Word: maying
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...with a lavish fireworks display, though, the showmanship had faded. Weeks earlier, Dubai's biggest state-owned development company had declared it was unable to pay its debts. Officially, Dubai owes its creditors $80 billion, though a recent report by regional investment bank EFG-Hermes estimates that the city may be in the hole for as much as $170 billion. After Sheik Khalifa al-Nahyan, the oil-rich ruler of neighboring Abu Dhabi, stepped in with $10 billion to stave off an embarrassing default, the skyscraper's owners changed the building's name to Burj Khalifa. For a city used...
...Fransi in Riyadh and Crédit Agricole in Paris. "The world has always been too focused on Dubai, but Dubai is not the GCC," he says, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council, a loose political and economic union of gulf nations. "In the short term, Dubai's problems may impact how the world sees the region. But over the long term, the region has and will show a tremendous amount of growth...
...Kuwait may be less conservative than Saudi Arabia, but its ban on alcohol is also a major stumbling block to becoming a tourism and professional services hub. Bahrain - another of Dubai's challengers in financial services - has a thriving banking industry and the most ethnically and religiously diverse local population in the gulf. But its tolerant feel is threatened by tensions between the élite Sunni minority and the less powerful Shi'ite majority, as well as Islamist political parties that have benefited from the kingdom's tentative experiments with democratic elections. (See 10 Things to Do in Dubai...
...those young people, they will have to continue opening up to the private sector, foreign investment, and perhaps edge toward democracy. "The attraction of Dubai to the other Middle Eastern countries was a state model of development without democracy, but that's not sustainable anymore," says Krane. "You may see some kind of compromise in Dubai, a renegotiation in the relationship between the ruler and the people, where the government develops some kind of tax, in exchange for giving the people a larger voice...
...supporters of Sarath Fonseka took to the streets to protest the retired general's arrest on Feb. 8 for "committing military offenses." Fonseka had challenged President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a Jan. 26 election, the country's first since the end of a 26-year civil war last May. Former allies, the two quickly became foes, with Fonseka alleging election fraud and claiming that his life was threatened following Rajapaksa's victory. Fonseka is set to be court-martialed at a later date...