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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January 25, 2024

All That Glitters …

NEED TO KNOW All That Glitters … BRUNEI [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/664da16e-6086-451b-b6d0-2da3d75c7e07.png"] Prince Abdul Mateen of the small Southeast Asian nation of Brunei was described in Time magazine as “swoon-worthy,” “hot,” and “sexy.” Long considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the world, the 32-year-old helicopter pilot in his country’s air...

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January 24, 2024

When the Street Wins

NEED TO KNOW When the Street Wins GUATEMALA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db73a011-021f-466b-9b89-77add155facc.png"] Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo’s supporters came out in force outside Congress on Jan. 14. But they weren’t there to witness his inauguration – they were there to make sure it even happened at all. As commentators noted, after much struggle,...

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January 23, 2024

Ever After

NEED TO KNOW Ever After ISRAEL/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] Yossi Sharabi and Itay Svirsky were two of the more than 240 people whom the Palestinian terror group Hamas kidnapped on Oct. 7. In a video released by Hamas, they appealed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war...

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January 22, 2024

A Spoonful of Salt

NEED TO KNOW A Spoonful of Salt THE GAMBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/89b5a0c0-046d-402b-bc1b-96a8d9ab5730.png"] Gambian Ebrima Sagnia, 44, in an emotional interview with Al Jazeera, recalled how in 2022, he gave the cough syrup to his four-year-old son to combat his high temperature. The boy became drowsy and couldn’t urinate for days....

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January 19, 2024

Gross National Gloom

NEED TO KNOW Gross National Gloom BHUTAN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/95cb74f9-3e10-4c29-ab01-000d0e49a2f4.png"] In Bhutan’s recent elections – the fourth since 2008, when the Himalayan nation replaced its traditional monarchy with a parliamentary form of government – the opposition People’s Democratic Party received a mandate to solve the economic crisis that has been...

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January 18, 2024

Trading in Blood

NEED TO KNOW Trading in Blood MEXICO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fcd100e2-d1bb-4cd7-b9f4-53a07a70e41c.png"] Mexico is the United States’ top trading partner – more than 800 billion dollars’ worth of goods move across the border each year, according to the US government. Some of those goods crossing the border, however, are not welcome – namely...

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January 17, 2024

Troubled Justice

NEED TO KNOW Troubled Justice NORTHERN IRELAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e1fa23fe-bd64-4526-9f49-8430fef05250.png"] Violence between British-backed Protestants and Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland has been relatively subdued in recent memory compared to the street fighting decades ago, when, as one BBC story illustrated, British troops huddled for safety behind their armored vehicles. Peace in...

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January 16, 2024

The Coming Storm

NEED TO KNOW The Coming Storm ETHIOPIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/bf55b5d2-7db8-404a-b87b-c88a42597d29.png"] When Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993, the latter retained access to a port on the former’s Red Sea coast. But five years later, Ethiopia lost access to this port during a war between the two countries that lasted...

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January 15, 2024

Simmer, and Boil

NEED TO KNOW Simmer, and Boil MIDDLE EAST [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7000f0bb-c02b-4438-87c6-002be2c0dfc6.png"] On Jan. 12, the United States and its allies launched more than 100 missiles at 60 targets in Yemen, including “control nodes, munitions, depots, launching systems, production facilities, and air defense radar systems,” reported CNN. Five people perished and six...

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