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/ 8 February 2007
It was projected to be a golden year for Lebanon and one to beat all records; instead 2006, with its string of crises including a 34-day war, proved a disaster for the tourism sector. From the expected 1,6-million visitors, only 1,06-million travelled to the "Switzerland of the Middle East", down almost 7% on 2005 and a huge 17% on the previous year, according to Tourism Ministry figures.
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/ 22 January 2007
Six months after thousands of tonnes of fuel oil spilled into the Mediterranean when Israel bombed a Lebanese power plant, the waters are still spitting out black poison despite efforts to clean up the mess. "The rain and the low tide have created new pollution zones," Ahmed Kojok of the Sea of Lebanon association told the media.
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/ 24 September 2006
In the depths of Cairo’s City of the Dead, Umm Essam unveils her latest creation: a blood-red belly-dance costume, complete with golden pearls. But there are no models or podiums in this dressmaker’s tiny workshop hidden deep in the alleys of one of the city’s oldest cemeteries.
Fifty-one people were killed on Monday when two trains travelling on the same track collided in northern Egypt in the country’s deadliest rail crash in four years. Two carriages were derailed in a tangle of torn metal as one train slammed into the back of another. Another 138 passengers were injured in the crash which also set one train ablaze.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Jalila, the new Arab superheroine, coursing across the sky, black hair flying, in her battle to right the wrongs and ensure that justice prevails in the Middle East. Joelle Bassoul investigates.
Darfur’s two rebel factions came under fresh pressure on Tuesday to sign a fragile peace agreement as Khartoum. Only the largest faction of one of two main rebel groups signed the peace agreement with Khartoum at the African Union-sponsored talks in Abuja on May 5.
The road to peace in Sudan’s strife-torn western region of Darfur remains long, experts say, with deep tribal differences yet to be overcome and a near-impossible disarmament task. A peace agreement was reached ten days ago in Abuja between the Sudanese government and the largest faction of the main Darfur rebel group, raising hopes of an end to the bloodshed.
”Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed,” French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously said three and half centuries ago. Today, it would cost Egypt’s ancient queen and beauty as little as to get a nose job in her native country, but specialists and disfigured patients might advise her against it.
On the back of dire poverty and legal shortcomings a new mafia is prospering in Egypt and turning the country into the regional hub for the human organs trade. There are no official statistics but in a country where social inequality is high and a quarter of the population is believed to live under the poverty line, more and more destitute Egyptians are falling prey to the phenomenon.
Behind a vale of trees lies the largest leper colony in the Middle East, a virtual oasis in Egypt for those who have been ostracised by society. The Abu Zaabal centre in the governorate of Qaliubiya, north of Cairo, hosts a hospital, pre-school, a prison and the adjoining village of Abdel Moneim Riad. It is home to 3 000 people.