Egypt wants Obama to speak from historic mosque
CAIRO: When President Barack Obama addresses the Muslim world from Cairo next month, Egyptian officials hope he will choose 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar mosque, the heart of a revered institution for Islamic…
Rafah crossing opened while Hamas delegation in Cairo
CAIRO: The Rafah border crossing was opened Saturday and Sunday, allowing for the transport of stranded Palestinians as well as aid supplies to the Gaza strip.The MENA news agency reported…
Mubarak sets social raise at 10 pct this year
CAIRO: President Hosni Mubarak has asked the government to grant public sector employees a 10 percent social raise, up from the 5 percent announced two weeks ago. Employees will also…
BG Egypt's Tim Blackford: Positive on oil and gas sector
CAIRO: BG Egypt has had a busy year. The company moved forward with investment plans, launched new projects and continued drilling efforts. When the economic crisis hit, its strategy was…
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…
