CAIRO – 21 July 2024: Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Deputy Prime Minister for Human Development, announced cooperation with the United Media Services (UMS) Company in the “human development“ file, as per the instructions given by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi to the government. The Deputy Prime Minister announced the cooperation with UMS in a press conference held with the UMS CEO Amr El Fekki at the New Al Alamein Festival on SundayAbdel Ghaffar, who also serves at the Minister of Health, thanked the UMS for organizing the New Al Alamein Festival. He thanked the Deputy Prime Minister for Human Development and Minister of Health Abdel Ghaffar for providing comprehensive and effective medical services for the festival participants. The second edition of the New Alamein Festival kicked off on July 11 and would last August 30. The festival has also decided to allocate 60% of the profits from the second edition of Alamein festival to support our people in Palestine.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty met with Bankole Adeoye, the African Union’s (AU) commissioner for political affairs, peace and security, on the sidelines of the AU’s 6th Coordination Summit in Accra, Ghana. Abdelatty reaffirmed Egypt’s commitment to supporting the AU’s peace and security efforts and its engagement with the AU Peace and Security Council. “The increasing security challenges facing the continent and the expansion of conflicts necessitate intensified consultation and coordination between the AU bodies and member states,” Abdelatty said. Egypt will hold the presidency of the AU Peace and Security Council in October 2024 and plans to organize several events during its term, Abdelatty said. Minister Abdelatty also welcomed Egypt’s approval of the Peace and Security Council’s request to extend the timeframe for the third phase of the AMISOM mission.

Takka, the innovative Sharia-compliant consumer financing solution by ADI-Consumer Finance, the consumer finance arm of Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank-Egypt (ADIB-Egypt), is celebrating its first anniversary, marking over one million app downloads in a year of remarkable success in transforming the Egyptian consumer lending landscape. Since Takka’s launch in June 2023, 250,000 users applied for consumer financing via the app. Takka is Egypt’s first Sharia-compliant consumer financing app linked to a prepaid card. “ADI-Consumer Finance has achieved a tangible market breakthrough, playing a definitive role in advancing ADIB-Egypt’s overarching goal of expanding financial freedom,” stated Amr Sanad, Chairman of ADI-Consumer Finance. Established in October 2021, ADI-Consumer Finance continues to be at the vanguard of digitizing Sharia-compliant consumer finance.

A massive fire broke out across several shops at Cairo’s Jewish Quarter in the al-Moski neighborhood on Friday evening, killing five people and injuring eight others. Investigations into the incident revealed that the fire had spread to neighboring properties, and civil protection forces were able to control it. Cairo Fire Operations received a report that a fire had broke out inside a commercial building in the Jewish Quarter in Moski. A security cordon was imposed to contain the fire which was eventually brought under control. Civil protection personnel worked strenuously to contain the widespread fires across the commercial areas, and cooling operations were underway as the total losses were counted.

CAIRO – 21 July 2024: The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) is expected to implement a series of interest rate reductions in the coming months, according to a report by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs predicts that these rate cuts will result in a cumulative reduction of approximately 11.25 percent by the end of 2025, bringing the interest rate to 13 percent. In light of these projections, the report suggests that interest rates within Egypt's IMF program may also decrease due to inflation trends. This indicates a potential opportunity for interest rate reduction. The overnight deposit rate, overnight lending rate, and the rate of the main operation remained unchanged at 27.25 percent, 28.25 percent, and 27.75 percent respectively.

CAIRO – 21 July 2024: Starting from Sunday, the Egyptian government will suspend its load-shedding program for the summer until mid-September, as announced by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly last week. In June, the government extended power cuts to around three hours per day nationwide in response to increased consumption levels caused by the scorching heatwave and fuel shortages. The load-shedding program was initiated last summer, resulting in daily power cuts across most of the country, except for major tourist destinations in the North Coast, Alamein, Sharm El-Sheikh, and Hurghada. During a press conference on Wednesday, the prime minister stated that power cuts would be limited to possible disruptions in certain areas due to technical issues exacerbated by the sizzling heat. The prime minister further noted that the country's expected energy gap for the following summer amounts to about 4 GW.

However, Russia and Belarus are exceptions due to the invasion of Ukraine,” a Hiroshima city government spokesperson told CNN. Envoys from Russia and Belarus haven’t attended since Hiroshima excluded them in 2022 following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February that year. Russia used Belarus as one of the launch pads for its assault and later moved some of its tactical nuclear weapons there. “As a city of international peace, Hiroshima city needs to invite all nations, regardless of whether they are at war or not,” said Kunihiko Sakuma, president of Hiroshima Hidankyo, an atomic bomb survivors’ advocacy group. Hiroshima authorities said they only send invitations to countries with embassies in Japan and have never invited Palestinian representatives to the ceremony.

Israeli warplanes struck the Houthi-controlled Yemeni port of Hodeida on Saturday, a day after a drone attack by the Houthi rebels hit Tel Aviv, according to statements from both sides. “The blood of Israeli citizens has a price,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said following the Hodeida strikes, indicating that more operations against the Iran-backed Houthis would follow “if they dare to attack us”. The Israeli military confirmed that its warplanes targeted “military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime” in Hodeida in response to the drone attack. Egypt has expressed deep concern regarding Israeli military operations in Yemen, warning that these actions are intensifying tensions across multiple fronts, in a statement issued Saturday by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He added that the Israeli strikes “would likely be perceived by many Yemenis as an attack on their homeland, which could bolster Houthi recruitment and funding.”

CAIRO – July 20, 2024: A new floating crane has joined the Egyptian Suez Canal maritime fleet on Saturday. The Alexandria-based Kased Khair for General Supplies and Contracting Company locally manufactured the floating crane (CC) at the South Korean Shipyard GUESUNG TECH, said the Suez Canal Authority (SCA). Suez Canal Authority Chief Admiral Osama Rabie said that the authority adopts an ambitious strategy to modernize and develop its naval fleet through various steps. The SCA already has two crane vessels “Rescue 1” and “Rescue 2,” with lifting capacity of 500 tons each. Every crane is 60.9 meters in height and 26.6 meters in width.

Kenyan President William Ruto on Friday nominated the first batch of 11 cabinet secretaries, marking the start of forming a “broad-based” government. The president reappointed four cabinet secretaries to their previous ministries of Interior and National Administration; the Defense; Lands, Public Works, Housing and Urban Development; and Environment, Climate Change, and Forestry. “I have started the process of forming a new, broad-based cabinet to assist me in driving the urgently needed and irreversible transformation of our country,” Ruto told a news conference in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Ruto said he is continuing consultations across the political divide on the balance of the Cabinet he will soon appoint. Neither can we turn away from recognizing that the opportunity before us is greater than the crisis,” Ruto said.

CAIRO - 19 July 2024: The Egyptian Businessmen Association is organizing a visit by a delegation of members to Turkey, to participate in the meetings of the 17th session of the Egyptian-Turkish Business Council, during next September, in coordination with the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade, as well as with the Suez Canal Economic Zone, to present the investment opportunities available to Turkish investors during the visit. This came after the virtual meeting of the Egyptian-Turkish Business Council, headed by Adel Lamai, head of the Egyptian side, and Mustafa Denizer, head of the Turkish side, to arrange for holding the 17th session of the council. Adel Al-Lami, head of the Egyptian side at the Egyptian-Turkish Business Council, said that a high-level visit to Turkey is expected during the coming period, stressing the importance of exploiting the current momentum in Egyptian-Turkish relations, mutual visits between the two sides, and the growing demand from the Turkish side for investment in Egypt. Al-Lamai said: The new government reshuffle included a distinguished elite of ministers, especially in the economic group. Denizer pointed out that the Business Council received many requests from Turkish companies to discuss investment opportunities in Egypt in various economic sectors.

CAIRO – 19 July 2024: A drone strike on Tel Aviv, early Friday, killed at least one person and injured several others as the attack occurred without any air raid warning sirens being activated. This assault, which ranks among the most serious on Tel Aviv since the onset of the Israeli war on Gaza on 7 October, is part of the Houthis' escalation against targets associated with Israel in recent months. According to Yahya Sare'e, spokesperson for Yemen's Houthi armed forces, the attack was executed using a new drone named Jaffa. The Houthis have warned that they will continue targeting Tel Aviv in the coming period. “The Yemeni (Houthi) armed forces designate the occupied Jaffa area (Tel Aviv) as an unsafe zone and it shall remain a primary target within the range of our weaponry,” stated Sare'e.

The Freedom and Prosperity Index by the Atlantic Council emphasises that freedom and inclusive policies are critical for achieving prosperity. The successful integration of these migrants into Egypt’s economy highlights the potential for economic freedom to create opportunities and foster prosperity. The Freedom and Prosperity Index outlines that countries with higher levels of freedom tend to experience better overall prosperity. The experiences of migrants in Egypt reflect the broader trend identified by the Freedom and Prosperity Index: economic freedom is a crucial driver of prosperity. In Egypt, security forces have periodically arrested individuals among the migrant population suspected of having ties to terrorist groups.

A major IT outage affecting the Windows operating system has caused widespread disruption to businesses and services around the world. Numerous airlines, including Vueling, KLM, Ryanair, American Airlines, Delta, United, Singapore Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Qantas, and Virgin Australia, experienced disruptions. Healthcare and Retail DisruptedThe outage impacted healthcare services, with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and hospitals in Germany facing disruptions. Train Services AffectedTrain services in the UK were disrupted by widespread IT problems, affecting operators such as Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express, and Great Northern. Egypt UnaffectedWhile the outage caused chaos globally, Egypt’s Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Minister of Communication confirmed that the country’s services were unaffected by the global IT outage.

The highly infectious polio virus has been found in sewage samples in Gaza, putting thousands of Palestinians at risk of contracting a disease that can cause paralysis. Gaza’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) both said they had carried out tests and found samples of the virus in sewage water. “Poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2) had been identified at six locations in sewage samples collected on 23 June from Khan Younis and Deir al Balah,” WHO said Friday. It said no one has yet been treated in Gaza for paralysis or other symptoms of polio, but that residents must now “contend with the threat” posed by the disease. Various United Nations agencies – including UNICEF, the children’s fund, and UNRWA, the agency for Palestinian refugees – are working with local health authorities to determine how far the virus has spread.