June 30, 2023

AI, Meet Europe

NEED TO KNOW AI, Meet Europe EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] The European Parliament recently overwhelmingly passed the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act. While the legislation must overcome more hurdles to become a law, it’s an example of European lawmakers charging forward with regulations to control technology that thinkers like...

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June 29, 2023

Cracks in the Foundation

NEED TO KNOW Cracks in the Foundation SENEGAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3676cf10-2f23-4295-b085-c86147830390.png"] Senegalese opposition politician Ousmane Sonko has filed a 170-page-long court complaint in France against Senegalese President Macky Sall and top members of the West African country’s security forces for alleged crimes against humanity. The charges stemmed from the Senegalese government’s...

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June 28, 2023

A Voice, a Divide

NEED TO KNOW A Voice, a Divide AUSTRALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/81d62805-bef8-41fd-9c0c-ed93ea461226.png"] After a recent historic parliamentary vote, Australians will vote on a constitutional amendment to dramatically expand the protections of their Indigenous communities. As a government website showed, the question will ask voters whether to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait...

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June 27, 2023

Pugachevshchina

NEED TO KNOW Pugachevshchina RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] In the 1770s, a Cossack named Emelian Pugachev rebelled against Catherine the Great. As described in Alexander Pushkin’s novel, “The Captain’s Daughter,” peasants furious at the Russian army’s corruption fueled the rebellion. But Pugachev’s uprising failed. He was captured and publicly executed in...

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June 26, 2023

Backroom Chats

NEED TO KNOW Backroom Chats CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] American diplomats claimed that the autocratic president of China, Xi Jinping, had no clue that one of his spy balloons had been shot down over the US in February. As CNN noted, Xi’s potential ignorance of a major international story illustrated...

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June 23, 2023

The Fix Is In

NEED TO KNOW The Fix Is In GUATEMALA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db73a011-021f-466b-9b89-77add155facc.png"] A Guatemalan court recently convicted newspaper publisher José Rubén Zamora of money laundering and sentenced him to six years in prison. His newspaper, El Periódico, regularly investigated Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, the New...

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June 22, 2023

Pushing For Normal

NEED TO KNOW Pushing For Normal SIERRA LEONE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fa024dc5-dbe7-d0c9-dd70-64d5fc0b96a9.png"] Samura Kamara, the leader of the All People’s Congress (APC) party and the main opposition candidate in Sierra Leone’s presidential election on June 24, recently called for every member of the small West African nation’s electoral commission to resign,...

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June 21, 2023

Contextual Legacies

NEED TO KNOW Contextual Legacies BELGIUM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/46999ca2-dabf-15d8-3505-820844e95828.png"] History has been stirring passion in Belgium as the country prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2030. When authorities announced they would spiff up the triumphal arch in the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels – a monument built in 1880 to...

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June 20, 2023

End Game

NEED TO KNOW End Game RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Commemorated on June 12, Russia Day celebrates the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic’s declaration of independence in 1990. Festivities in Moscow this year lacked much patriotic fervor, however. “For me, it’s a holiday of bureaucracy,” an anonymous Muscovite told the Moscow...

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June 19, 2023

Hot Stuff

NEED TO KNOW Hot Stuff CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] In an example of climate change arousing an international effort, firefighters from around the globe have rushed to help put out the Canadian wildfires that have burned 13 million acres of forest and choked the US Midwest and Eastern seaboard with...

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June 16, 2023

Pride and Pressure

NEED TO KNOW Pride and Pressure KYRGYZSTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/766aa12d-4910-4bb3-a204-adba72f724f9.png"] D Billions is a quartet of Kyrgyz singers whose performances for kids on YouTube have received 31 billion viewings, more than pop star Taylor Swift or South Korean sensation, BTS. As Global Voices explained, D Billions could be Kyrgyzstan’s biggest...

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June 15, 2023

Intrigue in the Palace

NEED TO KNOW Intrigue in the Palace COLOMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/80e582e1-1ef0-4fb5-a86a-699a8cf7cddf.png"] Leftist leaders from around the globe recently issued an open letter to the Colombian public, saying that the opponents of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who assumed office a year ago, were planning a “soft coup” to oust him from...

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June 14, 2023

When the Levee Breaks

NEED TO KNOW When the Levee Breaks RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1fcd4036-786d-9ce0-309a-14f74105b898.png"] Theories abound about the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. As CNN reported, Russian officials said the Ukrainians destroyed the dam in order to starve the Crimean Peninsula of water. The region is a former...

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June 13, 2023

Direction: Hopelessness

NEED TO KNOW Direction: Hopelessness CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7e5325a-3ac2-4df5-8925-90bdfbdaf0d9.png"] Fighting in the civil war in Sudan has prompted 14,000 refugees to flee across the border to their neighbor to the southwest, the Central African Republic (CAR). As Africa News wrote, however, the CAR is not a safe haven. The...

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June 12, 2023

Settlement of Evil

NEED TO KNOW Settlement of Evil POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] A mile-long mass of hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, recently. The demonstration wasn’t only to mark the 34th anniversary of the country’s first democratic election after the fall of communism...

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June 09, 2023

Mission Wealth

NEED TO KNOW Mission Wealth LAOS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2c88ac81-3523-4a3b-b94d-88479d0a30a0.png"] Anousa “Jack” Luangsuphom is a prominent activist and critic of the authoritarian, communist government of Laos. He ran a Facebook page where members could share their grievances about corruption and air their dissent about the government’s failure to respect freedom of...

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June 08, 2023

Far North Face Off

NEED TO KNOW Far North Face Off NORWAY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/65102137-137a-414d-a10e-0cd0d00c7aa4.png"] Norwegian officials recently warned their citizens to avoid Hvaldimir, a beluga whale that swims around the coast wearing a harness that can mount cameras. As CNN explained, the officials suspect that the Russian military trained the cute white cetacean...

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June 07, 2023

Musical Chairs

NEED TO KNOW Musical Chairs SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] Apartheid, or legal segregation based on race, ended in South Africa almost 30 years ago. Yet anyone walking around Johannesburg could be forgiven for believing the hateful policy was still in place, according to Catalyst, a free-market-oriented news publication. The...

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June 06, 2023

‘Cool’ Crimefighting

NEED TO KNOW ‘Cool’ Crimefighting EL SALVADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9d16e98f-6fe6-4329-b9c8-47184d56b2ce.png"] A judge in El Salvador recently sentenced the former president of the country, Mauricio Funes, to 14 years in prison for negotiating with gangs when he was in office between 2009 and 2014, a period when the country suffered some...

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June 05, 2023

Enmity, Long and Deep

NEED TO KNOW Enmity, Long and Deep KOSOVO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0999f062-2356-43ad-b3b8-f915c7878425.png"] Kosovo declared independence in 2008, around a decade after NATO bombed Serbian forces who were brutalizing the ethnic Albanian communities in the formerly Serb region. It’s one of the final chapters of the tragic, bloody breakup of communist Yugoslavia...

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