a0848a.png"] Ukraine isn’t letting up. After reclaiming more than half of the territory lost after Russia’s invasion in late February, including the major city of Kherson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is planning to keep pushing against the Russians on the battlefield and in...

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November 30, 2022

The Scramble

NEED TO KNOW The Scramble CYPRUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/880db9d5-aa98-4e2b-a4f2-fec3d1a85ab9.png"] As Russians flee their homeland in order to avoid conscription and the trenches in Ukraine where the Russian army has suffered devastating losses, neighboring countries like Georgia, Kazakhstan, Finland and Norway have tightened visa restrictions to prevent a flood of draft...

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November 29, 2022

On The Fence

NEED TO KNOW On the Fence BULGARIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1eb16295-db95-4ff1-8e0b-8bdc4e81cb9c.png"] The Schengen Area is one of the European Union’s most popular innovations: A travel zone where citizens of 26 nations can cross each other’s borders without passports. It was a big deal, then, when the European Commission, the EU’s executive...

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November 22, 2022

The Wizard of Oz

NEED TO KNOW The Wizard of Oz RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] More than 100,000 Russian troops have died since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, according to American estimates that Agence France-Presse cited. The same experts estimated that Ukraine likely has suffered a similar number of losses. Ukraine...

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November 15, 2022

A Game of Chicken

NEED TO KNOW A Game of Chicken RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] As Russian forces retreated from Kherson and Ukrainian forces poured into the strategic southern Ukrainian city, one could be forgiven for wondering if the world was seeing the beginning of the end of the war. Six weeks ago,...

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November 08, 2022

When War Is On The Ballot

NEED TO KNOW When War Is On The Ballot UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0108d265-986a-4f2e-735e-e3dde06919f5.png"] Western arms and financial support have been vital to Ukraine’s successes on the battlefield against Russia. But Western politicians who are unenthusiastic about supporting Ukraine are arguably gaining power around the world. The prospect of international support for...

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November 04, 2022

The Empire Strikes Back

NEED TO KNOW The Empire Strikes Back UNITED KINGDOM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db250264-45f9-48fa-be6e-ab4d2ef0d6a5.png"] Until 1947, the UK lorded over the Indian subcontinent, stealing its wealth and subjugating its people as the oh-so-superior colonial master. No one even a decade ago would have ever thought that a man whose ancestors were part of...

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November 02, 2022

Beaten, Not Broken

NEED TO KNOW Beaten, Not Broken UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0108d265-986a-4f2e-735e-e3dde06919f5.png"] Mercenaries from the Russian military contracting firm the Wagner Group held their ground around the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut last week. They kept attacking even as Ukrainians pushed back other Russian forces. As Forbes wrote, the Wagner fighters’ arguably...

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November 01, 2022

A Furry Election

NEED TO KNOW A Furry Election DENMARK [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/19f78c1e-e0c6-49d6-b264-eb1779028db9.png"] In November 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic was still raging, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen faced an agonizing decision. Covid-19 had been detected in some of the 17 million minks in the Nordic country’s massive fur industry. As Bloomberg reported,...

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