About 19 people arrested outside the headquarters of the UN Women’s regional office in Cairo were presented to the Supreme State Security Prosecution office in New Cairo on Wednesday, lawyer Fatma Serag told Mada Masr. Several other people were released on Wednesday as well, following the mass arrest that took place at the site of the Tuesday protest in Maadi, which was meant to express solidarity with women in Gaza and Sudan. The protest was dispersed by police forces, who dragged participants into vehicles and confiscated at least one of their mobile phones. It is the latest in a series of ..read more

Security forces arrested several activists on Tuesday from outside the headquarters of the UN Women’s regional office in Maadi, Cairo, where the activists had gathered to show solidarity with women in Gaza and Sudan. Participants in the protest and other activists circulated the names of at least 14 people who were arrested when the protest was dispersed, including some who were not participants but who were passing at the time of the protest dispersal. Maadi Police Station denied knowledge of the whereabouts of those arrested, lawyers told Mada Masr. Yet officials at the National Security Ag ..read more

The new general budget for the 2024/2025 fiscal year, which starts in July, was presented by the finance minister to the House of Representatives on Tuesday. It allocates over LE3.4 trillion toward debt servicing. The allocations include loan repayments and interest payments, and they collectively make up 62.1 percent of the total general budget.   Budget utilization is a more comprehensive method to conceptualize annual spending, compared to expenditure which excludes loan repayments and financial asset holdings. It covers total expenditure across eight categories: domestic and externa ..read more

Cemetery caretakers at the historic Bab al-Nasr cemetery have been instructed by officials to halt burials in the graveyard facing Moezz Street, with some told verbally that some of the graves overlooking Banhawy Street will be removed. Burials were also halted by a similar notice the governorate distributed last week to the cemeteries of the Imam Shafie and Sayeda Nafisa areas in preparation for their removal, with the remains of the dead to be exhumed and transferred to new locations, monuments and tombs erected to their memory demolished and the area leveled to the ground. This is the late ..read more

Students at the American University of Cairo protested on Monday to call on the administration to cut ties with corporations accused of aiding the Israeli occupation, one of the protesting students told Mada Masr, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern of facing retribution. This is the third time in a few days that AUC students have held up a banner to call on the university to end its contracts with computer giant Hewlett Packard and French insurer AXA— two corporations targeted by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign for their involvement with the Occupation’s mi ..read more

Families in search of loved ones who were killed by the Occupation gathered around the Nasser Medical Complex on Sunday, hoping to find their missing bodies in the mass graves at the facility. “I’m here looking for my son’s body. He’s been missing since the Occupation’s first withdrawal,” said the mother of Mohamed Zidan, speaking to Mada Masr. “I contacted the Red Cross, the civil defense and medical crews. Everyone told me he got shot by the Occupation. When I was speaking with the civil defense, they told me that the Occupation made a mass grave in the Nasser hospital courtyard.” Civil def ..read more

After a year of internal strife, Sudan continues to grapple with an armed conflict that has plagued its modern history. The war that erupted in Khartoum and consumed the historic capital, which had thrived for thousands of years, has set off a chain reaction of destruction, unleashing one of the most devastating conflicts the country has witnessed.  The events of the last year have cast a shadow over the lives of nearly 50 million people, fracturing Sudan’s agricultural sustainability, its educational system and nearly all basic services.  As the war rages on, Darfur is entering a n ..read more

Forty-seven percent of expenditure in the coming fiscal year’s budget is set aside for the government to pay interest on borrowing, according to the preliminary budget statement published by the Finance Ministry on Tuesday.   Expenditure on interest in the budget covers interest payments to which the government is committed on any borrowing it has undertaken to finance the budget deficit — borrowing from international organizations, or through local or international treasury bonds and bills. The public expenditure in the preliminary budget statement does not disclose allocations for ..read more

With few teachers and a freeze on public sector hiring, crowded classrooms have compromised learning at government schools across the country for years. The government launched a scheme in 2022 to make an exceptional 30,000 hires for kindergarten and assistant primary school teachers. Tens of thousands of hopefuls applied. They passed through stages including written tests, a medical examination, an unconventional and uncomfortable series of fitness tests, including running, push-ups and abdominal exercises, and finally, a verbal examination at the Military Academy. Though they passed the fir ..read more

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