Two dead, 11 missing in cargo ship sinking

At least two sailors died and some 11 people are still missing after their cargo ship capsized off the Egyptian coast in the Red Sea on Monday, Egyptian port authority sources said.

    The Cypriot-flagged cargo ship, carrying some 6,500 tons of sand used to manufacture glass, sank near the Egyptian port of Safaga, about 450 km southeast of Cairo, said the sources.

    The ship was on the way from Suez to the United Arab Emirates when it went down in the sea due to bad weather, according to the state MENA news agency.

    A nearby ship managed to recover two bodies of the crew of the cargo, said the report.

    Some 13 crew members have been saved from the sea and rescue teams have been searching for the rest of the 11 missing crew.

    In February, 2006, the Al-Salam 98 ferryboat that carrying some 1,400 passengers caught fire and sank into the Red Sea en route from Saudi Arabian port of Dhaba to the Egyptian port of Safaga, killing some 1,034 people, most of them Egyptians.

Israeli official holds prisoner swap talks in Cairo

Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel has held talks in Cairo with Egyptian mediators on a prisoner swap with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, an Egyptian official said on Sunday.

Dekel’s visit, the second in as many weeks, was aimed at securing the release of Israel soldier Gilad Shalit, who captured by Gaza militants in a cross border raid into Israel in June 2006.

The official said Dekel left Cairo on Sunday but gave no further details.

Egypt has brokered talks between Israel and Hamas over his release for months, with the Islamists demanding freedom for more than 400 Palestinian prisoners in return.

Last month Israel’s security cabinet said Shalit’s release was a pre-requisite for the reopening of border crossings into the Gaza Strip, as part of an Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas.

Israel has sealed off the crossings to all but vital humanitarian goods since June 2007 when Hamas seized power in the enclave, where Israel and Hamas waged a deadly three-week war in December and January.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last month that Dekel had proposed to release 220 Palestinian prisoners during a visit to Egypt in February.

Meanwhile Shalit’s parents have moved into a tent outside the Jerusalem house of interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to pressure the Israeli government to do more to free him.

“We will stay as long as Gilad, who has been held for nearly 1,000 days, is not freed,” the conscript’s father Noam Shalit told army radio on Sunday.

Galloway in Egypt to join Gaza aid convoy

British MP George Galloway arrived in Cairo on Saturday to join a convoy that had set out from London last month carrying relief for war-torn Gaza, an airport official said.

Galloway was met by officials from Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party.

The Egyptian government had arrested dozens of opposition members who demonstrated against Israel’s December and January offensive on Gaza.

Egypt opened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza to aid and Palestinian wounded during part of the war, but has since closed it to aid.

The convoy includes 12 ambulances and a fire engine and carries more than one million pounds (1.4 million dollars, 1.1 million euros) worth of aid.

North Sinai Governor Mohammed Shosha, who was preparing a reception for the convoy in Sinai, said Egypt would allow Galloway and members of the convoy to enter Gaza through Rafah, but that entry of the convoy itself would have to be coordinated with Israel.

Israel’s war on Gaza killed 1,330 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and wounded 5,450 others.

Among the dead were 437 children, 110 women, 123 elderly men, 14 medics and four journalists.

The wounded include 1,890 children and 200 people in serious condition.

The war also left tens of thousands of houses destroyed, while their residents remained homeless in the winter cold.

Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded to Hamas’s win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007, although a ‘lighter’ siege had already existed before.

Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”

A group of international lawyers and human rights activists had also accused Israel of committing “genocide” through its crippling blockade of the Strip.

Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.

Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Arab east Jerusalem, both of which were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.

Israel also currently occupies the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian Golan Heights.

In Egypt, a village boasts the nation’s first female mayor

Her father’s chair sits beneath the window to catch the morning light, where he once held court with villagers who wanted him to discipline their sons, chase away thieves and settle land and dowry disputes on the lush fields between the Nile and the desert’s edge.She eases into the high-back chair with the worn wooden armrests. A single woman of 53 wearing faded bluejeans and a pink blouse, her dark hair uncovered, she has her late father’s spirit and wisdom Read more

‘Royal granddaughter’s tomb’ found near Cairo

Cairo Archaeologists have unearthed the 3,000-year-old tomb of an Egyptian noblewoman in the necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo. The Japanese team believes that the tomb belongs to Isisnofret, granddaughter of Ramses II, the 19th Dynasty pharaoh who reigned over Egypt from 1304BC to 1237BC.The tomb contained a broken limestone sarcophagus bearing the name of Isisnofret, three mummies and fragments of funerary objects.

The archaeologists’ team leader, Sakuji Yoshimura, said that the find was made near the tomb of Prince Khaemwaset, a son of Ramses II. “Prince Khaemwaset had a daughter named Isisnofret [and] because of the proximity of the newly discovered tomb . . . it is possible that [it] is the daughter of Khaemwaset,” he said.

However, Zahi Hawass, who heads the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities, said he believed the tomb dated from the 18th dynasty because of the style of construction

Egypt Releases Internet Activist

Egyptian security authorities have released an Internet activist after they detained him Monday at his home near Cairo.The activist group April 6 Youth Movement said security agents seized member Rami al-Sweisy in the early morning hours Monday (3:30 a.m. local time). The group also said agents searched Sweisy’s home, and confiscated his computer and mobile phone.

While Sweisy was in detention, interrogators reportedly tried to convince him to leave the April 6 Youth Movement. The group uses social media Web sites, such as Facebook, to organize rallies critical of the government. It is calling for a general strike over a variety of issues next month.

In January, security agents detained bloggers Philip Rizk and Diaa Eddin Gad, both critics of the Egyptian government.

Authorities released Rizk after several days, but Gad’s whereabouts remain unknown.

The Cairo-based human rights group, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said bloggers have become a major target of the Egyptian police. The group accused authorities of acting unlawfully or using the cover of Egypt’s decades-old state of emergency to move against activists.

In its annual review last week, the United States said human rights conditions for people in Egypt remained poor in 2008.

The U.S. State Department said Egyptian authorities continue to deny or restrict their citizens’ ability to peacefully change their government, and continue to restrict press freedoms, including Internet use.

Egyptian authorities rejected the report’s findings.

Two-year-old boy becomes Egypt’s 56th bird flu case

A two-year-old Egyptian boy has contracted the bird flu virus and is in critical condition, the state-run news agency quoted the Health Ministry as saying on Sunday, becoming the 56th case in the Arab country.The Middle East News Agency (MENA) quoted Assistant Health Minister Nasr el-Sayyed as saying the boy, Youssef Abdel-Azim from the province of el-Fayoum in central Egypt, showed symptoms on Wednesday after coming into contact with dead birds.

He was administered the antiviral drug Tamiflu and remains in crticial condition on an artificial ventilator at a hospital in Cairo, Sayyed said, according to the agency.

Egypt is one of the only countries affected by bird flu that does not offer compensation for farmers when poultry is destroyed, which many experts say is the best way to ensure rapid detection of new outbreaks.

Some 5 million Egyptian households depend on poultry as a main source of food and income.

Since 2003, the H5N1 avian influenza virus has infected 408 people in 15 countries and killed 254 of them. It has killed or forced the culling of more than 300 million birds as it spread to 61 countries in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

While H5N1 rarely infects people, experts fear it could mutate into a form that people could easily pass to one another, sparking a pandemic that could kill tens of millions and topple the global economy.

What Clinton brings to Egypt

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed Sunday night in Sharm el Sheikh, she brought with her $900 million in U.S. aid for the Palestinians. Total pledges for the Gaza donor conference will ultimately top $4.4 billion.And almost as soon as Clinton stepped off the plane, she and a cluster of Palestinian, Middle East and European leaders began writing the next chapter in the storied history of unsuccessful conferences held at the popular Red Sea resort town.

“Since Mubarak became President, Sharm el Sheikh has become his place of residence for a good part of the year,” said Walid Kazziha, chair of the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo. “So often, international conferences have been held there, chaired by Mubarak.”

Former President Bill Clinton and Mubarak held talks there during the 1990s. As with today’s summit, those talks were aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The two leaders met there in 1996 to discuss the crisis along with Palestinian and Israeli leaders. The meeting yielded few results and violence continued to escalate up to the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.

In a sense, less is at stake with today’s conference. With Israel still trying to form a new government and the Palestinians deeply divided, both politically and territorially, no one expects any grand plan for peace to emerge.

Instead, leaders from around the world are bringing cash to help rebuild Gaza. Clinton has promised $300 million in reconstruction aid to Gaza and $600 million to cover the Palestinian Authority’s budget deficit in the West Bank, Reuters reported.

The European Commission pledged $552.6 million, while the Gulf states promised a collective $1.65 billion over the next five years.

The conference’s efforts have been further complicated by the refusal of many participants to give money directly to Hamas.

Instead, they will give the cash to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who does not have a foothold in Gaza. Abbas, in turn will distribute the funds in Gaza through international aid organizations.

But by doing it this way, there is a risk that the aid, which is badly needed in Gaza, will become politicized and the reconstruction will be slowed.

“For Hamas, it will probably allow Abbas to operate with that money as long at it’s not funneled through his people there,” said Kazziha. “If it’s going to strengthen the position of Fatah in Gaza, Hamas will not allow that.”

In its long history of summits in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt has also held regional conferences without including the western powers.

In 2005, Mubarak invited Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian Authority President Abbas, as well as King Abdullah of Jordan, to formally end the five-year Palestinian intifada.

Though the summit was successful in declaring an end to the violence, Hamas did not recognize the agreements that emerged from the meetings and violence, therefore, continued in the Gaza Strip.

By holding summits like these, Egypt is trying to re-grasp its regional leadership, after protracted period of loss of influence.

“We have to observe that Egypt’s status as leader of the Arab world has declined dramatically,” said Kazziha.

Egypt’s loss of influence can be attributed partially to its 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
President Gamal Abdel Nasser had been successful in unifying much of the Middle East by creating anti-western, anti-Israeli populist sentiments in the region. But when Anwar Sadat signed the peace treaty following the Camp David accords, many in the Arab world saw it as a betrayal of Egyptian and regional principles.

Egypt’s regional influence has continued to ebb over the subsequent three decades as its close ties to the west the significant aid package it receives annually from Washington have kept it more ideologically inclined to side with the West.

The Mubarak government most recently took heat for keeping the border between Egypt and Gaza closed for much of Israel’s war there. Images of a humanitarian crisis coupled with reports of the slow flow of aid getting across the border enraged many in the region and provoked attacks on several Egyptian embassies abroad.

“I think in the final analysis,” said Kazziha, “those who can lead the Arab world are those who can champion the causes of the Arab world in accordance with the ambitions of the Arab public.”

Rebuilding Gaza is chief among the concerns of the Arab public. And Egypt is surely hoping that it can defy history, declare the conference a success, and begin restoring its role as leader in the region.

 

American stabbed in Cairo unfazed by attack

An American science teacher stabbed by an attacker in a famous Cairo bazaar in front of his heavily pregnant wife said Sunday he thought the incident was random and would return to the historic market when his parents came to visit.Clay Huggins, a 31-year-old native of Houston, Texas, had his face cut by a knife-wielding Egyptian on Friday in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, where just a week earlier a crude homemade bomb killed a teenage French tourist.

“My parents are coming in April, I will probably take them there,” Huggins told The Associated Press by telephone from his home in Egypt’s port city of Alexandria, north of Cairo. “I feel it’s a very random, one time event. I don’t feel it’s representative of Egypt at all.”

Abdel-Rahman Taher, 46, has been charged with attempted murder, carrying a weapon without a license and injuring two other Egyptians, said police, according to the state news agency. He has been sent to the state mental hospital for 15 days to determine if he is fit to stand trial.

Taher was hospitalized in 2000 for another attack on tourists and only released a few months ago when his condition was deemed to have improved, added the report.

He told police after he was arrested Friday that he hated foreigners because of Israel’s recent offensive against the Gaza Strip.

“When he first ran at me, I just assumed he was trying to steal my bags or something,” said Huggins, recalling the moment that came after a long shopping trip with his 8-month pregnant wife and a friend. “It wasn’t until he was a couple of feet away that he pulled the knife out.”

The attacker’s first swipe with a foot-long (30 centimeter) kitchen knife sliced Huggins’ face, leaving a gash that would require five stitches. The teacher fended him off with a carved wooden folding table he had just purchased and then knocked him to the ground.

His shouts brought nearby police and bystanders rushing to his aid.

Huggins and his wife had actually debated earlier whether to visit the narrow alleys and famous shops of the 350-year-old Khan el-Khalili because of last week’s deadly bombing attack that killed a French teenager and wounded 24 others, mostly tourists.

“We felt after a major incident that a few days later would be the safest time to go,” recalled Huggins, who teaches at a school in Alexandria.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing and police have said they are still questioning suspects and witnesses.

Clinton in Egypt for talks

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Egypt Sunday to begin talks on efforts to rebuild Gaza and find a way to peace in the Middle East.In her first visit to the region since becoming the United States’ top diplomat, Clinton came bearing the prospect of $900 million in aid, provided Palestinians renounce violence, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Clinton is expected to push President Barack Obama’s commitment to finding a “two-state solution” that establishes a sovereign Palestinian state at peace with Israel.

“We want to strengthen a Palestinian partner willing to accept the conditions outlined by the Quartet and the Arab summit; in other words, a renouncement of violence, a recognition of Israel, and a commitment to abide by the previous agreements entered in by the Palestinian Authority,” Clinton said.

Clinton will confer with other regional and world leaders in Sharm el-Sheik before visiting Jerusalem and the West Bank Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a special envoy to the region, also are expected to take part.

“I wanted to come to hear for myself first-hand from people in Gaza, whose lives have been so badly impacted by the recent conflict,” Blair said at a school in Beit Hanun. “These are the people who need to be the focus of all our efforts for peace and progress from now on.”

The cease-fire between Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel has been tenuous at best since the Israelis pulled back from a three-week incursion this year.

Five Palestinian smugglers were killed Sunday when a tunnel they were in collapsed because of heavy rain, the Telegraph reported.

 

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