17 Articles
CAIRO: For years, Osama bin Laden’s charisma kept Al-Qaeda’s ranks filled with zealous recruits. But it was the strategic thinking and the organizational skills of his Egyptian right hand man that kept the terror network together after the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and pushed Al-Qaeda out. With bin Laden killed, Ayman Al-Zawahri becomes …
CAIRO: Egypt’s top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, warned that the country’s antiquity sites were being looted by criminals amid the country’s political upheaval as he announced he would no longer serve in his ministerial post in the government. Hawass was quoted in the Friday editions of Cairo’s dailies as saying he would not participate in the …
BAGHDAD: Only one of Nidal Haidar’s six sisters is married. She has given up on ever getting hitched. "Our chances of finding husbands are diminishing as we grow older," said Haidar, a 38-year-old dressmaker from Baghdad. "I am at an age where anyone who may propose to me will either be a widower or very, …
CAIRO: Russia’s temporary ban on grain exports is stirring both political and economic anxiety in Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer where half of the 80 million residents rely on subsidized bread to survive. Russia, which supplies more than 50 percent of Egypt’s wheat imports, had announced a temporary ban on grain exports earlier this …
BAGHDAD: Baghdad’s traffic cops are demanding their own guards after at least 10 were killed over the past week in drive-by shootings and other attacks that have set back efforts to restore normalcy to Iraq’s capital after years of violence. Security officials have blamed Al-Qaeda in Iraq for the killings, in which gunmen used pistols …
BAGHDAD: Al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun offering cash to lure back former Sunni allies angry over the government’s failure to give them jobs and pay their salaries on time, according to Sunni tribesmen and Iraqi officials. The recruitment drive adds to worries that the terror network is attempting a comeback after the deaths of its …
Iraq’s artists are using their work to try to process the turmoil since the 2003 US-led invasion, and what they are producing shows a profound anger over their country’s traumas and uncertainty over its future. They have a lot to deal with: A change of regime, foreign occupation, an insurgency, sectarian massacres and, now, the …
CAIRO: To the millions of Egyptians who have known no other president, Hosni Mubarak is the "Father of the Nation." But as with many fathers, they also have deeply mixed feelings toward him. Nearly half of Egypt’s population of 78 million were born or raised under Mubarak’s nearly 30-year authoritarian rule, and they have been …
DAMASCUS,Syria: After delivering a lecture on the increasing role of private banks in Syria, economist Mohammed Ayman Al-Maydani got an uncomfortable request from members of the audience to elaborate on a brief reference he made to corruption in the country’s private and public sectors. "If I answer this question I may not get to spend …
TRIPOLI, Libya: A Libyan plane carrying 104 people crashed Wednesday on approach to Tripoli’s airport, leaving a field scattered with smoldering debris that included a large chunk of the tail painted with the airline’s brightly colored logo. A 10-year-old Dutch boy was the only known survivor. The Dutch prime minister said everyone on the Afriqiyah …
For decades, Arabic fiction was associated with the name of one man: Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature. Nearly four years after his death, his native Egypt is experiencing an unprecedented fiction explosion from a new generation. Unlike their predecessors, the expanding group of young authors putting out a barrage of …
CAIRO: The UN s former nuclear chief has yet to return home to his native Egypt after almost a quarter century monitoring the world s atomic programs, but the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner has already created the biggest political stir in his homeland in years by hinting at a new career in politics. Mohamed …
BAGHDAD: By all rights, the Hewar art gallery should have been a casualty of war. Months go by without a single painting or sculpture being sold. The gallery s cafe – once a noisy meeting ground for Baghdad s intelligentsia – now sees just a few hardy regulars. The owner s balance sheet shows losses …
Associated Press CAIRO: Most Cairenes see the city s army of taxi drivers as rude and conniving, overcharging their passengers for uncomfortable rides in aging cabs. But first-time author Khaled El-Khamissy saw them as the lens through which to view all Egypt s woes. His book Taxi, Tales of Rides has become a best-seller in …
Associated Press CAIRO: Egypt s best-known democracy movement has switched its cause, now focused on demanding an end to the country s peace treaty with Israel. The campaign by the moderate Kefaya group is a sign of how the war in Lebanon knocked momentum from democracy efforts and left many reform activists deeply resentful of …
Associated Press CAIRO: To hear Ahmed Fouad Negm talk, nothing riles Egypt s most popular poet more than President Hosni Mubarak. Compared with Mubarak, Gamal Abdel-Nasser was a prophet and Anwar Sadat was a very kind man, Negm says of the Egyptian leader s predecessors, who, between them, jailed the poet for 18 years. Abdel-Nasser …
Associated Press CAIRO: It was not looking like a good day for the skipper and his family, the crew of Boat 578. From shortly after sunrise, Mohammed Abdel-Hameed, his wife and two of their daughters had shared duties rowing along the Nile, casting the net and hauling it in. By midday the return on their …