The fortieth edition of the Cairo International Film Festival, which takes place from 20-29 November, will open with a screening of new film Green Book starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali at the Cairo Opera House on Tuesday. One of the largest festivals in the Arab world, the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) will see more than 160 films from 60 countries screened, including 16 world premieres.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” crawled, slithered and flew its way to the top of the weekend box office with a $62.2 million opening in the US and Canada, according to studio estimates Sunday. The latest offering from the Harry Potter multiverse fell short of the opening of the first film in the Warner Bros. series, 2016′s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which debuted with $74 million in a similar November release and went on to earn $234 million in the US and Canada.

Chairman of the Travel Agencies Association in Alexandria Ali al-Manestrli stated on Monday that the committee for studying development of the tourism sector would construct a touristic street in Alexandria similar to Cairo’s al-Moez Street. Manesterly added that the committee has contacted with sponsorship companies to develop the street that would include clubs for musical concerts, shops and restaurants specialized in offering Italian, Greek and Egyptian cuisines.

When Yasushi Watanabe bought a cartoon film decades ago as a high school student in the Japanese city of Osaka, he had no idea he was purchasing animation history. But the modest reel he bought for just 500 yen ($4.40 in today s money) has been revealed as a rare lost cartoon produced by Walt Disney featuring a character that led to the creation of Mickey Mouse. The discovery was reported by Japan s Asahi Shimbun daily, which Watanabe contacted after reading a book about the history of “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”, the character Disney created in the 1920s.

No archaeological discovery has enjoyed attention such as the discovery of the granite sarcophagus weighing about 30 tons found under a house in Alexandria. I would like to point out that hundreds of foreign and Egyptian journalists have spoken to me about this subject. Most of the questions revolved around the question of whether this sarcophagus belongs to Alexander the Great, because Alexander’s tomb is still a dream for people everywhere, and many scientists and non-scientists have tried to search for this tomb in many places.

Egyptian tourism has been witnessing a strong improvement recently as recorded by several international organizations such as the United Nations World Tourism Organization, which ranked Egypt as the second fastest growing tourism destination in its global travel and tourism report for 2018. A new report published by esteemed economic organization Bloomberg also supported these findings. In the report, Bloomberg announced that Egyptian tourism witnessed a 40 percent increase during the first nine months of 2018, ending an era of struggle that began in 2011.

Air pollution kills an estimated 600,000 children every year and causing symptoms ranging from loss of intelligence to obesity and ear infections but there is a limited amount parents can do, a World Health Organization report said Parents should try to avoid household air pollution by using less polluting fuels for cooking and heating and not smoking but to reduce child exposure to ambient pollution they should need to lobby politicians to clean up the environment, WHO experts said.

Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities has uncovered on Saturday three cemeteries dating back to the New Kingdom of Egypt between 1570 BC and 1544 BC in Giza’s Sakkara necropolis. Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anani said the Pharaohs used the cemeteries for cats.

The French Institute for Oriental Archaeology’s mission has unearthed a sandstone panel and a wooden ark dated back to the 18th Dynasty of Pharaonic Egypt in the northern area of El-Assasif Necropolis in Luxor. The mission found the ark and the panel in good condition. It only lost part of the leg, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri said.

Egypt says archaeologists working at a dig in Cairo have found several fragments of stone slabs with inscriptions dating back up to 4,000 years. The Antiquities Ministry said on Tuesday that the artifacts were the latest finds in eastern Cairo’s Matariya neighborhood.

Sculptor Mai Abdallah defended her sculpture of Egyptian football legend Mohamed Salah, currently being displayed at the World Youth Forum (WYF), after receiving harsh criticism on social media. In a Facebook post, Abdallah explained that the sculpture wasn’t intended to go on display in the first place, but was just learning material for her instructional videos.

Chile announced on Sunday that it will ask the British Museum in London to return the remains of a mylodon, an extinct mammal that lived in Patagonia about 10,000 years ago. Minister of National Assets Felipe Ward will travel in two weeks to London for talks over the remains of the ground sloth that roamed in the southern region shared by Argentina and Chile. “We hope to have talks with the museum authorities… and seek to repatriate the mylodon s remains; these are bones and skin that are in storage, not even being exhibited,” Ward told reporters.

Egyptian sculptor Mai Abdel Allah on Sunday uncovered her statue of football player Mohammed Salah during the World Youth Forum (WYF), which runs from 3-6 November in Sharm al-Sheikh. Abdel Allah told al-Masry al-Youm newspaper that she thought up the idea of carving out the statue back in 2016, adding that she completed work in one month, prior to the opening of the WYF.

Several Egyptian filmmakers have been making quite an impact on the international scene in the recent years. From Abu Bakr Shawki’s “Youmeddine”, which achieved critical success and became Egypt’s 2019 Oscar Nomination for “Best Foreign Film” category, to “Sheikh Jackson”, which achieved a similar feat, Egyptian movies appear to be on the rise in terms of plot, acting skills and filmography. Three young filmmakers seem to be on their way to joining Egypt’s recent list of great filmmakers: Writer and Producer Tareq Abdel Ghaffar, Producer and Director Ammar Galal, and Cinematographer Mina Nabil. Together, the three collaborated on an Egyptian short movie titled “Hayden”, which premiered on Tuesday at the prestigious British Film Institute (BFI), in an event in collaboration with the London Film Academy: “The London Film Academy Showcase”. The movie, which takes place post-World War II, tells the story of a lady, “Hayden” who decides to host a party to reveal a surprise announcement. It stars Ingi Aboud Zeid, Abdallah Nahas, Gehad Hossam El-Din and Vanna Imam.

An Egyptian-French mission, affiliated to Cairo’s Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (or IFAO) and the University of Liverpool, has unveiled how builders from Pharaoh Khufu’s era could transfer stones from the Marmar Quarries in Tel al-Amarna, Minya governorate. The mission said on Tuesday that it had conducted studies and research on the Hieroglyphic writings and archeological inscriptions in Marmar’s Quarries.

The National Cinema Center, headed by the advisor to the Minister of Culture for Cinema Affairs Khaled Abdel Gelil inaugurated a cinema club on Saturday for people with special needs, at the Talaat Harb Cultural Center affiliated to the Cultural Development Fund. During the ceremony “Khaleek Aaed” by director Lamiaa Ragaey and “Kabir w Sagheer” film by Sahar al-Daly were screened. Artistic activities were also held, such as drawing workshops for people with special needs supervised organized by the National Cinema Center.

Egypt has sent hundreds of artefacts from the flooded ancient cities of Heraklion and Canopus to the US, to launch their exhibition in Minneapolis on Monday. The opening of the exhibition, titled “Sunken Cities: Egypt s Enchanted World”, was witnessed by several Minneapolis Arts Institute professors, press reporters, and Egypt s Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri, according to a statement on the Antiquities Ministry s Facebook page. After having spent six months in St. Louis – to an impressive audience of 113 thousand visitors – the exhibit will run in Minneapolis until April, Waziri said.

Mony Helal was crowned Miss Egypt 2018, qualifying to the 68th edition of the Miss World pageant scheduled to be held in China next December. “Being crowned as Miss Egypt 2018 and representing Egypt in Miss World makes me feel so proud. It is really a big responsibility,” says Helal, the 26-year-old Egyptian girl.

An archaeological mission from Egypt s Ain Shams University has completed the excavation of a shrine to King Ramses II discovered last year in Cairo s Matariya district. The head of the mission Mamdouh El-Damaty explains that the shrine was once used during festivals. The mission has also unearthed a collection of lintels, scarabs, amulets, clay pots and blocks engraved with hieroglyphic text.

The Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) has withdrawn its invitation to French director Claude Lelouch, who was due to be honored in this year s edition, after he was heavily criticised in Egypt for his support for Israel. "After the serious criticism, that reached its peak with a photo of Lelouch in an Israeli parachute base, the committee was about to announce the cancelation of the honoring before I personally talked to him on the phone, and he was aware of the criticism, so he himself didn t wish to come to a place where he wouldn t be greatly welcomed," explained festival president Mohamed Hefzi, an Egyptian director and producer, to an Egyptian TV programme Tuesday.

Graffiti covers the ruins of Cyrene in eastern Libya, a city founded by Greeks more than 2,600 years ago that once attracted tourists but is now neglected and the target of vandals. Insecurity and looting has hit Libya s archaeological sites in the chaos and fighting that has followed the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, as rival groups struggle to consolidate control of the country.