Proposed changes to the Constitution could reshape the role of the Armed Forces, even giving them authority to annul unfavorable election results, experts warn.
country: Egypt
Stay updated with comprehensive news on Egypt from Worldcrunch. Discover insights on Egyptian politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural landmarks with translations from top international sources. Highlights include Cairo, Alexandria, and cultural events.
CAIRO — On Oct. 1, 2017, the submarine S-42 set sail from the ThyssenKrupp shipyard in Kiel, northern Germany. The fourth of four submarines ordered by the Egyptian government since the start of the Arab spring — at a cost of 1.4 billion euros — quietly passed through the Kiel Canal to the port city […]
With its abundance of sunshine and adequate wind, Egypt is well suited to embrace green-energy alternatives. Instead it’s opting for old-fashioned coal.
Family and friends waited for incarcerated Egyptian blogger Shady Abu Zeid to be able to arrive at his father’s funeral.
Dubbed ‘the International,’ a young Egyptian computer programmer had built a program to scrape user data from Facebook. But the same practice is routinely done by the government and large corporations.
Egyptian society simply doesn’t recognize the reality of atheism, and often punishes anyone who declares it publicly.
CAIRO — The Democratic Party chalked up victories across the United States in the midterm elections on November 6, gaining control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years. And even if the Republicans still hold control of the Senate, the outcome of the midterms breaks up the Republican monopoly in […]
Categories
Stop Victim-Blaming Egypt’s Copts
-OpEd- CAIRO — Following last Friday’s attack on two buses and a microbus in Egypt’s Minya governorate, killing at least seven Coptic Christians and injuring 16 others, both domestic and international media have deployed subtle and not-so-subtle examples of “victim-blaming” in their coverage. Egyptian media highlighted the poor condition of the road on which the […]
CAIRO — “Wednesday isn’t blue?” Ayman looked at me like I’d gone mad. “Ok, what about your name. Isn’t it sort of reddish?” “Have you lost it?” he replied with a snort, sure I was joking. I enthusiastically started to explain the phenomenon which I’d just been reading about in a book exploring the secrets […]
Four years ago, then president Adly Mansour made sexual harassment a criminal offense. And yet, women who report such cases have been publicly shamed, demeaned and even fired.
Peace with Israel, signed in 1978, was never widely popular, but the context of a poor, war-torn nation made feelings vary widely.
Abdelrahman al-Gendy, a standout student and Harry Potter aficionado, was just 17 when he was arrested in Cairo, charged with multiple crimes, and given a 15-year prison sentence.
CAIRO — A friend of mine lived alone in downtown Cairo. She was single when she moved in but after getting into a relationship, her boyfriend joined her. One day in 2012, her neighbors saw her heading to the apartment with her boyfriend and two friends, a man and a woman. Once they were inside, […]
GOTHENBURG — I’m often asked: “Where do Yemenis escape to?” Syrians largely flee to Lebanon and Turkey, but where do Yemenis go? “The majority cannot afford to flee,” I respond. “For those who can afford it, their destination always depends on which country hasn’t closed its borders to Yemenis.” Often, they head west, across the […]
Egypt’s Finance Minister says the country is actually benefiting from the Turkish crisis, but so-called ‘hot money’ can burn long-term prospects.
Is religion numbing Egyptians into acquiescence amid a number of merciless austerity measures?
Egypt’s ‘operating system,’ to borrow a tech-world term, needs replacing — and the military must relinquish power. It looks impossible today, but is inevitable in the long run.
The two-year-old housing project is clean and orderly, unlike the makeshift dwellings its thousands of relocated residents left behind. But it’s also isolated and dull.
CAIRO — In the year of Mohamed Salah’s rise to fame as one of the world’s best soccer players, his every move and success has been well documented across the globe, no more so than in his native Egypt. Here, the cult of personality around him runs much deeper, hitting at the heart of struggles […]
Low wages, government censorship and even arbitrary detentions. Practicing journalism has become an increasingly risky business in Egypt.
CAIRO — On a hot summer day in 2012, two smartly clad Filipina women arrived at the JW Marriott Hotel on Cairo’s ring road, toting handbags in the crooks of their arms as they had often observed their female employers doing. They lingered in the lobby for hours over small cups of coffee as they […]
Even the most anti-democratic election can reveal much about the system.
As the state’s efforts to secure churches become more centralized, church scouts play an increasingly pivotal role.
The president thinks it’s time to ‘revolutionize’ Islam. But to do so, he needs help from the country’s oldest, most prestigious Sunni university.
Set for a second term, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has evolved in tone and substance over the past four years: from soft-spoken insider to all-powerful leader.
CAIRO — Over the course of the past two months, since Ghad Party head Moussa Mostafa Moussa decided to run for president, the party and its relatively unknown candidate have found themselves suddenly wading into uncharted waters. Before he submitted his papers to the National Elections Authority on January 29, only minutes ahead of the […]
CAIRO — There are “forces of evil” that control Egypt’s media outlets, according to a statement issued last week by Public Prosecutor Nabil Sadek. To protect “national security” and prevent “spreading fear throughout society,” Sadek instructed public prosecutors and regulators to monitor media outlets and arrest anyone who disseminates or broadcasts false news. However, it […]
CAIRO — I was four years old when, while visiting a relative at his home, he urged me to eat some food. He told me playfully, as children are often told: “Eat, you donkey.” But, according to my mother, I refused. It bothered me that he was asking me to eat in this way. I […]
CAIRO — “Angry” was the way many described President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s improvised speech during the inauguration ceremony of the Zohr natural gas field on January 31. The president declared that the only way Egypt’s national security could be compromised was over his “dead body” and the “dead body of the military.” But with whom […]
Egypt’s Zohr gas field is the largest ever natural gas find in the Mediterranean. But reshaping the global energy balance of power must factor in other equations.
MINYA — Anba Makarios, a bishop in the governorate with Egypt’s highest number of violent sectarian incidents, does not employ the usual appeasing rhetoric of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox church. He is a man who makes his voice heard but avoids being seen, expressing himself through official statements and brief phone calls to television talk shows. […]
Egypt’s St. Catherine’s Monastery holds a treasure trove of ancient texts. But spectral imaging technology shows there’s even more there than meets the eye.
In villages in Minya, Christians and Muslims are confined to separate districts, a condition that feeds into sectarian dynamics.
BIR AL-ABED — “For 20 minutes, they kept firing at us. We couldn’t hear anything else because of the sounds of the gunfire. Everybody was running. Some were trying to escape and others were looking for their children — no one was spared, young or old. When the militants were done firing, one of them […]
-Essay- CAIRO — I had never really thought much about my position on the death penalty. After I watched the film The Life of David Gale, I started to ask myself how one might possibly work on an issue as difficult as this. I don’t remember if I watched the movie before or after going […]
In light of the devaluation of the Egyptian pound and increasingly difficult visa processes, more and more Egyptians are turning to domestic tourism. Yet, while tourists continue for the most part to visit South Sinai, there are still widespread security concerns over travel in the rest of the peninsula, particularly areas of North Sinai, where […]
An Egyptian writer shares her struggle with keeping bipolar disorder from invading everything she does and everyone she knows.
The restaurant ‘Garemt Akl’ (eating crime) aims to tap into Hunger Games morbidity and real-life curiosity about incarceration among Egyptians. But it is chillingly insensitive to real inmates and their families.
The absence of Christian players at the professional level can be traced to discrimination that begins young.
CAIRO — Just north of the Egyptian capital, a short ferryboat ride will take you to the southern tip of the Nile island of Warraq. It has patches of agricultural land and scattered houses and deeper in, the island resembles a typical Cairo neighborhood with tightly-stacked buildings and narrow streets packed with motorcycles and tuk-tuks. […]