Greek Community of Alexandria

Category: EGYPT

News about Egypt

  • Egypt, EU launch new phase of strategic partnership: Foreign ministry

    Egypt, EU launch new phase of strategic partnership: Foreign ministry

    The Egyptian foreign minister’s visit to Brussels has launched a new phase of strategic partnership between Egypt and the European Union, paving the way for an EU-Egypt association agreement in the upcoming period, the ministry said on Tuesday.

    The agreement — which has been under negotiation since February 2016 — would frame the country’s relationship with European institutions over the next three years.

    In an official statement, foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid said Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his European counterparts have compiled a document of each side’s priorities, to guide further negotiations on the agreement.

    On his visit, Shoukry met with 28 European foreign ministers, making it “the first meeting of its kind with a non-EU minister this year,” the statement read.

    The meetings tackled EU-Egyptian relations. Shoukry discussed ways the EU could support Egypt economically and politically, given that the country’s stability is an essential European interest, the statement read.

    Shoukry also discussed economic, social and political developments in Egypt and the challenges the country faces in each of these sectors.

    “Egyptian national institutions bear the responsibility of safeguarding human rights in Egypt,” Shoukry told his EU counterparts, according to the statement, adding that “human rights include social and economic rights; they are not restricted to political rights.”

    The minister arrived in Brussels Sunday for an official visit, on which he met with EU officials including the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Vice President of the European Commission and the EU Commissioner for Home and Migration Affairs, along with the foreign ministers of 28 EU countries.

    “The visit was successful because Egyptian diplomats built a bloc of Egypt supporters within the EU, represented by countries that have made remarkable progress in cooperation with Egypt such as Greece, Cyprus, and Hungary,” the statement read.

    At a meeting with the EU Commissioner for Home and Migration Affairs and the German and Austrian foreign ministers in Brussels, Shoukry reiterated Cairo’s refusal to establish camps to house irregular migrants attempting to travel to Europe, saying “refugees and migrants live freely and enjoy the services provided to Egyptian citizens.”

    During his visit, Egypt’s FM also met with Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, to discuss political and security challenges in the Middle East.

    An EU delegation is set to visit Egypt mid-March to continue talks on the association agreement.

    During negotiations, Cairo has assured the EU that the agreement would be based on Egypt’s 2030 development plan.  

    (english.ahram.org.eg)

  • Searching for Life Quality? Cairo, Alexandria Just Made It to Africa’s Top 10 Cities

    Searching for Life Quality? Cairo, Alexandria Just Made It to Africa’s Top 10 Cities

    According to a Swiss study published Tuesday, Egypt’s Mediterranean city of Alexandria comes third while the capital Cairo ranks seventh when it comes to quality of life in Africa.

    Surveying 100 capitals and major urban centres in Africa, the research body Communaute d’Etudes pour l’Amenagement du Territoire at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) looked at seven categories: society, housing, spatial development, infrastructure, environment, governance and economy.

    “I wish this was true, but it’s difficult to understand how Cairo that has been, for example, reputed for its toxic air and chronic noise pollution in numerous global studies in the past comes at seven,” said Amro Ali, an Alexandrian researcher who currently lives in Cairo.

    “Also were they able to access data and independent studies on the informal settlements and housing crisis faced by the poor that plagues Cairo and Alexandria? As official statistics provided by the authorities would often give a skewed picture,” Ali added, wondering what the methodology was for measuring the seven categories.

    Swiss urban sociologist, Jerome Chenal, told Afrique Mediterranee Business, the Paris-based magazine that commissioned the study that “until now, rankings for Africa were done for investors and expatriates”.

    “We never asked how people lived, whether young or old, rich or poor,” Chental told AFP.

    Morocco’s Marrakesh held first place, and three of its other cities also made it to the top 10 on the list, while South Africa’s economic capital Johannesburg came second.

    (egyptianstreets.com)

  • Egyptian researchers turn shrimp shells into biodegradable plastic

    Egyptian researchers turn shrimp shells into biodegradable plastic

    Researchers at Egypt’s Nile University are developing a way to turn dried shrimp shells that would otherwise be thrown away into thin films of biodegradable plastic they hope will be used to make eco-friendly grocery bags and packaging.

    Six months into their two-year project, the research team has managed to create a thin, clear prototype using chitosan, a material found in the shells of many crustaceans.

    “If commercialised, this could really help us decrease our waste… and it could help us improve our food exports because the plastic has antimicrobial and antibacterial properties,” Irene Samy, a professor overseeing the project, told Reuters.

    The researchers buy unwanted shrimp shells from restaurants, supermarkets and local fishermen at cheap prices.

    Using shrimp shells is more sustainable because it could replace synthetic materials used in plastics and cut the amount of biowaste produced by the Egyptian food industry, Samy said.

    The shells are cleaned, chemically treated, ground and dissolved into a solution that dries into thin films of plastic, a technique the team says has potential for large-scale industrial production.

    “Egypt imports around 3,500 tonnes of shrimp, which produce 1,000 tonnes of shells as waste… Instead of throwing the shells away, we can make biodegradable plastic bags,” Hani Chbib, a researcher on the project, told Reuters.

    The project is a collaboration between the Nile University team of four and another research group at the University of Nottingham in Britain, where Samy conducted her post-doctoral research and first started experimenting with the idea.

    The team has only produced small samples and the project is not yet ready to go into commercial production but the team is working hard to develop properties that would allow the material to go into widespread use.

    “We are continuing to work on enhancing its properties, like thermal stability and durability,” Samy said.

    (www.reuters.com)

  • Mostafa el-Abbadi, Champion of Alexandria’s Resurrected Library, Dies at 88

    Mostafa el-Abbadi, Champion of Alexandria’s Resurrected Library, Dies at 88

    Mostafa A. H. el-Abbadi, a Cambridge-educated historian of Greco-Roman antiquity and the soft-spoken visionary behind the revival of the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, died on Feb. 13 in Alexandria. He was 88.

    His daughter, Dr. Mohga el-Abbadi, said the cause was heart failure.

    Professor Abbadi’s dream of a new library — a modern version of the magnificent center of learning of ancient times — could be traced to 1972, when, as a scholar at the University of Alexandria, he concluded a lecture with an impassioned challenge.

    “At the end, I said, ‘It is sad to see the new University of Alexandria without a library, without a proper library,’” he recalled in 2010. “‘And if we want to justify our claim to be connected spiritually with the ancient tradition, we must follow the ancient example by starting a great universal library.’”

    It was President Richard M. Nixon who blew wind into the sails of Professor Abbadi’s ambitious proposal. When Nixon visited Egypt in 1974, he and President Anwar el-Sadat rode by train to Alexandria’s ancient ruins to observe their faded grandeur. When Nixon asked about the ancient library’s location and history, no one in the Egyptian entourage had an answer.

    That night, the rector of the University of Alexandria called the professor and asked him to prepare a memo about the Great Library’s rise and fall.

    The task, he said later, made him realize how deeply the ancient library resonated, not only with Egyptians but also with many around the world who shared his scholarly thirst.

    Backed by the university, Professor Abbadi began developing plans for a new research institution and ultimately persuaded the governor of Alexandria, the Egyptian government and Unesco, the United Nations educational and cultural organization, to lend their support.

    In 1988, President Hosni Mubarak laid the foundation stone for what would become the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a $220 million seaside cylindrical complex. Designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, it comprises a 220,000-square-foot reading room, four museums, several galleries, a conference center, a planetarium and gift shops.

    It opened in 2002, hailed as a revitalization of intellectual culture in Egypt’s former ancient capital, which is now its often neglected second-largest city.

    “With the founding of the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina,” Professor Abbadi wrote in 2004, “the ancient experiment has come full circle.”

    The professor did not share fully in the glory. He, like other scholars, had been critical of some aspects of the finished library and maintained that the builders had been careless during the excavation, unmindful of the site’s archaeological value.

    When the library was officially opened, in a ceremony attended by heads of state, royalty and other luminaries, he was nowhere to be seen. He had not been invited.

    Mostafa Abdel Hamid el-Abbadi was born on Oct. 10, 1928, in Cairo. His father, Abdel-Hamid el-Abbadi, was a founder of the College of Letters and Arts of the University of Alexandria in 1942 and its first dean.

    Mostafa el-Abbadi earned a bachelor’s degree with honors there in 1951. A year later, he enrolled at the University of Cambridge on an Egyptian government scholarship. He studied at Jesus College under A. H. M. Jones, the pre-eminent historian of the Roman Empire, and earned a doctorate in ancient history there in 1960.

    Two years before, in Britain, he had married Azza Kararah, a professor of English literature at the University of Alexandria, who had earned her doctorate at Cambridge in 1955. She died in 2015.

    Besides his daughter, Professor el-Abbadi is survived by a son, Amr, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara; a sister, Saneya el-Abbadi; three brothers — Hassan, a former Egyptian ambassador to Thailand and Cuba; Hani, a former Egyptian ambassador to Sri Lanka; and Hisham — and five grandchildren.

    Professor Abbadi and Professor Kararah returned to Egypt in the 1960s to be lecturers at the University of Alexandria. They held many visiting fellowships and appointments throughout their careers. From 1966 to 1969, they taught at Beirut Arab University in Lebanon.

    (mobile.nytimes.com)