Syrian business owners welcome EU's lifting of sanctions
Business owners in Syria have welcomed the European Union's decision this week to lift sanctions on the country, in what observers say is the most significant easing of Western pressure on Damascus in more than a decade.
The EU's move, which followed a similar announcement by the United States in mid-May, was praised by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani as one that would bolster Syria's security and stability.
For many Syrian entrepreneurs, it also brings the hope of rebuilding their livelihoods after years of economic isolation.
'Companies that were ousted from Syria and stopped dealing with us because of the sanctions are now in contact with us,' Hassan Bandakji, a local business owner, told Al Jazeera.
'Many companies and producers are telling us they are coming back and that they want to reserve a spot in our market.'The EU and US sanctions had levied wide-ranging sanctions against the government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was removed from power in a rebel offensive in December of last year.
The economic curbs had severely limited trade, investment, and financial transactions in Syria, cutting businesses off from supplies and international banking.
'The main obstacle we faced was getting raw materials and automated lines,' said Ali Sheikh Kweider, who manages a factory in the countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
'As for bank accounts, we weren't able to send or receive any transactions,' Kweider told Al Jazeera.
Syria's new government, led by ex-rebel leader and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, had called for the sanctions to be lifted as it seeks to rebuild the country.
US President Donald Trump said after a meeting with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia last week that he planned to order the lifting of American sanctions on Syria.
Reporting from Damascus, Al Jazeera's Mahmoud Abdelwahed said the government is hoping the sanctions relief will help Syria reintegrate into the international community.
It also views the EU's announcement as additional 'recognition of the new political leadership' in the country, Abdelwahed added.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
4 minutes ago
- Forbes
Brute-Force Router Login Attacks Confirmed — What You Need To Know
AyySSHush campaign targeting thousands of routers confirmed. Thousands of routers worldwide have been targeted by a sophisticated campaign that leverages a two-year-old vulnerability, authentication flaws, and brute-force attacks. The researchers who uncovered the AyySSHush attacks have suggested it is likely the work of a nation-state threat actor. Here's what you need to know. The as-of-yet unidentified threat actors behind the AyySSHush campaign have targeted routers from major manufacturers, with at least 9,000 ASUS router models known to have already been compromised, using a stealthy and persistent backdoor that can survive firmware updates and reboots. State-sponsored hacker groups are known to have been behind everything from Windows password-stealing attacks, targeting presidential political campaigns, and even ransomware attacks against predominantly Western targets. Espionage, however, is one of the primary drivers of these hackers working in tandem with government resources. And what better way to get a data eavesdropping foothold than to compromise a router? Researchers at GreyNoise have reported that just such a sophisticated compromise campaign, that is said to be consistent with such advanced persistent threat actors, although it cannot attribute it to a specific group at this point in time, 'the level of tradecraft suggests a well-resourced and highly capable adversary,' the report stated. Although the GreyNoise research has confirmed that at least 9,000 ASUS routers have been compromised to date, and the number is increasing all the time, it has been reported that other routers from other major vendors such as Cisco, D-Link, and Linksys have also been targeted by AyySSHush. The researchers explained that attackers gain initial access through brute-force login attempts, along with authentication bypass techniques that exploit known vulnerabilities that owners have yet to patch. They then insert a public key that is under their control for remote access. While no malware is installed, the backdoor itself 'is stored in non-volatile memory and is therefore not removed during firmware upgrades or reboots,' GreyNoise warned. I have reached out to ASUS for a statement. "Even something as mundane as a router becomes a strategic asset once it gains long-term identity in a threat actor's infrastructure,' Wade Ellery, field chief technology officer at Radiant Logic, said. Which is why, at the organizational level at least, real-time identity-aware telemetry across all assets, including those routers, is essential. Debbie Gordon, CEO at Cloud Range, meanwhile, wanted that the campaign highlighted a dangerous shift in attacker strategy from quick hits to long-haul persistence. 'AyySSHush's ability to survive factory resets and firmware updates is a wake-up call,' Gordon said, 'edge devices like routers are no longer low-value targets.' With both SoHo and consumer routers targeted by this latest attack, routers can no longer be treated as set-and-forget devices.
Fox News
5 minutes ago
- Fox News
I'm a physician and I'm worried that our health agencies are facing increasing chaos
The American health system is bleeding out, and it desperately needs a real doctor. Leading Health and Human Services (HHS) today is like navigating a chaotic hospital — patients in every hallway, monitors screaming, seconds ticking away. Yet, instead of a seasoned physician who triages and trusts proven protocols, that hospital is overseen by an activist named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A patient's oxygen level plummets; nurses turn to HHS Secretary Kennedy. Instead of orders, they get a lecture on conspiracies. Chaos follows. That chaos is now national. Our health agencies are trying to perform open-heart surgery while debating the effectiveness of a scalpel. Scientists who should be developing next-generation cancer vaccines are, instead, defending 60-year-old elementary science. Conspiracy ideology is beginning to take over, and we're all going to pay the price. I'm a board-certified physician and one of the most-followed online, and since Kennedy took office, I've been forced to swap from fact-checking Instagram influencers to fact-checking the nation's top public-health official. Our nation's health system is in shambles, and the leadership of HHS plays a pivotal role in fixing this disaster. That's why it's deeply alarming that Kennedy, who continues to spread misinformation and denies the fundamentals of medicine, remains at the helm of the agency. Although he claims he's "not anti-vaccine," his words and actions tell a different story. He recklessly attacks vaccine efficacy, spreads disproven theories linking vaccines to autism, and denies fundamental virology — from diseases like HIV, measles, and more. I'm all for healthy skepticism, but scientific skepticism means investigating data, not cherry-picking it … or making it up. These aren't privately held beliefs either — a post on his active X account states that the HPV vaccine "increases cervical-cancer risk" all despite mountains of real-world data showing up to 88% drops in cancer among vaccinated teens. Sweden, England, and even the CDC surveillance report plunging pre-cancer rates. Recently, he claimed, "50% of the population is diabetic" and that "one out of every three kids" already has the disease. In reality, true estimates put China's diabetes prevalence around 12%, and the U.S. pediatric figure closer to one in 300. If one of my interns inflated numbers by a factor of 10, they'd be sent back to remedial math. Kennedy does it regularly on primetime television. Worse, he's now canceled $12 billion in disease outbreak prevention programs, proposed a 26% cut to the NIH budget, and pink-slipped roughly 20,000 public-health scientists and staff. Those decisions have consequences: dozens of federally funded vaccine clinics in Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Texas and Washington were canceled just as measles cases blew past 1,000 — the worst surge in a generation. He's dismantling the firehouse while buildings are burning. Public health cannot survive an HHS head who guts the programs that keep us safe and then fans the very myths that make outbreaks explode. Kennedy's long record of undermining proven public health measures and spreading scientific falsehoods makes him a threat to millions of Americans. Certainly, he should never have been confirmed to lead the office in the first place, but choosing to leave him in charge is like handing the keys to a driver who continues to insist that stop signs and red lights are optional. Today, I say that Kennedy is the wrong person to lead HHS. The integrity of our nation's health agencies demands leadership grounded in facts, research, and transparency — not misinformation. Doctors like me take an oath to 'do no harm.' We must call out leaders like Secretary Kennedy when they cause great harm to public health. We must stop the bleeding.
E&E News
8 minutes ago
- E&E News
US Steel-Nippon deal raises emissions concerns
An emerging White House-backed deal to allow a Japanese firm to purchase U.S. Steel could have implications for the industry's greenhouse gas emissions. President Donald Trump plans to hold a rally Friday in Pittsburgh to celebrate the deal, which he has described as a 'planned partnership' with Nippon Steel that will be 'controlled by the United States.' But clean energy advocates are concerned that Nippon's acquisition of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, one of the biggest American steel producers, could delay the industry's transition away from coal-based blast furnaces. Advertisement 'This deal poses real threats to steel decarbonization in the U.S.,' Astrid Grigsby-Schulte, project manager of the Global Iron and Steel Tracker at the firm Global Energy Monitor, said in an email. 'On a global scale, Nippon has a lot of work to do to align with net zero goals and this extends to their acquisition of U.S. steel.'
