May 05, 2023

Bona Fides and Possibilities

NEED TO KNOW Bona Fides and Possibilities CHILE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/baed026e-8c02-42fc-8c27-383b8bf87a6c.png"] Early last year, shortly after he was elected president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, 37, quoted a Chilean poem in his remarks at a meeting with the country’s most important industrialists and business leaders. The lines recalled a cemetery in...

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May 04, 2023

Loose Lips

NEED TO KNOW Loose Lips WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Massachusetts Air National Guard Airman First Class Jack Teixeira was a Cyber Transport Systems journeyman, or an IT specialist. The 21-year-old now stands accused of making classified documents public since at least late February, potentially jeopardizing US national security, Reuters explained....

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May 03, 2023

Demography and Destiny

NEED TO KNOW Demography and Destiny INDIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1ac703d1-8192-40be-95ea-427a8f7ed9ee.png"] The world’s largest democracy, India, is now the world’s most populous country. The distinction is important because it represents a shift in the world order that has developed in recent decades as China, which has had the largest population, has...

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May 02, 2023

Hearts and Minds

NEED TO KNOW Hearts and Minds GEORGIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e341329d-b90e-4b8e-8e3b-6429d9366897.png"] The prime minister of the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili, recently met European and NATO leaders in Brussels to press the case for his country’s admission into both Western organizations. Garibashvili and his fellow citizens felt snubbed when the European...

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May 01, 2023

Victims of Success

NEED TO KNOW Victims of Success WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Author Elizabeth Gilbert embraces romance and finds a partner in Bali after a life journey that she chronicled to great fame in her 2006 memoir, “Eat Pray Love.” Now residents of the Indonesian island are fed up with the increasingly...

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April 28, 2023

Change and Its Discontents

NEED TO KNOW Change and Its Discontents PARAGUAY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ee550bff-ea25-4704-9d3e-337485aa4528.png"] Presidents from the Colorado Party have ruled Paraguay for all but five years since the South American country adopted democracy in 1992. Now, however, as Paraguayan voters head to the polls to elect a new president on April 30,...

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April 27, 2023

More for Everyone

NEED TO KNOW More for Everyone UZBEKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/28e3dab6-1896-a95a-90a8-7dc88946c0c3.png"] President Shavkat Mirziyoyev feels like staying around for a while. That’s why voters in Uzbekistan have started marking their ballots in a referendum that would let him remain in office until 2040. If voters approve the new constitution, the document would...

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April 26, 2023

Shiny, Happy People

NEED TO KNOW Shiny, Happy People BHUTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/95cb74f9-3e10-4c29-ab01-000d0e49a2f4.png"] In Bhutan, the law states that “if the government cannot create happiness for its people, there is no purpose for the government to exist.” The small, constitutional monarchy in the Himalayan mountains, taking the constitutionally enshrined “Gross National Happiness” principle...

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April 25, 2023

The 100 Percenters

NEED TO KNOW The 100 Percenters NORTHERN IRELAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e1fa23fe-bd64-4526-9f49-8430fef05250.png"] American, British, Irish, and Northern Irish politicians recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended years of violence in the disputed British territory. Some Republicans – or Northern Irish residents who want to unify the territory...

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April 24, 2023

The Bombs of Ambition

NEED TO KNOW The Bombs of Ambition SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] This week, downtown Khartoum became a war zone. Fighters have been attacking residents, United Nations workers and other civilians, sexually assaulting women, and looting and destroying property, CNN reported. Health officials are warning that the country’s hospitals are running...

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April 21, 2023

Paradise, Imperfect

NEED TO KNOW Paradise, Imperfect COSTA RICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1680456f-646a-4ee8-9ddf-e349708a0ee2.png"] Those who live in Costa Rica practice what they refer to as the “pure life.” They dwell in a beautiful ecosystem where the culture is easygoing. The country’s army was abolished in 1948. In contrast with the 1980s, when deforestation...

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April 20, 2023

Wanted: A Government

NEED TO KNOW Wanted: A Government BULGARIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1eb16295-db95-4ff1-8e0b-8bdc4e81cb9c.png"] Bulgarians have voted in five general elections in the last two years. Voters, meanwhile, are tired. “We’ll probably have to vote again in the fall,” a local election worker told local television. “This has to end at some point …We’ve been waiting...

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April 19, 2023

Peace and Sabers

NEED TO KNOW Peace and Sabers TAIWAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/dab1143a-8514-4f63-8098-bd36050d9680.png"] After the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California – an event echoing former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year – the Chinese military staged a massive drill...

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April 18, 2023

Fathers and Sons

NEED TO KNOW Fathers and Sons UGANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eae01c28-7782-4a11-9e2b-886217499c6a.png"] Muhoozi Kainerugaba is the son of the long-serving president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, a 78-year-old who has been in office since 1986. Muhoozi, as he is known, only months ago ran afoul of his father when he tweeted flip references...

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April 17, 2023

Fair Weather Friend

NEED TO KNOW Fair Weather Friend BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3dffa11e-ac63-436f-a4ed-735a6dabc4a6.png"] Belarusian authorities recently announced that Russia would station nuclear missiles in their country, placing the weapons closer to NATO members. “This will be done despite the noise in Europe and the United States,” Boris Gryzlov, the Russian ambassador to Belarus,...

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April 14, 2023

On the Precipice

NEED TO KNOW On the Precipice SURINAME [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c997c02f-c706-4078-b30b-520ec1649e07.png"] Suriname’s gross domestic product (GDP) plunged by 16 percent during the coronavirus pandemic – the second worst dip in South America after the economic basket case of Venezuela. The country defaulted on its debt three times, leading the International Monetary...

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April 13, 2023

Allies, Enemies and Other Horrors

NEED TO KNOW Allies, Enemies and Other Horrors KOSOVO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0999f062-2356-43ad-b3b8-f915c7878425.png"] The former president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, and other prominent politicians who were leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are now on trial at a special court in the Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. As...

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April 12, 2023

New Kids on the Block

NEED TO KNOW New Kids on the Block WEST BANK/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7446631-e728-4689-8f2d-ebddc1f4962c.png"] For years, Fatah and Hamas have vied for control of Palestine. The largest faction in the late Yasser Arafat’s renowned Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah controls the occupied territories of the West Bank, where Palestinian officials uneasily cooperate...

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April 11, 2023

The Spiral

NEED TO KNOW The Spiral BURKINA FASO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0c0197a8-9ef4-4935-9656-24fbfbb32b2e.png"] Security forces in Burkina Faso recently murdered a 16-year-old boy and others in Ouahigouya, a regional capital of the landlocked West African country. In a chilling report, the Associated Press detailed the teenage boy’s gruesome murder in the street, citing...

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April 10, 2023

The Cheerleaders

NEED TO KNOW The Cheerleaders RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, had been a cheerleader for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As Reuters reported, he could be scathing of what he saw as Russia’s incompetent military establishment. But he called for Russia to assassinate Ukrainian...

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