With surprisingly muted fanfare, the government of Egypt launched two new social pension/transfer programmes in December 2014.After decades of "wanting" to address deprivation and poverty, the current government finally did do something!

I have often stared at a blank page recently, just as blankly as the uniform whiteness looked back at me, as I thought how to smear it with something meaningful. My words sometimes flow, but most times I’m filled with the thought of what little they will do. Even now, the futility of addressing those that refuse to be addressed persists in the back of my head as I try to write.

It has been exactly five years since Greece joined the European Support Mechanism with the close cooperation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At that time, key and critical financial data were the following: GDP amounted to US$222.151 billion at the end of 2010, public debt was 148.3 percent of GDP, unemployment stood at 12.5 percent and the percentage of Greeks who were living below the poverty line (earning less than 60 percent of the national median disposable income) was 27.6 percent.

What is happening in Ameriya? You will not find the answer in any newspaper. You will only find stories on social networking sites.

The president’s decision to pardon some 100 prisoners, most of them convicted under the protest law, is a welcome one. It not only ends an injustice inflicted on them by an unfair law, but speaks to their victory in the battle to defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest.

British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves has claimed that the tomb of the famous Egyptian queen Nefertiti lies behind the walls of King Tutankhamun's tomb, which has peaked the interest of the whole world.

Ramez, the Governor of the Central Bank, has failed to provide foreign currency, although he knows very well that everyone is suffering from its shortage. Why did he not bring in Moroccan and Nigerian magicians who are known for generating dollars out of thin air?

Europe is the dream refuge for most displaced Syrians abroad, estimated to number 4 million (women, men and children). Many risk their lives in the Mediterranean Sea and about 3000 have drowned on the dangerous route to Europe and especially to Germany and Sweden.

There is no constitution in the world that has no flaws. Here are certain issues with Egypt’s new Constitution: 1. The chapter on rights and freedoms is similar to those found in the constitutions of developed and democratic countries. It protects all citizens, especially the vulnerable and the disabled, grants them freedom of movement and travel, recognizes the sanctity of their homes and restricts jail custody and the state of emergency that we lived in for thirty years under Mubarak.

When a list of 15 candidates wins unanimously and by acclamation, it is astonishing and it casts doubt on the election law and the electoral process as a whole.

The lofty Mount Lebanon, renowned for its scenic beauty, cedar trees and ambrosial, fragrant air, has abruptly shifted towards the Mediterranean, to the sky-scraping beachfront of the Lebanese capital Beirut, reeking with the revolting stench of rubbish dumps.

With only a few days left until Eid al-Adha, the Israeli occupation wants to prove to the whole world and to us Arabs that it controls the Al-Aqsa Mosque and intends to rebuild Solomon’s Temple.

The Copts have suddenly become the Salafi Nour Party’s escape from disbandment ever since the Administrative Court obliged the Political Parties Affairs Committee to examine the legal position of parties with a religious bent before the start of the parliamentary elections. Sources within the party said it is granting membership to a large number of Copts so as to refute its religious nature.

The surgeon came out of the room to tell the family that he needs to insert an arterial stint in the heart of their loved one, who was lying under light anaesthesia in a neighbouring makeshift room in a residential building-cum-hospital in Cairo.

I write this not to defend the former agriculture minister or his colleagues - charged last week with corruption - but to defend law and justice, and to suggest an alternative to fight corruption.

I cannot believe the government is overlooking the new prime minister's reputation. How could the man have been chosen without anyone explaining his relationship with the main suspect in the Agriculture Ministry’s corruption case?

The Arab region, among all regions, seems to be like a boiling cauldron. In some countries, the long stability of despotic regimes, which was widespread across the entire Arab map, has dissipated; some were able to relatively regain it, while others couldn't.

After availing themselves to much media manipulation and to political machinations, women in Egypt are back in a very familiar place and one where they have been before. The state is paying lip service to their rights but dismantling their abilities to mobilise.

Press TV has interviewed Michel Chossudovsky, with the Center for Research on Globalization in Montreal, to discuss Russia’s decision to provide Damascus with military supplies and humanitarian aid. What follows is a rough transcription of the interview. Press TV: Russia’s call for the world to join and help the Syrian government in fighting ISIL terrorists, seems to have fallen on deaf ears at least in Washington. Instead, we have the US president saying that Moscow’s strategy in Syria is doomed to failure. Two questions here: First of all, what is Russia’s strategy that the West is so opposed to? And second: Why is the West so worried about what it calls an alleged Russian build-up in Syria?

If your daughter or brother just disappeared, you would probably go to the police. But what if the police were the ones who took them? That is the reality for thousands of families in Egypt, where the government is carrying out a brutal crackdown on dissent and freedom of expression. Ha'na el Taweel's daughter Esraa has been held without trial in Egypt for more than three months, and human rights groups say she is just one of thousands political prisoners being locked up for simply protesting or being associated with certain movements.

Here's my four-sentence review of Dr. Tawfik Hamid's new book Inside “Jihad: How Radical Islam Works; Why It Should Terrify Us; How to Defeat It.” Buy this book. Read this book. Refer to this book. Share this book. I've read and reviewed counter-jihad classics by bestselling experts including Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Mosab Hassan Yousef, and Phyllis Chesler. I think highly of each. This is how good Inside Jihad is. If someone said to me, "I want to read just one book about jihad." I'd give that reader Dr. Hamid's book.