Archive

November 24, 2023

Hot Top of the World

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Hot Top of the World NEPAL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a519ab91-7b87-4ef0-a6df-573c03bc0303.png"] United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently journeyed to the foot of Mount Everest in Nepal to issue a warning. He and his colleagues want to prevent Earth’s temperature from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial...

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November 23, 2023

Old Money

NEED TO KNOW Old Money BRAZIL [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f7cee1e0-dcb8-68eb-6ed9-13e370771cbb.png"] Slave trader Jose Bernardino de Sá was one of Brazil’s wealthiest people in the mid-1800s. He trafficked nearly 20,000 Africans to the South American country, using his proceeds to build roads and farms, and to finance the Banco do Brasil, which...

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November 22, 2023

New Beginning

NEED TO KNOW New Beginning NETHERLANDS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/50b9b3d5-1234-443a-9402-f9f624fae487.png"] In a surprise announcement in July, after 13 years in office, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he would retire from politics, after disputes with his leftist allies in government over migration to the Netherlands caused the government to collapse, triggering...

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November 21, 2023

Prelude and Epilogue to War

NEED TO KNOW Prelude and Epilogue to War GEORGIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e341329d-b90e-4b8e-8e3b-6429d9366897.png"] Russian soldiers, currently occupying some 20 percent of the former Soviet republic of Georgia’s territory on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, recently killed Tamaz Ginturi, a Georgian citizen, as he visited a cemetery and a church...

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November 20, 2023

Mirror Image

NEED TO KNOW Mirror Image WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] In the West, there has been staunch support for Israel since the attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas and its affiliates that killed about 1,400 people. It was no different in Africa, Asia or Latin America initially, with leaders expressing sympathy. That was...

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November 17, 2023

Pardoning Politics

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Pardoning Politics SPAIN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9867eeee-5129-4a23-af3d-b9c85aeb55a9.png"] Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party achieved a political masterstroke to remain in power, but also probably sowed the seeds to reap bitter enmity from his conservative rivals for the rest of his life. In July, when Spanish...

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November 16, 2023

No Exit

NEED TO KNOW No Exit NORTH KOREA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/081c0373-fb17-4e7d-af63-346faaef42b7.png"] North Koreans face hunger, forced labor, shortages of medicine and other supplies, and no freedom of expression or assembly, according to North Koreans who managed to escape the so-called Hermit Kingdom and tell their stories to the world. Yet when more...

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November 15, 2023

Shattering Glass, Splintering Peace

NEED TO KNOW Shattering Glass, Splintering Peace EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] Eighty-five years ago, the Jewish cemetery in Vienna was one of the main targets of Kristallnacht – a Nazi pogrom against Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues in Germany and Austria. And so it was again, reported CNN. On Nov. 1,...

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November 14, 2023

Hooray for Nollywood

NEED TO KNOW Hooray for Nollywood NIGERIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c258edc-b123-4d47-98e3-f42e226ea64f.png"] In the Nigerian-produced film for Netflix, “The Black Book,” actor Richard Mofe Damijo plays an ex-security forces agent-turned-deacon, who exacts revenge against the crooked police officers who framed and murdered his son. As he tracks down the bad cops, wrote...

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November 13, 2023

Teasing a Detonator

NEED TO KNOW Teasing a Detonator ISRAEL/ WEST BANK, GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] After the Palestinian terror group Hamas killed about 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, Israeli settlers – sometimes wearing masks or reservist army uniforms – started breaking into Palestinian homes in Zanuta, a village in the West Bank,...

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November 10, 2023

Young Bloods

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Young Bloods ECUADOR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/7dbfcec9-d17b-43ce-97b7-0ce48bb12d1f.png"] Ecuador, just a few years ago, was an oasis of relative prosperity and peace in the region. More recently, however, it’s become overly dependent on oil and, therefore, prey to the dramatic economic swings that often occur in energy commodities. Violence...

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November 09, 2023

The Grudge Match

NEED TO KNOW The Grudge Match MADAGASCAR [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/cf906d99-8f50-4493-b06f-8a929a73ebeb.png"] A Madagascan court recently postponed the first round of the country’s presidential election by a week to Nov. 16, after security forces injured opposition candidates at unauthorized political demonstrations. Police dispersing the demonstrations fired a tear gas canister that struck and...

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November 08, 2023

Importing a War

NEED TO KNOW Importing a War EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] Police in Europe recently arrested alleged terrorists for supposedly planning attacks in connection with the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Germany recently, police nabbed folks who had been previously...

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November 07, 2023

Pick Your King

NEED TO KNOW Pick Your King MALAYSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/053b35ef-03dc-4aeb-b916-fe602f4772eb.jpg"] Malaysia has a unique form of constitutional monarchy. Every five years, nine sultans convene at the Conference of Rulers – each sultan is also the sovereign of a state in the Southeast Asian country – to elect a new king...

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November 06, 2023

The Calamity Next Door

NEED TO KNOW The Calamity Next Door EGYPT [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/180d3d63-0093-422e-a6d2-b3d9896f0053.png"] Most Egyptians are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians as Israeli forces devastate the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian government, meanwhile, is no friend of Hamas, which massacred Israelis on Oct. 7 and has launched missile attacks on Israel...

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November 03, 2023

Bracing for the Storm

[announcement] NEED TO KNOW Bracing for the Storm LEBANON [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0326e424-e014-0b21-f1eb-761dce1d14a3.png"] Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently deployed drones to strike at Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that also wields significant political power in Lebanon, Reuters reported. The rocket fire and missile exchanges between the IDF and Hezbollah and its allies have...

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November 02, 2023

Books and Bombs

NEED TO KNOW Books and Bombs SOMALIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/15cd6f05-9c0c-4887-86f7-20dad73138cf.png"] A locally filmed, 10-part television series about Mogadishu high school students called “Arday” hit the Somali airwaves earlier this year, the Washington Post reported. A book fair, newly opened theaters, and art exhibitions have also cultivated a new Somali culture...

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November 01, 2023

Operation Dismantlement

NEED TO KNOW Operation Dismantlement POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] The results of the Oct. 15 parliamentary elections in Poland are echoing throughout Europe. Women and young voters helped swing the election to the Civic Coalition and other parties opposing the ruling Law and Justice party, a populist political group that espouses...

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October 31, 2023

Oversight Versus Insight

NEED TO KNOW Oversight Versus Insight ISRAEL/ GAZA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a7853464-ef94-4b48-96b9-d7badbef5e55.png"] On Sept. 11, Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, told members of the military at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, that Israel must be on its guard, now more than...

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October 30, 2023

Something Old, Something New

NEED TO KNOW Something Old, Something New NAGORNO-KARABAKH [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a090b285-d5d2-89d8-d770-d40b6cc60381.png"] Simon Maghakyan, a visiting scholar at Tufts University who studies heritage crime, recently warned in Time magazine that Azerbaijan intends to invade Armenia. This attack would come on the heels of Azerbaijan’s September invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, a historically Armenian...

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