Methanol Poisoning

Some alcoholic beverages are manufactured illegally in Kuwait at secret locations that lack safety standards. (AFP pic)

Kuwait arrests 67 over illegal alcohol after 23 deaths

Alcohol is produced by fermenting sugars. Pure sugar should give you pure ethanol, but if you are fermenting grain or fruit, you are going to get some methanol. There are ways to minimize the amount of methanol in the end product, but if you aren't careful, or don't know what you are doing, you can end up with a poisonous drink, and that seems to be what happened here.

You would think that in this day and age with ubiquitous access to all knowledge, things like this wouldn't happen, but some people just don't care about other people. Or they are just stupid. Could be either, or both. 

The Exchange | Official Trailer | Netflix

From Variety:

Set in 1987, three years before Saddam Hussein’s invasion of the city-state, this groundbreaking show is based on the true story of the first two women who broke the glass ceiling of Kuwait’s male-dominated stock exchange and proved themselves as talented traders in the cutthroat milieu.

The protagonists are Farida (Rawan Mahdi), a recent divorcee who, without her ex-husband’s cash, needs to provide for her teenage daughter, and her cousin Munira (Mona Hussain), a clerk for the Bank of Tomorrow’s trading division. They join forces to navigate a corrupt, patriarchal world, using their smarts to shake up Kuwait’s stock exchange.

These two attractive women are way up there in money and status. Well, Farida was until her divorce. Their clothes are flamboyant. Somehow I don't think the real women were dressing like that, but some people like soap operas, so I suppose that influenced the choice of costumes for this show.

Farida doesn't illicit much sympathy, at least for the first two episodes. How can anyone be that clueless about how the world works? But then I realize that she has been a kept woman for the last dozen years and probably wasn't allowed to know anything about how things are done.