Security sources say majority of dead are children after blaze breaks out at Coptic Abu Sifin church in Giza
A fire sparked by an electrical fault at a packed church in a working-class district of Greater Cairo has killed at least 41 people and injured another 45, Egyptian officials have said.
About 5,000 people had gathered at the Coptic Abu Sifin church in Imbaba, Giza, for Sunday morning services, when a fire broke out just before 9am local time (7am BST).
Continue reading...Naomi Klein and Caroline Lucas among signatories to letter voicing concerns over country’s hosting of climate summit
A hundred days before the Cop27 summit is due to start in Sharm el-Sheikh, a group of environmentalists and activists have expressed alarm over Egypt’s ability to host the event successfully because of its poor record on human rights, as thousands of prisoners of conscience remain behind bars.
“We are deeply concerned that [a successful conference] will not be possible due to the repressive actions of the Egyptian government,” they said. “Indeed, it seems more likely at this point that the conference will be used to whitewash human rights abuses in the country.”
Continue reading...Analysis: Foreign minister seeks to win friends and influence people in countries where closeness can be traced back to USSR
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, is arriving in Uganda on the latest stop of his tour of Africa, aimed at rallying support on the continent for Russia as the war in Ukraine goes into its sixth month.
Many African leaders have refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have accused the US and Nato of starting or prolonging the conflict.
Continue reading...Russian foreign minister starts trip in Egypt, one day after Russian strike on Odesa put question mark over deal to restart exports
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has reassured Egypt over Russian grain supplies at the start of a four-country tour of Africa, amid uncertainty over the future of a deal to resume Ukrainian exports via the Black Sea.
Egypt, one of the world’s top wheat importers, bought 80% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine last year, and has been torn between ties to Moscow and its close relationship to the west.
Continue reading...Tourists will no longer face having cameras confiscated, but law forbids pictures of children or those that can ‘damage country’s image’
Visitors and residents no longer have to sneak their photos of Egypt’s streets, after the tourism ministry announced that amateur photography in the country’s public spaces is now allowed.
Foreign vloggers and social media influencers have in recent months brought attention to Egyptian authorities’ practice of stopping people taking photos and videos, even at tourist sites, and confiscating camera equipment.
Continue reading...US adviser to the White House and partner call on UN to move climate crisis summit over fears they would be targeted
A White House adviser and his partner have called on the United Nations to move a key climate change summit from Egypt due to the country’s treatment of LGBTQ people, citing fears that they and other activists would be targeted by security forces if they attend the talks.
The couple, Jerome Foster and Elijah Mckenzie-Jackson, have written to Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to condemn the choice of Egypt as host of the Cop27 talks due to its “LGBTQ+ torture, woman slaughter and civil rights suppression” and that the decision “places our life in danger in the process of advocating for the life of our planet”.
Continue reading...Analysis: Israel has transformed itself from regional pariah to ally to many Arab states
Joe Biden has made clear that the Middle East is not a priority for his administration: Ukraine, China and the US midterm elections are all more pressing issues. Still, when Air Force One touches down in Tel Aviv for his first visit to the region as president on Wednesday afternoon, Biden will be faced with a rapidly changing – and still unstable – part of the world.
Biden’s main goal is to convince Saudi Arabia of the need to increase global oil supplies to ease the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the fact that he flies directly to Jeddah after two days in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories speaks to a significant shift: Israel’s transformation from regional pariah to ally for many Arab states.
Continue reading...‘Infuriating’ exclusions made just weeks before Joe Biden’s Saudi visit and expected rapprochement with the crown prince
Family members of several US nationals who are being held in Saudi Arabia and Egypt were not invited to attend a recent call with Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, in a move that was called “infuriating and discriminatory” by one critic.
The apparent decision to exclude the families from a 22 June call between Blinken and relatives of US nationals who are hostages or otherwise wrongfully detained in Russia, Venezuela, Rwanda and other countries, was made just weeks before Joe Biden’s controversial trip to the Middle East and an expected rapprochement between the US president and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince.
Continue reading...Family of Alaa Abd El Fattah join wife of Karim Ennarah, under travel ban, in demanding more action from foreign secretary
The family of a British national jailed in Egypt and the British wife of an Egyptian rights defender under a travel ban are demanding that Liz Truss do more to pressure her Egyptian counterpart when they meet this week.
The foreign secretary is expected to meet Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, in London after telling parliament in June that she would seek a meeting with him and raise the case of detained British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah. “We’re working very hard to secure his release,” she said.
Continue reading...A Romanian and an Austrian die within 600 metres of each other south of city of Hurghada
Two women have been killed in shark attacks in Egypt’s Red Sea, south of the city of Hurghada, the Egyptian environment ministry has said.
Two sources told Reuters that the body of a Romanian tourist in her late forties was discovered hours after an attack that left a 68-year-old Austrian woman dead. Both attacks happened within 600 metres of each other, off the coast of Sahl Hasheesh, according to the sources.
Continue reading...Climate activists say plight of jailed Alaa Abd El Fattah shows protesters’ voices will be ignored at Sharm el-Sheikh summit
Five months before a pivotal UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, one of Egypt’s most prominent political prisoners remains behind bars. Now on his 89th day of a hunger strike, Alaa Abd El Fattah is subsisting on just a hundred calories a day, normally in the form of skimmed milk or a spoonful of honey in his tea.
Abd El Fattah, a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, has spent most of the past decade in prison. First jailed for organising demonstrations against a law that in effect banned protest altogether, he was re-arrested in 2019 during anti-government protests in which he had no involvement, and last year was sentenced to a further five years in a maximum security prison on charges of “spreading false news undermining national security”, for comments about torture on social media.
Continue reading...Risk of significant tsunami within next 30 years is nearly 100%, Unesco says, as it urges coastal cities to become ‘tsunami-ready’
A tsunami could soon hit major cities on or near the Mediterranean Sea including Marseille, Alexandria and Istanbul, with a nearly 100% chance of a wave reaching more than a metre high in the next 30 years, according to Unesco.
The risk of a tsunami in Mediterranean coastal communities is predicted to soar as sea levels rise. While communities in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, where most tsunamis occur, were often aware of the dangers, it was underestimated in other coastal regions, including the Mediterranean, Unesco said.
Continue reading...Unprecedented food shortages could spark riots in dozens of countries as Black Sea blockade adds to pressures, says WFP chief
Dozens of countries risk protests, riots and political violence this year as food prices surge around the world, the head of the food-aid branch of the United Nations has warned.
Speaking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday, David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the world faced “frightening” shortages that could destabilise countries that depend on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia.
Continue reading...Sanaa Seif says UK government is not standing up for her brother Alaa Abd El Fattah, on hunger strike and facing death
The sister of a British dual national human rights activist held in a Cairo jail and on the 74th day of a hunger strike, on Tuesday urged the UK foreign secretary to publicly demand that Alaa Abd El Fattah is saved from death by being released.
Sanaa Seif was speaking at an event attended by Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the released British-Iranian dual national, and Gurpreet Singh, the brother of Jagtar Singh Johal – a Sikh activist from Dunbarton detained by the Indian police nearly five years ago. He has still not been charged and says a confession was extracted under torture.
Continue reading...‘Time is running out’ for blogger and activist who was given UK citizenship last year
Inside Alaa Abd El Fattah’s cell in the Wadi al-Natrun prison complex – once nicknamed “the valley of hell” for its location in the middle of the desert – fluorescent lights stay on 24 hours a day, along with CCTV to monitor his every move. Now 65 days into a hunger strike, the blogger and activist has become a symbol of resistance against Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi’s regime.
But despite becoming a British citizen last year, he is no closer to being released. His family fear that foreign secretary Liz Truss is failing to do enough to free him. “You would think that the moment he became a British citizen, something would change, not just because of the leverage of another citizenship but also the good relations between Egypt and the UK,” said activist Mona Seif, Abd El Fattah’s sister, who also acquired British citizenship last year.
Continue reading...Painted wooden coffins and bronze statues of deities dating to 500BC found by archaeologists in Saqqara
Archaeologists working near Cairo have uncovered hundreds of ancient Egyptian coffins and bronze statues of deities.
The discovery at a cemetery in Saqqara contained statues of the gods Anubis, Amun, Min, Osiris, Isis, Nefertum, Bastet and Hathor along with a headless statue of the architect Imhotep, who built the Saqqara pyramid, according to Egypt’s ministry of tourism and antiquities.
Continue reading...Jean-Luc Martinez is accused of conspiring to hide origin of works taken out of Egypt during Arab spring
The former president of the Louvre museum in Paris has been charged with conspiring to hide the origin of archaeological treasures that may have been taken out of Egypt during the Arab spring uprisings, in a case that has shocked the world of antiquities.
Jean-Luc Martinez was charged this week after he was taken in by police for questioning, a French judicial source told Agence France-Presse. Martinez ran the Paris Louvre, the most visited museum in the world, from 2013-21.
Continue reading...Host of November’s summit wants focus to be on ‘moving from pledges to implementation’
Financial assistance for developing countries must be at the top of the agenda for UN climate talks this year, the host country, Egypt, has made clear, as governments will be required to follow through on promises made at the Cop26 summit last year.
Egypt will host Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in November. The talks will take place in the shadow of the war in Ukraine, as well as rising energy and food prices around the world, leaving rich countries grappling with a cost-of-living crisis and poor countries struggling with debt mountains.
Continue reading...Britain stirred up tensions, chaos and violence in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, according to declassified papers
The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed.
The effort, run from the mid-1950s through to the late 70s by a unit in London that was part of the Foreign Office, was focused on cold war enemies such as the Soviet Union and China, leftwing liberation groups and leaders that the UK saw as threats to its interests
Continue reading...At least five others wounded in one of deadliest attacks against Egyptian security forces in recent years
At least 11 troops, including an officer, have been killed in a militant attack in the restive northern part of the Sinai peninsula, Egypt’s military said on Saturday.
It said in a statement that the militants attacked a water pumping station east of the Suez canal. It did not give further details on the location.
Continue reading...