Via Ozy, commentary on Venezuela’s new Oil Minister: By selecting Tareck El-Aissami as his new oil minister, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has given the enormous task of fixing the country’s most important industry to a man who has little expertise in the sector — and who is wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges. […]
Read more »Via Bloomberg, an interesting article on doing business in North Korea: The message from Dubai in late 2018 wasn’t unusual. It’s just part of the day for Alejandro Cao de Benós to open his email and find some intrepid capitalist who wants to do a little business in North Korea. Recently, there was the one […]
Read more »Via Bloomberg, an article on Ethiopia’s movement to liberalize its telephony sector: Ethiopia moved closer to liberalizing one of the world’s final frontiers for telecommunications by publishing the final draft of directives that mention spectrum permits will be valid for 15 years. The Ethiopian Communications Authority will hold consultations on the proposed rules for 14 […]
Read more »Via The Jamestown Foundation, an article on China’s efforts to find a rail route to Europe that bypasses Russia: For the last two decades, Moscow has counted on Beijing’s regular use of Russian railways to export Chinese goods to Europe. In turn, China’s reliance on Russian rail was based on the presumption that any substitute […]
Read more »Via The National Interest, an article on Rosneft: The Russian government no longer has a majority stake in Rosneft for the first time in the energy giant’s 27-year history. On March 28, Rosneft announced that it had sold all of its assets in Venezuela as part of a deal with the wholly government-owned company, Rosneftegaz. The sale […]
Read more »Via the Begin-Sadat Center, an article on who – after almost a decade of civil war in Syria – will be in charge of the reconstruction of the nation, with China a likely candidate: The relationship between China and Syria dates back to 1956, when the countries first initiated diplomatic contact. Bilateral relations have stayed […]
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