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Egypt

Egyptian Court Shutters Islamist TV Channel

AHRAMONLINE (Egypt), AFP, THE GUARDIAN (UK)

Worldcrunch

CAIRO — After being accused of “inciting hatred” against Coptic Christians and “undermining national unity,” the Islamist Al-Hafez TV channel was ordered by a Cairo administrative court to be closed permanently, according to the Egyptian Ahramonline news website.

The station, which was among several to be taken temporarily off the air after former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow, has been notorious for its inflammatory rhetoric against Christians and non-Islamist figures, whether in the opposition or general public, Ahramonline reports.

This decision comes a day after Egypt expelled three foreign journalists working as freelancers for Al-Jazeera. They had carried appeals from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood leaders to stage protests against the army-backed government.

The Guardian reports that for the past seven weeks, the Egyptian government has been accused of jamming the signal of Al-Jazeera, and blocking the broadcaster from sending raw TV feeds on the Egyptian crisis to other broadcasters.

Photo: Minneapolis Star Tribune/ZUMA

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Economy

Lithium Mines In Europe? A New World Of Supply-Chain Sovereignty

The European Union has a new plan that challenges the long-established dogmas of globalization, with its just-in-time supply chains and outsourcing the "dirty" work to the developing world.

Photo of an open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia.

Open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia.

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — It is one of the great paradoxes of our time: in order to overcome some of our dependencies and vulnerabilities — revealed in crises like COVID and the war in Ukraine — we risk falling into other dependencies that are no less toxic. The ecological transition, the digitalization of our economy, or increased defense needs, all pose risks to our supply of strategic minerals.

The European Commission published a plan this week to escape this fate by setting realistic objectives within a relatively short time frame, by the end of this decade.

This plan goes against the dogmas of globalization of the past 30 or 40 years, which relied on just-in-time supply chains from one end of the planet to the other — and, if we're being honest, outsourced the least "clean" tasks, such as mining or refining minerals, to countries in the developing world.

But the pendulum is now swinging in the other direction, if possible under better environmental and social conditions. Will Europe be able to achieve these objectives while remaining within the bounds of both the ecological and digital transitions? That is the challenge.

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