April 07, 2023

Taking Out the Trash

NEED TO KNOW Taking Out the Trash NICARAGUA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b1f74445-4296-4463-949d-e92d66c3e3b1.png"] Nicaraguan officials recently aired a prison interview with Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez, who in February was sentenced to more than 36 years in prison on charges of treason. Critics said the interview was staged to deflate criticism of the...

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April 06, 2023

The Hero and the Strongman

NEED TO KNOW The Hero and the Strongman RWANDA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ae24d297-b902-4996-a757-c6a84ab9a136.png"] When ethnic Hutu militants committed genocide against members of the minority ethnic Tutsi community in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, hotelier Paul Rusesabagina sought to give refuge to more than 1,000 people. His life story inspired the 2004 film...

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April 05, 2023

The Revolution Playbook

NEED TO KNOW The Revolution Playbook FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d78d9fd2-f0df-4e59-9bd4-334bffdc4974.png"] French authorities last week closed the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and other popular tourist sites as more than 740,000 workers staged strikes and demonstrations over President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the legal retirement age by two years to 64...

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April 04, 2023

Israeli Spring

NEED TO KNOW Israeli Spring ISRAEL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2f7ce1b6-fa2d-e80d-cdee-e2c83f69c720.png"] Civil unrest in Israel has prompted many observers to wonder if the same pro-democracy impulses that motivated Arab Spring activists more than a decade ago are now emerging in the Jewish state on the Mediterranean. The protests recently forced Prime Minister...

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April 03, 2023

Waterfront Property

NEED TO KNOW Waterfront Property MONTENEGRO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/4b30f1e1-b1f1-4c0b-8877-a8d9773d57e4.png"] The presidential race in tiny Montenegro, a NATO member with close ties to Russian-ally Serbia, became a proxy political contest between the West and East as tensions in southeast Europe ratchet up amid the war in Ukraine. You could say the West...

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March 31, 2023

Joyful Warriors

NEED TO KNOW Joyful Warriors FINLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/91b0da4b-efc6-40c2-a405-00e958404c77.png"] For the fifth time in a row, Finns are the happiest people in the world. According to the United Nations’ World Happiness Report, citizens of Finland demonstrate high levels of “eudaimonia,” a term the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle coined to describe “overall...

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March 30, 2023

Banking On It

NEED TO KNOW Banking On It WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) recently told European Union leaders that the banking sector on the continent was strong, reported Bloomberg. Yet on the same day Lagarde spoke, shares of Deutsche Bank plunged as traders worried...

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March 29, 2023

Books, Traffic and Trauma

NEED TO KNOW Books, Traffic and Trauma IRAQ [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7f5678d9-eac3-49b9-9755-dcad8927e883.png"] Twenty years after the American invasion of Iraq, the booksellers of Mutanabbi Street are back again, reviving the popular Arabic saying, “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads.” Fighting in the streets kept the customers away from this otherwise...

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March 28, 2023

The Forever Search

NEED TO KNOW The Forever Search MEXICO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fcd100e2-d1bb-4cd7-b9f4-53a07a70e41c.png"] In what the BBC called a “twisted moral code,” Mexican mobsters affiliated with the Scorpions Group, a faction of the drug-running Gulf Cartel crime syndicate, recently forced five of their members to turn themselves in to police for murdering two...

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March 27, 2023

Legion of Doom

NEED TO KNOW Legion of Doom RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] The prime minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, is worried. He didn’t like the implications of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s recent three-day visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The Chinese president’s visit to Moscow makes us anxious,” Morawiecki said during a...

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March 24, 2023

When Hate Comes To Town

NEED TO KNOW When Hate Comes To Town TUNISIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1f262cf6-0ed8-4367-aeca-5f0f2b6684d0.png"] Tunisian President Kais Saied has recently been claiming that migrants originating from sub-Saharan Africa were coming to his North African country as part of a conspiracy to alter its largely Arab-Muslim culture. His comments came as part of...

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March 23, 2023

Voting With Feet

NEED TO KNOW Voting With Feet CUBA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/934b8716-56c1-487d-ba72-11a855fa10c6.png"] Almost 23 years ago, heavily armed federal agents wearing body armor seized five-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami and returned him to his father, ultimately to be taken back to Cuba. The photo of the incident was a...

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March 22, 2023

Rubber Duck Politics

NEED TO KNOW Rubber Duck Politics THAILAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9aed0fb0-f5eb-4eda-ae64-69e423143eb5.png"] Thai authorities sentenced a man to jail for two years for peddling calendars featuring rubber ducks in monarchic regalia because insulting the Thai king is illegal in the southeast Asian country. As the BBC noted, the rubber duck happens to...

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March 21, 2023

A Hatchet in the Ground

NEED TO KNOW A Hatchet in the Ground SAUDI ARABIA/ IRAN/ CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/613e746f-14cd-b434-50ae-61a59c1972d5.png"] It’s hard to say which is more remarkable about the recent peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran – the reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Muslim powers who have been at odds over the future...

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March 20, 2023

Lessons, Please

NEED TO KNOW Lessons, Please WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Three years ago, people around the world began lockdowns that shuttered businesses, schools, government offices, and other institutions that had been the hallmarks of everyone’s lives. Now, after Covid vaccines and other measures have reduced – but not eliminated – fears...

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March 15, 2023

Call Me

NEED TO KNOW Call Me GREECE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/29c83f8b-bf10-474d-8514-5af3443c9a4a.png"] A young man traveling on the train from Athens to the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki on Feb. 28 was having trouble speaking to his mother on the phone. “Mum, there are too many people on the train,” he said, according...

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March 14, 2023

Coming Due

NEED TO KNOW Coming Due GHANA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7e0e6e88-9163-4694-b6cb-60313006b676.png"] Officials in Ghana’s finance ministry recently said talks to restructure its debt to China were “highly cordial and fruitful” – but, however, not concluded. Ghana owes China almost $2 billion. As Reuters reported, while the West African country technically is in default...

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March 13, 2023

Blazing Furnace

NEED TO KNOW Blazing Furnace VIETNAM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3f17a3ec-f2fd-42ee-b8c2-dd23d117cb41.png"] Vietnamese lawmakers elected Vo Van Thuong as the Southeast Asian country’s new president in early March, almost two months after his predecessor, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, was ousted due to a string of corruption scandals stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. Officials allegedly bilked...

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March 10, 2023

He Said, She Said

NEED TO KNOW He Said, She Said ARMENIA/ AZERBAIJAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/30fec2aa-e318-4e1c-a63d-8b70f85eb845.png"] Talks between Azerbaijani officials and the ethnic Armenian community in Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave that Azerbaijan recently seized from Armenia in a brief war in 2020, are “encouraging news,” the European Union’s special representative for the South Caucasus told...

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March 09, 2023

S.O.S.

NEED TO KNOW S.O.S. HAITI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/49e3c059-ec02-49d2-b8d4-2a7e10c83ff3.png"] The United Nations has appointed Ecuadoran diplomat Maria Isabel Salvador to help Haiti rebuild after a devastating earthquake in 2010, the dissolution of parliament in 2020, the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, and the subsequent explosion in crime, gang violence...

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