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The Takeaway: Will catastrophe reshape Lebanon’s social contract?

The scoop on the Syrian Kurdish oil deal; Sisi to challenge Erdogan in Iraq and Syria; Lapid leads list of contenders to challenge Bibi; don’t shortchange Iraq’s resilience.
An aerial view shows the massive damage done to Beirut port's grain silos (C) and the area around it on August 5, 2020, one day after a mega-blast tore through the harbour in the heart of the Lebanese capital with the force of an earthquake, killing more than 100 people and injuring over 4,000. - Rescuers searched for survivors in Beirut in the morning after a cataclysmic explosion at the port sowed devastation across entire neighbourhoods, killing more than 100 people, wounding thousands and plunging Leban

Lebanon:  ‘The explosion’ may be Lebanon’s Chernobyl

Update:  The Lebanese government has said that the devastating port explosion that, according to the latest figures, killed at least 135 and injured nearly 5,000, with damages preliminarily estimated at between $3 and $5 billion, was caused by the ignition of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at the Beirut port that arrived in 2014.

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