My deepest condolences go out to the families of those murdered in the heinous act of terrorism which last Sunday targeted the Church of St. Peter, worshippers, and all of Egypt. I wish the injured a speedy recovery and all Egyptians peace, harmony, and the capacity to overcome this tribulation. This is a truly taxing time, with much pain and serious consequences. But if the goal of Black Sunday’s crime is to fracture the unity of the Egyptian people, spur domestic turmoil, and inflame sectarian strife, this goal will not be realised. In fact, it has become even more unattainable.

Egypt has struggled in the five years since the Arab Spring, as political uncertainty and economic instability erode investor confidence and limit growth. Its economy has expanded a modest 2.5% annually between 2011 and 2015. Foreign exchange reserves have dipped to precariously low levels. An overvalued currency has hurt Egypt’s export competitiveness. Foreign currency shortages have kept domestic and foreign businesses from fully participating in the economy.

Back in 1959, Fidel Castro departed Santiago de Cuba in a victorious caravan across his country to Havana. Almost six decades later, his remains were carried on the same journey, in reverse. Castro's most enduring legacy will inevitably be one of David vs. Goliath. He was the young, bearded revolutionary from a small island who took on the enormous Goliath of US capitalism and American hegemony. That is the stuff of dreams. But it wasn't a dream for everyone. And, indeed, not everyone would agree on whether Castro was David or Goliath.

Rules don't apply to Russia. But Russia applies rules to other people. That, put crudely, is the Kremlin's outlook on life, exemplified by the latest bombshell from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). In a sense, it's no surprise.

The political leanings of those who President elect Donald Trump picked for his national security team in the new American administration point out his intention to exploit the state of fear created by the recent election campaign amid the clear and antagonistic discourse towards Islam and Muslims.

In May 2010, Time magazine tells us, Barack Obama invited a group of America's most distinguished presidential historians to dinner at the White House. He was searching for ideas, examples and "lessons from his predecessors." "But as the conversation progressed," Time reported, "it became clear to several in the room that Obama" was most interested in the accomplishments of Ronald Reagan.

Hope springs eternal. Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump's campaign finance chairman and now his nominee to serve as secretary of the treasury, made headlines Wednesday by claiming that there would be no "absolute" tax cut for the wealthy.

Across the world tens of thousands of women and girls are being loved to death. Take a wide angle snapshot of these deaths and violent assaults and they become a recitation of women attacked in desperate circumstances.

The president was predominantly male, not that I would have issues with a female one but that’s how the stereotypical template went. With vast political experience, he had served his country in other official posts, maybe even in uniform. He carried himself with dignity and decorum while exuding a special aura. Age endowed him with vision and, in most cases, the wisdom and foreign affairs’ knowhow to take appropriate actions for the sake of his country.

Situations vary dramatically from country to country. It would be foolish to take a one-size-fits-all approach and barrel forward regardless of circumstances on the ground,” said Hillary Clinton in her Keynote Address at the National Democratic Institute’s 2011 Democracy Awards Dinner. This quote reveals a lot about a cornerstone concept that fundamentalists, radicals, and extremists by and large lack—namely flexibility and adaptability that can never match the sharp stances fundamentalists always adhere to.

I’d imagined that in light of Egypt’s economic conditions, the state would lift restrictions on civic associations in Egypt that help millions of citizens by offering assistance and services the state cannot provide Faced with recent electricity price hikes, the new VAT, the floating of the pound, higher energy prices, shortages in sugar, rice, and medicines, and predictions of more price increases in the future, the logical thing for the state to do is to encourage NGOs to play a bigger role in alleviating the daily hardships faced by citizens.

President-elect Donald Trump met Monday in Manhattan with Gen. David Petraeus who is under consideration to be secretary of state. After the meeting Trump tweeted that he was "very impressed." Indeed, Petraeus would be an outstanding first diplomat of the United States, although Trump is reportedly also considering candidates such as former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, among others. If Petraeus were to be tapped for the job, from Day One he would be one of the most well-informed and well-qualified secretaries of state in the post-World War II era.

Using tough and shocking language, both in vocabulary and content, used many times against broad sections of Americans themselves and against symbols of the ruling establishment, Donald Trump has presented himself as offering a different vision.

Try to imagine the excitement of the Cuban people in 1959 when the young, charismatic barbudo, the bearded one, Fidel Castro, and his band of ragtag rebels managed to pull off the impossible: getting rid of the dictator Fulgencio Batista and ushering in -- or so everyone expected -- a new era in Cuba, a Cuba free of the corruption, violence and cronyism that had pockmarked its history since before its wars of independence. It's impossible to exaggerate the enthusiasm and hope Castro engendered in those early months in power before the realpolitik of the revolution kicked in. Who didn't want sovereignty, free health care or universal literacy?

This piece is not written by the academic I should be, but by the citizen. It does not claim to have any scientific value. Last week, I came across many friends complaining about the tyranny of discourse, of news, and they used this assessment in widely different contexts.

It was through an online article published by Al-Masry Al-Youm by Mohamed Abul Gheit that the entire community of social media was taken by a wave of shock and sadness over the state of affairs in Egypt as it keeps declining in a terrifying way. I have been consumed by deep worry and sorrow myself after having read this article with its compelling and unequivocal facts and figures that are all taken from one of the publications of the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), which is a sovereign executive body that is neutral amid political affiliations and that only produces research-based material.

Aplogise!” was president-elect Donald Trump’s conclusion of two messages he wrote to the cast of Hamilton, one of the most successful Broadway musicals in recent times. He was thus responding to the incident in which actor Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays former vice president Aaron Burr, addressed the audience of the show. At the end of last Friday’s performance, noting that vice president-elect Mike Pence was in the audience, he used the opportunity to thank Pence for attending the show and told him: “We hope you will hear us out.” Then Dixon added: “We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us. Again, we truly thank you for seeing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colours, creeds, and orientations.”

I decided to swim against the tide that accompanied the flotation of the Egyptian pound, the rumbling flood of comments on social media networks and opinion articles that filled newspapers and websites. Everyone is talking about the flotation and cuts to fuel subsidies, some people understand what they are talking about while others are driven by sources for which Allah has sent down no authority. Surprisingly, I discovered that we have 90 million economists and financial analysts created by social networks and electronic media. I will address the consequences of the flotation by arguing that the difficult economic decisions made in Egypt can be alleviated by using social safety nets.

The draft of the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) law, which was initially approved by parliament a few days ago, cannot be read without linking it with the historical, political, and social contexts surrounding it. These contexts can explain the wide-spread debate triggered by the law, and the conflict between a parliament that insists on passing its legal suggestion regardless of the NGOs’ acceptance or refusal, and NGOs that are not ready to accept it, refusing the entire package. Historically, liberating civil society and setting it free of the state’s grip has always been one of the major demands of the reformist powers in the past two decades. These powers succeeded in grabbing a significant constitutional gain represented in Article 75 of the Egyptian Constitution, which stipulates that the establishment of NGOs is based on notification, that it is prohibited from dissolving them unless through the judiciary, and that administrative agencies have no right to interfere in the affairs of NGOs that are legally registered.

The debate earlier this month between French politicians hoping to win the conservative presidential nomination was a clash of personalities, an illustration of different right-wing traditions, a contest to write the history and define the legacy of Sarkozy’s presidency, a fierce discussion on appropriate tactical alliances, and, at some points, a technical debate. The debaters included a former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, two former prime ministers, three former heavy-weight ministers, and an unknown, a 53-year-old convert to Catholicism who heads the small Christian Democratic Party, specialises in labour issues, who paid a visit to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and supports Donald Trump, claiming he fears Clinton’s ties with Wall Street.

Aimlessly cruising with a private vehicle in a country like Egypt should not be a personal decision, where citizens lose hours in commuting, which leads to increasing pollution and consuming significant amounts of partially subsidised fuel. The chronic problem of Egypt’s traffic congestion constitutes of drivers’ misbehaviour accompanied by no real penalties, using a large car for a single purpose, consuming substantial fuel for errands that could be run online, and many other aspects that need to be tackled.