YEAREND SPECIAL: New market regulator tops year's economic reforms
CAIRO: One of the major changes in Egypt's economy this year came in June with the creation of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), which brought several regulatory bodies under…
YEAREND SPECIAL: A year of economic stimulus and interest rate cuts
Egypt s measures to deal with the global economic crisis in 2009 have ranged from introducing stimulus packages to spur growth, upping infrastructure spending to keep the economy moving, to…
YEAREND SPECIAL: 2009: Culture in decline
The feared perils of the economic recession hit the Egyptian culture scene hard in 2009, a year that saw most culture centers scaling back their activities, the film industry receiving…
YEAREND SPECIAL: Faint traces, low hopes for local music
There are two problems with trends: they are easily substituted and their effects are short-lived. For an old trend to grow out of fashion, a new one must evolve. But…
YEAREND SPECIAL: The best films of 2009
For the past four years, my best-films-of-the-year list has been restricted to movies screened in Egyptian theaters either via commercial release or in film festivals. And because of these limitations,…
YEAREND SPECIAL: The year in art
2009 has been a somewhat bittersweet year for the local art scene. It was sweet in because galleries have become real powerhouses with a much stronger hold on the reins…
YEAREND SPECIAL: A year of adaptations in Egyptian theater
The powerful art of theater is losing its grip on the public in the face of the fierce competition of satellite TV, with the range of choices they offer from…
YEAREND SPECIAL: Egyptian filmmaker of the year: Yousry Nasrallah
Up until not long ago, the films of Yousry Nasrallah were only known to cinephiles and art-house film aficionados. Widely regarded as one of Egypt's foremost filmmakers, Nasrallah found fame…
YEAREND SPECIAL: Relative recession marks 2009 book scene
The one definite reality about Egyptian literature this year is that the volume of works released is relatively poor compared to last year's. This literary recession may have its roots…
YEAREND SPECIAL: Consumers against climate change
BRUSSELS: There is a forgotten player in the global efforts to limit CO2 emissions: the consumer. Households consume one third of the final energy used in the European Union and…