Word: banking
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What They're Watching in the Middle East A syrupy Turkish soap opera has millions of viewers across the Arab world hooked--and their clerics seething. Religious leaders from Bahrain to the West Bank have condemned Noor for being "replete with wickedness, evil and moral collapse," in the words of Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti. The show has drawn ire over its portrayal of egalitarian marriage--the heroine's husband supports her career in fashion--and characters who drink and date. Despite the criticism, 3 million to 4 million people in Saudi Arabia are tuning in daily...
High-profile women investment bankers like Nahed Taher, head of Gulf One Investment Bank, and Global Investment House's Maha al-Ghunaim, provide inspiration. Eid estimates that when she attended the American University of Beirut in the mid-1980s, about 15% of finance students were female; when she returned to teach in 2000, she says, over half were women. Others simply school themselves. When Khalida Mirza started selling marble, she had a high school education and four kids, but she quickly taught herself business basics through books and magazines. Today, she has a property firm and gives women jargon-free...
...investment firms, the biggest prize lies in Saudi Arabia, whose women have an estimated $11 billion sitting in bank accounts. But the Kingdom's strict laws on gender segregation mean the obstacles are greater there, too. One wealth manager recalls sitting in a Saudi palace giving an investment seminar, all the while worrying about whether he'd be arrested by the mutawwa, or religious police, for being alone in a room with 40 women. Gulf conservatives may rail against women driving, showing their hair or voting, but opposition to women investors has been muted. "You don't see [extremists] worrying...
...sounded a note of caution, saying in a release on Tuesday that there is a "long way to go to find a more lasting solution for those struggling with homelessness every day." Where the two sides disagree is whether a family of four who lost their home to the bank and is now couch-surfing with relatives should be considered homeless...
...lame-duck Bush Administration is already reversing itself on major Middle East policies by sending senior diplomats to engage Iran and hinting at a horizon for a troop withdrawal in Iraq. Hamas, already masters of the Gaza Strip, bragged recently that they could take on Fatah in the West Bank too, if not for President Abbas's movement enjoying the de facto protection of the Israelis. And Olmert's rivals also smell blood. Tzipi Livni, his Foreign Minister and rival within the Kadima Party, called once again on Tuesday for the Prime Minister to resign, and Defense Secretary Ehud Barak...