Norwegian wunderkind sweeps Eurovision
Norway s Alexander Rybak swept this year s Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow with a brash performance of a folk-inspired ballad that he penned himself.The boyish 23-year-old, a classically trained…
To boldly re-launch a franchise
When "Star Trek debuted as a television series in 1966, it was designed to be a Western flick in space; think "Rawhide in the Alpha Quadrant.But it soon became so…
The Value of a Pale Blue Dot
MELBOURNE: The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote: "Two things fill the heart with ever renewed and increasing awe and reverence, the more often and more steadily we meditate upon…
Go to Hebron
HEBRON: Go to Hebron. Observe how several hundreds of ultra-national Israeli settlers, a minority in a Palestinian town of 160,000, have turned the lives of its Palestinian residents into a…
Commercialize the SDR
BERKELEY: Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's Bank of China, made a splash prior to the recent G-20 summit by arguing that the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights…
Smuggler killed in Gaza-Egypt tunnel collapse
EL-ARISH: Egyptian police recovered a body from the rubble of a tunnel used to smuggle goods into the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday, a security official said. The body of…
Indorama workers contest transfer order at manpower ministry
CAIRO: Four workers from the Indorama textiles factory presented complaints to the Ministry of Manpower yesterday about what they allege are "illegal transfer orders issued against them.Ragab El-Shimy, Abdel Aziz…
Striking ambulance drivers to take evaluation tests
CAIRO: A day after the conclusion of negotiations to end a strike over pay and working conditions, Land and River Specialized Ambulance Center bosses removed 35 ambulances from the Center's…
Court reinstates breastfeeding fatwa scholar at Al-Azhar University
CAIRO: The Administrative Court annulled Al-Azhar's disciplinary committee's decision to expel Ezzat Attiya, president of the hadith department at the university, after he issued a controversial fatwa concerning breastfeeding in…
13 die in Egypt road crash
CAIRO: Thirteen factory workers were killed on Saturday when their small pickup truck crashed head on into a large lorry in southern Egypt, a security official said.The workers were on…