Latest in Lifestyle Highlight
Latest in Lifestyle
Fake Avastin shows very little protects drug supply
By Bill Berkrot / Reuters NEW YORK: As drug counterfeiters step up their sales of bogus medicines, global health regulators have few protections in place to prevent them from reaching patients, and new laws aimed at addressing the problem could be years away. Scrutiny of the supply chain has grown since fake versions of Roche’s multibillion-dollar …
Iranian-Americans get the reality TV treatment
By Lynn Elber/ AP Reality TV’s life lessons tend to be at least as synthetic as the shows themselves. Say you were intrigued by Snooki’s problem-solving approach, if one existed, to drummed-up crises on “Jersey Shore.” Translatable to the actual world? Nah. But there is a narrow exception with “Shahs of Sunset,” the latest contribution to …
Egyptian women participate in Bush fellowship
By Jamie Stengle / AP DALLAS: A yearlong fellowship program that aims to help women in the Middle East hone their leadership skills and build a network of support has been launched by former President George W. Bush’s policy institute. Charity Wallace, director of the women’s initiative at the George W. Bush Institute, said the goal …
Woman taxi driver breaks barriers in Egypt
By Aya Batrawy / AP CAIRO: It has all the trappings of an Egyptian taxi. The radio is usually tuned to the legendary singer Umm Kulthoum, whose robust voice is a favorite among cabbies. On the dashboard is a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. But startlingly, so are a stick of black eyeliner and lip gloss. Nadia …
Urban growth has negative effect on children, says UNICEF
By Safaa Abdoun CAIRO: The current surge in urban growth is creating a harsh environment for children all over the world, according to a UNICEF report. Forty-three percent – 35.2 million – of Egypt’s population lives in urban areas, but as families move to cities in search of better opportunities, services are struggling to keep up …
Twitter adds Arabic and Hebrew home pages
By AFP SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter on Tuesday launched Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi and Urdu versions of its website, further localizing of the popular one-to-many text messaging service. Twitter users have long been able to fire off messages, referred to as “tweets,” in those languages but will now be able to visit Twitter.com home pages with local-language …
Buttered Up: The content producer who loves aubergines
By Sarah Khanna I am so uninterested in shopping with friends that I cannot hide my indifference. A lone shopper, I saunter through the passages of ladies’ fashion inattentive to the new styles emerging in place of past fads; I buy what sits comfortably on my hips, pieces I would take pleasure in feeling against the …
TUB aims to excel in science, engineering
By Mennatallah Fouad Youssef CAIRO: In a bid to offer solutions to Egypt’s challenges, a new German university in El-Gouna will open its doors this year with three specialized Master’s programs that encourage students to take science to their communities. The Technical University of Berlin (TUB) Campus El Gouna will open its gates to graduate students …
Egyptian middleman bought fake Avastin from Turkey
By Edmund Blair / Reuters CAIRO: Fake versions of the multibillion-dollar cancer drug Avastin were purchased in Turkey before being traded by middlemen across the Middle East and Europe to the United States, an Egyptian businessman involved said on Tuesday. Milad Kamal Ayad, who works on commission for Egyptian firm SAWA, told Reuters he sourced 167 …
DJ lessons: Revenge of the house party
By Maha ElNabawi Midway through Italian DJ Marco Passarani’s performance this past Thursday at the Cairo Jazz Club, two things became instantly apparent about the local dance music scene. Firstly, and sadly, there is no legitimate dance music scene in Egypt. The eager party-goers filling up the club were mostly in attendance as a result of …
Buttered Up: Unboxing fluffy vanilla bean pancakes
By Sarah Khanna There’s a calming medicament in our home for the common cold; it paints in tinges of pink the cheeks of the runny-nosed, enlivens the spirits of the feverishly faint, and layers the room with the luxurious scent of true vanilla: pancakes. Taking short minutes to measure and mix, the batter comes together with …
Young entrepreneurs find training at Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement
By Amir Makar CAIRO: Young students and fresh graduates willing to work on development projects and with civil society are able to find the necessary skills and training at the Youth Leadership Program, provided by the Amerian University in Cairo’s Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement. Quoting the Gerhart Center’s website, the YLP offers young …
New study analyzes options for wastewater treatment in Lower Egypt
CAIRO: Egypt has made good progress towards increasing access to sanitation in urban areas but access to waste water treatment in rural areas lags far behind, a recent study showed. The World Bank and the University of Leeds launched a new study in Cairo that analyzed the cost-effectiveness of a range of investment options …
Egyptian student shortlisted in YouTube-NASA competition finale
By Mai Shams El-Din CAIRO: Egyptian high school student Amr Mohamed, 18, was named one of six regional competitors in the final stage of YouTube Science Lab competition challenging young scientists to design scientific experiments in space. YouTube, Lenovo and Space Adventures, in cooperation with space agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the …
Egyptian firm in fake Avastin scam proves elusive
By Edmund Blair / Reuters CAIRO: The trail of counterfeit copies of the multibillion-dollar cancer drug Avastin leads to an address in a crowded Cairo suburb, with no sign of the firm named by international suppliers as the source of the product. Last week’s discovery in the United States of the fake Avastin — containing no …
‘Displaced’ in Ard El-Lewa
By Tom Dale “Ard El-Lewa no good” asserts my taxi driver grumpily, as I give him directions to the gallery. “Bad area.” In fact, there is nothing bad about it, though no doubt life is harder for those who live in its overcrowded apartments than for residents of upscale Maadi or Zamalek. Informal concrete housing crams …
Buttered Up: Breaded fish tikka for the picky eater
I’ve been on a bad food binge. Throughout years of conscientious Asian-influenced eating in Kuala Lumpur, I missed the grease that many Egyptian dishes brought to the many mouths I’ve shared meals with. “Bring it on, Cairo!” I squealed as my big feet clumsily trampled onto the Egyptian soil that they so sorely missed, warm …
Teargas-flavored cotton candy, anyone?
By Amir Makar CAIRO: In the middle of severe clashes and ongoing street battles between protesters and security forces, they are often seen: a pink bright spot in the middle of the tear gas; the cotton candy sellers that appear to be immune to the buckshot, always present especially in the heat of the fight. “Sometimes …
Buttered Up: A roasted tomato macaroni for the unpresent
I know a boy with a golden smile that outshines his speckled eyes and curly locks woven with tones of clear honey and pale lager. A deliberately early riser, he gets high on dancing in front of the television and playing air guitar while the rest of our home sleeps. There are days I hear …
Buttered Up: A cooking crisis makes a bright lemon curd
I stepped into a friend’s cramped kitchen, cluttered with crusty teaspoons taking a mud bath in coffee-stained mugs, working to sustain the whims of a bachelor who would order out more often than not. Despite my friend’s phony cries for help, there was not much I could do with a shiny fridge that housed a …
Rolling Stone bets on South African music
Renowned jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela and heavy metal in Botswana feature in Rolling Stone’s take on music in its new South African edition, which hopes to fill a conspicuously empty niche. The American title launched its latest international edition in South Africa in November, tackling a crowded media market that has not yet cashed in …
Researchers find cancer in ancient Egyptian mummy
CAIRO: A professor from American University in Cairo says discovery of prostate cancer in a 2,200-year-old mummy indicates the disease was caused by genetics, not environment. The genetics-environment question is key to understanding cancer. AUC professor Salima Ikram, a member of the team that studied the mummy in Portugal for two years, said Sunday the …
Buttered Up: Celebrating failure with bread rolls
How do you celebrate failure? Do you examine your inner self, well hidden under a poised smile? Do you shatter like tempered glass crumbling into dull-edged pieces? Do you try, try again? A year has passed since the events of last January and I’m baking bread. Symbolic as it may be, I have failed. I …
Left Bank: Cairo’s new Groppi?
By Heba Elkayal Rarely, if ever, is a novel restaurant or food spot in Cairo executed with a full concept in mind that runs from the interiors to the menu. Left Bank, a new cultural cafe that opened Nile-side last Sunday, is different. Left Bank Bistro, Books and Bakery is the full name of this new …
South Africans most active tweeters; Egypt fourth
JOHANNESBURG: Young people tweeting from Blackberries and iPhones are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa, with South Africans by far the most vociferous, according to new research published Thursday. Kenya-based Portland Communications and Tweetminster published findings indicating Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation and is fast becoming an important source of …
The psychology of a nation: Egypt’s trauma continues
By Dalia Rabie CAIRO: The political and economic aftermath of the Jan. 25 uprising have been the topic of discussion over the past year, however little attention has been given to its psychological repercussions. Psychologist and neuroscientist Dalia Danish observed that after the Jan. 25 uprising, Egyptians were traumatized on some level or another. This was …
A closer inspection of Cairo’s ghost towns
Driving east or west out of Cairo, one used to observe endless desert, broken only by a few sleepy settlements and austere power lines. But in the past few decades, endless stretches of apartments and mini-palaces have sprung up, sometimes seemingly overnight, to cover vast swaths in patchy layers of brick, steel and asphalt. “Cairo …
Bird flu researchers agree to 60-day halt
WASHINGTON: International scientists on Friday agreed to a temporary two-month halt to controversial research on a bird flu virus that may be easily passed among humans, citing global health concerns. Two separate teams of researchers, one in the Netherlands and the other in the United States, found ways late last year to engineer the H5N1 …
Buttered Up: A sweeter smell to a basterma pasta bake
A particular smell connects me to both my home countries. It is a scent that I do not care for much but will not cower away from when it is presented to me — sweetly creeping up on me, playfully tickling my nose, at times coming a step too close for my own comfort. Keeping …
No Wikipedia? What if the Internet went down?
WASHINGTON: If a day without Wikipedia was a bother, think bigger. In this plugged-in world, we would barely be able to cope if the entire Internet went down in a city, state or country for a day or a week. Sure, we’d survive. People have done it. Countries have, as Egypt did last year during …