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“I just wanted to pitch-in but I wasn't sure how,” says the 37-year-old street artist, who made his name in Cairo during the 2011 revolution against Hosni Mubarak.

“If I would were in Cairo now, I would have taken to the streets with graffiti, like I did in 2011. I kept on wondering: how can I participate in a concrete and positive way, and make it useful?"

On the morning of 20 September, Ganzeer woke up anxious. During the next few hours he drew the image that has quickly come to define a new wave of protests against the sitting president. In the illustration, Sisi is dressed in a striped jacket and tie, but drawn as a cartoonish cat burglar.

POMED is increasingly concerned about the detention of Ahmed Gamal Ziada, and calls for his immediate and unconditional release. He was originally detained on January 29, 2019, after traveling from Tunis to Cairo in order to complete his membership in the Egyptian Press Syndicate. Upon arrival at the Cairo International Airport, Ziada was detained for two weeks without charge. He has since been accepted by the Syndicate as an official member.

If convicted, Ziada could face up to a year in prison.

yet another example of the Egyptian government’s ongoing crackdown on a free press, behavior that has earned it a Freedom House ranking of “Not Free” each year since 2013. Most recently, Egypt denied entry to New York Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick when he tried to enter the country on February 18. Prior to Ziada's detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists identified at least 25 journalists who were in prison as of December 2018, 19 on charges of “false news”—more than any other country in the world.

Turkish series, including shows about Ottoman sagas, have enticed audiences in the Middle East and beyond for the last decade. Particularly “The Magnificent Century,” a hundred-episode series of love and intrigue at the Palace of Suleiman the Magnificent, created a strong audience in the first half of the 2010

“Kingdoms of Fire” ("Mamlakaat al-Nar") tackles the struggle between the Mamluks and the Ottomans over the control of the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Egypt. Produced by the Emirati production company Genomedia, it is shown both on Saudi channel MBC and Netflix. However, it is not being streamed in Turkey.

The historical drama revolves around two central figures: Sultan Selim I, the Ottoman ruler (r. 1512-1520) known as Selim the Grim, who is played by young Syrian actor Mahmoud Nasr. Toman Bay, the Mamluk sultan, is played by Khaled Nabawy, an Egyptian actor known for his leads in historical drama ever since his discovery by award-winning director Youssef Chahine in 1994.

About 100 Egyptian nationals living in Qatar have been asked by Doha authorities to leave the country within a few weeks time, according to an Egyptian opposition figure based abroad who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.  The move by Qatar comes after Egypt requested that the figures — all of whom are affiliated with Islamist groups — be delivered to Egyptian authorities, said the source.

Qatar has given the Egyptian nationals notice to leave the country amid a diplomatic rapprochement between Doha and Cairo that has blossomed over the past year. 

Helping bridge the distance between Doha and Cairo are the increasingly strained relations between the current Egyptian administration and its long-standing Gulf backers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as a number of economic investment opportunities, with potential for Egypt’s need for foreign direct investment to soothe its distressed balance of payments to align with Qatari interest in a number of key strategic economic sectors, including agriculture and telecommunications. 

“There will be more pressure on the media during the election season. What is happening now indicates that we will not have free elections. If they can interfere at any point to censor information, then this will really affect elections,” Mohamed Zaree, a Program Manager at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies,

“All these disordered procedures and measures that are based on elastic and illegal reasons and applied by the interim authorities everyday the same way the disposed president did,” said the Arab Network for Human Rights Information in a recent press release.

On September 11, officials in Cairo declared that emergency law in Egypt would continue until June of 2012. In previous statements, officials claimed that the emergency law would end before elections this November.

The decision to expose Egyptians to the show was the outcome of a protocol signed by the Chinese government and the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU), a division of Egypt's information ministry, for the express purpose of using mass media to prepare the population for a stronger alliance between the two states. China gave ERTU the rights to the program for free and paid for the translation and overdubbing. Egyptian Information Minister Duraya Sharaf al-Din, toasting the program's premiere during a visit to the Chinese embassy in Cairo, told Chinese radio that her government wants the series to instill an emotional connection with China that will popularize political and economic ties.

The show falls outside the news cycle and offers little entertainment value, but for the narrow purpose of inducing Egyptian and Tunisian youth to enroll in their local Confucius Institutes it strikes precisely the right chords. Young listeners in an unstable country with high unemployment hear that they can study Chinese for free and dramatically boost their job prospects. The show's guests manage to preempt defensive reactions from the kind of nationalistic listeners who would bristle at such an overture from a foreign power: They are assured that Egypt, too, is a great civilization and only lags behind China owing to its history of exploitation by the West. A step toward China is a step toward liberation and progress. Beijing comes across as a refreshingly hospitable destination for study abroad, moreover. Its people honor guests and reject the anti-Arab stereotypes widespread in Europe and the United States.

Who listens to such a broadcast? Unlike America's Radio Sawa or the BBC from London, CRI Arabic isn't available on local radio in the region (with the exception of what appears to be a pilot project on FM radio in the sparsely populated North African republic of Mauritania). Nor does it figure prominently among Arabic stations hyped online. One finds it advertised in venues where Arabs already curious about China are likely to go. For example, the website of the Chinese embassy in Cairo features a link on its home page, while in person the embassy's cultural attaché encourages the young people he meets to tune in. Some Confucius Institute chapters also disseminate links to prospective students as a kind of audio brochure.

 text messages buzzed between mobiles in quick succession, drawing woops of joy and thumbs up from astonished Syrians

"Perhaps the Saudis will have to build a whole village for Arab presidents once they run out of villas," joked a taxi driver

the usual babble of conversation was subdued as customers sat quietly but intently watching the TV broadcasting images of flames pouring from Egypt's ruling party's head office, a Soviet-era building much like many of those that house the state institutions in their own capital

Egyptian authorities have detained and expelled a New York Times journalist upon his arrival at Cairo international airport, the latest move in the country’s crackdown on free speech and the media.The newspaper reports Wednesday that security officials held former Cairo bureau chief David Kirkpatrick for seven hours without food or water after confiscating his mobile phone, before sending him back on a flight to London on Tuesday.

Egyptian authorities have forced a Guardian journalist to leave the country after she reported on a scientific study that said Egypt was likely to have many more coronavirus cases than have been officially confirmed.

She cited a study accepted for publication in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, which had analysed flight records, traveller data and infection rates to estimate that Egypt could have had 19,310 coronavirus cases by early March, with the lower end of the range about 6,000 cases. The Egyptian government’s official count at the time period covered by the data was that three people were infected.

On 17 March, Michaelson’s press accreditation was revoked. The Guardian offered the Egyptian authorities the chance to write a letter for publication rebutting its report or the Canadian study, but received no response to the offer.

Egyptian lawmakers have called for stricter surveillance of women on video sharing apps after the arrests of a popular social media influencer and a well-known belly dancer on charges of debauchery and inciting immorality.

Instagram and TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam, 20, is under 15 days detention for a post encouraging women to broadcast videos in exchange for money, while dancer Sama el-Masry faces 15 days detention for posting “indecent” photos and videos.

“Because of a lack of surveillance some people are exploiting these apps in a manner that violates public morals and Egypt’s customs and traditions,”