CAIRO: Egypt’s al-Wafd Party chief Sayyed Badawi has accused Arab and foreign countries of transferring funds of around $300 million to Egypt to “disrupt the democratic process and to bring about chaos.” He said during his meeting with the former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema and Claudio Pacifico, the Italian Ambassador to Cairo, that he [...]
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SANA’A: Sources close to the coalition government have revealed to Bikyamasr.com that Yemen’s Vice-President Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi is slowly losing faith, disenchanted with the slow-pace-political-progress and the constant road blocks put forward by the country’s divided political factions. The man who is set to become Yemen’s newly elected President in less than two weeks [...]
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Seoul (The Korea Herald/ANN) – When Grand National Party leader Park Geun-hye met her opposition counterpart Han Myeong-sook earlier this month, photojournalists and cameramen created a frantic scene, trying to best capture the moment. The next morning, many local newspapers published a picture of the two women smiling at each other, describing it as a [...]
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CAIRO: When Mohamed ElBaradei made his triumphant return to Egypt for good in early 2010, hundreds of supporters met him at the airport here in Cairo, believing in the former IAEA chief as the savior for Egypt’s stumbling opposition against then-President Hosni Mubarak. He was the man. On Saturday, the man once tipped as the [...]
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London (dpa) – British Prime Minister David Cameron has left for a visit to Saudi Arabia for talks aimed at strengthening “vital” relations with the oil-producing country, the government in London said early Friday. He would hold meetings Friday with King Abdullah and Crown Prince Nayif, focusing on trade relations, energy security, counter-terrorism and political [...]
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Tel Aviv (dpa) – An Israeli father who came to national prominence for campaigning more than five years for the release of his soldier son held captive in the Gaza Strip, said Monday he intends to enter national politics. Noam Shalit, whose son, Gilad, was returned to Israel on October 18 as part of a [...]
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CAIRO: Egypt’s al-Nour ultra-conservative political party announced that a Coptic Christian cannot become president of Egypt and that Egyptian society “will not accept a Christian president.” The puritan party’s spokesman wrote a statement published on the party’s website aiming to clear the controversy after Egypt’s al-Akhbar state-run newspaper published an interview with spokesman Mohamed Nour [...]
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CAIRO: One of the top presidential candidates in Egypt, Amr Moussa, said in an interview that the country’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) should relinquish power and make the transition toward civilian government, adding that he fears anarchy could come to Egypt’s streets if not done quicker. Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign [...]
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BELGRADE: Serbia celebrated the 11th anniversary of the 5th of October 2000 Revolution this week. This was the day when the entire population of Serbia rose up to oppose the government of Slobodan Milosevic, who politically, culturally and economically had been dragging Serbia to the verge of chaos. It took a long while for the [...]
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CAIRO: Several political groups and a number of potential presidential candidates called on the Egyptian people to join them in Tahrir Square on Friday in the planned protest dubbed as “the Friday of the people.” The Revolution Youth Coalition, Artists of the Revolution, The Egyptian Movement for Change, the ElBaradei Campaign and 6 of April [...]
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CAIRO: Water came down on the crowd, something hard hit one man on the head and aggression ran rampant from drivers on Tuesday in Cairo as thousands of Coptic Christians marched through the streets of the Egyptian capital, demanding their rights be heard, and ultimately listened to. It was an impressive scene, only interrupted a [...]
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WASHINGTON: The Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations has provoked sharp debate in the occupied territories, elsewhere in the Middle East, throughout Europe and in the United States. The American Task Force for Palestine (ATFP) is one of the most important organizations affecting the relationship between the United States and the Palestinian Authority (PA). [...]
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When asked by Western friends whether I thought Egypt will be another Iran, my response is a resolute “no.” With a caveat – but I will get to that later. My main reason is that the late twentieth century incarnation of the Shia strand of Islam that gives the religious supreme leader an absolute political [...]
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TEL AVIV: People will differ about what instigated the protests, but they will agree on one thing: since a tiny group of Israelis in their 20s set up tents in the middle of the fashionable Rothschild Avenue in Tel Aviv calling for social justice, nothing has been the same. Tens of thousands took to the [...]
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is wearing thin the patience of the international community. As we creep closer to the date when the majority of UN member states officially lend their support to the Palestinian bid for statehood, Israel will find itself in a far tougher, more isolated position than it has since its creation 63 years [...]
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JERUSALEM: At the Women’s Society in Burqa, a Palestinian village of 6,000 residents 30 minutes northwest of Nablus, women greeted us with three kisses each – right cheek, left cheek and then right again. We were eight months into Women Supporting Women, a nine-month programme started by the Dalia Association to build women’s capacity to [...]
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CAIRO: A former top official with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh said in comments published by the country’s MENA news agency that the Islamic group should stay out of politics. “It is better for the Muslim Brotherhood to stay away from the partisan and political activities” in Egypt, he said. In his comments [...]
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CAIRO: The protesters watched in awe as one Egyptian man climbed to the top of the building, grabbing the Star of David flag of Israel and replacing it with the Egyptian flag. He was praised by all and dubbed Egypt’s “Flagman.” The removal of the flag – it was burned below the Israeli Embassy in [...]
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Egypt’s Political Parties’ Affairs Committee granted approval for a new political party led by former National Democratic Party (NDP) official Hossam Badrawi. It is the first political party led by an ex-NDP official to receive official approval in post-revolution Egypt. Activists and politicians have fought to ban former NDP politicians from entering into elections this [...]
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CAIRO: Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Egypt met on Monday with the Freedom and Justice Party chairman Mohamed Morsy and Saad Katatni, the Muslim Brotherhood’s FJP Secretary-General. The meeting was aimed at strengthening relations between the two countries and looked at political and economic developments, the Saudi embassy said. “We are hopeful that Saudi Arabia can [...]
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