72 Articles
CAIRO: Al-Wafd Party has decided to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled to take place in November, sparking divisions among Egypt’s opposition groups. In a general assembly meeting held on Friday by Al-Wafd Party, 56.7 percent voted for entering the People’s Assembly (PA) elections, while 43 percent voted against it. “The general assembly made …
CAIRO: Shadi Al-Ghazaly Harb, former member of the Democratic Front Party and assistant professor of General Surgery at Cairo University was released on Wednesday by Egyptian authorities after around 34 hours of detention. Harb was about to take a flight to Ireland to sit for his fellowship exams at the Royal College of surgeons, scheduled …
CAIRO: Shadi Tarek Al-Ghazaly Harb, former member of the Democratic Front Party and assistant medical professor at Cairo University was released on Wednesday by Egyptian authorities after around 30 hours of detention. “They dropped him off at the airport where he was abducted. He said he was blind-folded during the detention, so he couldn’t see …
CAIRO: The Dokki Misdemeanor Court adjourned the Van Gogh painting theft trial to Sept. 28. The main defendant, deputy culture minister Mohsen Shaalan, was to remain in custody and a number of officials were summoned to testify. The judge summoned as witnesses the director general of art museums Rawya Al-Halawany; tourism police Brigadier Ahmed Abdel …
CAIRO: The Ministry of Administrative Development criticized a proposal to split the working hours of government employees into morning and evening sessions to help ease Cairo’s heavy traffic, saying it doesn’t take into consideration the personal lives of these employees, especially women. By creating a morning and an evening slot, the proposal suggested, less people …
CAIRO: Ten more Bedouin detainees were released over the Eid Al-Fitr holiday, but local activists say the total 210 Bedouins freed so far is not enough to defuse the tension. Egypt’s interior ministry announced Saturday that it will release 10 more Bedouin detainees in a bid to neutralize tensions between security forces and Sinai Bedouins …
CAIRO: While legal experts welcomed the Ministry of Culture’s decision to crack down on websites violating intellectual property rights (IPR), they questioned its ability to implement it. “It’s a good step by the Ministry of Culture,” Hossam Loutfi, legal counselor for the Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers told Daily News Egypt, “However …
CAIRO: When it comes to criticizing the current political and social conditions in Egypt, Egyptians tend to get creative. From using props in demonstrations against soaring prices such as plates, spoons and pots, to forming the Cairo Complaints Choir, in a bid to sing their sorrows away. Recently, Hesham Al-Gakh helped revive a forgotten art …
CAIRO: “The deputy culture minister and the director of a Cairo museum were referred to a misdemeanor court on charges of severe negligence and harming state property in the Van Gogh theft on Monday,” Adel El-Saeid, director of the Prosecutor General’s office, told Daily News Egypt. El- Saeid added that nine other museum officials and …
CAIRO: The South Cairo Court on Saturday adjourned until Oct. 23 the Maadi ferry accident case, which killed nine girls and injured two last July. The judge did not attend the hearing, but assigned a deputy to announce the court’s decision without giving further details. Defendant and ferry Captain Ali Eweis, appealed a previous 10-year …
CAIRO: Egyptian families spend LE 45 billion a year in charity, according to a recent report by cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC). In 2009, 8.15 million families donated their money and time to charity, representing 86.7 percent of Egyptian families, said the report. The number of young adults and youth volunteering for charity …
CAIRO: With election fever in the air, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) are preparing their female candidates to win the majority of the 64 seat quota reserved for women in a bid to repeat their 2005 win in the coming parliamentary elections. In June 2009, Egypt approved a law providing 64 seats to women …
CAIRO: Egyptians disgruntled with the continuous and excessive power cuts, took their frustration to Facebook, starting a campaign satirically titled “You are Radiant, Government – No to Power Cuts in Homes.” The campaign’s page, set up as an event on the social networking site and attracting over 10,000 users, criticized the government for blaming the …
CAIRO: The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) issued a report on Tuesday calling for the annulment of the kafeel (sponsorship) system in the Arab world. The report considered the kafeel system “the most serious violation” of Egyptians working in Gulf countries. “The kafeel system is more like slavery; it has no guarantees to protect …
CAIRO: The Egyptian Center for United Journalists called on Egypt’s Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni to take all necessary action against one of his bodyguards for attacking a photo journalist. Amr Mustafa, a photographer at the independent daily Al-Dostor newspaper, was trying to snap a picture of Hosni as he entered the North …
CAIRO: Investigations into the theft of a $50 million Van Gogh painting from a Cairo museum last week, continue to reveal more security flops. Only one single security guard manned Mahmoud Khalil Museum which housed Van Gogh’s “Poppy Flowers” and most of the museum’s cameras have been out of order since 2006, revealed a report …
CAIRO: Speaker of Egypt’s Shoura Council Safwat El-Sherif said Wednesday that the National Democratic Party (NDP) has decided to nominate incumbent President Hosni Mubarak for a sixth term in office. President Mubarak, 82, has not yet accepted the nomination. In an interview with "Al-Musawwir" magazine, El-Sherif said that the final decision is up to the …
CAIRO: Gamal Mubarak, secretary general of the National Democratic Party’s (NDP) policies committee, said that the party will announce its electoral program for the upcoming parliamentary race in due time. Speaking Thursday evening in a television interview on “Masr El-Naharda” (Egypt Today), which airs on terrestrial Channel 2, the president’s 46-year-old son added that the …
CAIRO: Minister of Justice Mamdouh Marei announced last week that the family courts’ Office of Dispute Settlement (ODS) will offer services to mediate between married couples for free. The ODS helps reconcile married couples and resolve marital disputes to avoid a divorce court battle. Madiha El-Safty, professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, …
CAIRO: Former ambassador Ibrahim Yousry and other opposition figures filed a complaint to the Prosecutor General on Wednesday, demanding a stop to the export of gas to Israel at low prices, while Egypt is suffering from a shortage of natural gas. Yousry told Daily News Egypt that “by exporting gas to Israel, they [the government] …
CAIRO: Egypt’s Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud extended the detention of Deputy Culture Minister Mohsen Shaalan and four employees at the Mahmoud Khalil Museum for 15 days in connection with the theft of the Vincent Van Gogh painting “Poppy Flowers.” The five are investigated on suspicion of neglect and professional delinquency but no charges have …
CAIRO: Egypt said on Monday it has informed Interpol and placed its police on alert at the country’s entry and exit points to try to recover a Van Gogh stolen from a museum with a broken-down security system. “The search is ongoing. We still haven’t found the painting,” Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told …
CAIRO: The media relations office at Egypt’s Ministry of Culture confirmed to Daily News Egypt Sunday that the Van Gogh painting stolen from a Cairo museum remains missing. Ahmed Salah, press officer at the ministry said that “the painting hasn’t been retrieved yet.” On Saturday morning, Egypt’s Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced that the stolen …
CAIRO: The Egyptian Center for Human Rights (ECHR) has called for the resignation of the Minister of Electricity and Energy Hassan Younis, citing the excessive power cuts that have plighted Egypt since the beginning of Ramadan. Issued on Thursday, the statement accuses the government of failure and corruption in its inability to deal with the …
CAIRO: Algeria decides not to invite Egypt to the upcoming Algiers International Book Fair, raising tension levels between the two countries to a new level. According to Mohamed Saber Arab, head of the General Egyptian Book Organization, all other Arab countries have been invited except Egypt. The Algiers Book Fair is slated for this October. …
CAIRO: New Cairo residents say they still suffer from water cuts despite official statements confirming that the problem with the main water pipes has been fixed. Reports of water cuts throughout Greater Cairo have persisted and attributed to ruptured water pipes. The water cuts started on Friday due to the burst of the two main …
CAIRO: Residents of Al-Haram, Sixth of October City and Maadi, as well as other parts of Egypt, are forced to resort to candle light iftars and endure the scorching heat as power cuts continue to sweep across the country during the holy month of Ramadan. Mostafa Ibrahim, a resident from Faisal district in Al-Haram, told …
CAIRO: An MP with the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) recently launched a campaign supporting Gamal Mubarak, son of incumbent President Mubarak, for president in the 2011 elections. The campaign by MP Ayman Salah kicked off under the slogan “Gamal Mubarak, President of This Era …Gamal Mubarak the Best President for Egypt.” In his Manshiet …
CAIRO: The unemployment rate among youth has reached 22 percent in 2009, with 47.2 percent among women and 13.7 among men, according to a recent government study. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics issued a study on Wednesday, offering statistics that describe the situation of Egyptian youth, regarding employment, education and marriage. The …
CAIRO: The first appeal hearing of the Maadi ferry case Saturday, which left nine girls dead, two missing and three injured, was adjourned to Sept. 4. Islamist lawyer Montasser Al-Zayyat joined the team representing defendant Ali Eweis, the 18-year-old who rented out his older brother’s small boat to15 school girls and their supervisors on July …