A spokesman for the Jordanian body that handles firefighting says a Norwegian-flagged ship laden with wood has caught fire while unloading in the Red Sea port of Aqaba. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Tag Archives: Red Sea
Israel deploys Iron Dome near Red Sea resort of Eilat
Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defence system near the Red Sea resort of Eilat, which is close to the border with Egypt, an army spokeswoman said.
“An Iron Dome battery was deployed this morning in Eilat,” the spokeswoman told AFP.
“The batteries are deployed in several areas of the country and moved around according to changes in the (security) situation,” she added without elaborating.
But Israeli media said the deployment was related to unrest in Egypt, where the army is waging a campaign to drive militants out of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Eilat.
Ynet news website also pointed out that the deployment came at the height of the tourist season in southern Israel.
Eilat has been the target of attacks in the past. In April the town was struck by rocket fire from the Sinai and debris of a rocket that hit northern Eilat on July 4 were found days later.
Egypt’s official news agency MENA on Thursday reported that 10 jihadists had been killed in the Sinai Peninsula in the past two days during the army offensive launched to curtail a surge in violence since Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was ousted on July 3 in a military-led coup.
The Iron Dome deployment also comes hours after two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel late on Thursday night, causing no casualties or damage, police said.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Egypt faces huge challenges after political turmoil
The interim government tasked with putting Egypt back on track after president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster faces enormous challenges, from fixing the shattered economy to restoring security and democracy, experts say.
The new cabinet does have several factors working in its favour, however.
A wide section of the population that was bitterly disillusioned with Morsi’s rule, including several ministers, is supported by the country’s top religious authorities, both Muslim and Christian.
Separately, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait threw Egypt a financial lifeline last week, pledging $12 billion in aid and allaying fears of the country going bankrupt in the short term.
But major risks remain, with the threat of more violence between members of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and the security forces, and a surge in deadly attacks by militants in the Sinai, home to Egypt’s luxury Red Sea resorts.
Interim president Adly Mansour has set the government a tight timetable for reforming the constitution and holding fresh elections, while structural economic problems, including unaffordable food and fuel subsidies and a bloated public sector, must be confronted.
“There are a variety of challenges and unfortunately they can be overwhelming,” said Samer Shehata, who teaches Arab studies at Georgetown University.
Islamist parties and movements are totally absent from the new 34-member cabinet, in which a number of well-known technocrats hold senior positions.
Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy is a seasoned diplomat and former ambassador to Washington, accomplished economist and World Bank veteran Ahmed Galal heads the finance ministry, and Ziad Bahaa Eldin, another finance expert, was nominated minister for international cooperation.
Leftwing activist Kamal Abu Eita, a respected trade union leader, was appointed labour minister.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s appointment as deputy premier bolsters the military’s strong support for the government, while also raising suspicions about the cabinet’s independence from the generals who toppled Morsi.
Shehata says restoring security, which has sharply deteriorated since the fall of former strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, is essential.
A key task facing the government, namely how to bring back international investment and attract tourists, “has to be predicated on some kind of stability or security”, he said.
Reforming the police, known for its brutal methods and a leadership little-changed since the Mubarak era, is another pressing issue.
“The police hated the Brotherhood and now the police are newly elevated and I’m afraid calls for reform of the interior ministry in a meaningful way are not going to be heard or are not going to be executed,” Shehata said.
Sophie Pommier, an expert on the Arab world at Sciences-Po university in Paris, says the new government is under greater pressure to achieve results than its predecessor.
“Lacking the legitimacy of an elected government, it will have to earn it through concrete results,” she said.
Besides fixing the economy, the cabinet headed by liberal economist Hazem al-Beblawi “must meet high expectations in terms of the redistribution” of wealth, with Egyptians “waiting for quick signs that things are going in the right direction,” Pommier added.
But continuing violence “will complicate the situation”, she said.
The Brotherhood, weakened but not defeated after Morsi’s overthrow, has certainly …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Gunmen clash with Egypt army near Israel: security
Gunmen clashed with the Egyptian army on Sunday near the Israeli border, security sources said, in the latest violence to erupt in the Sinai peninsula since the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi.
The fighting broke out in the area of Al-Wifaq, in northern Sinai, after militants tried unsuccessfully to blow up a police vehicle with explosives.
Clashes between the gunmen and the army were ongoing, the sources said, with Bedouin elders trying to negotiate a ceasefire.
There no immediate reports of casualties.
The restive Sinai peninsula, home to Egypt’s luxury Red Sea resorts, has been hit by a surge of violence since Morsi’s ouster on July 3, with militants killing a police officer early on Friday.
A Coptic Christian man found decapitated a day earlier, while two people died in an attack on a checkpoint in the peninsula on Wednesday.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Ancient port found in Egypt
By hnn
An ancient Egyptian harbor has emerged on the Red Sea coast, dating back about 4,500 years.
“Evidence unearthed at the site shows that it predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world,” Pierre Tallet, Egyptologist at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and director of the archaeological mission, told Discovery News….
Source:
Discovery News
Source URL:
Date:
4-12-13
Egypt discovers ancient port and writings
Egypt‘s state minister of antiquities says a Franco-Egyptian exploration team has discovered a Red Sea port dating back about 4,500 years to Great Pyramid builder King Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom.
Mohammed Ibrahim said Thursday the port was discovered at Wadi el-Jarf, nearly 180 kilometers (110 miles) south the coastal city of Suez.
In a statement, Ibrahim said the port was used to transfer copper from Sinai to the Nile valley.
The team working in the Suez archaeological area also discovered hieroglyphic papyri, considered the oldest found in Egypt.
Ibrahim said the papyri reveal details about port workers and their daily lives. Most date back to the 27th year of the reign of Cheops, also known as Khufu.
The documents were transferred to the Suez museum.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/lbukSY-2Qgc/
Over 50 Iranian tourists visit southern Egypt
More than 50 Iranian tourists visited sites in southern Egypt on Sunday amid tight security as part of a bilateral tourism promotion deal that has generated some controversy.
The tourists, who according to a security official arrived on some of the first commercial flights between the two countries in three decades, will be restricted in their movement following objections from some ultraconservative Sunni Muslims to receiving visitors from Shiite Iran. Members of the Salafi movement in Egypt consider Shiites heretics, and fear Iran is trying to spread its faith in the Sunni world.
After visiting the city of Aswan Sunday, the group is expected to travel to the ancient city of Luxor in a boat down the Nile on Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media.
On Saturday, a private Air Memphis flight carried eight Iranians, including two diplomats, to Tehran on the re-opened route from Egypt. The ministry of civil aviation said in a statement Sunday that the routes will operate in southern cities and Red Sea resorts, not Cairo.
Following the June election of Egypt‘s Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, Egypt and Iran agreed to promote tourism between the two countries, in a sign of warming relations. Diplomatic relations were frozen after Egypt signed its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Iran underwent its Islamic Revolution.
Egypt‘s Foreign and Civil Aviation Ministries have set regulations restricting the number and movement of Iranian tourists in Egypt, keeping Iranian tourists from visiting the capital Cairo — mainly because several shrines of revered Shiite figures are located there.
Iranian tourists would only be allowed to visit certain sites, such as the ancient cities of Luxor and Red Sea resort areas like Sharm el-Sheikh.
AP Interview: Egypt says Iranian tourists no risk
Egypt‘s tourism minister says Iranian tourists would help shore up Egypt‘s dilapidated tourism industry and would not pose security challenge to the nation.
Speaking to The Associated Press in Cairo on Thursday, Hesham Zazou says he does not worry that visiting Iranians would try to export a revolution to Egypt.
Preparations are under way to allow Iranian tourists visit at a time when the Egyptian government is looking to boost the tourism business back to pre-revolution levels when 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010.
Continued unrest since the 2011 uprising that forced longtime authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak to step down, have scared away tourists and investment.
Last year, the number of tourists climbed to more than 10 million, but most tourists go to beach resorts along the Red Sea.
Israeli, Norwegian tourists suspected to be kidnapped in Egypt, officials say
An Israeli man and a Norwegian woman went missing in Egypt‘s Sinai Peninsula on Friday and are suspected to have been kidnapped, officials said.
An Egyptian intelligence official in Sinai said a Bedouin taxi driver told police he was driving the two to the popular Red Sea diving site of Dahab when gunmen ambushed his vehicle and captured the two tourists. The Israeli is believed to be of Arab origin, he added.
Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Svein Michelsen in Oslo said that a Norwegian citizen had been kidnapped, while Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson said his country was investigating reports of abduction.
The driver told Egyptian security officials that the gunmen seek the release of a detained relative and aim to free the tourists in exchange — a common motive for past abductions. Tourists are typically not held long and are released unharmed.
The gunmen told the taxi driver to deliver their demand to police, according to officials who sat in on the driver’s questioning.
Officials said Bedouin had blocked the road between Dahab and the Israeli border earlier this week to demand their relative’s release.
A top Egyptian security official in the southern Sinai city of Nuweiba, just north of Dahab, said he is heading to the border crossing to find out more about the identities of the tourists.
All Egyptian officials spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the subject.
Egypt officials: 2 tourists missing in Sinai
An Egyptian intelligence official says security forces are investigating a suspected kidnapping of an Israeli-Arab tourist and a Norwegian female in the Sinai Peninsula.
The official says a Bedouin taxi driver claims he was driving the two to the popular Red Sea diving site of Dahab on Friday when gunmen ambushed his vehicle and c captured the two tourists.
Security officials are treating the incident as a disappearance, but say they are investigating the driver’s account that the two were kidnapped.
A top security official in Nuweiba southern Sinai says he is heading to the Israeli-Egyptian border crossing to find out more about the identities of the tourists.
All officials spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the subject.
Former Egyptian ministers found not guilty
An Egyptian court has cleared two former ministers of charges that they sold state lands for cut-rate prices in the country’s prized Red Sea resort areas.
Former Tourism Minister Zuheir Garana and ex-Housing Minister Ahmed Maghrabi were found not guilty in the case involving the sale of land in the Red Sea resort of Ain Sokhna and the popular tourist city of Hurgahda.
The land was purchased by a businessman from the United Arab Emirates when Hosni Mubarak was president.
State auditors reviewed the case prior to Saturday’s verdict.
Garana was sentenced to up to eight years in prison and Maghrabi received a five-year sentence for guilty verdicts in previous corruption trials.
Their requests for appeals have been accepted and the two will be allowed out of prison pending retrials.
Christian Bale to Part the Red Sea?
Christian Bale is now reportedly in talks with 20th Century Fox to star in Ridley Scott’s Moses movie.
The upcoming film, titled Exodus, was originally scripted by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, but the project was recently made a studio priority after Dragon Tattoo scribe Steve Zaillian came on board for a rewrite. (The writer also worked with Scott on American Gangster.) According to Deadline, Fox hopes to get the ball rolling as soon as Scott completes work on his other film The Counselor.
This news comes hot on the heels of Steven Spielberg‘s departure from another Moses project, Gods and Kings, which is set up at Warner Bros. Life of Pi director Ang Lee is next in line for that one, although he’s yet to formally meet with the studio about it.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at IGN Movies
Airport closed after plane skidded in Poland
An airport spokesman says teams of experts are working to free a Boeing 737 airplane from a muddy field after it skidded off the runway while landing in Katowice, southern Poland.
The plane from the Czech Travel Service airline skidded late Tuesday and went some 20 meters (22 yards) off the Pyrzowice airport runway and ran into wet ground, where its front landing gear sank. None of the 176 passengers and six crew members was hurt. They had arrived from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
Airport spokesman Cezary Orzech said Wednesday that the airport remains closed while Czech experts work to pull the plane out.
All flights have been redirected to nearby Krakow.
Covert auctions in Egypt put arms that freed Libya into hands of terrorists
By Paul Alster
The weapons that helped Libyan rebels oust dictator Muammar Qaddafi are turning up for sale at clandestine auctions in Egypt‘s lawless Sinai Desert, where shadowy buyers purchase firearms for Al Qaeda and Hamas operatives, sources told FoxNews.com.
The illicit sales take place in the barren Sinai peninsula, where Moses is believed to have wandered with the children of Israel for 40 years. Auctions announced through the grapevine bring caravans of foreigners, all with huge sums of money at their disposal and all with the same mission, Israel Defense Force sources told FoxNews.com.
The vast and rugged desert area inhabited by an estimated 250,000 Bedouins has borders with Egypt, Gaza and Israel, as well as a long coastline on the Red Sea. While the location makes it easy for buyers to come from various regions, it also combines with the impromptu nature of the auctions to make them almost impossible to stop.
“There are more and more contacts between Al Qaeda and the small groups in Sinai,” a senior source in the Israel Defense Force told the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The hosts of these auctions aren’t just doing it for the money, the source said. Al Qaeda-linked jihadists are becoming more and more influential in the region, and playing a large role in who shows up for the auctions and who leaves with the bombs, anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons that are peddled there.
“If at the beginning we saw these tribes supporting terror cells for the sake of money, now we see it becoming more an ideological support, and we see more and more cases that these groups of Al Qaeda-influenced extreme jihadists are becoming more powerful than the tribes,” the source said.
With Libya rendered an unstable tribal nation rife with internal power struggles between secular moderates and radical Islamists in the wake of Qaddafi’s ouster, accountability for weapons in the north African country is impossible. The U.S., which denies directly supplying arms to the Libyan rebels, is concerned about weapons being sold in the region.
“The potential for proliferation and smuggling of unsecured small arms and weapons in the region is a concern to the U.S. government and the international community,” a U.S. State Department official told FoxNews.com.
The New York Times reported in December 2012 that the Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar, only to express alarm when evidence mounted that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants.
Qatar, strong supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, may well have been playing both sides of the game, as the U.S official strongly hinted to The New York Times. The weapons being auctioned in the Sinai desert almost certainly include many sent by Qatar to Libya, a disturbing consequence that had been flagged early by some American officials.
The weapons don’t always travel too far before they are deployed. A violent ambush by Islamist rebels from Sinai on an Israeli bus and a civilian car …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Saudi religious police arrest Ethiopian workers for practicing Christianity
Saudi Arabia‘s notorious religious police, known as the mutawa, swooped in on a private gathering of at least 53 Ethiopian Christians this month, shutting down their private prayer, and arresting the peacefulgroup of foreign workers for merely practicing their faith, FoxNews.com has learned.
The mixed group of men and womenwas seized in a private residence in the city of Dammam, the capital of the wealthy oil province in Eastern Arabia, and Saudi authorities chargedthree Christian leaders with seeking to convert Muslims to Christianity. The latest crackdown on Christianity in the ultra-fundamental Islamic country comes on the heels of abrutal 2011/2012 incarceration and torture of 36 Ethiopian Christians, and drew a sharp rebuke from a U.S. lawmaker.
“Nations that wish to be a part of the responsible nations of the world must see the protection of religious freedom and the principles of reason as an essential part of the duty of the state,” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., who sits on the Caucus on Religious Minorities in the Middle East, told FoxNews.com.
During Advent in 2011, Saudi authorities stormed a prayer meeting at the private home of one of the Ethiopian workers in the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The Saudi mutawa imprisoned 29 women and six men for more than seven months in barbaric prison conditions, where the men faced severe beatings and the women were subjected to sexually intrusive torture methods. After Christian organizations and human rights groups, as well as the United States government, complained, the Saudisdeported the35 Christian Ethiopian workers in August 2012.
Last March, Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the grand mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, declared it is “necessary to destroy all the churches in the Arabian Peninsula.”
Still, Saudi officials claim to tolerate other faiths even as the mutawa, or Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, mount their crackdowns, said Dwight Bashir, deputy director for policy at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
“During an official USCIRF visit to the Kingdom earlier this month, Saudi officials reiterated the government‘s long-standing policy that members of the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, also known as the religious police, should not interfere in private worship,” Bashir said. “However, the past year has seen an uptick of reports that private religious gatherings have been raided resulting in arrests, harassment and deportations of foreign expatriate workers.
“The U.S. government and international community should demand that any expatriate worker detained and held without charge for private religious activity in the Kingdom should be released immediately,” Bashir added.
A spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington said she “is not allowed” to give her nameand referred a FoxNews.com query to Nail al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington. He did not immediately return FoxNews.com telephone and email requests. Diplomats from Ethiopia‘s embassy in Washington told FoxNews.com they are looking into preparing a statement about the arrests.
Nina Shea, the director of the Washington-based Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, told FoxNews.com that the arrests in Dammam are “part of Saudi Arabia‘s policy to …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Islam or death? Egypt's Christians targeted by new terror group
By Lisa Daftari
A group of Christian priests from a local Coptic church in Egypt were told to convert to Islam or face death, according to an Arabic news site.
The incident, which comes in the midst of continued persecution and pressure on Egypt‘s Christian community, took place this week in the town of Safaga, near the Red Sea, the El Balad site reported.
According to El Balad, the threats are from a new group in Egypt, Jihad al-Kufr, whose name translates to Jihad against non-believers or non-Muslims. The group targets non-Muslims, and reportedly pressures them to convert to Islam.
“It’s not the first time. This is happening every day,” said Adel Guindy, president of Coptic Solidarity and a member of Egypt‘s Coptic community who travels between Paris and Cairo. “This one incident caught the attention of the news agencies, but there are worse things happening to the Christians every day in Egypt,” he said.
Christians have felt increasingly at risk since the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, which resulted in the rise of President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
“It has definitely worsened under the revolution. Once the worst part of the society surfaced — the Islamists — the Copts are paying a heavy price. The West doesn’t really feel our pain. It’s a war of attrition,” Guindy said.
Copts are the largest Christian community in the Middle East, and the most prominent religious minority in the region. Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt‘s 85 million people.
Egypt‘s new constitution has come under scrutiny by many for including elements of Sharia, or Islamic law, while simultaneously legitimizing the marginalization of the country’s religious minorities by denying them legal protection. It also granted increased powers to Morsi, who self-declared sweeping powers in a Nov. 22 power grab that prompted heavy international criticism.
The new constitution was ratified after its second referendum in late December, winning more than 70 percent of the vote. Moderate Egyptians took to the streets to protest the rushed ratification, but the demonstrations were quickly quashed.
Some believe members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic extremists, emboldened by the constitution‘s passage, have stepped up attacks against Egyptian Christians.
“There was a relative amount of freedom (for Christians) before Egypt‘s revolution, and many were hoping for more freedoms, and now things are unfortunately much worse and much more difficult,” said Jason DeMars, founder of Present Truth Ministries, a Christian advocacy group that tracks religious persecution around the world.
“It’s what they’ve always wanted to do, but Mubarak held some of that back because of the support he got from the United States and other Western countries,” DeMars said. “People were paying attention, but now the extremists are seeing this as an opportunity to crack down on the community there.”
Extremists over the weekend set fire to a Christian Church in the Province of Fayoum, the second such assault against the town’s Coptic population in a month. The attackers ripped down the church’s cross and hurled rocks at church members, injuring four people including the priest, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Pastor Disparages GOP, Describes Obama As Moses, In Pre-inauguration Message
Barack Obama and family attended a service at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church just before privately taking his oath of office to begin his second term Sunday.
In itself, that fact scarcely bears repeating. The content of the pastor’s message, however, provides a distinct insight into the psyche of Obama’s sycophantic followers.
After years of hearing Rev. Jeremiah Wright spew unabashedly leftist, anti-American propaganda from the pulpit, the Obama family might think such outrageous speech is normal. Traditional Americans, however, should be outraged.
Pastor Ronald Braxton didn’t waste any time in fawning over his church’s special guest, comparing him and his relentless attack on individual liberty to Moses parting the Red Sea.
In both cases, he said “forward is the only option,” urging Obama to “stand on the rock.”
Continuing the ill-fitting analogy, Braxton reportedly equated those opposed to Obama’s usurpation of power to enemies of Moses and, by extension, God.
Before closing the service, the pastor initiated a chant of Obama’s second term slogan, “Forward.”
One reporter described the pastor’s message as “a worship service for the man Newsweek labeled ‘The Second Coming,’” adding, “if Obama thinks anything like the pastor he chose just before taking his oath of office, America is in for a long, narcissistic, imperial four years.”
Another conservative writer was understandably upset at the dearth of reporting on substantiative portions of the message, called out one Associated Press writer in particular.
“How did you miss that part about ‘enemies’? Were you too busy admiring how the church ‘was draped in reds, greens, and golds found in the African Kente cloth’ to pay attention?” he wrote, asking, “And how can it be that the word ‘forward’ doesn’t appear at all in your report?”
Certainly, the writer feigned ignorance, knowing full well the intent of America’s media complex is not to disseminate facts but to spread the convenient talking points provided by this administration.
Click here to get B. Christopher Agee’s latest book for less than $5! Like his Facebook page for engaging, relevant conservative content daily.
Photo credit: iambrianna (Creative Commons)
US Oks sanctions on Arab militant group, Saudi man
The U.S. has declared an Arab group responsible for targeting U.S. and Japanese ships as a foreign terrorist organization.
The State Department’s action freezes any assets the Abdullah Azzam Brigades holds in the U.S and bans Americans from doing business with the group.
The group attacked a Japanese oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz in 2010. It also has claimed responsibility for narrowly missing a U.S. amphibious assault ship in the Red Sea and for bombings of Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheik resort that killed 98 people in 2005.
The State Department on Thursday also set sanctions on senior al-Qaida member Abu Maryam al-Zahrani.
A Saudi citizen, al-Zahrani is believed to be in Pakistan. He has been described as a leader of the terrorist group’s new generation.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
Egypt traffic accident injures 5 French tourists
An Egyptian security official says five female French tourists were injured, two critically, when their minibus overturned on snow-covered mountain roads in the Sinai Peninsula.
The accident happened as the women were heading early Thursday to St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, said Col. Ahmed Said, the monastery’s police chief.
Ambulances rushed to the scene and the injured were transported to hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Said says two of the women are in critical condition. Their Egyptian driver was unharmed.
Road accidents are common in Egypt, which has one of the world’s worst traffic safety records. Snow however, such as that brought in by the fierce winter storm to hit the region this week, is a rarity.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News