Food security
Last week Cairo hosted 26 Egyptian and international experts in the economic forum to discuss the current food security situation and the impact of the rise of international food prices on Egypt as an importer of food. The forum will draw policies to realise food security in Egypt and to promote the production of crops in Egypt on a globally competitive basis.
Heritage online in Arabic
Egypt has begun making its national archives digitally available on the Internet in Arabic, having last month registered the world’s first domain name in Arabic script. Egypt, the first of nine Arab countries to have registered so far, has adopted the domain name .misr—the Arabic word for Egypt and which will be spelt in Arabic script. Internet regulator ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, says the new Arabic domains are expected to start working during 2010.
The project to preserve and document in digital form the collection of the National Library and Archives (NLA) involves some 100,000 documents and creates one of the largest digital archives in the world. It is the result of cooperation between the NLA and the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage.
Barclays best
Barclays Bank Egypt has been awarded the Best Initiative in support of SMEs and the millennium development goals at the annual Africa Investment and Business Leader Awards. Barclays Latitude Club and Mashrou’y were seen by the judging panel as major enabling tools to the SME sector. Latitude Club is a networking facility that puts SMEs in contact with each other through Barclays branches across the world, thus facilitating business transactions and ensuring SMEs have global reach. Mashrou’y is an SME specific product tailored to suit the needs of Barclays SME customers by offering competitive prices and bundling specific solutions for industries in the SME sector.
100 years
The Egyptian Association for Political Economy, Statistics and Legislation last weekend celebrated its centenary. A conference was held in which more than 300 legal experts, economists, and senior public figures from Egypt and Arab countries participated. Former heads of the association were honoured, and a commemorative book on the role of the association throughout a hundred years was published.
Up from the sea
A huge nine-ton granite block thought to have once formed part of a temple in a sunken palace of Cleopatra has been raised out of the sea at Alexandria. The stone, said to be from a temple to the goddess Isis, had lain underwater for centuries and was among 400 artefacts discovered underwater by a Greek mission in 1998. Divers spent weeks cleaning it of mud and scum before dragging it across the sea floor for three days to bring it closer to the harbour edge. There it was raised by crane and ferried by lorry to a freshwater tank where it will lie for six months until all the salt, which acts as a preservative underwater but damages it once exposed, is dissolved.
Earthquakes are thought to have toppled the city of Alexandria in the 4th century. Cleopatra’s palace and other buildings and monuments lie strewn on the seabed in the harbour. In recent years, excavators have discovered dozens of sphinxes in the harbour, along with pieces of what is believed to be the Alexandria Lighthouse, or Pharos, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.