November 17, 2023

Pardoning Politics

NEED TO KNOW Pardoning Politics SPAIN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9867eeee-5129-4a23-af3d-b9c85aeb55a9.png"] Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party achieved a political masterstroke to remain in power, but also probably sowed the seeds to reap bitter enmity from his conservative rivals for the rest of his life. In July, when Spanish...

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November 16, 2023

No Exit

NEED TO KNOW No Exit NORTH KOREA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/081c0373-fb17-4e7d-af63-346faaef42b7.png"] North Koreans face hunger, forced labor, shortages of medicine and other supplies, and no freedom of expression or assembly, according to North Koreans who managed to escape the so-called Hermit Kingdom and tell their stories to the world. Yet when more...

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November 15, 2023

Shattering Glass, Splintering Peace

NEED TO KNOW Shattering Glass, Splintering Peace EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] Eighty-five years ago, the Jewish cemetery in Vienna was one of the main targets of Kristallnacht – a Nazi pogrom against Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues in Germany and Austria. And so it was again, reported CNN. On Nov. 1,...

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November 14, 2023

Hooray for Nollywood

NEED TO KNOW Hooray for Nollywood NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] In the Nigerian-produced film for Netflix, “The Black Book,” actor Richard Mofe Damijo plays an ex-security forces agent-turned-deacon, who exacts revenge against the crooked police officers who framed and murdered his son. As he tracks down the bad cops, wrote...

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November 13, 2023

Teasing a Detonator

NEED TO KNOW Teasing a Detonator ISRAEL/ WEST BANK, GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] After the Palestinian terror group Hamas killed about 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, Israeli settlers – sometimes wearing masks or reservist army uniforms – started breaking into Palestinian homes in Zanuta, a village in the West Bank,...

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November 10, 2023

Young Bloods

NEED TO KNOW Young Bloods ECUADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7dbfcec9-d17b-43ce-97b7-0ce48bb12d1f.png"] Ecuador, just a few years ago, was an oasis of relative prosperity and peace in the region. More recently, however, it’s become overly dependent on oil and, therefore, prey to the dramatic economic swings that often occur in energy commodities. Violence...

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November 09, 2023

The Grudge Match

NEED TO KNOW The Grudge Match MADAGASCAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/cf906d99-8f50-4493-b06f-8a929a73ebeb.png"] A Madagascan court recently postponed the first round of the country’s presidential election by a week to Nov. 16, after security forces injured opposition candidates at unauthorized political demonstrations. Police dispersing the demonstrations fired a tear gas canister that struck and...

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November 08, 2023

Importing a War

NEED TO KNOW Importing a War EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] Police in Europe recently arrested alleged terrorists for supposedly planning attacks in connection with the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Germany recently, police nabbed folks who had been previously...

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November 07, 2023

Pick Your King

NEED TO KNOW Pick Your King MALAYSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/053b35ef-03dc-4aeb-b916-fe602f4772eb.jpg"] Malaysia has a unique form of constitutional monarchy. Every five years, nine sultans convene at the Conference of Rulers – each sultan is also the sovereign of a state in the Southeast Asian country – to elect a new king...

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November 06, 2023

The Calamity Next Door

NEED TO KNOW The Calamity Next Door EGYPT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/180d3d63-0093-422e-a6d2-b3d9896f0053.png"] Most Egyptians are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians as Israeli forces devastate the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian government, meanwhile, is no friend of Hamas, which massacred Israelis on Oct. 7 and has launched missile attacks on Israel...

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November 03, 2023

Bracing for the Storm

NEED TO KNOW Bracing for the Storm LEBANON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0326e424-e014-0b21-f1eb-761dce1d14a3.png"] Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently deployed drones to strike at Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that also wields significant political power in Lebanon, Reuters reported. The rocket fire and missile exchanges between the IDF and Hezbollah and its allies have...

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November 02, 2023

Books and Bombs

NEED TO KNOW Books and Bombs SOMALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/15cd6f05-9c0c-4887-86f7-20dad73138cf.png"] A locally filmed, 10-part television series about Mogadishu high school students called “Arday” hit the Somali airwaves earlier this year, the Washington Post reported. A book fair, newly opened theaters, and art exhibitions have also cultivated a new Somali culture...

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November 01, 2023

Operation Dismantlement

NEED TO KNOW Operation Dismantlement POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] The results of the Oct. 15 parliamentary elections in Poland are echoing throughout Europe. Women and young voters helped swing the election to the Civic Coalition and other parties opposing the ruling Law and Justice party, a populist political group that espouses...

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October 31, 2023

Oversight Versus Insight

NEED TO KNOW Oversight Versus Insight ISRAEL/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] On Sept. 11, Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, told members of the military at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, that Israel must be on its guard, now more than...

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October 30, 2023

Something Old, Something New

NEED TO KNOW Something Old, Something New NAGORNO-KARABAKH [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a090b285-d5d2-89d8-d770-d40b6cc60381.png"] Simon Maghakyan, a visiting scholar at Tufts University who studies heritage crime, recently warned in Time magazine that Azerbaijan intends to invade Armenia. This attack would come on the heels of Azerbaijan’s September invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, a historically Armenian...

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October 27, 2023

Bittersweet Chocolate

NEED TO KNOW Bittersweet Chocolate IVORY COAST [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a564b077-08a4-45ea-b17f-6979ff1e43c2.png"] Half of the dark chocolate in the world comes from cocoa that originates from Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire). As the Hindu explained, the West African country wants to leverage its key location in this massive and lucrative supply chain to...

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October 26, 2023

‘The Champagne Fascist’

NEED TO KNOW ‘The Champagne Fascist’ ITALY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/13ef7d88-e231-4aaa-9970-c3480223c0d5.png"] Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, an icon of the far-right in Europe, recently announced that she would separate from her longtime partner Andrea Giambruno, a television journalist. The split came two days after recordings of Giambruno’s “foul remarks and suggestive comments...

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October 25, 2023

Failing a State

NEED TO KNOW Failing a State HAITI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/49e3c059-ec02-49d2-b8d4-2a7e10c83ff3.png"] Kenyan lawmakers are considering a plan to deploy 1,000 police to Haiti. This unique effort – an African democracy sending peacekeeping forces to aid a former French colony where ethnic Africans staged a groundbreaking slave revolt more than two centuries ago...

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October 24, 2023

No Quarter

NEED TO KNOW No Quarter ISRAEL/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] When Israel gave the order to evacuate northern Gaza in advance of military strikes, Lubna and her four children had already left their home there to flee south to her friend’s house, knowing that safety was going to become ever...

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October 23, 2023

Walking the Plank

NEED TO KNOW Walking the Plank PAKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eaf17bc7-6468-493e-bfe1-86954ffb120a.png"] Around 700,000 Afghan refugees fled to neighboring Pakistan since 2021 when the Taliban assumed power after the exit of the US military and its allies. They brought the total of Afghans in the country to 3.7 million, according to Human...

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