Egyptian doctors threatening to strike, Many make as little as $63 a month working under poor conditions. They want a minimum salary of about $180.
Enter the lounge in the Nile Hospital, take a seat on a ripped leather couch, brush away the cigarette smoke and listen to a litany of complaints on the cruel economics of healthcare from doctors whose salaries are as low as $63 a month and who live with their parents.

The travails of doctors mirror the larger shortcomings of a government struggling to provide medical care in a country where about 45% of the population lives in poverty. Physicians across the nation complain of long hours, shrinking respect for their profession, lack of medicine and broken equipment. One gynecologist said his public hospital is so broke that he buys his own rubber gloves rather than wearing ones that have been washed for reuse.

"You get 10 extra pounds [about $1.80] if you work a 24-hour shift," said Mohammed Farahat, an orthopedic specialist. "But to buy your dinner during that shift costs you 15 pounds. So you're thinking, what good does it do?"

Egypt's doctors have been protesting for weeks and have set a March deadline for a nationwide strike. Their battle is the latest ripple of labor unrest that in recent months has sparked demonstrations by textile workers, university professors, pharmacists, train conductors and real estate tax collectors. High inflation, flat wages and anger at the government of President Hosni Mubarak are increasingly agitating both the educated and working classes in a moderate Arab state that is one of America's closest Middle East allies.

The Doctors Union is demanding an immediate minimum monthly salary of 1,000 pounds or about $180 for the 93,000 physicians working directly for the state. No salary at the Nile Hospital in northwest Cairo exceeds that, including the pay for surgeons, Farahat said.

The starting monthly pay for doctors can be as low as $23. The Egyptian Health Ministry said that it would gradually increase pay based on performance, but that its budget, like those of many government agencies, is too strapped to meet the union's demands.

"We sympathize with doctors," said Abdel Rahman Shahin, a ministry spokesman. "The state should finance [higher pay], but the state has a lot of obligations." He added that with phased-in performance bonuses "at least there is some change doctors will feel" by the end of the year.

Many doctors view the proposal as a paltry attempt to correct years of low salaries that are now quickly eaten up by a surge in inflation that has increased prices as much as 50% for food and other commodities over the last two years. The crisis has also reminded doctors that despite years of education and training, their average salaries are slightly higher than that of government accountants, who earn about $35 a month, and less than many university professors.

"Life is very difficult, but people expect you, as a doctor, to have a car, spend generously and leave huge tips," said Ahmed Sobhi, an internist at Nile Hospital who earns less than $65 a month. "The reality is my small salary. My wife and I and our new daughter live in an apartment owned by my father. We never go to the movies. Our only entertainment is to watch TV."

That description fits thousands of Egyptian doctors, many of whom vent their anxiety on a blog sponsored by Doctors Without Rights, a lobbying group founded in 2007.

A post filed by Dr. Ali Said reads: "An inspector from the municipality has passed by our hospital today. All he cared to check was whether we had trees or not. You tell inspectors, 'There is a shortage in equipment.' They tell you, 'There is no money for this nonsense.' . . . Have you ever heard of anything like this in any other part of the world?"

The physicians' stature and sense of professional entitlement have been tested by a state healthcare system burdened by bureaucracy and debt. Most doctors moonlight by rotating shifts at different hospitals and private clinics. This accumulates into strings of sleepless nights but can earn doctors an extra $90 a month. Many leave Egypt for richer Persian Gulf oil countries, where hospital salaries are many times higher.

"This is causing a brain drain," said Farahat, who sat puffy-eyed in scrubs and a lab coat. "I have doctor friends who have moved abroad and I'm thinking of going to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. The problem is that in 10 to 15 years, if all the doctors leave, there will be no one left to teach a younger generation of Egyptian physicians."

It is a sensitive time for doctors to be contemplating a strike. Mubarak and his ruling National Democratic Party are under pressure from labor groups demanding better wages and from opposition organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, pushing for political reforms. Calls for change have highlighted the widening anger the poor have for an upper class they regard as corrupt and aloof to the nation's problems.

The Doctors Union has a history of involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants Egypt governed by Islamic law and has seen hundreds of members arrested by security forces seeking to limit the group's chances in upcoming local elections. The doctors have been careful in recent demonstrations not to let their cause for higher salaries be subsumed into a wider and more dangerous political debate.

But many physicians feel that, although they still command a degree of respect in society, they are part of a vanishing middle class. "We have two classes today in Egypt -- the capitalists and the poor," Farahat said. "We have no middle class anymore. Given such conditions, there must be labor strikes."

His colleague, Mohammed Sayed, an orthopedic specialist, agreed. "Five years ago a strike by doctors would have been unthinkable," he said. "Overall, the economy is doing well, but the money is not getting to the people. It's going to the elite. In the 1960s and 1970s, Egypt had rich people but they were self-made, the sons of farmers who came from the Nile Delta. Today, the rich come from the rich class; they've done nothing to work for it. We are asking for a reasonable demand of 1,000 pounds a month."

The Egyptian government's underfunding of healthcare has created a public system in which the poor are forced to pay for medications, sutures and other items that would normally be covered by subsidies. The nation's healthcare system is divided into public and private institutions, but most hospital beds are funded by the state. Inflation and supply shortages prevent patients from filling prescriptions, resulting in extended illnesses and longer recovery times.

"We face difficulties in serving patients because public healthcare is, in effect, being privatized in a ruthless way," said Said Sayed, a spokesman for the Doctors Union, which represents Egypt's 167,000 physicians. "We cannot serve the poor patient in public hospitals."

Mohammed Sayed, a husky, congenial man, said he works a number of 24-hour shifts a month, which earns him an extra $10. Even before the rapid rise in inflation, he said, that was a maddeningly low sum.

His friend, Mohammed Wael Saad, a surgeon at Nile Hospital, said most Egyptians view doctors as singularly altruistic and find it odd that they would consider striking over financial matters.

"People think we are beyond money. But how can we live?" said Saad. "How can I give the best when I work long hours and earn as much as a nurse or a mill worker? Our salaries need to be commensurate with prosecutors'. They earn 2,000 pounds [about $365] a month. So, is it more important to put someone in jail or to save someone from dying?"

jeffrey.fleishman@ latimes.com

Noha El-Hennawy of The Times' Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.

Rice Sets New Mideast Trip Amid Gaza Turmoil, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits the Middle East again next week amid tensions over Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza and Israeli strikes against Gaza militants. Rice, on tour this week in Asia, is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Thursday in Tokyo. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.


Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (L) shakes hands with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas (R) prior to a meeting in Jerusalem, 19 Feb 2008
Mr. Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas committed, at the U.S.-organized Annapolis conference last November, to work for a settlement of the Mideast conflict by the end of this year.

But prospects for an agreement in 2008 have receded amid slow-moving talks between the sides, and chronic Gaza-related violence.

On Wednesday, Israeli air strikes in Gaza aimed at quelling rocket fire from the territory killed at least 10 Palestinians including several Hamas militants, while one of at least 20 rockets fired at the Israel town of Sderot from Gaza killed one person on a college campus.

State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey, who confirmed Rice's Middle East travel plans, condemned what he termed unprovoked attacks on innocent Israeli civilians but also counseled Israel to be measured in its response.

"Our long-standing view is that Israel has a right to defend itself," he said. "However, we always ask that, in doing so, they consider the consequences of those actions and the potential effect it might have. And we remain concerned about the civilian population in Gaza that continues to suffer as a result of Hamas's misrule and of Hamas's not only toleration but active support and promotion of these kinds of attacks on Israel."


Condoleezza Rice
Rice, now in Japan on the last stop of an Asian trip, will fly to the Middle East for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials in Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Ramallah next Tuesday and Wednesday.

By coincidence, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is visiting Tokyo and is to confer with Rice there Thursday in preparation for the Secretary's Jerusalem visit, her second this year.

Mr. Olmert, whose government is under heavy domestic pressure for stronger action to stop the Gaza rocket fire, said in Tokyo the problem will not halt peace negotiations with Mr. Abbas.

The Israeli leader said he is not sure an agreement in 2008 is achievable but said the sides are determined to make what he termed a "giant step forward" to end the dispute once and for all.

After her Middle East talks, Rice goes on to Brussels for a NATO foreign ministers' meeting next Thursday expected to be dominated by discussion of Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Tourists warned of UAE drug laws,Travellers to the United Arab Emirates are being warned about its severe drug laws which have seen dozens detained for apparently minor offences.
Fair Trials International said arrests were being made over tiny quantities of drugs and over-the-counter medicines.

British tourist Keith Brown was sentenced to four years in prison after Dubai customs officers found a 0.003g trace of cannabis stuck to his shoe.

Fair Trials, a legal charity, said it has seen a steep rise in such cases.

Golden beaches

Possession of painkillers like codeine and some cold and flu medication could result in a mandatory four-year prison sentence, Fair Trials International said.

In one of the most extreme cases, it reported a man being held after poppy seeds from a bread roll were found on his clothes.

In recent years, chic hotels, skyscrapers and golden beaches have turned Dubai and Abu Dhabi into popular tourist destinations.


Many have no idea what risks they're taking or their vulnerability to this very strict approach
Catherine Wolthuizen, Fair Trials International chief executive
Businesses too have flocked to the UAE, which promises a high standard of living because of its oil wealth.

However, while it is considered one of the most liberal countries in the Gulf, the Muslim country's drugs laws are severe.

Last year, 59 Britons were arrested in the UAE on drugs-related charges, according to the Foreign Office.


HELD IN THE UAE
Keith Brown, 43, Middlesex: Four-year jail term for possession of 0.003g of cannabis
Robert Dalton, 25, Kent: On trial for alleged possession of 0.03g of cannabis
20-year-old, West Yorkshire: On trial for alleged possession of 0.02g of cannabis
Tracy Wilkinson, 45, West Sussex: Held in custody for eight weeks for possession of codeine before release
Swiss national: Four-year jail term after poppy seeds found on his clothes
Source: Fair Trials International
Catherine Wolthuizen, chief executive of Fair Trials International, said customs authorities were using highly sensitive new equipment to conduct thorough searches on travellers.

"So many people now travel to Dubai and, as we're seeing, many have no idea what risks they're taking or their vulnerability to this very strict approach," she said.

"If they find any amount - no matter how minute - it will be enough to attract a mandatory four-year prison sentence.

"What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person."

Jet-lag tablets

Keith Brown and his wife had been on their way from London to Ethiopia when they were stopped and searched at Dubai airport.

At first customs officers found nothing, but then a roll-up cigarette was spotted caught in the tread of his shoe.

The 43-year-old, from Middlesex, was charged with possession of 0.003g of cannabis and was sentenced to four years in prison.


I suppose there's a sense of disbelief more than anything else
Cat Le-Huy, held in Dubai
British resident Cat Le-Huy was arrested in Dubai for carrying Melatonin jet-lag tablets, which are sold over the counter in the US and Dubai.

Mr Le-Huy told BBC News he was forced to sign a document in Arabic and was refused a translator.

He said once the tablets were proved to be Melatonin, police took what he described as dirt from his bag and said they were now testing it to see if it was cannabis.

Speaking from inside the prison, he said he knew nothing of any drugs in his bag.

"I suppose there's a sense of disbelief more than anything else. I miss my friends and family back in London and I'm also aware of the other stress this is causing to friends and family.

"As far as my welfare, I'm being treated relatively well and I have to go through the system and whatever path that takes, I'll just have to deal with it."

Bread roll

Aside from illegal substances, travellers have also been held for possession of prescription drugs.

Tracy Wilkinson was held in custody for eight weeks before customs officers accepted the codeine she was carrying had been prescribed by her doctor for back pains.

Meanwhile, a Swiss national is serving a four-year jail term after three poppy seeds from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow airport were found on his clothes.

Fair Trials International has published a full list of banned substances on its website.

The Foreign Office is advising all travellers carrying any prescription drugs to take a doctor's letter detailing exactly why they need the medicine and the exact dose.

The UAE Embassy in London said it would not comment at this stage.

Egypt arrests militants from Gaza,Egypt has arrested 15 Palestinians armed with weapons and explosives who are believed to have crossed the Gaza border since it was breached last week.
The men, who were detained in the Sinai peninsula, also had detonators, flak jackets and grenades.

The arrests came as Egyptian government officials held talks with the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, on how to re-establish border controls.

A Hamas official said progress had been made, but no agreement was reached.

The group, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, is pressing for a role in how the border crossing is operated in the future.

Hamas has indicated that it could prevent Egypt from sealing the frontier if it is not officially recognised. A previous Egyptian attempt last Friday ended with militants bulldozing a second hole in the border.


Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been crossing freely into Egypt near the town of Rafah since 23 January to buy essential supplies made scarce by a recent tightened Israeli blockade.

The Israeli government imposed the restrictions a week earlier after a sharp rise in rocket attacks by militants based in Gaza.

Weapons smuggling

Egyptian officials said suspected militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad were among the 15 Palestinians arrested near the border town of al-Arish and in remote parts of Sinai in recent days.


We will not give up our legitimacy to anybody
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar
All of those detained had entered Egypt via Rafah, apart from two who had travelled from Gulf Arab states, they added.

Police are reportedly looking for four other armed Palestinians who are believed to have crossed the border.

Israel has said it is concerned that militants are taking advantage of the freedom of movement to bolster their stores of weapons and explosives.

It has also warned that foreign militants might use the opportunity to infiltrate the coastal territory and launch attacks on Israel.


GAZA BLOCKADE
17 January: Israel seals border following rise in rocket attacks
20 January: Gaza's only power plant shuts down
22 January: Israel eases restrictions
22 January: Egyptian border guards disperse Palestinian protest against closure
23 January: Border wall breached

In order to limit such activity, Egyptian security forces have maintained a tight security cordon in place around the border area to keep Palestinians from travelling further into Egypt.

Barbed wire and cement has also been used to close sections of the border and Egyptian troops have been deployed along the breaches.

On Friday, the forces began preventing Palestinian vehicles crossing into Egypt, but are still allowing people to enter on foot. Heavily-laden Egyptian trucks are also being allowed to continue transporting supplies into Gaza.

A senior Egyptian security official told Reuters news agency on Thursday that there had still not been official word on when the borders would be closed completely.

He said any closure would be incremental to avoid friction with Palestinians.

'Contradicts reality'

The Egyptian government has held talks in Cairo with both Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Thursday's talks had "concentrated on the facilitation of movement and the entry of Palestinians on the Egyptian-Palestinian border".


"It is still early to talk about details," he said.

Mr Abbas has rejected Hamas' claim over the border and reiterated his refusal to negotiate with Hamas leaders.

"Hamas has to end its coup in Gaza, accept all international obligations, and accept holding early elections," he told a press conference. "After that, our hearts are open for any dialogue."

But Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar said yesterday that discussion about shared control "contradicts reality".

"The reality is that there is a legitimate government. We will not give up our legitimacy to anybody," he said.

Nevertheless, Mr Zahhar said that while no agreement had been reached, some progress had been made.

Cairo wants to see a return to a 2005 agreement by which the border would be controlled by the Palestinian Authority and monitored by the EU and Israel.

Middle East tour diary,George W Bush has concluded a Middle East tour which included his first visit as US president to Israel and the Palestinian territories, as well as stops in the Gulf and Egypt. BBC correspondent Matthew Price, who travelled with him, wrote a diary on his progress.


16 JANUARY - 2230 GMT


I suppose the strangest thing about travelling on Air Force One is the knowledge that just a few metres in front of you on the same plane are some of the worlds most powerful people: Bush, Rice, Hadley. Sitting just up in front. Or in the case of Bush possibly lying in his bed, which is right up in the nose of the plane.

After our mad dash to the airport we rushed to the back of the plane where secret service men checked our passes off on a list and we went on board. Not where you walk on a commercial flight but much lower, similar to where the luggage goes. Up the stairs, probably 20 in all and then there's a landing with the media area, the staff area and the secret service too.

Inside - well, it's grey. Pretty nasty actually. And the media cabin is a bit like being in business seats with economy service. First timers like me get a goody bag. It used to have a box of cigarettes inside with the presidential seal on them, but Nancy Reagan, I'm told, objected, so now you get White House seal M&Ms.

There's no safety announcement. I guess if you're looking after the big man everyone else can fend for themselves. And we didn't have to turn off mobiles - although there's no signal at 33,000 feet! There are 14 seats in the journo area and a couple of TVs.

Bill Clinton used to come back and chat. The photographer next to me said it was bad. You'd be trying to sleep after a gruelling trip and he'd be trying to banter. No such problem with GW. He stays well away from us.

The most interesting thing was how this is the REAL bubble. The motorcade raced us to the tarmac then the plane then we taxied and flew and never once met a real person properly. I know that's modern politics, but I can't help thinking that George W Bush had hardly been abroad when he was elected president and then for the last seven years he has been in a presidential bubble - he's been subjected to this! And he lives in Washington, divorced as that place can be from real life too!


I just realised while writing that I woke up this morning in Riyadh, dropped in on Sharm el-Sheikh, and am now in Washington DC. And all day I think I've had only one chat with a person from any of the three countries.

We landed a little early, around half-seven, and trotted out into a cold Andrew's Air Force Base. To the right Marine One, the presidential helicopter. And there, the man himself walking towards it.

He cuts a lonely figure, slightly hunched. The chopper taxied then lifted off, at 7.48. Back to the White House, the end of a visit that has seemed to be more about keeping up good relations, than real achievements.

Me? I shared a taxi into town, to a funky little hotel. It's been an amazing trip. I think I'll sleep well tonight.


16 JANUARY - 1230 GMT

Now in the motorcade, but the old hands are nervous. We're too far back from the front of the motorcade.

Finally into Air Force One! And back to the US with the president. More to follow the other end.

16 JANUARY - 1145 GMT

Not sure if I've ever seen so many secret service people. Men in black glasses are everywhere here at the hotel where President Bush and President Mubarak hold their news conference in a few minutes.


The Egyptians are big on security. There have been several bomb attacks in Sinai in recent years so along our route here were dozens of plain clothes agents sitting out in the desert by the road side.
So now a moment of quiet while we wait for the two leaders.

I'm flying home on Air Force One, and the White House people are saying we have to run for the motorcade when it finishes. There's a frantic American woman who keeps telling us the president won't wait for us!

The photographers are telling us all to stay sitting so as not to obscure their view. Everyone's a little on edge. When they get here I'll be a couple of metres away from arguably the world's most powerful leader. Whatever your opinion of the man that's pretty exciting.

Or have I been in the bubble too long?

16 JANUARY - MORNING

One hour and twenty minutes of sleep. In a week of hardly any rest. The radio producer Yolande got no sleep. She was packing the equipment.


It's 0630. The sun is just about to come up. The sky is clear.

It is going to be one of those beautiful days you get so often in the Middle East when the light makes everything appear so sharp, so well defined.

The cars are swerving across the lane in front of our bus. But the traffic on the way to the airport is moving fast and we'll be there soon.

Off to Egypt for a few hours. Then back to the USA.

I always feel the same when leaving the Middle East. Slightly sad.

This is a special place, a place that has suffered so much, a place that is so misunderstood by so many people.

I wonder if George Bush now feels he understands it a little better?

15 JANUARY - AFTERNOON

I got out of "the bubble" today - for a whole 45 minutes.

I jumped in a taxi, and asked the driver to take me to a shopping street. The driver, from Bangladesh, laughed when I asked if he likes it here.


"It's not a good place," he said.

He's here, like all of the foreign workers, to earn money - in his case for family back home.

We pulled up and I got out. In a stationary shop a man in the red and white chequered headscarf favoured by Saudis said: "George Bush? Don't like."

In a cafe round the corner, BBC World TV was showing on the flat screen television, and at one table sat a man with a laptop watching YouTube on wireless internet.

I asked about Mr Bush's "Freedom Speech" in Abu Dhabi the other day.

"He always says this, this is his usual speech about freedom and democracy and things. Even in America they don't have this," he smiled.

"George Bush is not a peaceful man. He just, you know, starts a lot of wars."

We drove back to the hotel. I asked the Bangladeshi taxi driver about the cost of fuel here.

"No, not expensive," he said. Not sure that will make US consumers, nor George Bush, feel any better about the cost of a barrel of oil!


14 JANUARY - EVENING

What a day. Everyone covering this visit says today they hit a brick wall.

I think the White House press people did too. Everyone looks exhausted. The schedule is gruelling.


The story nose dived a bit so there was no adrenalin fuelling us all.
Journalists like a bit of meat on the bones of the story, but today all we really found out about the president was that he was shown what he said were "beautiful birds" of prey.


Then we got his dinner menu - artichoke soup, and apple pie with ice cream.

And you'll be glad to know no doubt that the Saudis held that dinner "relatively early for our early-to-bed president" according to his press secretary. Like I said, no news.

So the American journalists had to satisfy their networks with stories about how tomorrow we might witness the first snowfall in Riyadh in decades.

"At least they won't have to go far to find sand for the roads" one correspondent reported.

14 JANUARY - MIDDAY

"Welcome to the Middle Ages, baby!"

That's what someone in the travelling White House press corps said as we hit the ground in Saudi Arabia. Women on board discussed whether they have to wear headscarves. The gulf of understanding (or misunderstanding) is obvious.

On the bus to the hotel women were told that since we're on a high-level visit they can choose whether or not to wear a headscarf.


Since we're in a very conservative Muslim society where women are obliged to cover up, that seems strange official advice.
The Bush family is friendly with the Saudi royal family, so the president will know the limits of his so-called "freedom agenda" here.

A day after he called for countries across the Middle East to be more democratic and liberal, to introduce economic and social reforms, this is as good a place as you get to see that's not going to happen in any meaningful way during George W Bush's presidency.

He says each country must manage changes in its own way, but here to many it feels like he's trying to impose Western cultural values on the Arab world.

There's also a question over whether Mr Bush's strategy to isolate Iran because of its nuclear ambitions will work here. The short answer is "no it won't".

The Saudis have always played a very clever balancing act to maintain regional stability. They've been worried recently about Iran, but seem to have adopted an approach of trying to reach out to Tehran to diffuse tension.


President Bush will spend much of his two days in Saudi Arabia sightseeing rather than talking politics
There's an understanding among states in the region that Tehran doesn't react positively to aggression of either a political or military type.
In Saudi Arabia, and also the other states in this region, there's a sense that Iran's nuclear ambitions have changed the rules of the game.

When once the Saudis, like the Egyptians, called for a nuclear-free Middle East (remember Israel is believed to have dozens of nuclear warheads - although it never admits this) now they have shifted their position.

They say they want to develop their nuclear capability to diversify their energy resources, but the stated ambition is a clear response to Iran.

As usual the Saudis have to work hard to balance what's good for their close ally the United States, and what their regional neighbours, including Iran, need.

Perhaps that's why President Bush will spend much of his time here in the next two days sightseeing rather than talking politics.

14 JANUARY - MORNING

An early start today. Another early start!

We piled onto minibuses, with all our gear and drove the half hour or so to the airport.

Air Force One is a stunning sight on the tarmac to my left. The sun rising behind it and lots of reporters getting their photos taken in front.

On board, we get offered a mimosa - one last drink before arriving in Saudi Arabia.

We've just been reminded there's no alcohol in Saudi. And the women travelling on the trip have been told to dress appropriately.

Prepare for take off. Better go!

13 JANUARY - EVENING

It's not just the Bush White House I'm learning about on this trip. It's also the American media machine.

The people who work alongside me in the radio reporting operation are all seasoned correspondents. One is a household name in the US after years of service and renowned journalism.


And yet they all spend most of the day filing the shortest of radio pieces. So short indeed that they call them "spots"!
Sometimes they get to do longer analysis, and their work is professional and of a high standard. But it seems their stations no longer want more than a few seconds of coverage.

One of them, I'll not say for which network, the other day lamented the stories being covered on the station's website. Entertainment and wacky tales dominated.

Then today, I was doing a recording to camera with an American TV crew. I spoke for about a minute and a half to try to explain some of the background to the president's speech. That's almost a book, the cameraman said when I finished. He said in the US it's just a lot shorter.


There is good journalism in the States, of course. Newspapers have quality stories and TV and radio deal with some weighty issues. And I'm travelling in the main with some excellent journalists who take their jobs seriously.
This isn't a criticism of them, but overall the coverage most of their companies provide is dominated by quick, catchy stories. And it seems even their own president doesn't get much of a look in.

Some would argue the British media have already started down that path. If that's the case, the future doesn't look to be a terribly well informed one.

Enough! To sleep, briefly. Tomorrow we're off early to Saudi Arabia on the next leg of the trip. Day six. Country five.

13 JANUARY - MORNING

They call it the bubble, and when we touched down in Bahrain it felt like we were stuck right inside it.


The bus drove us out of the airport, it had parked next to the aeroplane and we simply walked onto it. For some reason our convoy had a police escort, and we passed junctions where the local traffic had to wait for us as we drove through red lights. We drove along the causeway towards the skyscrapers of Manama.
Other journalists took their cameras out, asking questions about what we were seeing. Excited tourists. Then we got to the hotel and were whisked in.

The reason they call it the bubble, is because this whole process means that from touchdown to media centre you literally look out of the bubble at the real world around you. In Kuwait I don't think I met a single Kuwaiti. Though to be fair most hotel staff there are from Asia or elsewhere.

It's basically like being embedded with the president - with all the issues that raises for journalists. Not that the White House in any way tries to affect our reporting.


They have never approached me about a story I've been filing. I've got total freedom, but because of the tight schedules don't get to meet the people of the country we're passing through. That's okay. The job is to report on the president's visit, but it does mean you need other sources of information about where you are.
One other quick thing. Mr Bush while here in Bahrain welcomed a new Iraqi law that allows thousands of former junior supporters of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to take up government jobs. It's worth remembering that it was Mr Bush's administration that supported the removal of Baath party officials from office in the first place, soon after the occupation of Iraq in 2003.

The feeling in the region? Among many I suspect "Why didn't he follow the new line on former Baath party officials in the first place?"

Right, got to pack. We're now off to Abu Dhabi.

12 JANUARY - 1200 GMT

You can't miss George Bush in a crowd. That hand held high waving. That swagger and grin. I was quite surprised though when he walked through the Arifjan military camp in Kuwait at the reaction from the US soldiers and other personnel there.

They cheered of course, but I'd thought they would have cheered for longer. Perhaps his unpopularity back home is rubbing off here?

As he told the troops that the US would be victorious in Iraq, Condoleezza Rice stood at the back, nodding in agreement behind her large black designer sunglasses.

Mr Bush has seemed more nuanced in his statements on this trip than he perhaps has in the past. He also seems to have a firm grip of the issues as he sees them, and there's a confidence about him.

It doesn't mean he's going to be successful of course.

Many here argue his presidency has done too much damage in the Middle East even to contemplate a bright future any time soon. But as one American official told me, maybe, with US domestic attention focused on Mr Bush's successor, perhaps he feels less constrained by US politics.

Perhaps, as this official speculated, he's enjoying simply the most powerful man in the world.

So. Now to Bahrain. We just boarded, after a mad rush of filing our stories. The plane's taxiing past Air Force One now. Another day, another country.


12 JANUARY - 0430 GMT

Early morning wake-up call again!

We're all in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kuwait with a load of our kit laid out on the floor and us security agents going through it. We're off to Camp Arifjan, the biggest US military base here.

The president's going to speak to the troops and to his top general in Iraq. He'll meet the US ambassador to Iraq too. Today the agenda's certainly less about Israel and the Palestinians.

11 JANUARY - EVENING

Amazing. I just did something I never thought I would. I got on a plane and flew from Tel Aviv to Kuwait. It took about two hours. Easy.

When I lived in Jerusalem and travelled to Iraq I would go through Kuwait. But the journey would take over seven hours - because there are no direct flights between the two countries. Until you're travelling with the US president.


The reason there are no direct flights is because Kuwait like many Arab countries doesn't have normal relations with Israel.

That's something Mr Bush wants to address here. He's hoping to encourage allies of his, like Kuwait, to have some contact at least with Israel. Even before we'd stepped off the plane Condoleezza Rice had said we shouldn't expect any developments on that, but she says there is progress.

And most Arab states like Kuwait will always find it an unreasonable demand to form any sort of tie with Israel, as long as Israel occupies Palestinian land.

You can see how it's all interlinked. That's why George Bush's strategy is - while not new - probably the only sensible way to proceed. He's worked out the issues that he thinks need addressing, and he's trying to address all of them at the same time hoping progress on one will aid progress in others. A virtuous circle if you like.

If it works maybe one day everyone will be able to fly from Tel Aviv to Kuwait in two hours.

11 JANUARY - AFTERNOON

The travelling press pack is now off to Kuwait, following hot on the heels of the president.

We are going to have to play catch-up on this leg as he will have done his official duties by the time we arrive.


The ride out from Jerusalem was beautiful. It is a bright sunny day and now, travelling out of Ben Gurion airport is proving so easy.

I spent four years getting all sorts of lengthy personal security questions coming in and out of this airport.

This time, after a very brief delay our bus simply drove into the airport and right up to the plane. We will be airborne within half an hour so.

The logistics that go into a trip like this are phenomenal.

It cost a huge amount of money - the White House is reluctant to say how much, but it is in the millions of dollars.

George Bush clearly thinks it is worth it. He left this troubled land still talking of his confidence.

Now he has to get some of his Arab allies on side to enlist their help in persuading the Palestinians and the Israelis to move forward.

10 JANUARY - EVENING

The great thing about being involved in a trip like this is that you get a special press pass that so far seems to open all sorts of doors.

When the rest of the city is shut down, I just whip out my "White House Middle East" card and sail through.


"The trip of the president to the Middle East" it says on it. Note, not any old president, just THE president!

And there is a confidence about the president and his people to be honest.

George Bush admitted today in an aside that he can sometimes be criticised for not speaking English so well. But on this trip so far he's appeared literate, on top of the issues and actually rather believable about the whole prospect of Middle East peace.

If I hadn't worked here for almost four years before covering the US, I might even be a little less sceptical about his chances of success.

His National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley came and spoke to us today. He said that the meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, had gone well, and that both sides had exchanged "reminiscences" during a working lunch.

He made it all sound very cordial.

And I spoke to another US official, who said he'd been in a private meeting of the president and US staff working here in Jerusalem.

The president - as he spoke about the chances of peace - had "welled up" he said. Visiting the Holy Land - as a religious man - has clearly affected George Bush deeply.

9 JANUARY - EVENING

Poor old George Bush. He certainly picked a good day to be travelling to the Middle East. All eyes in America were on who might be the next US president, rather than him.

Clinton and Obama were names you heard far more frequently on the US networks on the first day of his trip here than you did the name Bush.


A friend of mine who works here for a big US network says they were seventh story in the running order and possibly not getting onto the main evening news. And he was working with the White House correspondent!
What I thought was most interesting today was what felt like an ever so slightly more critical approach towards the Israelis from the Bush administration.

They are still the closest of allies of course.

However, in the last 24 hours I think every White House briefing we've had has mentioned how Israel has to stop settlement expansion, just as the Palestinians have to stop attacks against Israelis.

For years you rarely heard more than a cursory mention of Israel's settlement growth (remember one of Israel's commitments is to stop building Jewish towns and villages on occupied Palestinian land).

It'll be surprising if it makes a huge difference on the ground - but as President Bush said with a smile to Prime Minister Olmert today, "if you need a little nudge then you know I will give a nudge." He sounded like he meant it too.

9 JANUARY - MORNING

The streets are quieter than I ever remember them, apart from when this country closes down on Yom Kippur.

People have stayed away from the city today, because the streets around the president's hotel are closed. There are police everywhere. When the president's convoy moves from venue to venue they simply shut down the route he takes to other traffic.


I walked up to the hotel, which is surrounded by Israeli and US security people. People hang around to take a quick photo and are told not to use their cameras.
There's a strange feeling in the air. I left a United States in the grip of early election fever where George W Bush feels somewhat irrelevant. Here he's greeted by all as the most powerful man on Earth.

He hopes that will help encourage the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to focus on what he wants them to do - launch a proper negotiating process.

The thing that's so noticeable is the difference between what you hear from Bush's aides, and what you hear from people on the streets here.

His aides tell us they're still confident that there can be a negotiated peace deal by the end of the year. And why not? After all most people understand the broad layout of what such a deal would look like. In theory and on paper it is possible.

But then you talk to the people here, like my taxi driver this morning, who told me with that weary sigh everyone here has when talking about such visits: "It won't achieve anything."

8 JANUARY

Midnight on a mild January night. Far warmer than the freezing conditions I left behind in Iowa after reporting on the first stage of the process to chose the next president of the world's most powerful nation.

The United States - caught up in the excitement of Clinton v Obama - almost seems to have almost forgotten that its current president has exactly a year left in office.

I wheel my case across the tarmac, towards the charter plane that's taking reporters to the Middle East on President Bush's eight-day trip, and chat to a colleague who covers the White House for another network.

"He's got to go abroad," we joke. "No one here's interested in him anymore!"

But if George W Bush - America's least popular president in years (both at home and abroad) - gets it right, there will be more than just interest in him.

In pre-trip interviews he's said he genuinely believes there can be a "comprehensive peace treaty [between Israel and the Palestinians] signed by the end of this year".

Having left Jerusalem last August, after almost four years reporting from there, that strikes me as pretty unlikely.

As we taxi for take-off the steward makes a mistake during the safety announcement.

"In the event of a water execution..." he trails off.

"Do you mean water-boarding?" shouts a journalist. Much laughter.

Everyone here's covered President Bush's refusal to say whether he considers - as many do - the interrogation technique to be torture.

We settle back for the ride. In the next eight days we'll visit six countries, one occupied territory, and a host of world leaders.

It's going to be tiring, but fascinating.

Press spotlights Egypt's role in Gaza ,Newspapers in Israel do not hide their glee at the prospect of Cairo taking the lead in efforts to contain the crisis on its border with Gaza as thousands of Palestinians continue to stream into Egypt. However a leading daily fears that with no-one clearly in charge it is time for international deal on policing the border crossings.


A paper loyal to the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority accuses Hamas of trying to use the crisis to turn Arabs against Egypt, but a Hamas-run daily defends the surge as a last resort to prevent a humanitarian disaster.


In Egypt, two pro-government dailies urge Israel to ease its blockade of Gaza and call on Hamas to work for Palestinian unity and stop rocket attacks on Israel.


ALEX FISHMAN IN ISRAEL'S YEDIOT AHARONOT


Until midday on Wednesday the feeling prevailed in Israel that the strategy of pressure levers had failed. By evening the mood changed. Some of the security establishment top brass began to like the situation. "There is here an extraordinary opportunity to roll the responsibility for the Gaza Strip to Egypt. Let them supply food, electricity, fuel and water. The Israeli wet dream could still materialise. For with the exception of the Egyptian government - that scored own goal - all are happy."


ISRAEL'S HA'ARETZ


The closure imposed by Israel and Egypt on the Gaza Strip a year ago was effectively lifted yesterday. Even if Egypt closes the border again, it will be forced to reopen it, at least partially, whenever there is pressure... The Egyptians could now become the unwitting leaders in finding a workable solution.


ZVI BAREL IN ISRAEL'S HA'ARETZ


Both Egypt and Israel are trapped in the same problem. First, who will repair the barrier? Will the Hamas authorities permit Egypt to rebuild it? Will Israel be able to rebuild it? At least until the barrier can be repaired, Egypt will have to assign officials to oversee the border traffic... Such an arrangement will make Egypt directly responsible for this unofficial border crossing... Egypt will have to work out the arrangement with Hamas without eliminating the power of influence of President Abbas - in other words, it will have to get the Palestinian Authority and Hamas talking again.


YA'AKOV KATZ IN ISRAEL'S JERUSALEM POST


Without even knowing it, Egypt has helped Israel to complete the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Up until the restrictions clamped on the crossings late last week, Israel was responsible for facilitating the daily transfer of food, medical supplies, fuel, gasoline and other necessities into Gaza... All of this was being done while Qassam rockets pounded the western Negev. Egypt's decision to open its border shows that Israel has an alternative.


MUWAFAQ MATAR IN PALESTINIAN AL-HAYAT AL-JADIDAH


What happened in Rafah was a war against our sister country Egypt in an attempt to portray it as a country supporting the siege on the Gaza Strip. After the failure to instigate public feeling against Egypt, those who have hidden agendas sent the public to the gates of the Rafah crossing and pushed Palestinian women to clash with the Egyptian security forces.


TALAL AWKAL IN PALESTINIAN AL-AYYAM


The Israeli tightening of the siege lately on the Gaza Strip was not another round of aggression and escalation the Palestinians have grown used to. This was rather part of the war that [Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert has announced against all the Palestinians and their cause under the guise of what he calls the war on terror in Gaza. This war reveals to a great extent how dangerous a weak and fragile government can be.


HASAN ABU-HASHISH IN HAMAS-RUN FILASTIN


Blowing up the border wall with Egypt was a public move caused by a great humanitarian need. We urge Egypt not to consider it a violation of Egyptian sovereignty which we appreciate and respect.


MUSTAFA AL-SAWAF IN HAMAS-RUN FILASTIN


Egypt is a great country once it breaks free from constraints, pressure and conditions. This is the Egypt that the Palestinians always knew. Our blood was shed on our land as well as on Egyptian soil. However, this blood will not give any fruits if our great sister Egypt does not open the Rafah crossing.


EGYPT'S PRO-GOVERNMENT AL-AKHBAR


Israel must realize that the strangling and blockade may turn the Strip into a time bomb that could explode at any time in the face of Israel first, not to mention the impact of this on the security and stability in the entire region.


EGYPT'S PRO-GOVERNMENT AL-AHRAM


If Israel is largely responsible for the suffering of Gaza residents, Hamas is not free from responsibility either. There are two reasons for this. The first is the escalation of its differences with the PA and Fatah to the level of fighting and seizing [Fatah's] HQ in Gaza last year. The second reason is permitting the launch of rockets.


BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.

Hamas Beats Israel's Gaza Siege, It took explosives to do what diplomacy couldn't: allow Palestinians to go on a shopping spree. The siege of Gaza, imposed by Israel and the international community after Hamas seized control of the Palestinian territory last July, ended abruptly before dawn on Wednesday when militants blew as many as 15 holes in the border wall separating the territory from Egypt. In the hours that followed, over 350,000 Palestinians swarmed across the frontier, nearly one fifth of Gaza's entire population.

Some Palestinians craved medicine and food — goats appeared to be a hot item — because Israel had cut off most supplies from entering Gaza as punishment for militants' firing rockets into southern Israel. Students and businessmen joined the throng heading for Egypt. There were scores of brides-to-be, stuck on the Egyptian side, who scurried across to be united with their future bridegrooms in Gaza. And some, like teacher Abu Bakr, stepped through a blast hole into Egypt simply "to enjoy the air of freedom."

The previous day, President Housni Mubarak faced the wrath of the Arab world when his riot police used clubs and water hoses to attack Palestinian women pleading for Egypt to open the Rafah crossing in Gaza. And despite pressure from Israel and the United States, Mubarak wasn't about to order his men to use force to restrain Palestinians rendered desperate by Israel's siege. The Egyptian President said he ordered his troops to "let them come to eat and buy food and go back, as long as they are not carrying weapons."

At 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Palestinian militants detonated explosive charges knocking out slabs in the 26-foot concrete border wall, and by dawn, Gazans were racing to the open border on donkey carts and tractors and in cars. Once through the holes, they trampled across barbed wire, vaulted over fences and picked their way gingerly through cactus. Many carried heavy suitcases and said that they were never coming back to captivity in Gaza.

But most Gazans were in a mad scramble to go shopping, and they returned with everything from goats to tires to jerricans full of gasoline. One stout woman in a veil threaded nimbly through barbed wire with a tray of canned fruit balanced on her head. The Palestinians cleaned out every shop on the Egyptian side: By afternoon, there was nothing to buy within a six-mile distance of the border; and even the Sinai town of El-Arish, three hours drive away, had been sucked dry of gasoline. One taxi driver who brought back cartons of cigarettes and gallons of gas to resell for a profit in Gaza said, "This should help feed my family for several months."

Israel expressed fears that Hamas militants would use the breach in the border to bring in weapons. One Palestinian said he witnessed dozens of Hamas men who had been stuck in Egypt for months crossing into Gaza. Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Aryeh Mekel told newsmen, "We have real concerns that they can now freely smuggle explosives, missiles and people into Gaza, which makes an already bad situation even worse."

Hamas moved quickly to capitalize on the mass celebration of the border's breach. The movement's parliamentary leader, Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh, called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egypt to join in urgent talks to find a formula for keeping the Gaza-Egypt border permanently open. Haniyeh said Hamas was prepared to set up joint control of the border with the President's forces, bringing an end to a hostilities between the two factions that erupted last July when Hamas militants chased the President's Fatah militia out of Gaza.

Now that Gazans have exploded out of their besieged enclave, it may be up to Israel to seal up the border again, since the Egyptians are showing no signs of doing so. Israel had put the economic squeeze on Gaza's 1.5 million people — a policy described as "collective punishment" by many aid organizations — hoping it would turn the Palestinians against Hamas. But with the siege broken, even if temporarily, Hamas has earned the gratitude of hungry Palestinians and reinvigorated its popularity in Gaza.

Rights group slams U.S. over private security contractors in Iraq, An international human-rights organization said Wednesday that a lack of political will— not a fuzzy legal framework— was primarily to blame for the dearth of prosecutions of private security contractors accused of abuses in Iraq .

Human Rights First said the Justice Department had failed to hold such contractors accountable, amounting to what the organization calls a "culture of impunity."

"The biggest obstacle is not the law, but political will," said Maureen Byrnes , the executive director of the group, which is based in New York and Washington .

A Justice Department spokesman disputed the report's findings. The spokesman, Paul Bresson , said there was no lack of political will in the department to investigating the cases involving contractors but that the complications of investigating overseas could slow the process. "Obviously we strongly disagree with the report's conclusions," Bresson said.

The group acknowledges that clarifying the law— such a bill has passed the House of Representatives and is pending in the Senate — would ensure that prosecutors have a path for investigating allegations of criminal activities by guards.

An estimated 35,000 private security contractors work in Iraq for 181 companies, providing security for military bases, private businesses, foreign dignitaries and the U.S. State Department . They're part of a larger force of some 180,000 private contractors, more people than the American military has in the country.

There have been several allegations of abuses, the most recent by a group of Blackwater USA guards escorting a convoy through Baghdad on Sept. 16 . Iraqi officials say the guards killed 17 civilians and wounded 24 without provocation in Nisoor Square . An investigation into the incident is under way.

But Justice Department investigators warned congressional staff in a private meeting in December that they might have little legal justification for prosecuting the case.

At that meeting— first reported Wednesday by The New York Times and confirmed by McClatchy — officials said it would be difficult, though not impossible, to hold the guards accountable for the deaths under current law.

The State Department also offered the guards some immunity if they gave accounts of what happened in Nisoor Square , complicating the prosecution.

Scott Horton , who wrote the Human Rights First report, said the group wasn't trying to end all work for private security contractors.

Rather, he said, the agency wants contractors held accountable. The report points out that while 60 members of the U.S. military have faced courts-martial for suspected crimes during the war, only one private security contractors has faced prosecution.

"That shows a collapse of accountability," Horton said. "This problem didn't drop from the sky. It results from policy decisions. . . . The situation here is the Justice Department has gone AWOL."

Rep. David Price , D-N.C., authored a House bill that would place all private security contractors under the U.S. criminal code. The bill also tries to force the administration to act on prosecutions. It would require, for example, that the Justice Department dispatch FBI agents to Iraq to investigate allegations of abuses.

"It's maddening to see contractors act as if they're above the law," Price said Wednesday.

The White House opposes Price's bill, saying it contains vague language, wrongly extends U.S. criminal jurisdiction overseas and could strain FBI resources.

Despite the opposition, Price's bill passed in October— shortly after the Blackwater incident in Baghdad — by a veto-proof margin. A Senate version, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois , has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee .

There, Chairman Patrick Leahy , D-Vt., has been working with Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania to craft bipartisan support for the bill. But White House opposition remains strong, and there's no timeline for when the bill might get through the committee.

The Human Rights First report makes several recommendations. They include asking the Justice Department to take the lead in prosecuting abuses in federal courts, coordinating investigations with the Defense Department and holding companies accountable through their written federal contracts.

It also says that private security contractors should mark their vehicles prominently with identifying symbols to aid in investigations, and that contractors who wrongly kill or injure civilians should be responsible for compensation.

US judge halts deportation to Egypt, 'FREE FROM TORTURE': The Egyptian murder suspect Sahem Khouzam was to be released from US prison and not sent home to face justice, a federal judge said ,AP, PHILADELPHIA ,Saturday, Jan 12, 2008, Page 7
A federal judge ordered a halt to the deportation of an Egyptian who says he fears that he will be tortured if returned to his homeland after his release from a Pennsylvania prison.

US District Judge Thomas Vanaskie said on Thursday that Sameh Khouzam made "a credible showing" that he had been tortured in Egypt, and the US government could not deport him on the basis of diplomatic assurances without court review.

"In light of the government's refusal to expose the Egyptian diplomatic assurance to any sort of impartial review, the government may not proceed with the removal of Khouzam," wrote Vanaskie, a judge with the court's Middle District of Pennsylvania in Scranton.

The judge also ordered the release of Khouzam under "reasonable conditions of supervision."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hailed the decision, calling it the first of its kind.

"This is a significant victory for due process and the rights of all people -- citizens or not -- to be free of torture," ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said in a statement.

Justice Department officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

EGYPTIAN ASSURANCES

Egyptian officials say Khouzam is a convicted murderer who should be returned to face justice.

US officials earlier this year agreed to hand him over, saying they had been assured that he would be treated humanely upon his return.

Lawyers for Khouzam told Vanaskie in August that such assurances were meaningless and that the Coptic Christian would almost certainly be tortured if sent back to the overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

Government attorneys said the court must defer to the executive branch's determination that Egypt's assurances are sufficient.

They also said the case must be put in the broader context of relations between the US and Egypt.

"Not even the president of the United States has the authority to sacrifice ... the right to be free from torture" on the altar of foreign relations, Vanaskie wrote in a footnote in his 53-page ruling.

Khouzam was convicted in absentia of killing a woman, but Vanaskie said in ordering his release that such a conviction did not establish a threat to the community in the US.

He cited an affidavit saying that in Egypt such convictions are routinely made after review of a file and are often overturned in a new trial.

Attorneys for Khouzam, who is being held in York County Prison, deny that he killed anybody, saying Egypt has never produced a body or an autopsy report.

Khouzam was arrested when his plane landed in New York in February 1998 and he spent the next eight years in US prisons. Another federal judge granted him a "deferral of removal" in 2000 under an international treaty that bans deportation to a country where torture is likely.

Khouzam, 38, won a second US Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 2004 and was released last year. Federal immigration officials took him into custody again in May.

REFUSAL TO CONVERT

Khouzam's lawyers say he was detained, beaten and sodomized by Egyptian authorities after he refused to convert to Islam. They say he escaped from a hospital, went straight to the airport and got on a plane to the US.

While he was in the air, Egyptian officials called US officials and said Khouzam was wanted for killing a woman, and the US canceled his visa.

"The issue in this case does not concern any right of Khouzam to remain in the United States," Vanaskie wrote. "The right at stake here is to be free from torture."

A Link Between Anxiety and Heart Attacks, It's no secret that men with angry, explosive personalities are at a higher risk of a heart attack. But they're not alone: Nervous, withdrawn and chronically worried people are courting coronary problems, too, according to a new long-term study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Of 735 American middle-aged or elderly men who had good cardiovascular health in 1986, those who scored highest on four different scales of anxiety were far more likely to suffer heart attacks later in life. Men in the top 15% on any of the four scales, or on a combined scale of all four, had a 30% to 40% greater chance of heart attack than their less anxious peers.

Researchers have long known that problems of the mind can affect health. Other studies have looked at the relationships between heart-attack risk and factors like "Type A" personality, anger or depression. But "very few studies look at many psychological factors at one time," says Biing-Jiun Shen, lead author on the anxiety paper and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. "I think that's a unique part of this study."

Using data from the U.S. Normative Aging Study, Shen reviewed the men's responses to a series of questions on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (a commonly administered personality test), and pulled out their scores on four separate anxiety scales that measured obsessive or compulsive thoughts; introversion and social exclusion; phobias; and a predisposition to become tense or have a physical reaction, like nausea or hyperventilation, to stressful situations. Even after accounting for other mood problems, like depression or anger, and for a whole host of physiological and demographic indicators — including age, body mass index, education, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and smoking and drinking habits — the effect of chronic anxiety was clear. It was also a stronger risk factor for heart attack than any of the other psychological problems in the study.

What's not so clear is why that might be. The relationship between stress, psychological problems and coronary disease or other physical woes is still not well understood. But it is the subject of intense scientific scrutiny. Many other researchers are trying to understand the interaction between mood disturbances like anxiety or depression and other health problems.

Shen notes the results of his study may not be universally applicable across populations. "We only looked at men who are older, around 60," he says. While men may suffer more heart attacks than women, women are far more likely to suffer from anxiety, just as they're more likely to suffer from depression. Gender aside, there's no reason to believe that the link between anxiety and heart attacks is straightforward. "We're not saying depression's not important. We're not saying anger's not important," Shen says. "Different factors can be essentially different for different groups." Still, psychological problems are often related, which means that different problems can affect the body in the same ways. The bottom line is that more study will be needed before we know how much sway our brains have over our heart function — and how much we can control what happens in the mind to prevent a heart attack.

Last of the ancient wonders,For thousands of years, the riddle of the Pyramids has puzzled observers. Egyptian deity; canopic jars,,,Speaking of Egypt, it is the Pyramids that spring to mind. Their grandeur, their mystery and their architecture have caused more debate than any other structure on Earth. Since the time of Herodotus geographers and historians have tried to solve their riddles. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, in particular, has a design so striking that some thought only a deity could have created it. No wonder it was listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Despite their size, the precise number of pyramids in Egypt remains unknown. Pyramidal structures that were demolished or hidden under the sand are constantly being found, and Egyptologists now put their number at about 100. There are thought to be some 28 pyramid complexes dating from the third to the sixth dynasties, all standing along a narrow stretch of the desert from Abu Ruwash south to Meidum. No two of them, whether from their external appearance or their internal system, are alike.

One can divide the pyramids of Egypt into geographical groups. Ten groups are at the ancient city of Memphis. Others are at Abu Ruwash, the Giza Plateau, Abu Sir, Saqqara, Dahshour (in which lie the two pyramids of Sneferu, Khufu's father and founder of the Fourth Dynasty) and finally Meidum, which probably also belonged to Sneferu although its construction began in the reign of his father, Huni. A further few pyramids are found in Upper Egypt.

Historians and Egyptologists have come up with a unified theory explaining how and why pyramids were built, but they differ on both issues. They cannot explain, either, why they were not erected in one centralised place instead of being dispersed.

Why did the builders choose the pyramidal shape? Some Egyptologists refer to it as a solar symbol with a similarity to sunrays, linking the Pharaoh with his home the sun. This view was put forward by Alexander Moret, who said: "The beams of the sun pierce the clouds and let down to earth a ladder of rays." Others emphasised the merit of the number four in reference to the four corners and faces of a quadrilateral pyramid. The number had a sacred nature in most of ancient mythologies. It refers to the number of cardinal points, the four elements from which the universe is composed (water, earth, air and fire), the children of Nut and the sons of Horus, the names of which match with the four canopic jars containing the viscera of the deceased. In Egyptian mythology, however, one can always find enough pretexts to ascertain the divinity of any number.

Egyptologists finally decided that the pyramidal shape was no more than the ben-ben stone on a giant scale. The ben-ben once surmounted the pillar of Atum in the Sun Temple of the Phoenix at Heliopolis; it was considered the "divine seed" of the prodigal cosmic bird. It was suggested that the relic was a meteorite that had fallen from heaven and was considered sacred. A small pyramidion was placed on the top of all obelisks and pyramids.

It is not difficult to find the reason for the pyramidal shape. The structure represents just one point in the long continuum of the evolution of tomb design that began with the mastaba shape in the pre-dynastic era, followed by the layered mastabas of the Step Pyramid, Sneferu's Pyramid at Meidum -- a step pyramid like Djoser's but superimposed with a second pyramid of eight steps -- and then by a third building phase whereby it was transformed into the pyramid type we know now. The last was the outcome of a series of experimental trials to reach the optimal shape of the Fourth Dynasty.

Pyramids are a natural shape. The design is simple; they are easily built, aesthetically pleasing, and stable, especially in buildings of great height. Thus from an engineering standpoint the pyramid shape makes sense, and above all has the advantage of satisfying man's basic need to imitate familiar hills and mountains. This explains why pyramids are so common throughout the world, without entailing cultural contact.

Again, if the pyramids were meant to be tombs, as we shall see in a while, and considering that the ancient Egyptians' religion was a sun-cult as well as a star-cult; associating the king's rebirth with the Sun (Ra), Orion (Osiris) and Sirius (Sothis), with whom the king is united after death, then the Egyptians would need to erect their tombs in the form of a pyramid in order to receive the maximum amount of rays, or blessings, falling from these three gods as they traverse the sky. However, the first rises in the east while the second and third culminate due south; so by adding further steps to the early mastaba the ancients ended up with a pyramidal shape able to maximise the rays. One can also say that, from the ideological point of view, the evolution from the mastaba to the Step Pyramid, i.e. from primordial mound of the Sun to a celestial ladder to the stars, reflects the increased importance of the stellar destiny or terminus of the divine king. This is exemplified in the Pyramid Texts found at Saqqara. Here is a passage taken from the pyramid of the Sixth-Dynasty king Pepi I, in which the gods Horus and Seth are urged to help the king by taking him by the hand and leading him to the sky to sit among the stars. Eventually, the king becomes a star:

"Who shall live lives by the gods' command. You shall live! You shall rise with Orion in the eastern sky. You shall set with Orion in the western sky. Your third is Sothis, pure of thrones. She is your guide on the sky's good paths."

While Egyptologists take the view that the pyramids served as tombs, others claim they were stellar observatories or stores of hidden knowledge. Those in favour of the latter view ask why a king like Sneferu would want to build two tombs. Another king, Amenemhet III, had two pyramids built for himself, one at Dahshour containing a granite sarcophagus and one at Hawara containing a quartzite sarcophagus. Were the pyramids meant not as literal tombs, but rather cenotaphs?

Again, there is more than one incident in which the sarcophagi of kings and queens were discovered inside their pyramids. The wooden sarcophagus of Menkaura of the Fouth Dynasty, was found in the third pyramid in the Giza Plateau with remains, presumably of the king, still in place. The cover bore the sentence "Osiris, the king of Lower and Upper Egypt, Menkaura, son of Nout and the descendant of Geb and his beloved, you shall have an eternal life." The mummy of Queen Ipwet, mother of Pepi I, was found in her burial chamber. The thieves did not waste time with opening the sarcophagus. They dug a hole to steal the contents but left her coffin intact inside a second wooden sarcophagus, her bracelet still on her right arm along with parts of her necklace. And while Queen Hetepheres's sarcophagus in a subsidiary pyramid at Giza was empty, the canopic jars containing her viscera were still in place among her intact funerary items.

The view that the pyramids were tombs was therefore endorsed by a number of scholars. Some suggested the pyramids had sloping sides so the dead Pharaoh could symbolically climb to the sky and live forever. They even inferred that the mastaba structure of the Step Pyramid, the first known pyramid, was a symbolic staircase. The Bible says: 'Let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven.' Although this refers to the gardens of Babylon, the concept is the same.

Yet the pyramids represent only one element in the pyramid complex. Others included small pyramids for queens, a mortuary temple, a valley temple connected by a causeway, offering shrines, funerary boat pits and mastaba tombs for family members and nobles. The walled complex constituted only one part of an integrated necropolis, and its location was another indication that the pyramid was intended as a tomb.

According to Breasted, the Papyrus of Abbott describes regular inspections of sepulchres of former kings in the reign of Ramses IX. A report on the pyramid of Sobekemsaf II of the 17th Dynasty stated: "It was found that the thieves had broken into it... The burial place of the king was found void of the king as well as the burial place of the king's wife Nubkhas; the thieves having laid their hand upon them."

Thus it was usual to consider the pyramids as tombs for kings, not as temples for worshipping the god Osiris, or granaries, or even stellar observatories. But why did the ancient Egyptians build such huge monuments if they were meant only as tombs? Did they really need to erect a structure 147m high to bury a king? Did it stem from the depth of their religion? Herodotus (485- 425 BC) had a say on this:

"The Egyptians are religious to excess beyond any other nation in the world... they are meticulous in everything which concerns their religion... It was only the day before yesterday that the Greeks came to know the origin and form of the various gods... The names of all the gods came to Greece from Egypt..."

An ancient Egyptian would never call the dead "deceased", but rather the "glorified" or, according to the Christian Egyptians of today, "the groom [or bride] of heaven". One experiences not life and afterlife, but a first and second life. Life is a transitory period, whereas the second life is eternal and worth making an effort for.

People obsessed with the afterlife would clearly consider that a private tomb was not less important than a house, and perhaps more. Mud- brick for the transitory lifetime, stone for the eternal afterlife. We cannot locate the palaces of the Pharaohs, yet their pyramids and temples have endured the ravages of time. Khufu's son Hardjedef expressed it neatly: 'The house of death is for life.' Nor were the men who built the pyramids slaves, as was once thought, but contributors to the house of eternity for their divine ruler, the manifestation of the gods on earth. "Set up for me a tower that I may ascend to Moses's God..." the Pharaoh told the envoy sent by Moses. "I am your supreme god." This quotation from the Quran suggests that even in the time of Moses, long after pyramid building had ceased, their original use was remembered.

All Egyptologists agree that the pyramids were intended as places of ascension and transformation of the king's soul. Khufu called his pyramid akhet, meaning the place of becoming an akh (spirit) . This is verified in the Pyramid Texts, funerary inscriptions serving as resurrection rituals that adorn the interior of several Old Kingdom pyramids. Egyptologists consider them the oldest collection of sacred texts known to us from ancient Egypt, if not the whole world, and put their number to 800 spells covering some 4,000 lines, according to Maspero who first collected them and Faulkner who translated them in 1969. The passages found in the Pyramid Texts suggest that they eventually evolved into the Coffin Texts and later in the Book of Going Forth by Day, known as the Book of the Dead, which was placed with the deceased. It was remarked that no single pyramid ever contained the whole collection of spells. Altogether there are some 10 pyramids containing Pyramid Texts, the earliest texts being at Saqqara in the pyramids of Unas and Teti where some 227 spells were found in the first pyramid alone. The pyramids built prior to these dates were puzzling monuments, revealing a little information; which led Maspero to announce in 1880, after entering the first to contain texts: "Thus spoke the dumb pyramids."

The main theme of the texts is the king's resurrection in the afterworld by identifying himself with the god Osiris, lord of the underworld. Whether the king boards the sun-boat of Ra or reaches the sky by flying like a bird or climbing a ladder, all texts emphasise one common theme: his eternal afterlife. In other words, the texts provide every possible service to the deceased king on his ascent and his reception in the world of the divine. This excerpt from the pyramid of Unas expresses a plea for the king to overcome death:

"Unas lives! He is not dead! He has not been judged! He judges! You have gone alive to sit on the throne of Osiris. You are to purify yourself with the cool water of the stars, and you will climb down upon ropes of brass, on the arms of Horus, the imperishable stars have carried you. Enter then into the place where your father is, where Geb is! Your son comes to you, both of you may stride over the sky, united in darkness, that you may rise on the horizon in the place where you like to be... The messengers of Ra have come to you. Go after your sun! ..."

The tomb was seen as an instrument of rebirth where the king's body entered into the starry body of Nut in the west so that he might be resurrected, like Ra, on the eastern horizon. The texts on the north and south walls begin in the west and read to the east; i.e. in accordance with the daily movement of the Sun, which "dies" in the west and is "reborn" in the east. According to J Allen, the direction of the texts matches the soul's path through the tomb, moving from the innermost part of the sarcophagus chamber in the west ( duat ) through the antechamber ( akhet ) to the outside of the pyramid, then flying through the corridors to be released into the light ("Going Forth by Day") to the northern circumpolar stars. The spells consequently fall into three main groups with their location dictated by their functions: offering and insignia spells on the north wall of the burial chamber; resurrection spells on its south wall and finally mourning spells in eastern locations in order to awaken the deceased. The Pyramid Texts represent the boundaries of the cosmos, whereas the movement from south to north is only an imitation of the Nile stream.

This layout of the tomb complex is equally valid for the Great Pyramid. While in the Fourth Dynasty no spells were inscribed on the walls, the arrangement of the chamber systems portrayed the same architectural metaphors. This led some authors to propose that Khufu's Pyramid was the Book of the Dead symbolised in stones.

From the Fourth Dynasty, the king was addressed as "Son of Ra". Other names were Ntr and Nfr, meaning the complete god. Sometimes he was called Horus or Khunum. When the king died the godhead passed to the next reigning king, whereas his ba (soul) was united with Osiris, Horus's divine father. So while Horus was the ruler in the land of the living, Osiris ruled the land of the dead.

From earliest times the ancient Egyptian religion was both a sun-cult and a star-cult. Like Horus, Ra was god of the living. According to I E S Edwards, Ra and Osiris shared a common feature: Osiris was brought back to life after being murdered by his brother Seth, while Ra disappeared daily beneath the western horizon but was reborn each morning. In these two events the ancient Egyptians found reason to hope for their own survival.

In trying to reach a unified theory on the issue of the afterlife in ancient Egypt, scientists reached vague and ambiguous conclusions. They speak of a star-destiny in which the king is transformed into an eternal star, and a solar destiny in which he followed the god Ra to be reborn likewise, and finally an Osiris destiny in which he impersonated Osiris and was resurrected. It seems to me that this misses the point. According to the Pyramid Texts, he also frequents other places or is transformed into other gods. Eventually he achieves a kind of unification with the cosmos. Ancient Egypt, as Thomas Mann remarked, is a country where "the gods die and the dead are gods", which applied to Ra and Osiris and equally to the stars. Eternity was therefore the diffusion into the whole of the universe.

The future of West Nile,Since West Nile's first U.S. appearance, researchers have learned more about the virus but there are still unknowns.
SPECIAL REPORT

• Six years later, mysteries remain
• A North American fixture
• The animal connection
• Diseases beyond West Nile
• Map: March across U.S.
• Special Report

Leona Thrower felt exhausted, but she blamed it on recent travel. Then came the nausea. Four days later, the 67-year-old lay comatose in intensive care, battling encephalitis caused by West Nile virus.

"I feel ignorant because I hadn't paid attention and I didn't know anything about it," said the Phoenix, Arizona, resident. "I never gave it a thought."

After more than six weeks in the hospital starting in June 2004, Thrower has spent the last year recovering at home. She still suffers from fatigue, muscle and joint problems and a weakened immune system.

"It's affected my whole life. Things that I did before I can't do," she said. "I was a substitute teacher and I couldn't do that this past year."

Thrower is one of the more than 16,000 U.S. cases of West Nile virus since it first appeared in the country in 1999. Six years and more than 600 deaths later as the frenzy dwindles, health officials say West Nile is not disappearing any time soon and they are beginning to uncover some new mysteries about the illness.

"There's still a lot of activity out there in many parts of the country and there's no reason to think it's just going to go away from various places because it really hasn't ever done that," said John Roehrig, who studies West Nile as chief of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's arbovirus diseases branch in Fort Collins, Colorado. "In all the states that have had West Nile, they've maintained some level of activity for West Nile."

In 2004, human cases in the United States dipped to 2,470 with 88 deaths after previous years of big increases. Cases in 2003, for example, numbered nearly 10,000 with 264 deaths. But whether the downward trend will continue this season and into the future is still an unknown, according to researchers.

Some believe West Nile may take on a cyclical pattern, similar to its virus cousin, St. Louis encephalitis, another illness transmitted by mosquitoes that causes inflammation of the brain.

"If [West Nile] goes that route, then it would be a situation where it's sort of oscillating," explained Dawn Wesson, an associate professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. "Every few years we'd have an outbreak or some cases and then maybe not much activity between years."

The CDC's Roehrig agrees that this may be the path West Nile takes in the future, but cautions it will always be present.

"Every state every year will have some number of cases -- maybe it will just be a handful of cases, but it will never really just fade away completely like St. Louis encephalitis does," Roehrig said. "Even in the inter-epidemic period, there will always be some West Nile activity somewhere in the country."

Eyeing the next hotspot

Quickly spreading on its westward march across the nation, West Nile has infected mosquitoes, animals or humans in every state in the lower 48 in the past six years. (A North American fixture)

This season, California is the most likely hotspot if West Nile follows previous patterns, say authorities.

The state led the nation in number of cases last year at 771, and health officials say West Nile was just getting started.

More cases are expected as it becomes entrenched in the central and northern parts of the state and other parts of the West, according to Vicki Kramer, chief of vector-borne diseases at the California Department of Health.

"Because now it has been established and detected in all of California's counties by the end of 2004, we expect more widespread and earlier activity this year," Kramer said. "I'm sure we'll see more activity in Oregon and Washington as well."

Long-term effects?

For people like Leona Thrower, the long-term effects of West Nile are still unknown.

New studies suggest that even mild cases of West Nile -- often called West Nile fever -- may have lingering effects not known about a few years ago.

"It's being observed that even in cases of West Nile fever, which has always been characterized as a milder disease ... that it in and of itself in certain individuals can be a very severe disease and can take individuals quite a while to recover from it," said Roehrig.

Wesson explained that even though the illness has been present globally for decades, the volume of U.S. cases has allowed scientists to study the effects more closely among a wider range of individuals.

"[Scientists are looking at] potential long-term negative effects of having been infected, maybe not even being really sick -- maybe having a mild headache and other sorts of things -- but still having some minor neurological problems for extended periods of time," Wesson said. "As it's better studied, it seems there're more reports of that sort of thing out there."

Other mysteries for researchers involve birds. West Nile moves from one area into another depending on bird migration, or at least that's the theory. Wesson said that difficulty gathering data hinders a concrete solution. (West Nile and animals)

Also, birds in the Corvidae family, such as crows and blue jays, are more susceptible to West Nile than others, and researchers don't know why.

"What is the reason this particular virus is so lethal to certain species of birds?" Roehrig questioned. "It's an interesting question that still some researchers are working on, but we really don't have a good handle on it."

Precautions not panic

One area of progress for researchers is a West Nile vaccine for humans. In May 2005, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech company Acambis reported promising results in the first stage of human trials. But federal health officials caution that vaccine availability for the public is still several years away.


Ridding your yard of standing water can lower the numbers of mosquitoes.

For now, experts urge the same tips to avoid West Nile carrying mosquitoes they've issued in the past, such as wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants outside and fixing window and door screens so mosquitoes don't enter the house.

This year, though, the CDC expanded its recommendations of bug repellent to include those with the chemical picaridin and oil of lemon eucalyptus in addition to those containing DEET. And they're also warning against complacency.

"There's always a tendency to get comfortable with the fact that this disease is out there, especially if you live in a place where you've had West Nile for four or five years and never been infected," Roehrig said.

"That's always a problem," he continued. "How do you keep people not panicked about this, but at least aware of the fact that if it's summertime, it's West Nile time and you have to think about taking some precautions."

After her experience with West Nile, Thrower always has bug repellent close at hand for a trip outdoors for her or her husband, and she is more aware of yard conditions that encourage mosquito breeding, such as standing water.

"When you go out, you see bugs flying around and you're immediately alerted to them," she said. "We are just very cautious now."

Looking backward, looking forward.,The transition from 2007 to 2008 might mark a historic shift in Egypt, ,At the threshold of a new year Egypt seems to be straddling two eras: that of a now decrepit political order, the life expectancy of which ended years ago but is still clinging tenaciously to life, and that of something that is still embryonic.

As difficult as it is to predict what will happen to this large and amazing country of ours, it is patently obvious that the Egyptian political arena is rife with conflict between forces dependent upon the old order and determined to keep it alive by all means, including life-support in the ICU, and forces that are eager to pull the plug and prepare the ground to greet the newborn.
Until recently, the current political order in Egypt, which has its roots in the July 1952 Revolution, has shown a remarkable ability to reproduce itself and, hence, to survive. Its success in this rested on its ability to control and manipulate political and security-related dynamics, in order to regulate social and economic factors, thus achieving a form of harmony between domestic and external pressures. However, this method has gradually corroded to the extent that it has now long passed hope of repair.

The 1952 Revolution gave rise to a political system essentially characterised by the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual (the president of the republic) and a ruling elite that held a tight grip over all aspects of political life through a single-party system and a bureaucracy operating under that party's protection; and, lastly, through a powerful state-controlled media establishment. Since the revolution was spearheaded by the military, the military establishment became the effective guardian of the revolutionary order and the storehouse from which the regime derived its most important personnel, especially those in executive posts.

This system -- theoretically -- facilitates the self-perpetuation of the rule of the military, since the constitution allows the president to choose, independently and without restrictions, his vice- president who, in the event of the death or incapacitation of the president, would become the next president. The unwritten provision was that the vice-president had to be selected from the military, thus, reigns of government were passed on smoothly from Gamal Abdel-Nasser to Anwar El-Sadat and then to Hosni Mubarak. Since major political transitions in Egypt hinge upon the figures at the pinnacle of the order and since the death of Nasser (by natural causes) and of Sadat (by assassination) occurred suddenly and unexpectedly, the existence of a vice-president furnished a kind of "constitutional" safety valve for containing power struggle in the wake of a president's demise. This safety valve does not exist under the Mubarak regime.

Armed with the laurels and political weight derived from his achievements in the October 1973 War, president Sadat sought to introduce several fundamental changes into the Egyptian political system. However his attempts to pave the way for the re-emergence of the multi-party system fell short of their aim and by the time he died he had effectively done no more than found a political party, led by himself and that was little more than an extension of the monolithic state party that had existed under Nasser.

Although Mubarak did not fundamentally modify the political system he had inherited, he has distinguished himself from his predecessors by two significant and potentially dangerous matters. The first is his stubborn resistance to naming a vice- president throughout his quarter of a century of rule. The second is allowing his son to play a high- profile role in politics, which, in turn, has given rise to the increasingly widespread suspicion of the existence of a design to groom the son to succeed him in the presidency. Against this backdrop there emerged a political movement opposed to any scenario of hereditary succession.

The majority of the Egyptians would have no objection to giving Gamal Mubarak every chance to fulfil his political ambitions, on the condition that his pursuit takes place within a truly democratic framework that ensures equal opportunity for all. Unfortunately, the train of events over the past two years leave little room for doubt that the constitutional amendments that were introduced have but one aim: to shoe the president's son into the presidency without a serious rival. Article 76 of the constitution was amended so as to permit for multi-candidate presidential elections but upon application of its provisions only a handful of nominees managed to field themselves.

Among these are Ayman Nour who is now languishing in prison and Noaman Gomaa who was later ousted from the party he headed by an internal coup. The legislative elections that were held soon afterwards awarded, as usual, a very comfortable majority to the ruling party, which proceeded to pass through the legislature the other constitutional amendments needed to clear the way for Gamal Mubarak's rising political star. That the constitution stipulates that a presidential candidate has to have been a member of his party's executive leadership for at least a full year before presidential elections are held was only a minor hurdle. The NDP simply took advantage of its last convention to modify its bylaws so as to merge its political bureau and its secretariat (of which Gamal is a member and which party lawyers realised could not be technically termed a party leadership) into a single supreme executive body.

Under Nasser, the revolutionary regime profoundly changed the country's economic and social structures. Massive agrarian reforms were followed, after failed attempts to foster autonomous development through market steered mechanisms, by the development of a state planned and controlled economy. The effect of such reforms was to uproot the political and social influence of the long-established feudal elite and the relatively newly emergent urban entrepreneurial class, to expand the middle class, and to open new horizons for the poor and underprivileged. However, this socialist-inspired programme began to erode with the onset of the Open Door policy under Sadat and the gradual decline in state intervention in the economy and reliance on market-driven forces.

In spite of outbursts of popular anger that this policy reversal triggered, such as the 1977 bread riots, the regime was initially able to keep a lid on social discontent, not always through recourse to its security apparatuses. However, as the push towards privatisation and the sale of public sector assets and properties intensified by the early 1990s, Egypt's socio-economic map underwent a profound change and polarisation became sharper. The most salient feature of the new socio-economic map was the rise of a new entrepreneurial elite that was heavily dependent upon the regime and upon foreign aid and franchises in its single-minded drive to accumulate wealth, which, in fact, did accumulate into these few hands with astounding speed.

As a consequence, the gap between rich and poor expanded rapidly and the standards of living of the lower middle class and the poor declined sharply. Meanwhile, the new entrepreneurial class became increasingly intertwined with the ruling elite, thus influencing national policies and playing an instrumental role in the spread of rampant corruption and organised crime on a scale previously unknown in Egypt. This resulted in a dramatic decline in public utilities and services, in fields ranging from transportation to public education and health. Such profound changes naturally impacted on social cohesion and political stability, as evidenced by the mounting wave of protest demonstrations and labour strikes in 2007.

In its early phase, the 1952 revolutionary regime was determined to secure Egypt's national independence. Towards this end it waged a succession of major political battles (the Soviet arms deal, the Bandung conference and the founding of the non-aligned movement, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, the construction of the High Dam, etc.) that affirmed Egypt's international status and poised it to play an influential role in the regional and international spheres. This very self- assertiveness also rendered Egypt vulnerable to enormous outside pressures which often escalated to debilitating blows. The harshest of these was the defeat in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

In spite of this crippling setback, Egypt refused to give in and, with the support of its Arab neighbours, it succeeded in turning the scales and erasing the taint of defeat. Yet, Sadat's realignment following the 1973 War, which had a profound impact on Egypt's management of the Arab-Israeli conflict, resulted in the gradual erosion of Egypt's regional and international status. Moreover, it also became clear that the government's new foreign policy orientation mirrored the very domestic changes that brought to the fore a socio-economic elite of a particular nature, an elite that had become a cornerstone of the ruling regime, the interests of which were organically linked with the West and, eventually, with the rise of Gamal Mubarak.

True, the foreign policy shift enabled Egypt to recover the Sinai Peninsula . However, it did not enable it, in spite of the long "peace" with Israel, to fulfill its aspiration for a major developmental leap forward to compensate through economic progress for the ground it had lost in political clout. As a result, Egypt became, at once, ever more dependent upon the West and ever more vulnerable. A quick glance at events in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan is sufficient to fathom the degree to which Egypt's national security is in jeopardy.

Against such a historical backdrop, one can argue that Egypt is about to cross the threshold to 2008 caught in the mesh of hurdles generated by a teetering political system that refuses to give up the ghost and by the shadow of a new system the features of which remain unclear. At this juncture we have: firstly, a president nearing 80 without a vice-president to succeed him; secondly, a ruling party that derives its strength from the state apparatuses and that is effectively run by the president's son who is being groomed for the succession. On the political arena there is a sharp polarisation between the ruling party and the legally banned Muslim Brotherhood, while on the socio-economic level an equally acute polarisation exists between the small group of the super rich and the throngs of the poor.

In short, we have a perilously seething pot with no viable alternative political parties or civil society institutions to mediate between the polarised entities.
It may be impossible to say for sure whether Gamal Mubarak will succeed in reaching the presidency under such circumstances. But if he does, two quite significant changes will result. Power will effectively shift from the military to the civil establishment and a precedent of hereditary succession will be set for a republic with only a thin veneer of democracy. It is difficult to say which will pose the greatest dilemma.

Since it is impossible to halt or reverse the process of political and social catalysis, 2008 is likely to bring major developments that will mark a turning point between two eras. This likelihood increases given that 2008 is the year of the American presidential elections, the results of which might bring about a turning point in the international arena.

Egypt records 19th bird flu death, A second woman from Egypt's Nile Delta region died of bird flu on Monday, the health ministry said, bringing the week's toll from the virus to four.
The deaths are thought to have resulted from exposure to poultry infected with the H5N1 strain. Two other women tested positive for the virus on Friday.

Nineteen people have now died of bird flu in Egypt in the past two years.

The government says the large number of people who keep poultry at home makes it difficult to eradicate the disease.


Egypt has the largest known number of human cases of bird flu outside Asia and most of those who have contracted the virus have died.

Most of the Egyptians who have died have been women.

Women and girls are often responsible for looking after poultry in Egypt.

The World Health Organization announced early this year that some of those who had died in Egypt had been infected with a strain of the virus that was showed moderate resistance to the antiviral drug, Tamiflu.

More than 213 people have died of H5N1 bird flu since the disease's resurgence in December 2003 - most of them in South East Asia.

Experts point out that cross-infection to humans is still relatively rare and usually occurs where people have been in close contact with infected birds.

But they say if the H5N1 strain mutates so it can be passed between humans, it could become a global pandemic.

Iran wants talks with US ambassador- Iran wants to renew high-level talks with U.S. officials on security in Iraq, insisting that discussions take place between ambassadors and not lower-level functionaries, Iraqi officials said Monday.


The Iranians also want a clear-cut agenda for the meeting, which the American side has not yet provided, according to Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a member of parliament. Three Iraqi officials confirmed his account, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the press.

There was no immediate comment or confirmation from Iran's Foreign Ministry or state media.

A May 28 meeting concerning security in Iraq between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze between the two countries.

A planned Dec. 18 meeting between Iranian and American security, military and diplomatic experts was canceled a few days before it was to be held. At the time, Iranian officials said it was a scheduling problem while U.S. officials referred questions to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.

American officials have since pointed out that Dec. 18 was the day Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Iraq, which forced the postponement of the meeting. For security reasons, they said they could not disclose Rice's arrival date ahead of time.

Since then, top Iranian officials in Baghdad have asked their Iraqi counterparts to push the Americans to hold a fourth-round of talks between Crocker and Qomi, an Iranian official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The two last met in August, shortly after the first and only meeting of low-level experts, which produced no concrete results.

Iran has long been accused by Washington of training, arming and funding Shiite extremists inside Iraq to kill American troops.

But in the past month, U.S. officials have said Tehran appears to have slowed or halted the flow of illegal weapons across the frontier. Iran has denied the arms smuggling accusations, insisting that it is doing its best to help stabilize its embattled western neighbor.

Crocker told reporters during a Sunday briefing in Baghdad that he would be willing to meet Qomi again, but said no date had been set for a meeting at any level.

"I would be open to this. We could do it at the experts' level or we could do it at my level. I would definitely see that as a possibility," he said. "We're looking at what we might talk about, which I think is the first and necessary step before deciding who talks about it."

Crocker said there were "some signs, some indicators that the Iranians are using some influence to bring down violence from extremist Shiia militias." They included a drop in the number of attacks that use high-tech shaped charge bombs, which American officials allege are made in Iran.

"How lasting a phenomenon that will be, and how Iran will define and play its role in Iraq in 2008 will be very important to the long-term future of the country," he said.

Crocker said any talks with the Iranians would focus solely on Iraqi security and would not extend into the explosive issue of U.S. accusations that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Al-Askari said a top Iranian diplomat complained to him in recent days that U.S. officials are not providing enough information about what a new round of talks at any level will achieve.

"They told us that the Americans are vague and that they want to know what is the goal, what is the purpose of these talks," al-Askari said. "They said they do not want to talk on the level of experts — that at a minimum, it should be at the ambassadorial level or even higher."

Al-Askari added that the Iranians were also upset that although they contributed to the improving security situation in Iraq, U.S. officials have not done enough to acknowledge it.

"The Iranians will not stand anymore going to talk with the U.S. one day, and the next day watch the Americans speak badly about them in the press — by saying Iran is supporting militias and supplying weapons," he said.

The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad was closed Monday for the Eid al-Adha holiday.