May 04, 2022

No Free Lunch

NEED TO KNOW No Free Lunch ANGOLA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e580f12f-c318-4898-ba82-0cb1373117e3.png"] Angolans traditionally offer meals of cornmeal or cassava porridge and beans with palm oil in honor of a recently departed loved one. Now hunger and high unemployment have led desperate Angolans to hang around cemeteries and then follow the families...

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May 03, 2022

A Troubled Land

NEED TO KNOW A Troubled Land AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] At least nine people died and 13 were injured in Afghanistan recently when bomb blasts blew up their mini-buses in Mazar-e-Sharif. "The targets appear to be Shiite passengers," a police spokesman told Agence France-Presse. "The enemies of Afghanistan are creating...

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May 02, 2022

No Vacancy

NEED TO KNOW No Vacancy POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] The number of Ukrainian war refugees who have fled to Poland has surpassed the population of the Central European country’s capital, Warsaw. They’ve largely received a warm reception, a stark contrast to how Polish officials welcomed migrants who have fled the...

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April 29, 2022

The War Without a Name

NEED TO KNOW The War Without a Name MEXICO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fcd100e2-d1bb-4cd7-b9f4-53a07a70e41c.png"] A Mexican drug gang recently left six severed heads on a car roof in order to intimidate rival dealers who might try to infringe on claimed turf in the southern Mexican town of Chilapa de Alvarez. "In Chilapa selling...

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April 28, 2022

The Comeback Kid

NEED TO KNOW The Comeback Kid PAKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eaf17bc7-6468-493e-bfe1-86954ffb120a.png"] Tens of thousands of Pakistanis attended a recent rally in support of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in Lahore. A former jet-setting cricket star who allied with religious conservatives, Khan told his supporters that he was the victim of a...

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April 27, 2022

Guns & Butter

NEED TO KNOW Guns & Butter MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7000f0bb-c02b-4438-87c6-002be2c0dfc6.png"] Observers in Tunisia are wondering how much higher food prices can go before civil unrest breaks out. Supermarket shelves in the North African country have been bare for weeks. Staples like eggs, flour, rice and sugar...

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April 26, 2022

Desperate, and Cursed

NEED TO KNOW Desperate, and Cursed SRI LANKA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d469a690-58fa-4bcb-9cd4-16e56a24386f.png"] Schoolteacher Agnes Felician has been protesting lately against the policies of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. But she also took to the streets recently to demand justice for the estimated 270 people who died when bombers attacked three churches and numerous...

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April 25, 2022

Coming Together, Coming Apart

NEED TO KNOW Coming Together, Coming Apart UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/879da9e8-c310-d6a2-ee6f-8b86fc30a91d.png"] It's been two months since Russia invaded Ukraine to push back against alleged NATO encroachments and bring back into the fold an important region of the former Soviet Union and the late Czarist Russian Empire. Of course, some say that...

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April 22, 2022

Wanted: Redemption

NEED TO KNOW Wanted: Redemption RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] A few years before the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian satirist Vladimir Voinovich imagined a story about a former KGB agent who became head of state, created a class of corrupt oligarchs around him, draped himself in the mantle of...

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April 21, 2022

Zeitenwende

NEED TO KNOW Zeitenwende GERMANY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96d66e57-2644-40b9-aed7-fc66370c3077.png"] Are homeowners in Frankfurt to blame for the atrocities in Ukraine? Some critics think so. “Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression runs on the money Russia gets by selling fossil fuels to Europe,” wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently. “Germany…has in effect...

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April 20, 2022

On a High Wire

NEED TO KNOW On a High Wire TURKEY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c729e5f1-8c42-44f8-a040-a59baad60df0.png"] Turkish leaders have said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal. They have delivered drones and ammunition to Ukraine that have been key to helping Ukrainian forces repel Russia’s invasion. The drones have been used in “pop-up attacks on...

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April 19, 2022

Looky, Looky

NEED TO KNOW Looky, Looky SOMALILAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3acb250d-c8fb-ab06-e014-2db36946b098.png"] Though technically part of war-torn Somalia, Somaliland declared independence in 1991, has governed itself for 30 years as a democracy and avoided the bloodshed that has plagued the rest of Somalia. Now Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi thinks it's time for...

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April 18, 2022

Twilight of the Gods

NEED TO KNOW Twilight of the Gods RUSSIA-UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] The island of Jersey, a British territory and tax haven in the English Channel, recently froze $7 billion of assets owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. That’s around half the Chelsea football club owner’s wealth, noted Fortune. He’s been...

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April 15, 2022

Talk Abroad and at Home

NEED TO KNOW Talk Abroad and at Home SLOVENIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/91af5831-13d6-a440-6055-3beb55c4774a.png"] Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa recently joined the premiers of the Czech Republic and Poland in Kyiv to show their support for Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion. The trip into a war zone took even their families by...

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April 14, 2022

Fear and Vindication

NEED TO KNOW Fear and Vindication BALTICS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5076fedd-d931-e5b0-6e53-8d829a873c67.png"] Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have become the first European countries to cut off gas imports from Russia, a move that seeks to curtail Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main revenue source. Lithuania described the move as a “response to Russia’s energy blackmail...

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April 13, 2022

Sovereignty Un-Stifled

NEED TO KNOW Sovereignty Un-Stifled FINLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/91b0da4b-efc6-40c2-a405-00e958404c77.png"] Finlandization has been proposed as a final status for Ukraine after Russia concludes its ongoing brutal invasion. But the Finns might counsel against it. The Finns are themselves considering joining NATO rather than continuing to accept what the New York Times described...

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April 12, 2022

Shopping Around

NEED TO KNOW Shopping Around AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8aca45b-1687-4d5b-b62c-09186470d8a2.png"] Around 45 percent of the European Union’s gas comes from Russia. In the next few months, EU officials expect to unveil a plan to phase out those and other fossil fuel imports over the next four years in response to Russian...

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April 11, 2022

The Wages of the Toady

NEED TO KNOW The Wages of the Toady BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3dffa11e-ac63-436f-a4ed-735a6dabc4a6.png"] Russian soldiers retreating from Ukraine to Belarus are selling goods that they have looted while fighting. They’re also filling up hospitals and, in some cases, overwhelming morgues in the former Soviet republic that lies to the north of...

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April 08, 2022

Ça Marche

NEED TO KNOW Ça Marche FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d78d9fd2-f0df-4e59-9bd4-334bffdc4974.png"] Folks in the small town of Moissac in southern France are on edge. The ethnic composition of the medieval town has changed dramatically in the past decade. Around 2,000 Bulgarians – mostly Roma – have settled in Moissac. Last year, concern over...

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April 07, 2022

The Game of Neutrality

NEED TO KNOW The Game of Neutrality WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] As his soldiers fight Russian forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently pledged that his country would become permanently neutral – that is, aligned neither with NATO nor Russia – in exchange for security guarantees designed to prevent more fighting in...

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