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Wednesday, 13 December 2017

A somewhat boring night on the airwaves as talking heads stop talking about Jerusalem

The airwaves served up a (somewhat boring) mixed bag of nuts last night as the talking heads finally grew weary of discussing Jerusalem.

Hona Al Assema’s Lamees Al Hadidi spent a chunk of her evening talking about bitcoin, starting with a general overview of the cryptocurrency (watch, runtime: 8:08).

Banque Misr Vice Chairman Akef El Maghraby explained that banks in Egypt and around the world aren’t yet dealing in bitcoin or other virtual currencies because they remain unregulated, are highly volatile, and come with high security risks (watch, runtime: 3:32).

Lamees also talked to information technology expert Hossam Saleh about the current darling of global risk takers (watch, runtime: 7:35) — and chatted with the chairman of a hotel furnishing company, who told the host about his own experience with bitcoin (watch, runtime: 10:47).

Over on Kol Youm, Amr Adib spoke to Education Minister Tarek Shawki about the ‘new education system’ currently in the works. The system, which will come into effect as of the next academic year, will encompass students at all grade levels from nursery through high school. A prominent feature of the new model is the diversification of tests across different schools to stop encouraging students to memorize a “model answer” for standardized questions (watch, runtime: 7:35).

Adib also talked about the collapse of a building in Shobra’s Rod El Farag, which he attributed to corruption that gives unlicensed and unsafe buildings a free pass. MP John Talaat joined Adib to discuss the issue (watch, runtime: 5:26).

Masaa DMC’s Osama Kamal also spoke to deputy head of the House Housing Committee Mohamed Ismail about the building collapse, which he also attributed to building code violations overlooked by local officials. Ismail called on increased oversight from the Housing Ministry (watch, runtime: 6:43).

Separately, Trade and Industry Minister Tarek Kabil phoned in to Al Hayah Al Youm to tell host Tamer Amin about the ongoing World Trade Organization’s ministerial conference in Buenos Aires. According to Kabil, Egypt is acting as a leader of sorts in presenting African countries’ trade issues during negotiations (watch, runtime: 4:37).

Meanwhile on Yahduth fi Masr, Sherif Amer spoke to sources about an upcoming list of presidential pardons for some 250 individuals, most of them apparently jailed for acts of political protest.

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