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Items by Reuters
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Lebanon Hezbollah mobilises to block IMF's Azour for presidency
The Iran-backed Hezbollah and its closest allies are set to torpedo an attempt by rivals to elect a senior IMF official as Lebanese president this week, in a tussle that underlines its decisive sway and the dim prospects for reviving the crumbling state. The standoff has laid bare Lebanon’s deep splits, with the...
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Turkiye needs more than economic U-turn for lasting investments
Turkiye’s expected return to orthodox economic policies may not be enough to secure longer-lasting international investments, with a restoration of predictability and the rule of law still needed to build trust, analysts say. While higher interest rates should draw some foreign investors back to Turkish assets, analysts say only fundamental changes...
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FACTBOX – What is inside the EU migration deal, and what lies ahead
European Union ministers agreed, this week, on how to handle irregular arrivals of asylum-seekers and migrants, a deal hailed as a breakthrough after almost a decade of bitter feuds on the sensitive matter. As the deal took shape, a stabbing in France by a Syrian man who was granted asylum in Sweden, 10 years...
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TIMELINE - Saudi-Iran ties: A history of ups and downs
Iran reopened its embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday, Saudi media reported, months after the two regional rivals agreed to end years of antagonism under a Chinese-brokered deal. Protracted rivalry between the Middle East’s leading Shia and Sunni Muslim-led powers has fuelled conflicts across the region, including wars in...
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Iran hard-line rulers see missile systems as vital deterrent
Iran presented what officials described as its first domestically-made hypersonic ballistic missile on Tuesday, the official IRNA news agency reported, an announcement likely to heighten Western concerns about Tehran’s missile capabilities. Here are some facts about Iran’s missile programme, which is one of the biggest in the Middle East. Military clout Hypersonic missiles can...
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Egypt faces external debt reckoning after borrowing spree
Egypt faces an increasingly tough task raising cash for foreign debt repayments after external borrowing quadrupled over the past eight years to help fund a new capital, build infrastructure, buy weapons and support an overvalued currency. Few of its grand projects are generating additional hard currency inflows, while foreign investors...
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Drought drives economic exodus from Iraq rivers and marshlands
On a sun-scorched shoreline in Iraq’s southern marshlands, fishermen stood shovelling a grim catch: tiny fish gathered dead from the water, fit only for use as animal fodder. Locals once lived self-sufficient lives in the vast freshwater areas that make up the UNESCO-recognised Iraqi Marshlands, filling their nets with varieties...
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Analysis - US seeks to mend frayed Saudi ties with second high-level trip
With two high-level visits in less than a month, the United States is hoping to steady ties with Saudi Arabia after several years of disagreement and deepening mistrust. US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, will arrive for meetings with officials of the world’s largest oil exporter next week, the State Department...
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Why is OPEC+ cutting oil output?
OPEC and its allies, including Russia, meet in Vienna on 4 June to decide on their output policy. The group, known as OPEC+, agreed on 2 April to increase crude oil production cuts to 3.66 million barrels per day (bpd) or 3.7 per cent of global demand, after several members...
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Lebanon Central Bank Governor set to end his tenure a wanted man
Once celebrated as a financial wizard, Lebanese Central Bank Governor, Riad Salameh, is spending his final weeks in office a wanted man, faced with French and German arrest warrants that have been prompted by long-running corruption probes. The warrants are the latest twist in cross-border investigations into whether Salameh, the Governor for three decades whose term...
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FACTBOX - Russia gold shipments to the UAE, China and Turkiye
The United Arab Emirates has become a key trade hub for Russian gold since Western sanctions over Ukraine cut Russia’s more traditional export routes, Russian customs records show. The records, which contain details of nearly a thousand gold shipments between 24 February, 2022 and 3 March this year, reveal the names of...
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Saudi embrace of Assad sends strong signal to the US
Once labelled a pariah, Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, took centre stage as Master of Ceremonies last week when Arab states readmitted Syria to the Arab League, signalling to Washington who calls the regional shots. His effusive greeting of President Bashar Al-Assad at the Arab Summit with kissed cheeks...
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EXPLAINER - The probes into Lebanon Central Bank chief Salameh
Lebanon has been verbally informed of a German arrest warrant against Lebanese Central Bank Governor, Riad Salameh, who is being investigated for money laundering and embezzlement in his home country and abroad but denies any wrongdoing, Reuters reports. The move by Germany comes one week after France issued its own arrest warrant and just...
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Qatar takes diplomatic back seat as Saudi flexes political muscle
The Arab League’s welcoming back of Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad into its ranks highlights how far behind Qatar has fallen in its bid to be a diplomatic voice that carries weight in the Middle East. Earlier this month, Qatar reluctantly withdrew its opposition to Saudi Arabia’s initiative to re-admit Syria. It...
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Jet orders boom as airlines fear shortage
Plane makers cannot build them, but airlines cannot stop buying them. Even as they wrestle with industrial problems preventing the delivery of jets sold before the pandemic, Airbus and Boeing are totting up billions of dollars of new orders stretching beyond 2030, amid a rebound in air travel. From Air India to Ireland’s...
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North Africa backslides toward swirling debt troubles
Tunisia and Egypt are edging closer to major debt crises that could suck in a volatile North Africa region, and pose tough choices to wealthy Gulf Arab neighbours, investors and analysts warn. The countries are already being challenged by shortages of essential goods and financial market dysfunction and, in Tunisia’s case, a...
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Arabs bring Syria Assad back into fold but want action on drugs trade
Having brought President Bashar Al-Assad in from the cold, Arab states want him to rein in Syria’s flourishing drugs trade in exchange for even closer ties. But as Damascus makes its own demands, the way ahead appears far from simple. Arab states turned the page on years of confrontation with Assad on...
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Sudan deepens crisis in Africa as UN sees 5 million more needing aid
When a power struggle between Sudan’s rival military leaders shattered a tenuous peace in her village in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, Halime Yacoub Issac’s first instinct was to take her five children and run. But four days after seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad – a country with its...
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Smouldering Iran nuclear crisis risks catching fire
Even as the United States and its European allies grapple with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions with China, the smouldering crisis over Iran’s nuclear program threatens to reignite. In a sign of European concern, Britain, France and Germany have warned Iran they would trigger a return of UN...
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Israel seized Binance crypto accounts to 'thwart' Daesh, document shows
Israel has seized around 190 crypto accounts at crypto exchange Binance since 2021, including two it said were linked to Daesh and dozens of others it said were owned by Palestinian firms connected to the Hamas group, documents released by the country’s counter-terror authorities show. Israel’s National Bureau for Counter...
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'Constant fear': war shakes Sudan, despite truce pledges
Strikes by air, tanks and artillery shook Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and the adjacent city of Bahri on Friday, witnesses said, mocking a 72-hour truce extension announced by the army and a rival paramilitary force. Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands have fled for their lives in a power struggle between the Army...
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How Sudan's military factions set path to war, as mediation stalled
Alarmed that movements of rival military factions in Sudan could bring bloodshed, a group of mediators pushed for last-ditch talks between Army Chief, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and paramilitary Commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, two weeks ago. But neither of Sudan’s two most powerful men showed up to the meeting, convened at...
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For Palestinian evacuee, Sudan war is like nothing he's seen
Growing up in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medicine student Khamis Jouda has survived numerous wars but says he has experienced nothing like the violence he witnessed in Khartoum this month. “We have seen things we had never seen before. Everyone feared for his life,” said Jouda, 25, who was evacuated...
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'We escaped the bombing in Sudan but we had to leave my brother behind'
Rawan Al-Waleed and her family were forced to charter a bus to drive them to Egypt in an effort to escape the bombing in Sudan, but her brother's paperwork was incomplete so they had to leave him behind...