November 17, 2021

Cold Truths, Hot Air

NEED TO KNOW Cold Truths, Hot Air WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] World leaders, diplomats, environmentalists and fossil fuel industry executives who attended the COP26 climate change summit were tasked with forging an agreement to save the planet. In the end, they created a new deal that broke new ground in...

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November 16, 2021

The Marlboro Men

NEED TO KNOW The Marlboro Men MONTENEGRO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/4b30f1e1-b1f1-4c0b-8877-a8d9773d57e4.png"] The US and other international observers have turned a blind eye over the years to cigarette smuggling in Montenegro, a small former Yugoslav republic on the Adriatic that achieved independence from Serbia in 2006 and joined NATO nine years later. Montenegrin...

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November 15, 2021

The Vanishing Villages

NEED TO KNOW The Vanishing Villages ROMANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9aaceeea-9490-44fc-a4ad-151c831adffc.png"] The bodies of Romanians who perished in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have been placed in black plastic bags and lined up in a hallway in a hospital in Bucharest, the capital of this eastern European country. Hundreds of people die...

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November 12, 2021

Round and Round We Go

NEED TO KNOW Round and Round We Go BULGARIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1eb16295-db95-4ff1-8e0b-8bdc4e81cb9c.png"] Bulgarians will vote in a total of four elections this year. Even so, confidence in the Balkan country’s government is still lacking. As Balkan Insight explained, citizens of the European Union’s poorest member voted for new parliaments in April...

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November 11, 2021

Voting With Feet

NEED TO KNOW Voting With Feet ARGENTINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/76e4f41e-d963-4fc8-b435-ba5bf19812a5.png"] Argentine President Alberto Fernández unveiled big spending plans on social welfare programs and other benefits in order to convince voters that they should reelect his Peronist allies in the Justicialist Party during legislative elections on Nov. 14, wrote El Pais,...

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November 10, 2021

Heeding Candide

NEED TO KNOW Heeding Candide MAURITANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/18cc7578-f1a7-4a18-81da-f90716e211fd.png"] Algeria recently accused Moroccan forces of killing three Algerian citizens who were driving a truck from the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott to the Algerian city of Ouargla. As Agence France-Presse explained, Morocco’s regional rival, Algeria, supports the rebels who are fighting for...

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November 09, 2021

Meta Problematic

NEED TO KNOW Meta Problematic WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had a chance late last year to stand up to the communist leaders of Vietnam. Instead, as the Washington Post explained, he blinked. Vietnamese officials asked Zuckerberg to stop the posts of government critics. Refusing their requests...

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November 08, 2021

Eastern Front

NEED TO KNOW Eastern Front POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] Last month, the European Court of Justice ordered Poland to pay $1.2 million a day for failing to prevent political interference in its judicial system. As CNN reported, the Polish government under the control of the Law and Justice Party has...

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November 05, 2021

When Might Is Right

NEED TO KNOW When Might Is Right NICARAGUA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b1f74445-4296-4463-949d-e92d66c3e3b1.png"] Nicaraguan law enforcement recently arrested two prominent businessmen on charges of “money laundering, acts that diminish the country’s independence and inciting foreign interference,” according to the Associated Press. Similar charges have been levied against scores of others for similar crimes...

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November 04, 2021

Like Father, Like Son

NEED TO KNOW Like Father, Like Son CHAD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b08925fb-4623-40c3-9563-de5bd3009fa5.png"] Earlier this year, Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno wanted to command his troops fighting against jihadist rebels in his country’s remote north. So he journeyed to the front, where he died in the fight, National Public Radio reported. Deby,...

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November 03, 2021

Fed Up

NEED TO KNOW Fed Up SWEDEN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3c7156af-17ce-455f-85b2-83980fe2f678.png"] A gunman shot and killed Swedish rapper Einar recently in Stockholm. The 19-year-old, award-winning entertainer was the most streamed artist in Sweden on Spotify in 2019, Agence France-Presse reported. Einar’s songs feature drugs, crime and violence. He had public feuds with...

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November 02, 2021

Stuck in Purgatory

NEED TO KNOW Stuck in Purgatory CAMBODIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f7961b85-6c8d-4728-b55b-cbaa2e866255.png"] Thirty years ago, diplomats signed the Paris Peace Agreement to bring an end to civil war in Cambodia. The run-up to the agreement was hell on earth, as journalist Sydney Schanberg depicted in his book, “The Death and Life of Dith...

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November 01, 2021

Leadership in Retrograde

NEED TO KNOW Leadership in Retrograde SUDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/224b0e8f-5be6-4e44-b799-a1b865717c98.png"] After widespread protests and violence, President Omar al-Bashir stepped down as president of Sudan in 2019. In his wake, a power-sharing government of military and civilian officials ruled the country. The arrangement was difficult, but it pointed to a better...

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October 29, 2021

Blah, Blah, Blah

NEED TO KNOW Blah, Blah, Blah WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Recently, Larry Fink, the chief executive of Black Rock, one of the world’s biggest asset managers, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times with a surprising call to arms. To curb climate change, he wrote, the richest countries in...

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October 28, 2021

Justice’s Clock

NEED TO KNOW Justice's Clock GERMANY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96d66e57-2644-40b9-aed7-fc66370c3077.png"] Seventy-five years ago, the victorious allies of World War II concluded the trials in Nuremberg that resulted in 12 Nazis receiving death sentences for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Holocaust, or the extermination of six million Jews...

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October 27, 2021

Headwinds

NEED TO KNOW Headwinds WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] The coronavirus pandemic disrupted global energy supplies. Now it’s not clear if world leaders can fix the problem. In China, where officials curbed coal mining to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets, President Xi Jinping is asking coal companies to dig more and faster...

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October 26, 2021

A Place Called Rock Bottom

NEED TO KNOW A Place Called Rock Bottom LEBANON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a353fadd-2d2a-41b3-b0c1-951b96702e16.png"] As befits a widow who follows local Muslim traditions in Lebanon, 32-year-old Ammouneh Haydar remained inside for 40 days following the death of her husband in a fuel tank explosion. As she mourned, however, her thoughts were less focused...

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October 25, 2021

On a High Wire

NEED TO KNOW On a High Wire INDONESIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ec0c6f24-24ad-434b-bf1d-56e472da6e67.png"] Indonesian President Joko Widodo – known as Jokowi – is urging the world’s rich countries to give his Southeast Asian nation a hand in reaching its climate goals. The fourth most populous country in the world, with the largest Muslim...

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October 22, 2021

Fait Accompli

NEED TO KNOW Fait Accompli UZBEKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/28e3dab6-1896-a95a-90a8-7dc88946c0c3.png"] When voters in Uzbekistan head to the polls to elect a new president on Oct. 24, they will almost certainly pick incumbent President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In office since the death of his predecessor in...

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October 21, 2021

Revolution Redux

NEED TO KNOW Revolution Redux TUNISIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1f262cf6-0ed8-4367-aeca-5f0f2b6684d0.png"] Tunisian Najla Bouden Ramadhane recently became the Arab world’s first female prime minister. That’s a historic feat in the region and the greater Arab world, National Public Radio noted. But the path Ramadhane, a professor and ministry of higher education official, took...

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