Egypt to add 1,425MW to grid in September

Egypt will add around 1,425MW of capacity in September, as a number of new generation units are coming online, the Asharq Al Awsat newspaper cited the countries minister of electricity and energy on Monday,

The additional quantities will include 140 MW from solar energy stations and 60 MW from wind farms, minister Hassan Younis said according to the paper.

Egypt this year added 2,660 MW to its power generation capacity which is expected to reach 27,440 MW by the year’s end, the daily reports, adding that the country has witnessed in the last two months frequent power cuts amid a spell of intense heat.

Court sentences five over factory assault

An Egyptian military tribunal sentenced five workers on Monday to suspended jail terms for assaulting an arms factory manager, despite appeals by rights groups that they be tried in a civil court, their lawyer said.

The workers, who were also accused of vandalism, were given suspended prison sentences of between six months and one year, and were each also ordered to pay a 1,000-pound (180-dollar) fine, Haitham Mohammadin said.

Three other workers were acquitted of any wrongdoing in connection with the case, he added.

The verdict comes days after rights watchdog Amnesty International urged Egypt not to try the eight workers before a military court, saying sentences handed by such courts “flout international standards of fair trial.”

“Trials of civilians before military courts, whose judges are serving members of the military, flout international standards of fair trial and are inherently unjust,” Amnesty said in a statement on Friday.

The workers, all civilians, were accused of vandalism and assault during an impromptu demonstration at the government-run factory south of Cairo earlier this month after a colleague was killed in a gas explosion.

They were also charged with stopping production, and one was accused of imparting military secrets after he allegedly told an opposition website that the factory was unsafe.

Amnesty said the trial of the workers was the first since the country’s military justice law was amended in June, giving the military more powers over civilians working at its installations.

Egyptian rights activists say it is the first time workers have faced a military trial since the 1950s, despite several strikes in military factories in the 1990s.

The country has seen a wave of labour unrest in the past few years, coinciding with economic reforms that have been praised by foreign investors but also criticised for further impoverishing the poor.

Activist riles opposition in signing petition

Pro-democracy activist Saadeddin Ibrahim has signed a petition supporting the political ambitions of the Egyptian president’s son, riling the opposition who say the move undermines their call for political change.

The move by Ibrahim, a long-time critic of President Hosni Mubarak and who spent three years in jail, highlights divisions in the opposition which analysts say needs unity to mobilise the masses in its call for change before the 2011 presidential vote.

Ibrahim, a dual U.S.-Egyptian citizen who moved to the United States after he was freed from prison, signed the petition backing Mubarak’s son, Gamal, because he believes anyone has a right to run in a free vote, his family said.

But members of the opposition criticised the move.

“It is either that (Ibrahim) is perturbed from years of exile abroad after state persecution or there is a deal with the government he accepted to avoid further harassment,” said Hassan Nafaa, member of a group opposed to so-called “inherited” power.

Analysts say the pro-Gamal petition is aimed to counter an opposition signature campaign that supports a call for constitutional change made by former U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who says he may run for president.

“If (Ibrahim) was a true dissident he would never support Gamal…Gamal is from the ruling party and there are no fair elections in Egypt so the odds are stacked in Gamal’s favour,” said Kareema al-Hifnawy, a member of the Kefaya protest group.

ElBaradei probably faces insurmountable hurdles to get on the 2011 presidential ballot. If Mubarak, 82, does not run, many Egyptians expect Gamal, 46, to do so. Both deny such a plan.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest opposition group, said it had not read the pro-Gamal petition signed by Ibrahim, adding that everyone had the right to run in a free vote.

But the Brotherhood’s Mohamed el-Beltagy added “backing a Gamal candidacy means accepting the faults in the constitution.”

The ruling party denies any role in the pro-Gamal petition, which Ibrahim signed on Sunday before flying to the United States, according to his wife Barbara.

His brother Ahmed said Ibrahim’s “logic is that in the past he has supported ElBaradei and Ayman Nour for their right to run for elections so long as they are free and fair. He now supports Gamal as long as he runs through the proper channels.”

Independent newspaper al-Masry al-Youm described the signing as a “surprise” and said Ibrahim justified his move by saying power would not be “inherited” if it involved a free vote.

A poster campaign backing Gamal has also sprung up in recent weeks, focused on poor neighbourhoods of Cairo and other cities, which analysts say aims to win over the poor who grumble that economic liberalisation has only helped the rich.

Ibrahim was jailed for three years in Egypt on charges of “tarnishing Egypt’s image” in his political articles. He was released in 2003, moving to the United States shortly after.

Culture Minister Talks With Prosecutors

Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s minister of culture, said he had been questioned by prosecutors as an investigation continued into the theft of a van Gogh painting from a museum in Giza this month, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Hosni said he volunteered for the interrogation, which lasted more than three hours on Sunday night, to counter accusations that his negligence had led to the theft. The van Gogh, known as “Poppy Flowers” or “Vase and Flowers” and valued at more than $50 million, was taken on Aug. 21 from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, where it hung in a room with only some working cameras and no working alarms.

Mr. Hosni said that day that the painting had been recovered at the Cairo airport, then had to retract that statement.

In his interrogation, Mr. Hosni said, he told prosecutors he had delegated full responsibility for the museum to Mohsen Shaalan, a deputy culture minister. Mr. Shaalan and four museum guards were detained last week by Egyptian prosecutors.

Food inflation feeds social unease

In Egypt, if a passer-by spots a piece of bread in the street, the morsel is usually not ignored but picked up and placed reverently on a ledge away from passing feet. Bread is ’aish – life itself.

So Russia’s ban on wheat exports has significantly increased economic and political pressures on an Egyptian government that spends heavily on bread subsidises for its 80m people.

Egypt is the world’s largest importer of the grain and the provision of bread, sold for less than 1 US cent a loaf, is central to the government’s strategy for maintaining social peace.

To that end, Cairo last year obtained about 60 per cent of its wheat imports from Russia.

Despite economic growth in recent years, food subsidies remain a sensitive political issue. The price of bread in particular is deemed to be a red line, which successive governments have been reluctant to cross, fearing social upheaval.

In 1977 deadly riots erupted on the streets of leading Egyptian cities after former president Anwar Sadat tried to remove a range of food subsidies.

Since then, the authorities have been careful to ensure that some basic foods are subsidised and that cheap bread, in particular, is available to all Egyptians. “Of course it is a drain on the budget,” says Angus Blair, head of research at Beltone Financial, a regional investment bank. “Any subsidy is a drain, but in a country where so many people are poor there is no other option.”

A recent government study found that 90 per cent of families in the country consume subsidised bread and 60 per cent of them rely on it as a main item in their diet. Some 40 per cent of the population is classified as poor.

As the cost of wheat on the international market jumped, Egypt has turned to other sources for its imports, such as France and the US.

Ministers have also hastened to reassure the country that there will be no increases in the price of the subsidised loaves and that the government will absorb the estimated $400m-$700m expected to be added to an already hefty support bill.

Youssef Boutros-Ghali, the finance minister, said earlier this month that food subsidy costs for the year to end in June 2011 were likely to reach E£13.5bn ($2.4bn). Most of this will be spent on supporting the price of bread.

Economists expect the higher wheat prices will add between 0.2 to 0.4 per cent to a budget deficit that the minister had estimated at 7.9 per cent before the increased spending.

But even if the price of bread is to be maintained at the same level – where it has been since 1989 – other wheat products such as pasta, flour and unsubsidised bread, which also form an essential part of the diet of poor Egyptians, have gone up.

These price rises come in an atmosphere of high food price inflation, which has already been raising social pressures in the shape of frequent public protests.

So far these have been small and localised, but they feed into a general mood of discontent that has been deepening as the country approaches general elections in November and a presidential poll next year.

“You have to look at food price inflation in Egypt, which is the highest of any country in the world at 18.5 per cent year on year,” says Mr Blair. “When a big chunk of society earns only a few dollars a day, this kind of food inflation is unsustainable. It would be even in a mature society.”

Egyptian per capita consumption of wheat is 180kg a year – one of the highest in the world – specifically because bread is cheap, and officials say this encourages waste. Local wheat production accounts for more than half of the 14m tonnes of wheat consumed every year. The rest is imported.

Egypt’s big wheat imports are, for many critics of the government, a sign of its failure to ensure the country can rely on itself for its most basic food needs.

Speaking during this current crisis, Amin Abaza, the agriculture minister, said he aims to achieve 70-75 per cent wheat sufficiency by 2020, but that it was contingent on an overhaul of the irrigation system in the agricultural lands of the Delta and Nile valley. Egypt’s water resources are already overstretched, and only through saving water in the existing agricultural land will it be possible to reclaim more desert land.

But Tarek Tawfik, chairman of the chamber of food industries and himself a farmer and exporter, says that using scarce and therefore precious water to grow wheat in reclaimed desert land is a waste.

He points to Egypt’s rising food exports, which are largely based on growing high value-added horticultural products such as fruit and vegetables on reclaimed land, using modern irrigation techniques such as hydroponics.

“We have to change our policy of wheat consumption,” Mr Tawfik says. “Subsidised bread should be available only to those who need it – not to all people. At the moment cheap bread is not just used to feed people, but also to feed chickens, fish and farm animals.

“There is a lot of waste. We can only achieve self sufficiency in wheat if we reduce consumption.”

Security Department to Monitor Facebook and Support the Government

On 1st July, 2010, theEgyptian Ministry of Interior (MOI) has reportedly established a special department to monitor Facebook activities and content in Egypt according to the administrative decision 765.

Based on the Kuwaiti newspaper Aljarida, this new MOI department works according to three shifts/8 hours each. Each shift is composed of 15 individuals: 2 police officers, 10 secretaries of police and 3 engineers. The main task of this group is to monitor Facebook content like groups, pages and chat and to publish reports countering online criticism of current Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak or his son Gamal.

An anonymous security source mentioned to Aljarida that Egyptian security authorities used to censor Facebook among other websites but the MOI paid special attention to Facebook in 2008 after the first call for 6 April Strike that was organized on Facebook.

The anonymous source mentioned to the newspaper that there are groups of paid young Egyptians from the National Democratic Party (NDP) youth, to defense the NDP and the government. According to the same source they have already created 166 Facebook group in support of president’s son Gamal Mubarak and 38 other groups supporting his father, resident Hosni Mubarak.

In February 2010, the Egyptian digital advertising company Connect Adsannounced to be the Facebook official representative for Middle East and North Africa and I wonder what is the current relation between the MOI department and Connect Ads, because at some point the MOI will need to collect personal information about the Facebook users in Egypt.

It will not be strange if a Facebook user faced a trial or get arrested based on his or her online activity in Egypt, like the trial taking place against Egyptian activists facing several charges, such as the misuse of world wide web.

The numbers of Facebook users in Egypt jumped to 3.8 million, according to a recent report by E-Marketing. Consequently, there is team of 45 members in Egypt who are monitoring the activities of these 3.8 million as well as the monitoring of e-mail .

Mubarak holds meeting with Sarkozy ahead of Washington visit

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has arrived in Paris on the first leg of a tour that will take him also to the United States.

The President embarked on a three-day working visit to France during which he will have a summit meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Talks between Presidents Mubarak and Sarkozy will deal with the Middle East issue, launching direct negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides along with bilateral relations, official source informed Global Arab Network.

President Mubarak's visit to France reflects the strategic partnership between the two countries, Egyptian ambassador in Paris Nasser Kamel said.

In statements on Saturday, Kamel said President Mubarak was keen to stop over in Paris ahead of Washington visit for consultations with his French counterpart Sarkozy on the Middle East peace march along with a range of other regional issues of joint interest, the ambassador added.

According to Egyptian Ambassador in Paris Nasser Kamel, Mubarak's visit to France stresses keenness on using the Egyptian-French co-chairmanship of the Union for the Mediterranean in boosting diplomatic efforts.

Egypt and France want to take advantage of the union's co-chairmanship to submit a clear message that the Mediterranean peoples look forward to reaching a comprehensive and just settlement, the Egyptian diplomat added.

Mubarak, accompanied by an Egyptian delegation composed of Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, Minister of Information Anas al-Feki, Chief of Presidential Staff Zakareyya Azmi, and Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Omar Soliman, will meet US President Barack Obama on Wednesday. Mubarak will attend an iftar at the White House for participating delegations.

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Conflict has cost Middle East $12 trillion: report

August 30, 2010 by admin · Comments Off 

The 20 years of conflict has cost the Middle East region 12 trillion U.S. dollars during the period from 1991 to 2010, Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported on Sunday quoting an Indian report.

The report was published in a book entitled “The Cost of Conflict in the Middle East” by the Strategic Foresight Group in India and translated by the Institute for Peace Studies of Egypt.

The Middle East region afforded a high record of military expenses in the past 20 years and is considered the most armed region in the world, the report said.

The conflict had a negative effect on the Palestinians. The death toll from the conflict has increased to 4,000 Palestinians since 2000, while the number of people living under poverty line has risen to more than one million since 2006, the report said.

The report added that 42 percent of Palestinian families were barred from health care facilities due to the segregating walls that divide their lands.

Countries in the region could have reached a 6 percent growth of its national domestic production, but they failed due to the lack of political stability, it added.

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Egypt discovers 5 smuggling tunnels at borders with Gaza

August 30, 2010 by admin · Comments Off 

Egyptian authorities discovered on Sunday five secret tunnels used for smuggling goods at borders with Gaza Strip, reports China’s Xinhua news agency.

Four smuggling tunnels were discovered in a farm at borders in north Sinai while a fifth tunnel opening was found at a house close to borders with the besieged enclave, a security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Nobody was arrested in connection with the tunnels and no goods confiscated, the source added, adding that the authorities have closed the tunnel openings.

After Israel imposed a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip in 2007 and closed down all commercial crossings with the enclave, the Palestinians dug hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza- Egypt borders to use them in smuggling goods from Egypt into the besieged enclave.

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Egyptian security seizes arms caches in Sinai

August 30, 2010 by admin · Comments Off 

Egyptian security forces seized four arms caches in Sinai containing anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank mines which they suspected were going to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip, a security source said on Sunday.

Smugglers operate from the Sinai Peninsula which borders both Gaza and Israel, using the area as a base to ferry weapons into the Palestinian enclave and Israeli territory. Security forces confiscated the missiles, which were left over from past Arab-Israeli wars, the source said.

Egypt has stepped up security in the mountainous Sinai region since a series of bombings in Sinai resorts carried out between 2004 and 2006.

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