Egypt in the News on 3 March 2019
The ongoing debate over the constitutional amendments continued to fill opinion pages in the Western press over the weekend. Michael Wahid Hanna writes in the Financial Times that the opposition marks Egypt’s last chance to “preserve [its] republican character,” while Yasmine El Rashidi wonders in a piece for the NYT if the proposed constitutional amendments will spark another revolution.
Other headlines worth noting in brief include:
- The National takes a look at how Egypt became MENA’s fastest-growing startup scene.
- Whose place is it to speak about LGBT+ rights in the Arab world,asks a Thomson Reuters Foundation piece, following controversial remarks made by Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s prime minister, at the Sharm conference last week.
- Four members of Hamas who had been detained in Egypt since 2015 were returned to Gaza on Thursday, reports The Times of Israel.
- Supply Ministry reforms on food subsidies are seeing opposition, as the ministry restricts subsidies to only the neediest members of society, according to The Arab Weekly.
- Rami Malek’s Oscar win is great, but where is the home-grown Arab representation? Such is the question posed by an opinion piece in the NYT that explores the political, financial and social struggles of movie makers in the region hoping to leave their mark in the annals of Oscar history.