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THE REPUTATION of the Caribbean’s major cigar production centres – Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua – has dominated global markets for years. But the entire region’s balmy and moist climate and rich soils are ideal for growing cigar wrapper and filler leaf.…

The Saudi Arabian paint market is rebounding after a sluggish 2020, when sales declined due to an economic downturn caused by lower oil prices and the Covid-19 pandemic, as well the trebling of value added tax (VAT) across the kingdom. The World Bank has projected that this will cause a 5.4% contraction in national GDP, a highly unusual recession in a fossil-fuel rich country used to robust growth.…

THE ACCESSION to power of President Joe Biden has sparked speculation that the recent shift in USA policy towards Israel and the Palestinian Territories pushed by his predecessor Donald Trump may be over.

Regardless of the justified criticism of Trump’s ethics and unpredictable governing style, the fact remains that his administration moved the needle in the Middle East.…

THE ARAB Spring has had a mixed record of success as regards liberalization, but one recent bright spot has been the revolution in Sudan, which in 2018 and 2019 swept away 30 years of despotism under former President Omar al-Bashir. This rebellion, notable for its active nurturing by professional classes, has so far spawned a sustainable ‘Sovereignty Council’ government committed to democracy.…

The medieval scholar Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, a famous Tunisian historian of the 14^th and 15^th centuries, created a model for the history of states, which he said had a natural life of birth, maturity and death.

His Muqaddimah, published in Arabic in 1377, written as a prelude to an ambitious survey of global history, said states went through three stages, always ending – as the adage about politics says – in failure.…

Former US President Donald Trump may be out of office, but the first initiatives of the new administration of President Joe Boden have been to encourage the American manufacture of clothing and textiles, just in a different way from his predecessor.…

The former global head of sales at Jersey-based energy services company, Petrofac, David Lufkin, January 14 pleaded guilty at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, to three counts of bribery to win USD3.3 billion in contracts in the United Arab Emirates.…

The United States is to roll out anti-money laundering provisions in banking regulations to the sale of antiquities and arts following a January 1 vote in Congress for sweeping reforms. The vote, overturning President Donald Trump’s veto on the National Defense Authorization Act spending bill, includes a clause handing federal regulators the power to end secrecy over antiquities transactions so that buyers and sellers be identified.…

The Gulf kingdom of Bahrain is kicking off 2021 with the grand opening of its new airport passenger terminal, a 210,000 square metre (sqm) building that is four times the size of the existing facility. Following its official opening on January 28, the terminal will be capable of processing 130,000 air traffic movements a year, up from 95,500 in 2019, and will have a handling capacity of 4,700 bags an hour. …

LUXEMBOURG may be a small country, but it is big in dairy, especially milk – with its other main products cheese, butter, butteroil and cream. Growth in the dairy sector of this Grand Duchy, similar in size to the UK country of Dorset and slightly smaller than the US state of Rhode Island, is continuing – even during the market disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit.…