February 23, 2024

Forced Predictability

NEED TO KNOW Forced Predictability BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3dffa11e-ac63-436f-a4ed-735a6dabc4a6.png"] Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko recently claimed that his security forces had captured Ukrainian and Belarusian “saboteurs” in a counterterrorism operation on the country’s border with Ukraine. Other than saying these so-called enemies were transferring explosives to use in Belarus and Russia,...

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February 22, 2024

Running Out the Clock

NEED TO KNOW Running Out the Clock UKRAINE/ RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1fcd4036-786d-9ce0-309a-14f74105b898.png"] Near the front line in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Ukrainian soldiers detail how two years of fighting their giant neighbor, Russia, is wearing them down, as they cope with losses, fatigue and shortages. Titushko, 39, explained to the Guardian...

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February 21, 2024

A Popular Resistance

NEED TO KNOW A Popular Resistance MYANMAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9ef34308-9cd1-4a8e-a2b3-e7a7ab6846ed.png"] In Nam Hpat Kar in northern Myanmar, a towering golden Buddha statue stands above the wreckage of civil war. Much of the village is now rubble after the central government fired heavy artillery and launched air strikes against rebels in...

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February 20, 2024

Disaster, in Slow Motion

NEED TO KNOW Disaster, in Slow Motion HAITI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/49e3c059-ec02-49d2-b8d4-2a7e10c83ff3.png"] Feb. 7 is a treasured day in Haiti. In 1986, it was on this day that Haitians ejected dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier after 15 years. Five years later, on that very day, Haitians witnessed the swearing-in of Jean-Bertrand Aristide,...

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February 19, 2024

Failing Grade

NEED TO KNOW Failing Grade SENEGAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3676cf10-2f23-4295-b085-c86147830390.png"] Senegal is traditionally a “haven of stability and democracy” in West Africa, Agence France-Presse recently wrote. But President Macky Sall’s decision to postpone the West African country’s presidential election that had been slated for Feb. 25 changed all that. Demonstrations, often violent,...

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February 16, 2024

Seeding Fury

NEED TO KNOW Seeding Fury EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] In Italy, a sign on the front of a tractor flying the Italian tricolor in Turin in early February read, “Agriculture is dying!” as Euractiv wrote. To the north, in Germany, around 30,000 farmers and 5,000 tractors descended on Berlin,...

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February 15, 2024

The New Clique

NEED TO KNOW The New Clique WEST AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8bda180e-c600-c3ec-d2fb-e8dfad709a2d.png"] Officials in the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria have a dilemma: On the one hand, they want to ensure prosperity, democracy and security in the region. On the other, they want to keep...

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February 14, 2024

Warm and Fuzzy Politics

NEED TO KNOW Warm and Fuzzy Politics INDONESIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ec0c6f24-24ad-434b-bf1d-56e472da6e67.png"] Gen. Prabowo Subianto, 72, who is Indonesia’s defense minister, has pioneered the use of generative AI in his presidential campaign. The “doe-eyed cartoon” avatar of himself that he has disseminated on TikTok and other social media platforms has been...

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February 13, 2024

The Delicate Dance

NEED TO KNOW The Delicate Dance JORDAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8e349f45-1adc-4062-b298-9fdf38aa8f40.png"] Jordanian lawmakers enacted a repressive cybercrimes law last year, to the alarm of human rights advocates who forecast that officials in the Middle Eastern kingdom could use it to subdue dissent. Now, those very same advocates say that Jordanian authorities have...

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February 12, 2024

Havana Blues

NEED TO KNOW Havana Blues CUBA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/934b8716-56c1-487d-ba72-11a855fa10c6.png"] Storm waves recently flung jellyfish and seaweed onto the streets of Havana. After the storm, temperatures plunged to 55 degrees Fahrenheit, unusually cold weather for the Caribbean island. “This really is something new … we’re not used to this kind of cold,”...

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February 09, 2024

Clinging to the Snake

NEED TO KNOW Clinging to the Snake GABON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/8b6af594-29cd-4ef9-63c5-84ef31e981ea.png"] Hours after President Ali Bongo won reelection to a third term in Gabon in August last year, extending his family’s 56-year rule of the West African country, his military officers seized power in a bloodless coup. It was just the...

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February 08, 2024

An Election of One

NEED TO KNOW An Election of One AZERBAIJAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/00e51a13-ac1f-4599-999d-e15e3ad08ea2.png"] President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan recently ordered a snap presidential vote. He was slated to run for reelection next year. Now, for a variety of reasons that highlight the tensions and risks in the former Soviet region in the...

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February 07, 2024

Skidding Off the Rails

NEED TO KNOW Skidding Off the Rails PAKISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eaf17bc7-6468-493e-bfe1-86954ffb120a.png"] Late last month, courts in Pakistan in different rulings convicted ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan on charges of revealing state secrets and corruption, sentencing him to 14- and 12-year terms in prison around a week before Pakistani voters went to...

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February 06, 2024

Growing Pains

NEED TO KNOW Growing Pains ARGENTINA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/76e4f41e-d963-4fc8-b435-ba5bf19812a5.png"] Labor unions took to the streets a few weeks ago in Argentina to oppose recently elected President Javier Milei’s libertarian plans to adopt the US dollar as the country’s official currency while radically shrinking government spending. It’s the president’s first big test...

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February 05, 2024

Word Play

NEED TO KNOW Word Play ISRAEL/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] In a Jan. 26 interim ruling on whether Israel was perpetrating acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip, justices on the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands said they were “deeply concerned” about the ongoing bloodshed. And so it...

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February 02, 2024

‘Hustle-bro Populism’

NEED TO KNOW ‘Hustle-bro Populism’ EL SALVADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9d16e98f-6fe6-4329-b9c8-47184d56b2ce.png"] El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has drawn admiration and condemnation since he first took office in 2019. The former mayor of the capital of San Salvador whose maternal grandparents hailed from Jerusalem, Bukele created a bitcoin investment fund after making the...

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January 31, 2024

Target Practice

NEED TO KNOW Target Practice BALUCHISTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/eb272fcf-6499-280e-ed70-9060750b87d2.png"] Iran and Pakistan fired missiles and drones at each other this month ostensibly to kill separatists in Baluchistan, a region that straddles the two countries as well as Afghanistan. Iran aimed at bases used by Jaish al Adl, a Baluchi militant...

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January 30, 2024

Saving Stalin

NEED TO KNOW Saving Stalin GEORGIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e341329d-b90e-4b8e-8e3b-6429d9366897.png"] The late communist dictator Josef Stalin is arguably the most controversial native son of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Mixed feelings about Stalin, who defeated the Nazis, turned the Soviet Union into a world power, but also oversaw an iron-fisted regime...

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January 29, 2024

Law & Disorder

NEED TO KNOW Law & Disorder SOUTH AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5516b8d6-0af4-46a7-8454-a3339ff1009f.png"] Residents of Rabie Ridge, sick and tired of criminals running rampant through their township outside Johannesburg, South Africa decided to take matters into their own hands. They went house to house and rounded up six people they accused of...

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January 26, 2024

The Politics of Co-Dependence

NEED TO KNOW The Politics of Co-Dependence FINLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/91b0da4b-efc6-40c2-a405-00e958404c77.png"] The former president of Finland and 2008 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari died recently at the age of 86. He helped draft peace accords in Namibia in the 1980s, in Northern Ireland and between Serbia and Kosovo in...

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