January 12, 2022

Justice Delayed But Not Daunted

NEED TO KNOW Justice Delayed But Not Daunted LATIN AMERICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/59fbe6be-49eb-3207-4c89-ea2ca4043f2a.png"] The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a Costa Rica-based panel affiliated with the Organization of American States, recently rendered guilty verdicts against two past rightwing governments in Latin America and one from the left. The court found that...

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January 11, 2022

The Long Goodbye

NEED TO KNOW The Long Goodbye BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3eb41941-dc99-4c07-a44c-b49cace98355.png"] Fikret Alic appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1992 during the Bosnian War. Emaciated, he was standing behind the barbed wire of the Trnopolje camp run by Bosnian Serbs. The treatment he suffered recalled the worst of...

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January 10, 2022

Perception is Key

NEED TO KNOW Perception is Key EGYPT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/180d3d63-0093-422e-a6d2-b3d9896f0053.png"] French automaker Citroën recently apologized for airing a television commercial in Egypt that featured the popular Egyptian performer Amr Diab driving a C4 crossover sport utility vehicle. In the commercial, Diab uses a built-in camera in the car to snap...

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January 07, 2022

Falling From Grace

NEED TO KNOW Falling From Grace BENIN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2f9461ee-c4e6-4b8e-a1ae-3fd929fd2dfa.png"] Benin’s former justice minister, Reckya Madougou, had been planning to run for president against cotton magnate Patrice Talon in April. She would have been the country's first female presidential candidate. And she had a good chance at unseating the incumbent. Instead,...

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January 06, 2022

The Honey-do-list

NEED TO KNOW The Honey-do-list UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3889a598-67d0-4b0d-b019-11292382b589.png"] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former television star and comedian, has installed friends and colleagues from his comedy studio into the top echelons of his government. That’s his prerogative as the head of state of the former Soviet republic who was elected...

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January 05, 2022

Mission Impossible

NEED TO KNOW Mission Impossible NORTH KOREA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/081c0373-fb17-4e7d-af63-346faaef42b7.png"] North Koreans were barred from laughing, drinking alcohol or enjoying leisure activities from Dec. 17-28. As Radio Free Asia explained, the enforced misery was part of a mourning period for the late Kim Jong Il, the father of the country’s...

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January 04, 2022

Bloody Passions

NEED TO KNOW Bloody Passions PAKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eaf17bc7-6468-493e-bfe1-86954ffb120a.png"] Priyantha Kumara was a Christian and Sri Lankan citizen who managed a Rajco Industries factory in Pakistan. When rumors spread that he had trashed some posters of the Islamic prophet, Muhammed, ahead of a planned repainting of his factory, hundreds of...

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January 03, 2022

Once More Unto the Breach

NEED TO KNOW Once More Unto the Breach WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] As the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spread around the globe, the Netherlands instituted a nationwide lockdown that made the Dutch feel like it was 2020 all over again. Non-essential businesses, bars and restaurants are closed until mid-January, the...

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December 31, 2021

A Frightful Old Year

NEED TO KNOW A Frightful Old Year WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Fear was the watchword of 2021. People feared the coronavirus. In Africa, where the Omicron variant first appeared, United Nations officials continued to sound alarm bells about the lack of a coordinated international effort to vaccinate people and stop the...

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December 30, 2021

Much Ado About Something

NEED TO KNOW Much Ado About Something CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] School officials forced third-grade teacher Fatemeh Anvari out of her classroom at Chelsea Elementary School in Quebec because she wore a hijab. Anvari didn’t lose her job, per se. She was reassigned to an inclusion-and-diversity literacy program. Her students were,...

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December 29, 2021

Scratches in the Teflon

NEED TO KNOW Scratches in the Teflon UNITED KINGDOM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db250264-45f9-48fa-be6e-ab4d2ef0d6a5.png"] The former speaker of the British House of Commons, John Bercow, recently told Good Morning Britain that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was the worst premier he had ever known. A formerly Conservative parliamentarian who recently switched to the...

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December 28, 2021

Upstaging Ghosts

NEED TO KNOW Upstaging Ghosts CHILE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/baed026e-8c02-42fc-8c27-383b8bf87a6c.png"] If the legacy of General Augusto Pinochet’s cruel rule haunted Chile for years, the ghost of his predecessor, the late leftwing Chilean President Salvador Allende, is now getting its chance to do the same. Pinochet seized power in a coup that unseated...

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December 27, 2021

After the Fall

NEED TO KNOW After the Fall AFGHANISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2beac6fe-a680-4765-a2ff-d329629a897c.png"] Two veteran foreign correspondents from the Washington Post recently journeyed along the 300-mile highway from the Afghan capital of Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar. American taxpayers funded the road to the tune of $300 million. Today, four months after...

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December 24, 2021

Through the Past, Darkly

NEED TO KNOW Through the Past, Darkly LIBYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bbf539f5-8945-4e8b-9453-35a595c0de45.png"] Muammar Gaddafi was a brutal dictator who ruled Libya for four decades. After rebels killed him in 2011 during the Arab Spring, his death left a power vacuum that resulted in a bloody civil war that continues to this...

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December 23, 2021

The Propulsion of Desperation

NEED TO KNOW The Propulsion of Desperation SIERRA LEONE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fa024dc5-dbe7-d0c9-dd70-64d5fc0b96a9.png"] When Alhaji Siraj Bah’s adopted family perished along with more than 1,400 people in Sierra Leone in 2017 in mudslides, he vowed to take action. “All I felt was helpless,” Bah, now 22, told the Washington Post. “So,...

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December 22, 2021

Woke, à la Française

NEED TO KNOW Woke, à la Française FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d78d9fd2-f0df-4e59-9bd4-334bffdc4974.png"] In the United States, the term “woke” generally means understanding and acknowledging the historical legacy and contemporary impact of racism and related injustices against African Americans, particularly how slavery and segregation yielded racist policies and attitudes that resonate today...

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December 21, 2021

Just Business

NEED TO KNOW Just Business UNITED ARAB EMIRATES [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e7c972cb-39f7-4c1c-a7c9-c1ed67fdc38d.png"] The United Arab Emirates recently made Sunday a day off, putting the Persian Gulf kingdom in step with the Western world’s workweek. In most Arab countries, the workweek runs from Sunday to Thursday, as Friday is a Muslim holy...

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December 20, 2021

Olympic-sized Snubs

NEED TO KNOW Olympic-sized Snubs CHINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/198e41ed-dcee-4398-8f9e-af928160f105.png"] When President Jimmy Carter ordered an American boycott of the 1980 winter Olympics in Moscow, he sought to punish the Soviet Union for invading Afghanistan, as Biography explained. But critics said he simply punished athletes without accomplishing anything tangible. The “diplomatic boycott”...

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December 17, 2021

A Global Addiction

NEED TO KNOW A Global Addiction WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] At the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last month, more than 40 countries pledged to phase out their use of coal. Richer countries expect to end coal burning in the 2030s, the BBC reported. Developing nations have...

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December 16, 2021

Tits, Tats, Tragedies

NEED TO KNOW Tits, Tats, Tragedies UNITED KINGDOM / FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e8e29128-01ba-0e46-6f25-9ee1467659cc.png"] British novelist and Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was born in Zanzibar but came to the United Kingdom as a refugee in the 1960s, recently decried the UK and France's policies towards the desperate African, Middle Eastern...

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