American movie star Will Smith arrived to Egypt on Sunday morning with his family for a short visit while the megastar Amitabh Bachchan will be attending the Luxor African Film Festival in Egypt this month. This should mean that Egypt is safe now and is open for tourists as such visits promote tourism and support foreigners’ visits to Egypt. Smith chose to visit the Pyramids with his family while Bachchan will be accompanying his wife Jaya Bachchan and daughter Shweta Nanda to visit Luxor, which has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open-air museum", as the ruins of the temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor stand within the modern city. Immediately opposite, across the River Nile, lie the monuments, temples and tombs of the West Bank Necropolis, which includes the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens.

International media was talking on February 21, 2017 about the visit of Lionel Messi, the famous Argentinean football star who signed with the Egyptian program TOUR N’ CURE to be its ambassador. He came at the face of an initiative to promote the North African country as a medical tourism destination for hepatitis C patients. The program offers hepatitis C patients, from all over the world, with an effective and affordable treatment package.

If you are among the people seeking positive news in Egypt, you will be glad to hear that US dollar decline against the pound and registered 16 EGP especially as the dollar declined against the pound at unprecedented rates since the flotation on 3 November 2016, to hit EGP 16.00 on Tuesday compared to EGP 19.50 mid-December 2016. Those who stored the dollar are heading to the banks to sell their stock before they lose their profits as economists are advising to not buy dollars in the coming period, because they expect its further decline in the short term.

Couple of years ago, President al-Sisi promised that Egypt will be a great country once again like it used to be in the past. In a study prepared by PWC, Price Waterhouse Cooper, Egyptian economy is expected to grow to be stronger than Canada in 2050. This will only happen if many reforms are carried out in Egypt to face corruption, and nepotism. These reforms can’t be carried out away from the people who should work harder and change their mind from This study is very similar to Egypt's vision 2030, which is an optimistic Sustainable Development Strategy to develop Egypt by the year 2030 that many people underestimate. All Egyptians are dreaming that Egypt will be one of the greatest nations all over the world. Thus, stop dreaming and start working.

After an old Coptic Christian woman was stripped off and dragged along the streets of the Egyptian city of Minya as hundreds of people watched, the case was closed for lack of evidence. The case dates back to May 2016 when she was attacked amid clashes over a claimed love affair involving a Christian man and a Muslim woman from the Karm village in Minya. The Muslim wife assured later that her former husband is behind such rumors in order to blackmail her. However, the violence attacks against Christians in the village led to the torching of a number of houses belonging to Coptic Christians as well as attacking the old woman and her daughter in law.

As the people in Egypt are suffering from the financial crisis, many people start storing food and other stuff that they fear will disappear from the markets or its prices are getting higher. Some people add that the increasing prices will cause many people to commit crimes in order to provide for their families. I indeed share such fears with them, but I believe there is much better way to face it. In such hard circumstances, everybody usually think how to sustain the life of his own and his children. People may care about storing food, but they rarely think about other people starving. This is what makes the crises even bigger. Therefore, I suggest that people in Egypt should do more good and help more poor people in order to prevent this evil from reaching their homes.

Last week I wrote an article entitled Copts between martyrdom and citizenship after the terrorist attack on St. Peter Coptic Orthodox Church in Cairo, in which 27 Copts were killed and dozens were severely injured. Today, I decided to write another article entitled “Copts between hatred and citizenship” after an Islamic preacher called Shiekh Mahmoud Lotfy announced that hatred is an Islamic mandatory, especially against Copts and other infidels. He explained that Muslims should hate non-Muslims and their rituals. The statement comes few days after the terrorist attack that targeted a Coptic church, while celebrating the Holy Mass, killing mostly women and children, as if it comes to give strong excuse to the terrorist and encourage others to follow his lead. This should lead Copts to ask questions about equal citizenship in their homeland with many Islamic preachers repeating the same words and inciting hatred against what they consider Christian minority in an Islamic country.

Copts have been raised on the idea of accepting martyrdom as martyrs enjoy superior rank in their church. Therefore, the Coptic Church has offered thousands of martyrs throughout its history. Those martyrs were simply victims of tyranny or fanatics who don’t like their faith and want to get rid of it forever. Copts refused to abandon their faith and therefore they were brutally tortured and killed. Copts have always accepted such suffering remembering the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Holy Bible in which he said: “yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service”

Talking about the prices in Egypt, everybody will say that prices are increasing in Egypt and the people are suffering more and more. However, these are not the prices I meant in the title. The prices that are going down in Egypt are the prices of the workers. The floating of the Egyptian pound caused the prices to increase, but such increase was not reflected on the wages. The US dollar prices jumped from about 8.5 LE to about 17 LE. This means that the wages are cut off by 50%. The worker who earned 3000 LE was receiving about 353$ per month couple of months ago. Now, the same worker receives about 176$ per month. The workers who work for the minimum wages of 1200 LE are now receiving 71$ per month instead of 174$ couple of months ago.

The famous football player Lionel Messi signed with the Egyptian program TOUR N’ CURe to be its ambassador. The program offers hepatitis C patients, from all over the world, with an effective and affordable treatment package. The Egyptian latest initiative in medical tourism offers the opportunity to treat hepatitis C with the most recent, advanced therapies worldwide with no waiting time. Moreover, the treatment package offers patients the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of Egypt and visit historic landmarks during the days of the treatment. They will be staying at a nice 5-star hotel.

This week brought several surprising events and surprising reactions as well. The government in Egypt decided to raise prices of fuel which increased the already increasing prices in Egyptian markets. At the end of the week, Donald Trump won the elections in the United States of America after he issued negative statements about Muslims and immigration. I thought that the two incidents will bring gloomy faces at work and streets. Yet, I was surprised to find my colleagues still smiling and telling jokes. I think that the Egyptians tend to have such unexpected reactions in such very difficult situations. We may think like: the worst has already happened and we have faced our fears! There is no use losing our smiles as well!

After Egypt’s government announced to offer investors and small farmer around 500,000 feddans, as part of the country’s mega project to reclaim one million and half feddans, the Minister of agriculture is currently taking serious steps to cultivate 100 thousand acres of greenhouses in north Sinai. Another positive thing is that the Arab Organization for Industrialization is making the greenhouses through cooperation with the Netherlands and Spain in this field. This project will exploit arable land using modern systems to consume small amounts of water.

As the economic situation in Egypt is getting really bad and among the increasing prices and unemployment, Egypt’s government announced to offer investors and small farmer around 500,000 feddans, as part of the country’s mega project to reclaim one million and half feddans. This project that should increase the Egyptian agriculture land by 20% may be able to solve many problems in Egypt like the unemployment and traffic by moving millions of people away from the main cities, and most importantly will provide food for the Egyptians as alternative for importing.

Cairo University, one of Egypt’s top universities, finally realized that developing education should be reflected on developing minds, and that resisting retardation comes with resisting discrimination. This was revealed with a decision by Cairo University’s President Gaber Nassar to abolish religious identity from all official paper work. In fact, the Egyptian constitution has been talking for long time about freedom of religion and equality among citizens, but has always supported discrimination among citizens based on religion with the ‘religious identity’ field from Egyptian national identity cards.

Several articles on the internet claim that Israel has won the war of October 1973, but the truth is that Israel had much more losses in the war that it can’t be called a victorious after all. One of the articles that claims Israel has won said that the use of intelligence massively benefited the Israelis, and that the Arab nations did not fight as one unit as their command structure was not unified and each fighting unit (in the Sinai and the Golan Heights) acted as individual units. It added that with up to nine different nationalities involved on the Arab side, mere co-ordination would have been extremely difficult. It also claims that the Israelis had to work to one simple equation: if they lost, the state of Israel would cease to exist. Therefore, for Israel it was a fight to the finish – literally “death or glory”

The dream of immigration has always been a dream for young people in Egypt. This dream becomes more intense with the deteriorated economy and increasing prices. The migrants pay a huge price estimated at 50.000 LE in order to reach Europe, but the price sometimes is their lives. Last week, a boat carrying almost 600 people capsized off Egypt's coast, killing at least 204, in the latest disaster among migrants trying to reach Europe. I understand that those young people are despite enough to do so, but giving the possibility that one may lose his life as well as the nest egg may force him or her to search for alternatives.

As an Egyptian citizen, I feel that my developing country has a lot of work to do in order to develop, especially as the situation is too bad on many scales like economy, security and socially. Many resources are wasted in my country including the power of youth that we are in bad need to benefit from! We can’t build our country without achieving our unity. Yet, fanaticism hinders our steps and leads us to more vital losses and affects the sense of belonging to this country very badly. At the time we are in bad need to build our country, we are fighting to issue a law of building churches that tries to keep the Coptic Christians as suffering minority that struggles to achieve freedom of worship.

In Egypt, we have several economic problems that many people think they will not be able to provide food for their children very soon with the increasing prices. However, the majority of those people forget about such problems and prefer to think about sectarian issues like building churches and football games between Ahli and Zamalik. The regimes in Egypt used to incite such sectarianism among the Egyptian people till the people became ready to do that on their own. It’s amazing to see people who don’t have enough food and medicine for their children only complaining about building a new church in their village, in which God is going to be worshipped!

After a Coptic old woman was stripped off in the streets as punishment for her son after rumors about a romantic relationship between him and a Muslim girl, I searched the internet to find out that similar accidents occur in several parts of the world including an one accident in Uttar Pradesh, India on April 26, 2016. The story said that a 60-year-old woman was stripped and tortured in a village in Uttar Pradesh on Monday after her son allegedly eloped with a girl, police said. The woman's face was blackened and chilli powder was thrown on her private parts as "punishment", they said. Senior police officer Akhilesh Chaurasia said the woman was attacked by the family members of the girl with whom her son had allegedly run away on Sunday.

On May 2nd, Egyptians celebrate the feast of Sham El Nesim, which is an old feast dates back to the Pharos. On that day, Egyptians go out and enjoy the green parks and eat colored eggs and different kinds of fish as well as spring onion. This feast was prohibited by the extremist Islamic scholars several times; however, the Egyptians love to celebrate that feast and enjoy its traditions in the open.

Egyptian newspaper “The Seventh Day” launched a website to measure the credibility of news published about Egypt in international media including BBC, CNN, RUETERS and Associated Press. It said that the news published about Egypt were not accurate and there were much more news about Egypt than Turkey and Qatar. In fact, it’s a nice idea to listen to what is being said about Egypt in the West. However, the problem is that we will only listen without actually listening to reason. We may keep accusing the world of targeting Egypt, but we have to realize that we are not always right and the world is not always wrong.