The Sassoons and Kadoories created huge, competing business empires, helped open China to the West and aided Jewish refugees in Shanghai during the Shoah – but their fates differed greatly, as revealed in a new book The chefs were French, the managers Swiss, the jazz musicians American. In the 1930s, the Majestic was Asia’s most luxurious hotel. The world’s high and migh
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Radical reform is only way to avert ‘disaster’ for oil-reliant country, says finance minister Ali Allawi, Iraq’s finance minister: ‘All you can do is to point out the disaster before us if we continue along this path Iraq’s finance minister has warned of “severe security consequences” if its economy is not “restructured radically”, as the coronavirus crisis wreaks havoc o
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Oil exporters in the Middle East and North Africa region are expected to suffer a $270 billion slump in oil revenues this year, according to the latest projections from the International Monetary Fund. In a regional overview published today, the Washington D.C.-based organization pointed to a sharper-than-anticipated drop in crude production this year for these countries – a
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Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq are all teetering on the brink of economic collapse. Europe cannot afford to be a helpless bystander. It is hard to imagine that the suffering and despair across the Middle East could worsen. But across Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq a new economic unravelling is continuing apace, threatening to throw the region into even deeper turmoil. In Lebanon and Syr
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The COVID-19 pandemic continues across the world, and in Iraq the number of cases is rising. As of 30 June 2020, the World Health Organization reported 49,109 cases in Iraq, with 1,943 fatalities. Since March, the government has been enforcing movement restrictions and curfews to help slow transmission of the virus. As the livelihoods of many people have be
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