Exclusive-Syria made first direct international bank transfer via SWIFT since war, central bank governor says
DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Syria this week carried out its first international bank transfer via the SWIFT international payment system since the outbreak of the country's 14-year civil war, central bank governor Abdelkader Husriyeh said on Thursday, a milestone in Syria's push to reintegrate into the global financial system.
Husriyeh told Reuters in Damascus that a direct commercial transaction was carried out from a Syrian to an Italian bank on Sunday.
"The door is now open to more such transactions," he said.
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Chicago Tribune
12 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Touche French Creole works to bring flavors of New Orleans to downtown Aurora
Those who have visited New Orleans or have a hankering for southern flavors may find what they are looking for at a new restaurant in downtown Aurora. The JH Hospitality group launched Touche French Creole in April at 6 N. River St., one of a trio of restaurants it has opened in the historic Hobbs Building. The venue joins others located on either side of it at the Hobbs Building including Giardino Trattoria & Pizzeria at 12 N. River St. and Leilani Asian Fusion at 2 N. River St. According to a press release from the JH Hospitality group, the 80-seat Touche French Creole restaurant led by chefs Keonte' Tooles and Rayshawn Hendricks offers 'a fresh, modern spotlight, pairing classic dishes with innovative touches and delicious cocktails. Diners can expect elevated takes on Southern staples like shrimp and grits, po' boys, and rich, flavorful etouffees.' Aurora resident Harish Ananthapadmanabhan, a partner with the JH group, said the vision is to help 'make downtown Aurora a truly international food destination.' 'Our goal is that on every weekend all the patrons in the surrounding area think of downtown Aurora as a destination,' he said. 'The more people that come in – they have different options to chose from and that means all the restaurants can thrive. We're bringing in international cuisines to create options but also having things that are reasonably priced.' The JH Hospitality group flew its chefs down to New Orleans to visit a number of local restaurants there to learn more about their culinary approaches as well as to help design the menu of Touche French Creole. He said his group has also made the chefs partial owners in the venue, offering them 'an equity stake so they have more a sense of ownership' in the venture. 'That's exactly the same thing we did with Giardino's as well,' he said. 'That's the overall model.' Hendricks, 25, said he has been cooking since high school. 'After high school, I did attend Joliet Junior College where they have a really good culinary program and studied behind an Italian chef and a pastry chef there,' he said. 'I had a lot of French training and techniques at the school and now we've taken that and fused it with the creole aspect so it's kind of refined comfort food.' Hendricks said the restaurant also offers 'classic French dishes like beef bourguignon and things like that, but most of our menu is New Orleans-based.' 'We have things like fried catfish, shrimp and grits, shrimp etouffee and beignets,' he said. 'In terms of what's been popular, people like our crab cake, our catfish is the number one entree and the shrimp and grits is number two. The people that come in here so far are looking for the New Orleans feel. 'If people haven't been exposed to this, a lot of it is seafood heavy. It's comfort food and reminds people of home,' Hendricks added. 'As a young chef, I want to bring being different and want it to stand out with the cuisine and the creativity.' Stu Saucier of Oswego, 44, works as a sous chef and oversees food preparation at the restaurant and said he brings 10 years of experience to the food industry. 'I've worked at VAI's in Naperville and 113 Main in Oswego and also in the Turf Room in North Aurora,' he said. 'I was working in schools before this and I left restaurants for a while and I was looking to get back in the kitchen and the menu intrigued me. I'm actually French so seeing the French creole sign attracted me. It's an ideal fit.' Saucier said one of the key parts of food preparation is technique. 'When you're a cook it's executing a menu and elevating a menu so when you get a recipe – you're a robot – you do the same thing every time,' he said. 'When you're a chef you build that toolbox up and start learning more techniques and use those to innovate and create and makes things new. It's like being a teacher – you always learn something new.' Marshon Crowder, 26, of Aurora, works as the manager at Touche French Creole and said for him, he has enjoyed the hospitality side of the business. 'It's not been the food, it's the people and I tend to think of myself as a huge people person,' he said. 'I feel like I can connect with a wide variety of people which is what brought me into this. I think this is becoming a destination not only for the Chicago area but the Midwest in general. Downtown Aurora is becoming more vibrant, more lively, and it feels great.' In addition to its dinner menu, Touche French Creole will offer a weekend brunch every Saturday and Sunday. The restaurants hours are 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more information, go to
24 minutes ago
Tariff threats, wars will slow but not collapse global luxury sales, new study shows
MILAN -- Global sales of personal luxury goods are 'slowing down but not collapsing,' according to a Bain & Co. consultancy study released Thursday. Personal luxury goods sales that eroded to 364 billion euros ($419 billion) in 2024 are projected to slide by another 2% to 5% this year, the study said, citing threats of U.S. tariffs and geopolitical tensions triggering economic slowdowns. 'Still, to be positive in a difficult moment — with three wars, economies slowing down, inequality at a maximum ever — it's not a market in collapse,'' said Bain partner and co-author of the study Claudia D'Arpizio. 'It is slowing down but not collapsing.' Alongside external headwinds, luxury brands have alienated consumers with an ongoing creativity crisis and sharp price increases, Bain said. Buyers have also been turned off by recent investigations in Italy that revealed that sweatshop conditions in subcontractors making luxury handbags. Sales are slipping sharply in powerhouse markets the United States and China, the study showed. In the U.S., market volatility due to tariffs has discouraged consumer confidence. China has recorded six quarters of contraction on low consumer confidence. The Middle East, Latin America and Southeast Asia are recording growth. Europe is mostly flat, the study showed. This has created a sharp divergence between brands that continue with strong creative and earnings growth, such as the Prada Group, which posted a 13% first-quarter jump in revenue to 1.34 billion euros, and brands like Gucci, where revenue was down 24% to 1.6 billion euros in the same period. Gucci owner Kering last week hired Italian automotive executive Luca De Meo, the former CEO of Renault, to mount a turnaround. The decision comes as three of its brands — Gucci, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta — are launching new creative directors. Kering's stock surged 12% on news of the appointment. D'Arpizio underlined his track record, returning French carmaker Renault to profitability and previous roles as marketing director at Volkswagen and Fiat. 'All of these factors resonate well together in a market like luxury when you are in a phase where growth is still the name of the game, but you also need to make the company more nimble in terms of costs, and turn around some of the brands,'' she said. Brands are also making changes to minimize the impact of possible U.S. tariffs. These include shipping directly from production sites and not warehouses and reducing stock in stores. With aesthetic changes afoot 'stuffing the channels doesn't make a lot of sense,'' D'Arpizio said. Still, many of the headwinds buffering the sector are out of companies' control. 'Many of these (negative) aspects are not going to change soon. What can change is more clarity on the tariffs, but I don't think we will stop the wars or the political instability in a few months,'' she said, adding that luxury consumer confidence is tied more closely to stock market trends than geopolitics. President of Italian luxury brand association Altagamma Matteo Lunelli underlined hat the sector recorded overall growth of 28% from 2019-2024, 'placing us well above pre-pandemic levels.' While luxury spending is sensitive to global turmoil, it is historically quick to rebound, powered by new markets and pent-up demand. The 2008-2009 financial crisis plummeted sales of luxury apparel, handbags and footwear from 161 billion euros to 147 billion euros over two years. The market more than recovered the losses in 2010 as it rebounded by 14%, with an acceleration in the Chinese market. Similarly, after sales plunged by 21% during the pandemic, pent-up spending powered sales to new records.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
'Amber waves of grain' recede in America's heartland as wheat farmers struggle
By Emily Schmall COLBY, Kansas (Reuters) -On a foggy morning in May, Dennis Schoenhals drove a carload of crop scouts around the wheat fields of northern Oklahoma, part of an annual tour to evaluate the health of the crop. But on some fields, Schoenhals and other farmers had already abandoned plans to harvest the grain for sale because prices had sunk to five-year lows. Farmers cut their losses early this year across the U.S. wheat belt, stretching from Texas to Montana. They were choosing to bale the wheat into hay, plow their fields under or turn them over to animals to graze. In Nebraska, wheat acreage is less than half of what it was in 2005. For farmers with crop insurance, damaged or unprofitable wheat fields can still earn revenue. But many agree that chasing insurance payouts is not the best business model. The Great Plains have long been celebrated for the "amber waves of grain" in the popular hymn "America the Beautiful." The region's states produce most of the U.S.-grown crop of hard red winter wheat, favored by bakers for bread. But with prices hovering around $5 per bushel, U.S. wheat farmers have reached an inflection point, with many forced to either lose money, feed wheat to cattle or kill off the crop. Interviews with more than a dozen farmers and analysts across Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, along with a review of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, revealed a vast disparity in profit for wheat compared to other crops. This has led farmers to abandon more fields before harvest. In parts of the region, prolonged drought has lowered yields in recent years. Farm revenue has also suffered in years with healthy rainfall, as abundant global supplies have weighed on prices. Many have pivoted to corn, soy or livestock, often after generations of their family growing wheat exclusively. "They can't sustain that," said Schoenhals, 68, who raises crops and cattle near Kremlin, Oklahoma, and is president of the state's wheat growers association. "Eventually you either change to other crops if you're able to, or you go out of business," he said. Two years ago, severe drought drove farmers to abandon about a third of the U.S. crop. This year, healthy green stalks shot through the cracked soil, and farmers had expected to harvest the most bushels per acre since 2016. But wheat prices hit a five-year low in May. Every year since 2020, farmers have abandoned between a fifth and a third of the winter wheat crop, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Nationwide, corn and soybeans dominate crop fields, with wheat a distant third in planted acreage. Hard red winter wheat exports hit historic lows in 2024 after drought and lower prices in other wheat-producing areas of the world squeezed the U.S. commodity's competitiveness. In Kansas, the leading U.S. producer of hard winter wheat, the disparity between acreage and value is particularly stark. About 1.3 million more farm acres in Kansas were planted with wheat than with corn in 2024, USDA data show, but corn's value of production was more than twice as high. Plentiful global supplies have kept benchmark U.S. prices stuck at lows that discourage farmers from growing wheat, producers and analysts told Reuters. Supplies are so ample that droughts in important grain-growing regions of China and Russia this year have barely budged prices. 'We're below profitable levels for these guys,' said Darin Fessler, an analyst with Lakefront Futures in Lincoln, Nebraska, who grew up on a row crop farm in nearby Sutton. The way things stand, he said, many farmers have "eaten a lot of their own money and burned up working capital. These bankers are going to say: 'show me some profits or we're going to have some farm sales.'" HERITAGE BUT NO PROFIT Ties to wheat farming run deep in the Plains. Historically, European settlers in Kansas struggled to find a foothold until Mennonites from Ukraine arrived with seeds of Turkey Red wheat, a variety that proved able to withstand the area's dry soil, harsh winters and extreme temperature swings. The seeds spread to neighboring Oklahoma and Nebraska, where pioneers established homesteads in the sandy, light earth in which wheat thrived but other crops struggled. Hard red winter wheat has remained the main variety of wheat sown in the U.S. Images of golden stalks adorn hotel lobbies and road signs, and towns include the word in their names. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather, a daughter of Red Cloud, Nebraska, wrote a celebrated poem describing "the miles of fresh-plowed soil, heavy and black, full of strength and harshness." Now, U.S. wheat growing is on a steady decline, with farmers finding surer profits from corn, soybeans or cattle. On the wheat quality tour in May, weeks before Nebraska wheat is usually harvested, no wheat could be seen for miles around Red Cloud. When Royce Schaneman joined Nebraska's wheat board 19 years ago, wheat fields stretched for 2.2 million acres across the state. Since then, acreage has shrunk to less than a million acres, he said. In Cheyenne County in southern Nebraska, the state's most productive wheat-growing land, about one in five fields was abandoned this year. "The feeling out in the country is not good," he said. Generations of farmers grew wheat because the crop thrived on rainfall alone. In recent decades, farmers have invested in pricey irrigation systems, experimented with hardier varieties and used fertilizer to improve yields. Agronomists have helped farmers grow more bushels per acre even as climate change has brought more drought and pests. Producers in the southern Plains have experimented with other types of wheat such as durum, the kind used for pasta, and a gluten-free variety, pursuing customers willing to pay more. Profits remain elusive. 'It's heritage, but there's no profit," said Lon Frahm, the CEO of Frahm Farmland, a 40,000-acre operation in Colby, Kansas. Surrounding Thomas County is now dotted with wind farms. Farmers there once grew wheat exclusively, he said, but they have started to diversify due to more frequent drought and global competition depressing prices. Frahm himself now mainly plants corn. He irrigates, fertilizes and harvests the grain using multimillion-dollar machines, then stores it in gleaming, 80-foot steel grain bins. His 7,000 acres of wheat sometimes produce just 5 percent of his farm's total output. "There's certainly profit in corn," he said.
