One thing we miss by not staying in a hotel is delivery of The Egyptian Gazette to our room each morning. The Gazette is an eight-page English-language daily newspaper. It focuses primarily on Egyptian events but also has world and middle-eastern news. I picked one up while we were downtown today and noticed that they have a website so I (or you, dear reader) can keep up on current events. Just follow this link.
I noticed a couple of articles in today's paper that relate to my recent posts.
- An acute shortage of butane gas cylinders is threatening to cause sales of sweets for the Prophet Mohamed's Birthday next month to plummet, a senior trade official said yesterday.
- Flyover collapses in Fayyoum. This was just a small article noting that a flyover (a highway overpass) collapsed when hit by a dredger mounted on a giant truck. This didn't make the on-line edition. Glad it happened after we visited since it closed the Cairo-Fayyoum highway for a while.
I also note that the Analogue to Digital TV transition here is scheduled for 2015.
But the website omits my favorite part of the Gazette, a column titled "Red-handed" which usually reports on a couple of interesting local crimes each day. Today's best item is:
The Judiciary Disciplinary Tribunal has dismissed chief of an appeal court only known as H.A. in Alexandria from his position ... a citizen had lodged a complaint to the Justice Minister against chief of the court ... accusing him of committing wild acts at the villa of a friend which were deemed unbecoming to his prestigious post. The judge was claimed to drink alcohol, smoke hashish cigarettes and bring hookers to the villa. ...the law stipulates that mere suspicion is quite enough to end the career of a judge.
This gives you the flavor of the column. So you can see the website is not complete enough for me to quit buying the paper.
On the other hand, I saw a couple of items on the website that were not in the hard copy.
There is a daily poll:
Yesterday's question: Did the world media do a good, balanced job during the Gaza war?
- Yes 35 per cent
- No 42 per cent
- I don’t know 23 per cent
Today's question: Has Barack Obama done well in his first days of president?
- Yes:
- No:
- I don't know:
The front page of the website also conveniently carries the weather forecast, exchange rates and prayer times.
UPDATE: Feb 13
How did that poll question turn out?
Has Barack Obama done well in his first days of presidency?
- Yes 43 per cent
- No 39 per cent
- I don’t know 12 per cent
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