Egypt

7 Nov 2019; MEMO: Activists across the world are planning a mass hunger strike this weekend in solidarity with the 60,000 political prisoners currently being detained in Egypt.

In Egypt political detainees are systematically tortured and deprived of basic rights such as family visits and medical care. They live in squalid conditions, overcrowded cells, are often only allowed to use the toilet just once a day.

6 Nov 2019; MEMO: Director of Toxicology Centre at the Egyptian Kasr El Aini Hospital, Nabeel Abdul-Maqsoud, said yesterday that there are over 10 million drug users in Egypt, including three million addicts, Arabi21 reported.

Speaking to a local TV, Abdul-Maqsoud said that tramadol, heroin and Estrox are the most common types drugs among the Egyptian youths.

5 Nov 2019; MEMO: Remittances from Egyptians living abroad have risen to $4.4 billion in July and August 2019, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) announced yesterday.

In May, Egyptian expatriates’ remittances were reported to have risen by 42.8 per cent, reaching $3 billion. In 2018, remittances stood at $4.2 billion.

Remittances are one of the primary sources of foreign currency into Egypt.

4 Nov 2019; MEMO: An Egyptian network engineer yesterday revealed that the state-owned telecom company, WE Egypt, was spying on its customers for the government.

“I have discovered a new loophole, which WE is using to monitor its customer accounts,” the engineer said in footage on Twitter.

CAIRO, Oct 27 (NNN-MENA) – Egypt has accepted a US invitation for a meeting with Sudan and Ethiopia, over a Nile dam dispute, the foreign ministry said.

The meeting, to be held in Washington, would bring together foreign ministers from the three Nile basin countries, to try to break the stalemate in talks, on Ethiopia’s giant hydro-power dam.

Egypt’s foreign ministry, said that, Cairo had “immediately accepted” the invitation from Washington, without specifying when the meeting would take place.

CAIRO, Oct 26 (NNN-MENA) – The Egyptian parliament, rejected a European Parliament (EP) resolution, which condemns human rights conditions in the country, describing it as an “unacceptable” intervention into the internal affairs of Egypt.

The EP’s resolution represents a continuation of an unacceptable approach of previous resolutions, that are not given any consideration by the Egyptian parliament or the people, parliament said.

LUXOR, Egypt, Oct 20 (NNN-XINHUA) – Egyptian Antiquities Ministry, on Saturday, unveiled 30 newly-discovered, well-preserved ancient coffins with mummies, in Upper Egypt’s Luxor.

“We have very famous cachettes in Luxor. Today, my colleagues in the ministry are adding a new cachette,” Egyptian Antiquities Minister, Khaled al-Anany, told Xinhua on the site, in al-Assassif necropolis.

He said, the cachette includes a collection of 30 colourful wooden sarcophaguses, noting that, the coffins are in a good condition of preservation.

CAIRO, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Egypt hosted on Saturday a meeting of members of the Libyan parliament to unite their visions and efforts for the settlement of war-torn Libya's crisis, official MENA news agency reported.

Held at the headquarters of Egypt's House of Representatives in Cairo, the meeting of Libyan lawmakers is the second such hosted by Egypt after a previous one in July.

17 Oct 2019; MEMO: After a lawyer, his wife and his brother were arrested from a café in Damanhour, a city in Lower Egypt, his mother and two sisters were also arrested after enquiring about his whereabouts.

According to a Facebook post written by Major General Helmi Hamdoun, which has now been removed, his son and lawyer Mohamed Helmi Hamdoun was with his wife Asmaa Daabes and brother Ahmed in a café in Damanhour when security forces stormed the café and arrested all three of them.

15 Oct 2019; MEMO: Egyptian activist Israa Abdelfattah, who was kidnapped from a street in Cairo over the weekend, has detailed how she was tortured and beaten in custody.

On Saturday Israa was abducted by plainclothes police officers from her car and taken away in a van to an undisclosed place of detention and banned from contacting family or lawyers.