Middle East > Iraq

Iraq

Capital: Baghdad; GDP growth (annual %) 2016: 11.0%;

OPEC raises forecasts for global oil demand

OPEC boosted estimates of request for its crude this year and next amid stronger-than-expected fuel consumption and a weaker outlook for rival supply.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations raised forecasts for the all it needs to supply in 2017 and 2018 by about 200,000 barrels a day for each year, according to a statement from its secretariat in Vienna. Still, a rebound in Libyan production pushed the group’s output last month to the highest this year, undermining its plan to rebalance oversupplied world markets.
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‘I was sold seven times': the Yazidi women welcomed back into the faith

No one wears shoes in Lalish. The village is so sacred that all visitors must walk its paths barefoot. Perched at the top of a narrow valley, in the parched, scrubby hills of northern Iraq, close to the Kurdish border, its cluster of shrines are a revered site for followers of the Yazidi faith.

At the heart of Lalish is a pool of water sheltered by a small cave, its entrance shaded by mulberry trees and watched by a guardian in a red turban. This is the “holy white spring”, where newborns must be brought for baptism, the waters mixed with the Lalish soil for the rites of marriage, birth and death. For generations, the rituals carried out at the spring had been unchanged. But two years ago, groups of women, usually silent, often with young children, began joining the families filtering in and out of the cave.
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Policy Differences Emerge Among Gulf States Days After Wooing President Trump

Cracks have appeared in a Saudi-led, US-backed anti-terrorist political and military alliance days next US President Donald J. Trump ended a historic visit to Saudi Arabia. The cracks stem from Qatar’s long-standing fundamental policy differences with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates about Iran and the role of political Islam.

The cracks emerged as the result of an anti-Qatar media and cyber campaign involving a spate of anti-Qatar articles in US and Gulf media; the blocking of Qatar-backed media websites and broadcasts in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt; statements by prominent former US government officials; and a recent seminar by the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies that has long asserted that Qatar supports militant groups.
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GlObserver provides the latest business news Country Analysis and Reports for A

Key Facts: Full name: Republic of Iraq
Population: 31 million (UN, 2010)
Area: 438,317 sq km (169,235 sq miles)
Major languages: Arabic, Kurdish
Major religion: Islam
Life expectancy: 68 years (men), 73 years (women) (UN)
Monetary unit: Iraqi dinar
Main exports: Crude oil
GNI per capita: US $2,340 (World Bank, 2010)
Internet domain: .iq
International dialling code: +964

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Climate change laws around the world
2017/05/14
There has been a 20-fold increase in the number of global climate change laws since 1997, according to the most comprehensive database of relevant policy and legislation.

The database, produced by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Sabin Center on Climate Change Law, includes more than 1,200 relevant policies across 164 countries, which account for 95% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

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What Iraq needs to survive
2015/08/08
Other Iraqis believe that the problem Iraq is facing is purely social; that the country does not, in fact, exist, and that its formation under the Sykes-Picot Agreement necessitated the unification of disparate peoples incapable of coexisting.

n describing the Iraqi dilemma since 2003, some Iraqis have been attributing the problem to political rather than social factors, whereby all disputes were ascribed to political causes. The prevailing thought part these Iraqis is that Iraq did not suffer from any social, sectarian, religious or ethnic rifts that contributed to this fractious national of affairs.

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