Egypt censors book fair
CAIRO: Egypt has banned a number of Western and secular books from the 40th Cairo International Book Fair, including works by Czech author Milan Kundera and Morocco s Mohamed Choukri,…
Egypt blames Israel, not Hamas for border breach
CAIRO: Egypt has blamed Israel rather than Hamas for the recent events in Rafah in which thousands of Palestinians broke through the border to fill up on fuel, food and…
Law giving power to impugn president unlikely, say MPs
CAIRO: Mohamed Omda, an independent Member of Parliament (MP), announced Monday that he is currently working on a law aimed at giving the People's Assembly (PA) the right to call…
Inception of capitalism on the streets of Rafah
RAFAH: In what can only be described as the shopping spree of poverty, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded the Egyptian border town of Rafah this past week to purchase…
Price hikes, energy subsidy cuts to affect fertilizers
CAIRO: The government's spree to unite domestic and international prices will soon affect fertilizers. The Ministry of Agriculture recently announced that prices of fertilizers would rise to international levels in…
THE REEL ESTATE: Trapped in her atonement
It's been a couple of days now since I watched Joe Wright's cinematic adaptation of British novelist Ian McEwan's acclaimed novel "Atonement. Unable to extract myself from this state of…
6 authors on shortlist for first International Prize for Arabic
LONDON: Six authors from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt were on the shortlist as finalists for the first-ever International Prize for Arabic Fiction, organizers announced Tuesday.The shortlisted books, chosen from…
Curbing Pakistan's rising militancy
Military rule and the "war on terror are the two main culprits for the rise of militancy in Pakistan. A third factor, a dictator-foreign nexus - whereby a Western power…
America and Europe
Deeply frustrated by the Bush administration's policies, many people and governments in Europe hope for a fundamental change in American foreign policy after the upcoming presidential election. But it would…
The West is failing Kenya
The violent clashes, political turmoil and mayhem that have gripped Kenya over the past few weeks, following the seriously flawed presidential elections on Dec. 27 2007, which were marred by…