Issue: 73
The Most Important People Were Not in Copenhagen

The most powerful individuals on the planet have convened here to reach a deal. But based on the quality of the deal that emerged, I believe that the important people in the world are elsewhere.
Issue: 71
Egypt: 38 degrees and searing sun - it's winter by the Red Sea!

Maybe it would have been wise to have learned a few words of Arabic before my stay at the Makadi Palace. If I'd looked up the word for 'an adaptor' I could have prevented a doctor being hastily dispatched to my room.
And a smattering of the local dialect would have come in handy when explaining to the bell boy, who let himself in at 5am to collect my bags, that he was 11 hours early for my 4pm check-out.
Language barriers aside, it is hard not to feel thoroughly relaxed at the vast terracotta-coloured complex that has sprung up in the desert to cater for the many tourists who flock to Egypt's Red Sea coast.

The shifting Sands of Net Debate

The sand and deep blue sea of Sharm el-Sheikh are a magnet for winter sun worshippers - a place to have serious fun. This week, though, it is also somewhere to do some serious thinking about the future of the internet.
Amidst the swimming shorts and bikinis in this Egyptian resort, on the Red Sea, fifteen hundred besuited men and women stand out.
They are attending the four-day Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a United Nations' sponsored gathering to try to reach a consensus on where the net should be going.
The meeting, of governments, advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations, is happening at a time when the internet is changing as fast as the shifting sands of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Egypt has bid to be one of the first countries with an Arabic top-level domain

The Egyptian government on Monday announced it had applied for an Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) from Icann, the internet naming co-ordinator. Tarek Mohamed Kamel, Egypt's minister of communication and information technology, told the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Sharm el-Sheikh on 16 November that the new domain name would be '.misr' written in Arabic, which translates into English as '.egypt'.
"The internet now speaks Arabic," Kamel said in an Icann statement. "This proves that Icann is interested in the multilingual development process of the internet and we're thankful to be one of the first to apply for an Arabic IDN."
Egypt's OCI forms joint venture with Brazil's FITCO

Egypt's Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) (OCIC.CA) (OCICq.L) said on Wednesday it is forming a joint venture with Brazil's FITCO International S.A. to distribute its fertiliser products.
OCI, Egypt's biggest fertilisers maker, had signed an agreement with FITCO in March to supply and import urea into Brazil.
For more details, please visit: http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSLI3952720091118
 

Good Reads

Easy Print In Sharm

The season is starting, and that means marketing, marketing, and marketing. The road race begins for businesses to get out there, and capture their required target markets. The common methodology for this, prior to the opening of Easy Print, was, let’s print flyers thousands of flyers, using offset printing techniques, so we can distribute them all over town town. Surely if one prints 5,000 flyers and distributes them, people will show up to their venue. Isn’t that how it always worked? At Easy Print, and in Europe and the States, that is considered an ultimate waste of money and paper.

Today in Sharm, there are new tools you can use, to ensure your print requirements are made Easy.

To Sharm Parents

I was fortunate enough to become a parent, and what I can say so far is, parenting is a tough job – tougher than any other job, let alone in a place like Sharm, with all its diversities. With this mind, I did a little bit of research. I spent the last 2 weeks having chats with different parents about what their take on parenting in Sharm is like. It was very interesting what I learnt.

My Daughter My Love

As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
(Solomon Ibn Gabirol)

Daughters warm your heart.

From the day they are born until the day you hand them over into someone else’s care.
A daughter is truly a blessing, a gift from God.

What do you do when a nervous young man asks your permission to marry your angel?
When you know her heart and wings have already flown into his nest. When you know this nervous young man is worthy of her love? You rejoice.

The happiness you feel is twofold, the first is recognition that she has finally grown up and chosen a partner to accompany her on the most important journey of her life.

Latest Reviews

Dear Lady

I don't know from where I can start I am an Egyptian lady living in sharm for 2  and half years. I am 23, and recently i am not feeling well here. I choose to write to you because I like what you always write, and also because you are in the same city, so maybe u will understand me. I feel that Sharm is full of russians and every time i look around me i find them with open clothes, and egyptian men around them holding their hands and maybe more! When I apply to any good position that suits my qualifications, the answer is, sorry we need a russian girl...i’m not saying they are all bad, some of them are my best friends, but some have to respect our traditions.