Story published July 16, 2010 by GlobalPost:

HURGHADA, Egypt – When Hamdy Shahat and his four-man crew first set sail from this resort town last month, he expected to return with a boatload full of red snapper to sell at the market later that night.

Instead, the 33-year-old skipper came back empty-handed, except for several streaks of thick, brown oil gummed along the hull of his wooden boat.

Thousands of miles from the Gulf of Mexico, the site of BP’s massive oil leak, Shahat had inadvertently discovered Egypt’s own oil spill. Now, just like most Americans, Egyptians are asking what went wrong in the Red Sea.

For fishermen like Shahat, navigating around small patches of oil floating in the otherwise turquoise-colored Rea Sea is not all that new. Egypt’s portion of the waterway is, after all, home to about 180 oil platforms and heavily trafficked by massive tankers heading north from the Middle East to Europe through the Suez Canal. In an environment like this one, small-scale oil leaks are almost the norm.

But this time, the oil was nearly impossible to avoid.

“I remember the slick looking like a lot more oil than usual,” said Shahat. “The way the sunlight hit the surface of the water the patch looked so big that we thought it was actually underwater coral.”

Last month, Shahat was among the first in Hurghada to discover, like other fishermen who inadvertently sailed through it, what some experts are already calling one of Egypt’s worst oil spills in recent years.

Many details regarding the source of Egypt’s latest spill, which washed up on the shores of an area rich in biodiversity and popular with foreign tourists, are still unknown. Read the rest of this entry »

“Energy from the Ground Up” is from GlobalPost’s new video series Energy Entrepreneurs.  Here’s a snippet from the background article on the series:

Al Gore isn’t going to save the world from climate change. (He may not even save his own reputation if salacious allegations about his groping a massage therapist in Portland, Ore. prove true; Gore denies the charges).

But the world doesn’t need Gore, or any other global warming “guru.”

That’s because it already has Khaled Al Sabawi in Ramallah, who’s heating and cooling homes in the West Bank with geothermal energy…

On June 22nd, a fire ripped through Cairo’s Souq el-Gomma, destroying shops, merchandise, and livelihoods.

Story published July 1, 2010 by Daily New Egypt

Hussein Soliman Farag built homemade solar panel collectors on his roof to save money on gas and to help the environment in Cairo.

Story published June 19, 2010 by Daily News Egypt

Story published June 3, 2010 by GlobalPost:

RAFAH, Egypt — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a target of public outrage following the deadly weekend raid by Israeli commandos on a Turkish-led aid flotilla, kept the Rafah border crossing with Gaza open Thursday to people and supplies.

Since the May 31 raid, international pressure has mounted on Israel and Egypt to ease the three-year blockade on the Gaza Strip, prompting Cairo’s move Tuesday to open the border to Palestinians seeking medical treatment.

High-ranking security officials inside the Rafah border terminal said that more than 500 Palestinians had been allowed to enter Egypt on Wednesday.

The land and sea blockade on Gaza was imposed by Israel in 2007, after the violent takeover of the strip from the Palestinian Authority by Hamas, an Islamic resistance group that had once vowed to “wipe Israel off the map.”

For its part, Egypt has also largely kept the Rafah border crossing sealed, except for the most serious humanitarian cases.

Read the rest of this entry »

Voters in the Helwan constituency alleged electoral fraud during the Shoura Council elections held Tuesday.

Mohamed ElBaradei went on a walking tour of Coptic Cairo today. Supporters said ElBaradei’s visit was meant to bring awareness for his movement of change in Egypt.

A waiter dishes up "tarb" at El Rifai

Story published May 24, 2010 by GlobalPost:

CAIRO, Egypt — At El Rifai, tucked away in a narrow corner of one of Cairo’s poorest neighborhoods, the only thing on the menu is meat.

For more than 40 years, this alleyway restaurant has been a carnivore’s dream, dishing up nightly over 200 pounds of fire-grilled kabob, seasoned lamb chops and tarb, a sausage-like stick of minced beef wrapped inside a layer of moist fat.

El Rifai is a local success story, having evolved from a metal street-cart near the Sayeda Zeinab mosque into a renowned, albeit shabby, eatery popular with movie directors, politicians and other celebrities.

But tough times have fallen on El Rifai. Soaring meat prices in Egypt have kept customers away, cutting business by one-third over the past few weeks. Waiters are receiving fewer tips, a vital chunk of their monthly incomes, and are suddenly worried for the future.

And so, last month, owner Mohamed El Rifai did what many Egyptians have done recently to voice their anger: he joined an organized protest, shutting the doors to his restaurant for a day.

“Meat in Egypt is just too expensive now,” said El Rifai, 66, owner and namesake of the restaurant. “By closing down, I lost some business, but it was nothing compared to what’s been going on recently.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Story published April 15, 2010 by GlobalPost:

CAIRO, Egypt — Egyptian security forces have clashed with demonstrators in downtown Cairo for the second time this month, in a sign that foment over a worsening economy and political uncertainty is growing.

Plainclothes security officers beat at least one protester before bundling him into a car during clashes on Tuesday, witnesses said. The demonstration, which also saw hundreds of protesters physically taunt riot soldiers, was aimed at challenging police brutality that occurred at a rally last week. During that protest, activists and journalists were attacked and about 100 people were detained.

Egypt’s excessive use of force to quell political assemblies — which are illegal under the country’s controversial emergency law — is nothing new, especially during a parliamentary election year.

In spite of the threat of violence, a worsening economy and concerns over the health and future of 81-year-old President Hosni Mubarak have led to increasing unrest on the streets of the capital.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Fishy Fatwa: a top cleric nixes an Egyptian culinary tradition.