During a recent visit to Japan, I went up the famous "Sky Tree" tower, which is one of the capital s most well-known tourist attractions. From that staggering height, one can view this enchanting city which glistens across a vast area. You can see to the horizon, the geography of light extending infinitely. If you are bolder, you can stand on a glass floor to see down below – too distantly – houses and streets as if you are viewing them from an airplane. What an exciting and charming scene! The city of Kyoto was Japan s capital for centuries, then the city of Edo, which was called Tokyo later, became the empire s metropolis.

The history of the United Nations testifies to the important role played by Egypt in the creation of the world organisation and the drafting of its charter at the San Francisco Conference at the end of World War II. This history has also recorded how Egypt has consistently defended the interests and aspirations of the Arab and African nations in the organisation in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.

The kids are alright. Or so says Vladimir Putin, defender of Slavic values, crusher of political dissent and (it seems) indulgent fan of Russian rap music. Speaking on Saturday at a St. Petersburg forum on arts and culture, the Russian President warned against heavy-handed censorship of Russian rap. On the surface, it s an odd move. Like most authoritarians, Putin likes to present himself as a social traditionalist -- defending Russia s viciously homophobic restrictions on gay life and decriminalizing domestic violence in a nation which still expects women to obey their husbands. Among the international alt-right, Putin is widely seen as a last defender of Christian values.

Pyramids were power plants!” This is what we heard from Dr. Wassim al-Sisi while he was speaking to one of the Arab television channels. The original question was about who built the Egyptian pyramids. He defended the Egyptians and attacked those who say the Jews built the pyramids. I myself am a fan of this man; he speaks in a beautiful and calm manner, he is a polite person, and I personally respect him and appreciate him. But when I hear him say that the pyramids were power plants, then it is my duty to respond, since this is my specialization and my field of study within Egyptian antiquities for more than half a century.

It must have been one of the most humiliating moments in the life of the so-called "Princess of Huawei" when Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese telecommunications giant, on December 1 at Vancouver International Airport. Canadian agents detained Meng at the request of the US, which claims Huawei, through the use of the Hong Kong company Skycom Tech, dodged sanctions on Iran. After 10 days in a corrections center and an unusually long bail hearing, Meng is under house arrest in Vancouver on $10 million Canadian bail ($7.5 million US). She faces extradition to the US, as well as a possible 30-year prison sentence if found guilty of defrauding banks to circumvent American sanctions.

The Democratic Party has a lot going for it right now. An energized base of supporters in cities and suburbs, a more diverse freshman class in Congress to mix up the agenda, interesting likely candidates for President, and a shared focus on defeating President Donald Trump. It is easy to see why, in the age of Trump, the debate about who should be the next nominee is primarily about who can beat Trump. The questions many are asking go something like this: Does the nominee need to be a white man to reach voters the Democrats lost in states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016? Does the nominee need to be a woman or an African-American to energize key parts of the Democratic base who turned out in record numbers in the 2018 midterms?

Theresa May s so-called "survival" of the vote of no confidence this week, by 200 votes to 117, offered a rare moment of clarity amid the chaos that passes for Britain s shambolic exit from the EU. But it s unclear whether either she or the EU recognized it, or are ready to grasp what it means. No-deal Brexit looks likelier than ever after May s summit humiliation May is sticking to her well-scripted and oft-repeated lines, and so is the EU. Both are heading for the cliff edge of a "no deal" UK exit from the EU that neither side wants or can afford.

In a long-winded, 2,900-word, deeply faulty article, you continue your deliberate smearing of Egypt, its military, its judicial system, its parliament, and its leader. This Egypt-bashing started long before you were barred from entering the country, and it is why you were refused entry. Let s start with this phase.

Politics is at its worst when the issues are blurred and confused, and ends and interests are obscured behind moral guises that everyone knows have nothing to do with the heart of the matter but that, instead, are means to avoid it. The short-sighted handling of the question of the war in Yemen in the US Congress — in the Senate, in particular — stems largely from the tendency to ignore the basics.

The Gulf summit did not result in reconciliation among the countries of the boycott as some had speculated. Those who thought that a White House order has been issued to invite Qatar, as a superior resolution for reconciliation and restoring the Gulf to normalcy, did not take into account the possibility that reconciliation was not in the interest of Washington, Tehran or Ankara, and therefore the situation has been frozen! Many cheered when King Salman invited the Emir of Qatar to the GCC summit, with explanations in every direction. Some said that reconciliation was a decision at the White House, while others said that Egypt would go on the path of reconciliation following Riyadh, but Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry was confident that none of this will happen and that the terms set by the Arab quartet have not been resolved yet!

President George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the United States, passed away Friday, 30 November. With his death, a historic era — not only for the world, but also for the Middle East — comes to an end. Few American presidents came to the White House with deep knowledge and wide experience in foreign affairs as President Bush enjoyed.

In January next year, Egypt will begin its one-year stint as chair of the African Union (AU). It will be keen to leave an imprint on the organisation commensurate with its status, and Africa as a whole is looking forward to benefitting from the leadership of a country that it regards as a cornerstone of the continent with its wealth of resources, skills and expertise. What initiatives can we look forward to during Egypt s chairmanship of the AU? Some have been initiated earlier, and then abandoned, while others are ripe for revival, helping to make Egypt s year at the head of the AU a year of unprecedented achievements.

The French nation is no stranger to strikes and protests, and the French are among those nations whose citizens organise strikes on the most regular basis. The labour unions in France wield massive powers in rallying and executing major strikes that can hit vital economic sectors such as transportation and communications.

I first went to Russia in 1969 as an exchange student. I ve studied, lived, worked and traveled there ever since. I m now considered an "expert" on Russia, a word which always strikes me as an exaggeration when it comes to understanding a country as complex as this. I remember a friend of mine who studied Russian with me. He laughingly told me once that, as he heard little Russian kids speaking the language better than he did, that if he simply gave them a gentle kick, they d speak English.

The Giletts Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protests in Paris on Saturday saw violent acts (92 people were injured, including 14 policemen), but it didn’t prevent the French government and politicians from seeking dialogue with the protesters, even if these dialogues have yet to yield any tangible progress. Giletts Jaunes emerged abruptly as a popular protest movement without a leader or a boss, rejecting parties and unions. They took to the streets for the first time on Saturday, November 17 in a protest against the increase in the price of gasoline (14 percent). The number of protesters fell and rose in the following weeks because of the violence, until it reached 75,000 protesters on Saturday.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed when I listened to al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb’s speech celebrating the birth of the Prophet (Mohamed) before President Sisi. I was waiting for the announcement of a specific practical plan to purify the Islamic heritage and renew religious discourse, which has sharply deviated from rightness and dumped us in the black swamp of terrorism, producing a mutilated monster of the Islamic religion; in Islamic costume, Islamic economy, prophetic medicine and other manifestations of nominal despicable beliefs.

When it comes to education in the Arab world, more is never enough. Do we need more schools? Definitely. More teachers? Absolutely. More efforts to help more girls to enroll? It goes without saying. However, we also need to explore issues such as quality and the contemporary crisis in much education in the region. The Arab world, part of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, has achieved enormous gains in terms of schooling and education over the past two decades. But what was regarded yesterday as a huge achievement is looked upon today with a different eye.

To mark the 116th anniversary of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, the Ministry of Antiquities organised what, to me, was a landmark event that serves to demarcate the dividing line between this venerable establishment s over a century-long past and its future as a truly modern museum, employing the latest techniques to display a unique collection of antiquities that can be seen nowhere else. We are speaking of a rebirth of a major historic museum. For some time, news of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), due to open in 2020, overshadowed the old museum and the question of its fate. GEM will be the largest museum in the world.

It is common knowledge that international relations revolve round the great powers and their relations, and that all the rest is detail or, at least, less important than the main hegemonic system that governs the spread of political influence, rivalry in war and peace, and the deterrence of other powers. It is common practice to describe the main hegemonic system in terms of the number of its poles, as in the multipolar order that prevailed between the two world wars, or the bipolar order that followed World War II and the rise of the US and the USSR to global pre-eminence, or the monopolar order such as that which was dominated by Britain from the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 or that which was dominated by the US from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until the global financial crisis in 2008.

I want to call attention to an extremely important book by an Egyptian now living in Sweden, Sameh Egyptson. Holy White Lies: The Muslim Brotherhood in the West, which appears to have been published at the author s own expense by Dar Al-Maaref, is an exhaustive study of the Muslim Brotherhood organisation s designs to assert its influence over major governmental and non-governmental institutions in the West. Its plans and strategies towards this end rely on lies, deception and doublespeak. The author uses Sweden as a case study representative of other Western countries.

I am not accustomed to attending embassy celebrations on the national days of different countries. There are more than 100 embassies in Cairo, as well as many international and regional organizations, and attending such events is not commensurate with many of the burdens. However, I was keen on attending the celebration of the Embassy of Latvia in Cairo with the centennial anniversary of the state. Latvia was one of the countries that came into existence in after World War I, on November 18, 1918. This was almost four years before the birth of the Egyptian state, which was based on the British declaration of February 28, 1922, following the Egyptian revolution of 1919, the centennial anniversary of which will be celebrated next year.