Neutral Switzerland has been a renowned facilitator in peace negotiations and a traditional meeting place for parties in conflict. At the same time, little is known about Switzerland’s role in a historic step that helped Egypt establish sovereignty and gain full independence. Eighty years ago, on 8 May 1937, the Montreux Convention Regarding the Abolition of the Capitulations in Egypt was concluded. Foreigners in Egypt were finally placed under the Egyptian legal system. The capitulations phenomenon, started by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, was a fundamental impediment to Egyptian sovereignty. Based on the principle of extraterritorial jurisdiction, it allowed capitulatory powers—Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Greece, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United States—to manage judiciary, legislative, and fiscal issues of their nationals living on Egyptian territory. Not only did this deprive Egypt of its right to exercise self-determination, but it also resulted in unequal treatment. Any civil or commercial disagreements between foreigners and Egyptians had been handled in mixed courts, which often tended to favour nationals of capitulatory powers at the expense of Egyptians.

The law of nature is inevitability, and the law of life is choice. Humans live between the ability to choose and the inevitability of life. You might wonder “how?” and the answer is that the law of nature does not recognise exceptions. Despite the renewing nature of life, it is stable and unchangeable. The change of seasons is inevitable, because the sun cannot just rise from the west. It is inevitable for the sun to rise from the east. The same goes for night and day. This is the law of nature that will not let an apple float; it falls on the ground instead where there is gravity and Newton’s law that knows no exceptions. Law in nature is the rule, not a coincidence.

A lot of unnecessary energy has already been expended on Egyptian television arguing over the planned reforms ofresidency and naturalisation procedures, with accusations of treason flying both ways. The idea is that you get a five-year long residency if you stash a lot money in the bank that the government will then spend and invest as it sees fit, with an IOU certificate promising to hand it all back when the residency permit expires. Knowing the government’s record, such as old-age pensioners’ funds of workers’ syndicates, maybe this isn’t the best way of going about things. But that’s a concern for those depositing the money, not the self-righteous brigade here thatisafraid that the country will somehow be swamped by necessarily ‘evil’ foreigners who want to change the ethnic-sectarian composition of the country or spy on behalf of a foreign country. (If a Russian or a Chinaman wanted to come here to ‘invest’ in the country, say in the Suez Canal industrial zone, would anybody be up in arms against them?) This, in turn, is seen as a stepping stone towards naturalisation, since after ten years you can apply for the passport. This just goes to show how paranoid, and how ungrateful, some people are,given that places like Syria and Lebanon have always housed Egyptians in exile. Mohammad Abdu in Lebanon is the most famous case on display—somebody who was welcomed with open arms by everybody in Lebanon, Muslims and Christians alike, whohelped him and Gamal Al-Din al-Afghani set up newspapers calling for unity between Christians and Muslims and among Arabs in general.

The Middle East is a region of great opportunity. We have a large and young population with more than its fair share of problems, and as every entrepreneur knows, every problem is an opportunity; the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. As a region, we are also one of the largest exporters of capital to the world. Investors from the region own the priciest global real estates and are shareholders in the largest companies of the world. The big question facing local entrepreneurs is how to attract big regional capital into opportunities from the region, for the region. Having successfully raised multiple rounds of funding from the region, we believe the Careem’s journey has teachings that can help us solve this puzzle.

Emmanuel Macron may well become the next president of France, but he's not making it any easier for the French to vote for him. t the same time his arch foe, Marine Le Pen, is pulling every trick from Donald Trump's playbook. Halfway through France's bizarre two-week election campaign before the final vote May 7, here are just some of Macron's faux pas: The victory bash Last week, when the ballots giving him a first-round win over 10 other candidates were barely counted, Macron staged a victory bash at the same restaurant where the Socialist incumbent, Francois Hollande, had celebrated five years ago.

Michael Flynn, the man who holds the 24-day record for the shortest tenure as national security adviser, continues to tarnish the reputation of the Trump administration even after his very public retirement from the position. The former three-star Army general was forced to resign by President Trump for allegedly lying to Vice President Pence about his discussions with the Russian ambassador. In the latest development, the inspector general of the Department of Defense released documents responding to congressional subpoenas revealing that Flynn allegedly received payments from entities tied directly to foreign governments after his retirement from the military, without properly notifying and receiving permission from both the Defense and State Department. So far, the conduct does not appear criminal in nature, but could force Flynn to forfeit part of his military pension.

A year and a half has passed since the downing of the Russian plane in Sinai, but the Russian government is still preventing its citizens from traveling to Egypt, the closest, cheapest and favorite tourist destination for Russians. During this period, the Egyptian government introduced an airport security system based on the demands of the Russian side and introduced everything new and modern available in the world. This was witnessed, followed and examined by the Russian experts who traveled to Egypt dozens of times to see their list of demands implemented. But, despite the understandings reached between the two sides on the security agreement which is soon to be signed, nothing has really happened. The return of Russian tourism to Egypt became a clear issue to the public and to industry specialists in Egypt. Everyone has realized that the issue is not about securing the airports, aircrafts or tourist security, but rather about the two countries' differences when it comes to certain other economic matters and matters of Egyptian sovereignty.

In 2003 President Bush Jr insisted beyond a shadow of a doubt that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, Hussein deserved a showdown like no other, one that ultimately saw Hussein hanged, prosperous Iraq destroyed, and law-abiding Iraqis obliterated as divisive and unruly sects emerged. And let’s not forget Islamic State finding in Iraq an easy gaping void. It was proven afterwards that Saddam Hussein never possessed weapons of mass destruction, but after 11 September some country had to be at the receiving end of the bashing stick. Iraq was unfortunate enough to be the picked-on country, earning the wrath of the US.

UNESCO is a UN organisation concerned with education, the sciences and culture. It is a crucible in which the world's cultures melt and come closer to each other; a forum for the exchange of ideas, inspired by various civilisations and the experiences of nations and peoples. Consequently, taking charge of this organisation should be on a rotation basis among representatives of different cultures in a way that permits — through every director's culture for a certain period — articulating the potentialities of such a culture, its civilisational facets, vision in dealing with current challenges and displaying its value system and how such a culture interacts with other cultures.

Next month’s annual congress of the world soccer body, FIFA, is likely to become the first international forum since US president Donald Trump took office to debate Israel’s controversial settlement policy in the occupied West Bank. Israeli efforts to prevent FIFA from debating and possibly censoring it for allowing soccer teams from Jewish settlements in occupied territory since 1967 to play in Israeli leagues are further complicated by the fact that Mr. Trump has called on Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu to freeze settlement activity.

In a research paper, I am currently preparing, I determined that there were decisions made by some opinion-making circles in the West that blame Egypt and Egyptians occasionally, then look for justifications for those claims later. The presidency of Egypt is the most condemned, followed by the Armed Forces, the police, media, intelligence, judiciary, and then the parliament.

The declaration of a state of emergency last week prompted no major controversy. The president made the declaration on Monday evening, the government approved it immediately upon receipt, and parliament ratified it the next day, after MPs agreed to forgo debate.

Twenty-seven years have passed since Francis Fukuyama hastily described the triumph of capitalism as "the end of history", but now capitalist globalisation is in deep crisis. This crisis manifests as four sub-crises, which are as follows.

Just the other day, I was meeting with a Christian friend at a cafeteria on the top of a building, and he was afraid the place would fall down if a terrorist bomb targeted it. He was reacting—rightly it seems—to what had just happened in Stockholm. Now look what’s happened here: two churches were targeted on Palm Sunday, with scores dead and wounded in Alexandria and Tanta. It’s fair to say this is all political, meant to embarrass President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in the US and kill off any chances for Egypt to rebuild its ailing tourist industry. But that doesn’t exonerate the rest of us for not doing enough to combat extremism. It is worth noting that this brand of fanatic likes to attack shrines and mortuaries, such as the shameless ransacking of the remains of the Prophet Yunus (PBUH) in Iraq. Following Sunday’s terrorist attacks, former Grand Mufti Dr. Ali Gomaa was talking about these fanatics and how they’d attacked the mortuary of Imam Al-Nawawi in Syria. I can relate a personal experience in this regard. I once got fired from a place, without naming names, with no “clear” explanation as to why. But, curiously enough, something that came up in the complaints from the administration was that I had the audacity to use a book by Wasif Boutrous Ghali in class. I don’t think the specific book I used was the issue, but just the fact that I was using a book written by a Copt.

The US missile strike on Al-Shayrat Syrian military airbase was justified by the US president and officials on the claim that a chemical gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun town in Idlib Province had been launched from the base. Then the US secretary of state announced a sudden shift in the Trump's administration position towards Syria, asserting that there shouldn't be a role for President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria's future.

I happened to be in al-Duweir village, Assiut governorate, with friends and family when we heard the shocking news of the bombing of the two churches. We had just been exchanging well wishes for Palm Sunday and Easter, and suddenly everything changed as the magnitude of the crime and casualties became apparent. This isn’t the first terrorist crime or the first time our churches have been targeted. But coming on Palm Sunday, with the terrifying number of victims and speculation that Pope Tawadrus was a target in the Alexandria bombing, compounded the trauma and seemed to suggest we’re on the cusp of a new stage of violence and escalation, a readiness to overstep all religious, human, and even political red lines.

In October 2015, the Economist published a piece titled the Sad State of Egyptian Liberals. It said liberals in this country were in crisis and enumerated the reasons: internal divisions (most of them due to strong egos) lack of money, inexperience, and a terminology that proved alien to most Egyptians. More specifically, a “limited government” was a foreign idea the Egyptians did not understand. The alien terminology argument is debatable. I would rather say, for instance, that Egyptians (at least the elites and the urban and rural middle classes) understand quite well what constitutes a “limited government,” but they, rightly or wrongly, do not consider this to be a top priority.

In 1939, the relentless Nazi bombardment of Warsaw destroyed the city’s zoo. What the Nazis didn’t know, however, is that what they had destroyed was not an ordinary zoo, but the extraordinary creation of an unusual Christian Polish couple, Jan and Antonina Zabinski. Thanks to them and their son Ryszard’s efforts, approximately 300 Jewish women, men, and children were saved from certain death.

Often the media occupies itself with the minutiae of current events without giving the reader enough basic information. The ongoing dispute over laws governing the judiciary is a good example. So let me first outline the issue as I understand it before proposing an opinion. Several laws regulate judicial bodies in Egypt. Currently, the presidents of the Court of Cassation, the State Council, and the State Litigation Authority are appointed by presidential decree after consulting the general assembly or supreme council of each of these three bodies—that is, with the participation of senior members of those judicial bodies. Nominees for the position are customarily chosen on the basis of seniority.

Before the gates of a fascinating building overlooking Lake Geneva stand sculptures depicting the struggles of workers against exploitation and glorifying those who labour. This is somewhat perplexing as the statues now decorate the building of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)—the body that took over the premises of the International Labour Organisation in blunt symbolism of the path of the 20th century.