Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The call for the west to address the autocracy of President Sisi’s government is problematic, says Youssef Farrag
I cannot agree more with Amr Darrag’s opinion on the failure of the Egyptian government – shown in extravagant projects that were meant to lift President Sisi’s status rather than serve the population and in the establishment of an autocratic regime that has seen an abundance of human rights violations (If Sisi’s brutality in Egypt continues, the results could be dire for Europe, 11 February). And it is likely, in light of the proposals for a constitutional amendment, that Sisi will be in office until 2034.
However, the call for the west to address the autocracy of Sisi’s government is problematic. Democracy is established and sustained by collective action, and can only thrive when people are able to be force themselves into the conversation and the decision-making process. Thus, democracy can be imagined differently in different countries and can often be used to reject rather than affirm western values.
Desperate to reach Europe, migrants from Africa are travelling to Egypt and selling body parts to pay for their passage
Wearing a baseball hat and smoking a shisha pipe in a cafe in Cairo, Dawitt tells me he is 19, but looks years younger. He explains that he escaped Eritrea aged 13 to avoid forced, indefinite conscription into military service.
His family helped him pay smugglers to travel via Sudan to Egypt. Struggling with debt and desperate to make the sea crossing to Europe, he looked in vain for regular work. Then he met a Sudanese man who suggested a “safe and easy way” to raise the cash – selling a kidney.
Pharaonic tomb dating back more than 2,000 years discovered at Tuna el-Gebel site
Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered a Pharaonic tomb containing 50 mummies dating back to the Ptolemaic era (323-30BC) , in Minya, south of Cairo, the ministry of antiquities said.
The mummies, 12 of which were of children, were discovered inside four, nine-metre-deep burial chambers in the Tuna el-Gebel archaeological site.
Royal College of Paediatrics urged to rethink conference funding amid claims deal contravenes World Health Organization code
The Royal College of Paediatrics has been accused of breaching World Health Organization guidanceafter it accepted sponsorship funding from baby formula companies.
More than 100 medics and 13 health groups have written to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), urging it to drop Nestlé, Nutricia and Danone from the list of sponsors for its first international conference, to be held in Cairo on 29 January.
In Sudan, Egypt and beyond, unrest is growing and hardline dictators are ill-equipped to respond
Sudan missed out on the Arab spring, but that may be changing. Protests against Omar al-Bashir, the indicted war criminal who has dominated the country for 29 years, are becoming a daily occurrence. Street-level unrest, sparked by rising bread and fuel prices, began last month and spread quickly. But the focus of demonstrators, their ranks swollen by teachers, lawyers and doctors, has switched to Bashir himself. They want him gone.
Bashir’s response has been predictably repressive. And the president may succeed in battering his critics into silence, as in the past. But the causes of the unrest cannot be bludgeoned away: a struggling economy, low investment, high unemployment, corruption, bad governance and a potentially disastrous lack of opportunity for new generations of young people.
Italian doctoral student’s family seek truth about his torture and murder in early 2016
Three years after the disappearance, torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, Egypt is stonewalling Italy’s efforts to investigate.
In November, Italian prosecutors officially named five members of Egypt’s security services as subject to investigation in the case of Regeni, who went missing on 25 January 2016 aged 28. But two months on, Egypt has barely acknowledged the development.
Decree states Cairo structures require ‘dusty colours’ while blue is to be used on the coast
Egyptian authorities are reaching for their paint brushes following a decree by the president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, demanding buildings across the country adhere to a unified colour scheme of “dusty” shades in Cairo and blue on the coast.
Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, told a cabinet meeting: “The plan is to have unified colours for the buildings instead of this uncivilised scene.” He said a presidential decree targeting unpainted red-brick buildings demands local authorities paint them soon, or face punishment.
Mansoura and Al-Azhar universities backtrack after video of celebratory embrace goes viral
Two students expelled from university in Egypt for the “immoral act” of hugging in celebration of their engagement have been reinstated after a viral video of their embrace drew widespread public sympathy.
The universities of Al-Azhar and Mansoura initially told both students they would be thrown out after footage emerged showing the male student kneeling and proposing to the teenage woman before presenting her with a bouquet of flowers. The video, shot on the campus of Mansoura University, then showed the pair embracing, a moment greeted by cheers from their friends.
Filippo Grandi calls on rich countries to give proper funding for developing nations that host people fleeing conflict
The head of the UN refugee agency has said he too would do “anything” to escape if he was stuck in a squalid refugee camp, as he called on the world’s wealthy nations to properly fund services in developing countries.
Speaking to reporters after meeting the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Filippo Grandi, the high commissioner for refugees, said countries are not getting enough recognition for hosting refugees, and that he would campaign for Cairo to receive more bilateral development aid to support its efforts.
More than one in 10 people travelling through the region are taken, as smugglers boost dwindling returns by preying on people for ransom, survey finds
More than 15% of refugees travelling north through the Horn of Africa were kidnapped during their journey last year, according to what is believed to be one of the most comprehensive surveys of migration journeys.
Researchers from the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), who conducted 11,150 interviews across 20 countries and seven migration routes, warned that kidnappings may be increasing and identified people travelling through the Horn of Africa to north Africa and Europe as the most vulnerable.
The fall of the Saudi crown prince after the Khashoggi affair is a cautionary tale for all authoritarian rulers
The trial of 11 people charged with the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi opened and was quickly adjourned in Riyadh last week. It may be that the outcome is fixed in advance. Yet that the hearing took place at all could be seen as progress of a kind. It suggests even a state as autocratic, inward-looking and undemocratic as Saudi Arabia is not immune to international opinion and can be forced, in extremis, to respect the human right to justice.
The Khashoggi affair has provided a chastening lesson for Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, who is widely believed to have ordered the journalist’s slaying in Istanbul in October. Until then, Salman was riding high, courted by Donald Trump, lauded at home for modest social reform and feared, if not respected, across the Arab Middle East for his war of attrition in Yemen and determination to face down Iran.
Medics say limiting families s not the answer for a country where a baby is born every 15 seconds
In the cramped office of New Cairo hospital’s family planning clinic, Safah Hosny sets a box overflowing with contraceptives next to the visitors’ ledger on a small desk.
There are eight condoms for one Egyptian pound, about 4p, or ampoules of injectable birth control, for just under 9p. A contraceptive implant lasting three years costs 22p, while copper IEDs – the most popular form of birth control on offer according to Dr Hosny – cost 17p.
The outlook is bleak for key countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya
Just over eight years ago, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a bitter one-man protest outside a government office against the government. Within hours, demonstrators took to the streets of his small town, Sidi Bouzid. By the time he died in hospital just overtwo weeks later, protests had spread across the country, would soon topple the president and spill beyond Tunisia, in a regional convulsion dubbed the Arab Spring.
Milanesi confirmed his country's support to Egypt and his honor to meet with the pope for the second time. Pope Tawadros II and Milanesi met previously in Italy during the former's visit past July.
It is the largest fish farm in the Middle East. Sisi is also slated to inaugurate a university hospital and two drinking water stations, and he will witness the ground breaking ceremony for the foundation of an industrial zone.
For almost six years, we had missed that enthusiasm and excitement of hosting our favorite celebrities and seeing their photos around the pyramids, between monumental temple pillars in Luxor, or even lounging at our beautiful, sunny beaches. Egypt's iconic monuments and paramount history have placed it on the top of most - if not all - international figures' bucket lists, from the year one; Agatha Christie , Patricia NIXON and U.S. President Richard Nixon , Louis Armstrong , Muhammed Ali , Amitabh Bachchan , Princess Diana , Shakira , Barack Obama , Salma Hayek , Paris Hilton , Van Diesel , and many more.
In Cairo, Pope Francis, once again, did what he usually does best: he snapped at the state of immorality and selfishness, which is governing the world, particularly in the West. The message to Egypt's priests could actually be directed at the population of the European and North American cities: The first temptation is to letting ourselves to be led, rather than to lead The second temptation is complaining constantly The third temptation is gossip and envy The fourth temptation is comparing us with those better off The fifth temptation is individualism, 'me, and after me the flood' the final temptation is 'keep walking without direction or destination' Pope Francis gave speeches, and met the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah El Sisi.
Freed from prison two years ago on "compassionate release" after being diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, the flaming 76-year-old radical still is championing left-wing massacres against the police. Translation: Sicko Grandma Stewart - as unrepentant and unapologetic as the rest of her rotten hippie pals in the bloodthirsty Weather Underground, Black Liberation Army and Black Panther movement - continues to endorse murdering her ideological enemies in the name of peace and social justice.
At least 16 people died in the hot air balloon crash in Central Texas, the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday, adding that investigators are still trying to determine the exact number of passengers and what caused the accident. It's apparently the worst such disaster in U.S. history, and one of the worst ever in the world.
'It went up like a big fireball': witness heard popping sounds before hot air balloon crashed near power lines in Texas killing 16 The accident on a rural field in central Texas occurred about three years after 19 people, including nine Hongkongers, were killed in a hot-air balloon crash in Luxor, Egypt A hot air balloon burst into flames over central Texas after apparently striking power lines and plunged into a field, killing all 16 people aboard in one of the deadliest such accidents on record, police and eyewitnesses said. The Federal Aviation Administration said the fiery crash occurred at about 7:40 a.m. Saturday near Lockhart, a town about 50km south of Austin, the Texas capital.