By: Paul Wallace.
Bloomberg, Feb. 26, 2020
Lebanon has a lot more than just maturing Eurobonds to worry about.
In addition to $31 billion of those, the Middle Eastern nation’s central bank has $52.5 billion of obligations in the form of foreign-currency deposits and certificates of deposit, according to calculations by Toby Iles and Jan Friederich, Hong Kong-based analysts at Fitch Ratings Ltd.
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The Business Times
Reuters, Feb. 21, 2020
[BEIJING] Retail sales of China’s passenger car crumbled 92 per cent on an annual basis in the first 16 days of February, according to China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), as the corona-virus outbreak slammed the brakes on businesses across the country.
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By: Yisrael Price
Hamodia, Feb. 18, 2020
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz has predicted that his party will trounce Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud with 40 Knesset seats in the March 2 voting, though the latest polls did not bear him out.
“We’re gonna take 40 seats in the next election,” Gantz said at a campaign event in Tel Aviv on Monday night, according to The Times of Israel.
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By: Chris York
Huffington post, Feb. 17, 2020
Entire cities on lock-down. Armies of engineers mobilized to build entire hospitals in just days. The Kafkaesque tracking and surveillance of those who might be infected.
Faced with a crisis like corona-virus Covid-19, there are tools available to a totalitarian state like China that simply wouldn’t be options somewhere like the UK.
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By: Russell Flannery
Forbes, Feb. 17, 2020
Some 78% of companies that participated in a new survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai said they don’t have enough workers to run a full production line in the mainland.
Nearly half of the 109 companies — 48% of the total– from Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing and the Yangtze River Delta said their global supply chain operations have already impacted amid China’s deadly corona-virus outbreak. The survey was conducted Feb. 11-14.
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Council of The European Union
Feb. 17, 2020
The Council has added eight prominent businessmen and two entities linked to those businessmen to the list of persons and entities subject to the sanctions against the Syrian regime and its supporters. Their activities directly benefited the Assad regime, including through projects located on lands expropriated from persons displaced by the conflict.
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By: Layan Odeh and Dana Khraiche
With assistance by: Paul Wallace and Abeer Abu Omar
Bloomberg, Feb. 16, 2020
Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines scrapped a decision to reject payments in the local currency, hours after the nation’s president warned against the move and questioned its legality.
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By: Dana Khraiche and Lin Noueihed. With assistance by Abeer Abu Omar
Bloomberg, Feb. 13, 2020
Lebanon’s top officials are still discussing their options for how to cope with a raging financial crisis after making a request for technical assistance to the International Monetary Fund, in the hope the new government can regain the credibility it needs to secure urgent aid.
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By: Adam Taylor
The Washington Post, Feb. 6, 2020
While Washington was watching impeachment proceedings, a humanitarian disaster brewed in Syria. The crisis in Idlib, which threatens to be among the worst in a nine-year-long war full of them, is a reminder that the Syrian war hasn’t gone away — and that it has the capacity to worsen.
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By: Frederic Wehrey
The Guardian, Feb. 2, 2020
In Abu Grein, on Libya’s frontline, the militiamen’s scars read like a roll-call of the wars that have roiled the country since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. One of the fighters, a truck driver named Muhammad, removes his cap to reveal a balding pate etched with shrapnel gashes. “From Da’ish,” he says, referring to a 2016 battle he fought against Islamic State in the Libyan city of Sirte.
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