June 30, 2021

Who Matters?

NEED TO KNOW BURKINA FASO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0c0197a8-9ef4-4935-9656-24fbfbb32b2e.png"] Who Matters? Angelina Jolie recently visited war-ravaged Burkina Faso to bring attention to – and generate help for – the plight of people fleeing violence and struggling with displacement. “The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel seems to me to be totally neglected. It...

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June 29, 2021

No Quarter

NEED TO KNOW NICARAGUA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b1f74445-4296-4463-949d-e92d66c3e3b1.png"] No Quarter Nicaraguan intellectual Emilio Álvarez Montalván once described his fellow citizens as “outgoing, imaginative, hard-working, and compassionate" to Stephen Kinzer, a Boston Globe columnist and senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He also noted how...

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June 28, 2021

All the King’s Horses

NEED TO KNOW LIBYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bbf539f5-8945-4e8b-9453-35a595c0de45.png"] All the King's Horses Literally and figuratively, Libya is a minefield. Russian mercenaries fighting in Libya’s civil wars left behind booby-trapped teddy bears and soda cans as they fled when warlord Khalifa Haftar failed to conquer the capital of Tripoli. Children who “playfully” crush...

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June 25, 2021

Thrust and Parry

NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Thrust and Parry After meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland recently, American President Joe Biden said Russia would face consequences if the country continued to encourage or ignore ransomware and other cyber espionage attacks launched from its territory. Asked what those consequences might...

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June 24, 2021

Bitter Win

NEED TO KNOW ALGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/afd743d3-28d8-42d3-ad85-cbd124324f7b.png"] Bitter Win Algeria’s traditional ruling political party, the National Liberation Front, garnered the most votes in parliamentary elections held on June 12, the first since mass protests forced longtime authoritarian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to resign two years ago. But it would be inaccurate to...

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June 23, 2021

Tweet Control

NEED TO KNOW NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] Tweet Control When Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Information and Culture announced a new ban on Twitter on June 4, they released their order in a tweet. The social media platform is an important part of the West African country’s political and economic landscape. About...

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June 22, 2021

Deadly Impatience

NEED TO KNOW INDIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1ac703d1-8192-40be-95ea-427a8f7ed9ee.png"] Deadly Impatience The Taj Mahal reopened to visitors recently. Officials closed the 17th-century mausoleum honoring the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and his late wife in April during a strict lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Al Jazeera reported. Only 650 tourists...

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June 21, 2021

A Taxing Issue

NEED TO KNOW WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] A Taxing Issue At their recent meeting in Britain, leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations accepted an American proposal to impose a minimum global corporate tax. The new levy would “address the tax challenges arising from globalization and the digitalization of...

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June 18, 2021

Living Ghosts

NEED TO KNOW ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] Living Ghosts Thousands have perished and more than 2 million people have fled their homes in Tigray, a mountainous region in northern Ethiopia, since fighting between Tigray People’s Liberation Front rebels and the central government started late last year. Now famine has struck...

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June 17, 2021

Exorcising Enemies

NEED TO KNOW IRAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/aa73e799-3df4-4d8a-8ec5-35a9feeb2bb4.png"] Exorcising Enemies Iran and world leaders hope to revive the 2015 nuclear accords before Iranian voters elect a new president on June 18. The accord would impose limits on Iran’s nuclear program while lifting international sanctions that have battered the Iranian economy where inflation...

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June 16, 2021

The Defeated

NEED TO KNOW ARMENIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/291ba8a2-3105-41e3-a793-e28cc6a9282e.png"] The Defeated Serzh Sargsyan, a former Armenian president and prime minister now running for parliament, recently pledged to offer his son to the country’s former enemy, Azerbaijan, in order to free Armenian prisoners now detained in the latter country. The strong words were typical...

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June 15, 2021

Repression By Grammar

NEED TO KNOW WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Repression By Grammar Traditional Czech speakers add "ova" to the last names of females. The suffix literally means “belonging to” a husband, father or another male relative, explained a Cox News Service story that noted how “ova” in English refers to female egg...

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June 14, 2021

Borderlines

NEED TO KNOW WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] Borderlines Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei recently blamed the US for attracting migrants seeking a haven from violence and fleeing poverty. During a CBS News interview before American Vice President Kamala Harris' recent visit to the Central American country, Giammattei suggested the new US...

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June 11, 2021

Writing Its Story

NEED TO KNOW EGYPT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/180d3d63-0093-422e-a6d2-b3d9896f0053.png"] Writing Its Story The coronavirus pandemic devastated Egypt’s most important industry, tourism. In 2019, more than 13 million tourists visited the North African country, earning it $13 billion. It was a return to pre-2011 numbers – afterward, the street protests of the Arab Spring...

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June 10, 2021

Taxing the Air

NEED TO KNOW CANADA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c7ee49a6-d768-4bd1-93d6-b44b086c3c21.png"] Taxing the Air The Canadian Supreme Court this year issued an important decision with worldwide implications when its justices approved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to tax carbon emissions. "Climate change is real,” said Chief Justice Richard Wagner, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation....

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June 09, 2021

Steppe Politics

NEED TO KNOW MONGOLIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d44c27c0-8811-4785-9bf7-c8eb1cb78277.png"] Steppe Politics Mongolia’s last presidential election in 2017 was extremely close. Incumbent President Khaltmaa Battulga, a former sumo wrestler, won with 50.6 percent of the vote. He did so using a campaign of fear. “Battulga used a combination of Sinophobia, nationalism, and fearmongering to win votes,”...

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June 08, 2021

The Laws of Air

NEED TO KNOW BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3dffa11e-ac63-436f-a4ed-735a6dabc4a6.png"] The Laws of Air Ryanair flight 4978 was over Belarus on a trip from Greece to Lithuania when an air traffic controller announced that they had a bomb on board. Soon after, a MiG fighter jet suddenly appeared to escort the commercial flight to...

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June 07, 2021

Tribal Laws

NEED TO KNOW KENYA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/042c2340-7f46-4be6-b8d2-b99757193837.png"] Tribal Laws Violence frequently mars elections in Kenya. As the Council on Foreign Relations explained, voters in the East African country identify with politicians through their ancestral tribes, setting the stage for political disputes to turn personal. In 2007, for example, clashes after...

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