February 08, 2023

Tanking Diplomacy

NEED TO KNOW Tanking Diplomacy RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] A Russian company that makes materials for oil fracking, Fores, is offering more than $70,000 to the first Russian soldiers who capture or destroy any of the tanks given to Ukraine by the US and Europe. The announcement of the bounty...

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February 07, 2023

Dirty Laundry

NEED TO KNOW Dirty Laundry THE PACIFIC [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ca74ef83-91bb-5485-7145-653b9834523b.png"] Since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melted down in 2011 after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out its power generators, officials have been running water through the nuclear fuel in the damaged reactor, then storing the irradiated water in more...

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February 06, 2023

Straddling a Divide

NEED TO KNOW Straddling a Divide SERBIA/ KOSOVO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f6afaae5-7d10-5af0-76bc-7a515c553cc0.png"] Late last year, Serbia and Kosovo, the former Serbian territory whose majority ethnic Albanian citizens declared independence in 2008 less than a decade after a bloody war to achieve just that, looked as if they were on the verge...

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February 03, 2023

Held Hostage

NEED TO KNOW Held Hostage CYPRUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/880db9d5-aa98-4e2b-a4f2-fec3d1a85ab9.png"] Workers in Cyprus went on a three-hour strike recently. The demonstration was a warning to the government and business elites on the Mediterranean island that public sector workers, educators, and construction workers could bring the Cypriot economy to a halt unless...

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February 02, 2023

Murder, and Other Disasters

NEED TO KNOW Murder, and Other Disasters ECUADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7dbfcec9-d17b-43ce-97b7-0ce48bb12d1f.png"] Under the conservative government of President Guillermo Lasso, Ecuador’s economy grew 3.2 percent last year, inflation today is relatively low compared with the region, employers have hired 500,000 people and 750,000 fewer Ecuadorians now live in poverty. In an interview...

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February 01, 2023

Playing Charades

NEED TO KNOW Playing Charades MYANMAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9ef34308-9cd1-4a8e-a2b3-e7a7ab6846ed.png"] Two years ago, Myanmar’s generals staged a coup that ousted the Southeast Asian country’s civilian leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Recently, in a show of force to prove that he is firmly in control, Prime Minister...

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January 31, 2023

Silent Gestures

NEED TO KNOW Silent Gestures RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Muscovites recently have been laying wreaths of flowers, stuffed animals, photographs and other mementos at the feet of a statue dedicated to the early 20th century Ukrainian writer, Lesya Ukrainka. The makeshift memorial, appearing after a Russian missile hit a residential...

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January 30, 2023

Sharp Elbows

NEED TO KNOW Sharp Elbows MOROCCO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/51ed502f-b616-bdda-8769-e407c1a0bb69.png"] Moroccan lawmakers recently voted to “reconsider” their North African country’s relationship with the European Union. The origins of the diplomatic shift began with Morocco’s alleged persecution of journalists, as Reporters Without Borders recounted. The triggering event, however, was the European Parliament’s...

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January 27, 2023

Interior Thoughts

NEED TO KNOW Interior Thoughts AUSTRALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/81d62805-bef8-41fd-9c0c-ed93ea461226.png"] Almost everyone ranks the Amazon, the Sahara and Siberia as among the world’s greatest, most gigantic and most remote wildernesses. Many might forget to add one of the planet’s vastest untouched regions, though – the Australian Outback. The Outback covers nearly two...

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January 26, 2023

The Morning After

NEED TO KNOW The Morning After ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] The war between Ukraine and Russia has understandably garnered much attention over the past year. While that carnage has unfolded, however, another bloodbath recently was to end in the Horn of Africa. Approximately 600,000 people died in the two-year-long war that...

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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 24, 2023

Twixt the Bear and the Dragon

NEED TO KNOW Twixt the Bear and the Dragon MONGOLIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d44c27c0-8811-4785-9bf7-c8eb1cb78277.png"] In Mongolia, Dulamsuren Demberel worries about her family’s budget. The price of coal has increased by 40 percent in recent months as post-pandemic inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have roiled energy markets. Nomadic herders like...

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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 20, 2023

Rags to Riches

NEED TO KNOW Rags to Riches BOTSWANA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/17159046-9205-41d2-a989-0e0218ccc942.png"] Sprawling, landlocked, relatively lightly populated Botswana enjoys a higher gross domestic product per capita than neighboring continental economic powerhouse South Africa. As the South African newspaper the Daily Maverick explained, Botswanans earn around $9,200 on average annually, compared with South Africans...

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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 18, 2023

Oiling the Hinges

NEED TO KNOW Oiling the Hinges MIDDLE EAST [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7000f0bb-c02b-4438-87c6-002be2c0dfc6.png"] Natural gas is changing the Eastern Mediterranean. It could also shake up the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. As the Middle East Institute outlined in a recent report, governments in southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa have been struggling to develop...

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January 17, 2023

The Exile and the Mob

NEED TO KNOW The Exile and the Mob BRAZIL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b4df2610-e790-44f6-bec1-f859c705ae8b.png"] The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, might finally be planning to return to his native country after decamping for Florida in late December, shortly before his successor, the now incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,...

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January 16, 2023

The Forever Pandemic

NEED TO KNOW The Forever Pandemic CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] China recently lifted mandatory quarantining for visitors, ending three years of travel restrictions designed to prevent Covid infections. The move was the latest easing of anti-Covid measures in the country, which was rocked last month by protests against lockdowns, as...

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January 13, 2023

The Balancing Act

NEED TO KNOW The Balancing Act KAZAKHSTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d52e63cf-06bb-47d0-b573-377bff5ae37c.png"] Kazakhstan recently memorialized the first anniversary of Bloody January, the term for the four days of civil unrest and police clashes a year ago that led to the deaths of almost 240 people before Russian forces intervened and restored order. “It...

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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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