News about a proposed new alliance called the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) has surfaced from the White House and particularly Tim Lenderking, US deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Gulf affairs. Lenderking has conducted shuttle visits to a number of countries in the Middle East in preparation for the announcement of the new alliance in January 2019.

In his remarks before the UN General Assembly Tuesday, 25 September, US President Donald Trump talked about a regional strategic alliance for the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Jordan and Egypt to counter the Islamic State group and other terrorist organisations in the Middle East. Two days later, the foreign ministers of these countries met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the meeting dealing with the threats and challenges facing Middle Eastern countries, with special emphasis on defeating terrorism and containing Iran.

Education is back as one of the hottest and widely discussed topics around the world. Since 2010, there has been more than $2.3bn invested in education technology companies in the US alone, while global investment within the sector reached over $9.5bn. With almost 40% of American employers saying they cannot find people with the skills they need and UK. organisations spending almost £6.3bn on temporary workers, recruitment fees, and training, as a result of skills gap in the UK market, it is clear to everyone that the current education system is broken and needs a clear and deep fix. An action needs to be taken!

South Korean President Moon Jae-In was in Pyongyang last Tuesday, 18 September, the guest of Chairman Kim Jong-Un of North Korea. It was their third summit this year. The two Korean leaders signed a joint declaration that renewed the momentum for a peace deal in the Korean Peninsula that would end the state of war that has lasted from 1953 till today.

Reformist trends in the Arab world, in general, are caught in a vice between two kinds of radicals. The first hails from the political right, from its ultraconservative to religious fascist stripes, and is opposed to any change whatsoever unless it propels society backwards. It cares nothing for progress and has little interest in the world at large and the major currents of change that generate the transitions from one era to the next.

For the first time ever, Egypt has launched a national anti-bullying campaign in schools, with TV advertisements, bill boards and social-media materials all drawing attention to the need to tackle bullying among the country s children. The campaign was launched under the auspices of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) and in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Technical Education (MOETE) and the UN children s agency UNICEF with funding from the European Union.

The debate over whether Ashraf Marwan had been working for or against the State of Israel has been an Israeli–Israeli conflict since the Agranat Commission was established in November of 1973. One seeking the truth need not look outside Israeli reports, analysis, and official documents. Until this day, there have been two opposing camps in Israel debating on whether Marwan was a true spy of Israel. The Egyptians chose to remain silent on this issue.

Comparing my window view of Cairo over twenty years ago with today, I can see that its weather has changed dramatically. It is also clear to me, having visited many countries since, that Cairo is not alone in these changes. The global implications of climate change on the environment have become obvious – even to non-experts.

I spent my childhood and youth, up to the time I graduated from university, between Rod Al-Farag, where our family home was located, and Shobra, where I went to school. Both neighbourhoods (though Shobra above all) are foremost among those historic districts of Cairo that physically embody the unique, cohesive national fabric of the great Egyptian people, both Muslim and Christian.

Throughout history, the concept of time has constantly been changing. It differs from culture to another and from age to another. Scientists and philosophers have discussed the concept of time, whether it is linear or circular, with an end or without, or subjective or objective. Moreover, in the topology of time, there are questions always raised for study and discussion. For instance, can time be represented as a line, if it is, where does it begin and where does it end? Is it only one line or not?…etc. Indeed, the concept of time is dealt with differently in these two philosophical movements: modernism and postmodernism. The last four years are seen as a revival of modernism concept of time, which has been adopted by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

It would be mistaken to reduce the current political conflict in the US to the clash between the current occupant of the White House and the US press establishment. President Donald Trump, in no time at all since coming to power, has succeeded in antagonising a vast circle of domestic and international parties, the only exception being Zionist circles in the US and in Israel.

I remember vividly the terrible day when our lives (our world) changed forever. I was listening to the radio in my apartment, a few blocks from Ground Zero, when the plane hit the first tower. I could hear the cries from the street below: “Oh, no, no, no!” “Oh, my God!” I ran downstairs just in time to see the second tower crumble like a sand castle. It was 9:59 am. I joined others rushing to the spot when a large group of people came running back shouting: “Go back, go back, for God s sake, go back!” We rushed back only to discover later that it was a false alarm, that there would be no more attacks on the towers after the second plane hit. Without fully understanding the significance of events, I felt that a relatively peaceful way of life had been replaced by a darker, more sinister one. A great sadness came over me. Soon after, we learned the details of what had happened, and heard stories and saw pictures of those who had thrown themselves voluntarily to their certain death rather than remain trapped inside an inferno. Richard Drew, who photographed one of the iconic images of that fateful day, the “Falling Man,” the lonely image of a man falling to his death with one of the towers in the background, said recently that for him it was the image of the Unknown Soldier. An estimated 7% of those killed in the attack on September 11 did so by jumping into the void from their offices.

September 13, 2018, marks 25 years since the first of the Oslo Accords was signed by Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn amid great fanfare. Many Palestinians hoped that they would finally be free of Israel s then-quarter-century-old military rule and have a state of their own. Having taken part for two years in the Madrid and Washington Palestinian-Israeli negotiations preceding the Oslo accords, and having seen the obduracy of the Shamir and Rabin governments about allowing the Palestinians anything resembling self-determination, independence, and statehood, I had few hopes for Oslo. Sadly, my pessimism proved all too well-founded.

Tourism for Egypt is not just a breath of fresh air that adds a bit of revenue or a touch of elegance. Instead, it is and always will be the backbone of the Egyptian economy and the livelihood of millions of Egyptians. Many people in Egypt have been severely hit over the past seven years, with all their turbulence, acts of terror and efforts made by the Muslim Brotherhood group and its supporters to send a message to the outside world that Egypt is an unsafe place.

Where is the world order headed, as the result of recent developments? The debate that governs the answer has evolved between two theories. The first is the “Clash of Civilisations” theory espoused in 1991 by Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington who attempted to forecast the nature of global conflict following the end of the Cold War that brought the victory of the US and capitalism over the Soviet Union and socialism.

The recent passing away of the late Egyptian, Arab, African and international thinker, the political economist and activist Samir Amin was a source of sorrow for many people around the world. This was particularly the case among those who were aware of the very important role Amin played throughout his life in raising awareness in the global South regarding the bitter realities of its relationship with the North and the negative repercussions this relationship has had for the countries and peoples of the South.

Of the many books and articles that appeared to mark the 12th anniversary of Naguib Mahfouz s death, no doubt Mohamed Shoair s outstanding work, The Children of Gebelawi: The Story of a Banned Novel (Al-Ain Publishing House) is the most important and enduring. The eminent literary editor s study of one of the most important Arabic novels ever follows the history of that great literary work from its conception, as it appeared in serialised form in Al-Ahram in 1959, through four decades of the battles surrounding it until the assassination attempt in 1994, and then the subsequent 12 years up to the time of Mahfouz s death. It is a profound and thorough investigation that packs elements of suspense.

In the previous article, we looked how important it is for Egypt to have an economy that is resilient to external and internal shocks without unnecessarily constraining the change, innovation, openness, and flexibility necessary to create a sustainable growth. The challenge for policymakers is to find the right balance; and to help them do this, we think it important they consider an emergent concept: agility. Most often applied to the corporate sector (the Agile Corporation), agility is also relevant to the wider macro-economy because, at its heart, it reflects the way the world is, not what we would like it to be. Part of the reason that central planning is a poor method of economic management is that economies are inherently unstable and unpredictable. These inherent characteristics mean not that it is hard to predict what will happen to an economy, but that it is impossible.

Since October 2017, more than 1 million women worldwide have shared experiences and solidarity with their sisters under the banner of #MeToo. They are saying that enough is enough. For too long, women have experienced violence in their homes, in public spaces and at work. For too long, this abuse has been normalized, women s voices have been silenced and their stories disbelieved. For too long, perpetrators have not faced consequences. It is estimated that there are 1 billion women worldwide living with the pain caused by gender-based violence. These women do not always go to the authorities to file formal reports, but the data that the World Health Organization helped UN-Women gather from dentists, surgeons, mental health specialists, emergency rooms and morgues illustrates how violence against women is a global health crisis. We cannot allow this to continue for another generation.

Many countries, international and non-governmental organisations, as ‎well as academic and research institutions all over the world, recently ‎celebrated the centennial of the birth of the great late South African leader Nelson ‎Mandela. During his lifetime, Mandela became an icon whose ‎fame and status went far beyond the national borders of his country, not ‎only to the rest of his African continent, but to each and every ‎part of the globe.‎

I picked up Al-Masry Al-Youm last Friday to find the headline, “We miss you, Uncle Naguib.” It introduced an article by the Egyptian journalist and television presenter Mufid Fawzi who recalls interviews he did many years ago with Naguib Mahfouz, although they seemed as fresh as though they were just done yesterday. Time for the great writer is unlike time as we know it, where the past is past and the future has yet to be. For him, time has a different nature. It renews itself with new and totally unfamiliar events and developments, which is when we “miss” the great man and wonder what he would have to say about this particular moment in time.