Newsreel

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Limited reshuffle

PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday issued a decree marking a limited cabinet reshuffle. Mushira Khattab, who was the secretary- general of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, now becomes the first state minister for the newly formed Ministry of Family and Population.

The new ministry took the "population" from the Ministry of Health, which was previously called the Ministry of Health and Population.

Presidential spokesman Suleiman Awwad said the change was made "because overpopulation is a national security issue that hinders overall development."

In addition, the minister of irrigation and water resources, Mahmoud Abu Zeid, was replaced by Mohamed Nasreddin Allam.

Ferry owner sentenced

THE SAFAGA Appeals Court on Wednesday handed down a seven- year prison sentence for Mamdouh Ismail, owner of the Al-Salam ferry which sank in the Red Sea in 2006, killing more than 1,000 people. Ismail, a former MP, was sentenced in absentia over this deadliest disasters in modern maritime history. He is reportedly in London.

The court also sentenced two other defendants to three years in prison each, but acquitted two.

In June 2008, Ismail was found not guilty in a trial which sparked outrage among the victims' families. The prosecutor-general called for a retrial after only Salaheddin Gomaa, the captain of a passing ferry, was sentenced to six months in prison for failing to come to the assistance of Al-Salam.

The doomed ferry was carrying more than 1,400 people from Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian port of Safaga, where the initial trial was held. Ismail had denied responsibility for the disaster, and blamed the captain of Al-Salam, who went down with his ship, for underestimating the crew's ability to fight a fire that had broken out on board.

In June 2006, Ismail was ordered to pay LE330 million to compensate victims of the disaster. In return, a freeze on his assets was lifted. A 2006 parliamentary commission of enquiry blamed Ismail's company for the disaster, saying the firm had continued to operate the ferry "despite serious defects" in the vessel.

Paintings stolen

NINE paintings were stolen from a 19th Century palace, which used to be the residence of Mohamed Ali Pasha, who ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1848. The palace overlooks the River Nile in the northern Cairo suburb of Shubra Al-Kheima. Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said the paintings were smuggled after being removed from their frames.

The stolen paintings, which date back to the era of Mohamed Ali and his family, were on loan from the Higher Council of Antiquities as part of renovations at the palace a few years ago.

According to Hosni, officials at the palace last saw the paintings at closing time on Monday evening, before the keys were handed over to the tourism police who are responsible for guarding the palace until the following morning. Hosni was quoted on Wednesday as saying that the police and general prosecution were informed of the theft, and have begun investigations.

Education picket

THOUSANDS of administrative education workers staged a sit-in on Monday in front of the headquarters of the Cabinet and of the education directorates in the governorates of Gharbiya, Suez, Daqahliya, Sharqiya and Minya. They were protesting at not receiving bonuses and sought to equate their pay scale with that of teachers. They also demanded the dismissal of Minister of Education Yosri El-Gamal.

In Gharbiya, hundreds of such workers staged a protest in front of the 10 education departments in the governorate, saying they were determined to receive their local incentives as stipulated in Law 114/2008. In Suez, dozens went on strike in solidarity with their colleagues who were staging a sit-in in front of the Cabinet headquarters.

The head of the committee defending workers' rights in Suez's education directorates, Fawzi Abdel-Fattah, said more than 100 administrative workers in the city took part in the sit-in. "We want the dismissal of the education minister, and we want an investigation with the chairman of the central administration of the secretary-general's affairs since he's the one who took the decision to stop the payment of bonuses. And we want administrative workers to be paid as much as teachers," Abdel-Fattah said.

In Sharqiya, more than 200 people working in Minya Al-Qamh education directorate went on strike to demand the 50 per cent bonus per year their colleagues receive. In Minya, 900 members of the education and scientific research syndicate committee at Abu Qurkas complained they had not received their bonuses from the Education Ministry. Workers protested at what one said was the ministry's "haphazard manner in paying under the pretext that there were no financial resources."

In an official statement issued on Sunday, the Education Ministry threatened to take the necessary legal measures against protesters, saying they were hampering educational activities. It called on all workers at all pre-university educational stages not to respond to such "tendentious" calls for going on strike or staging sit-ins.

"The issue of education administrative workers and categories not included in the teachers' pay-scale is being seriously studied by all state bodies, as these workers complement the teachers' job," the statement read.

The ministry stressed that it would not allow the educational process or exams to be hampered for any reason. It added that the bonus was being discussed by the government, the People's Assembly committees, and education trade unions according to the regulations.

Defected blood bags reopened

THE CAIRO Appeals Court will review the case of former MP Hani Sorour, involved in the notorious case of manufacturing defective blood bags. On 18 April Sorour will be represented in court along with six employees from his factory, Hayedelena for Advanced Medical Industries Company (HAMIC), and from the Ministry of Health and Population.

Implicated in the case with Sorour are Helmi Salaheddin, general manager of the blood affairs department at the Ministry of Health; Mohamed Wagdan, chairman of the technical centre in HAMIC; Nivan, Sorour's sister and a HAMIC board member; and three company employees: Wafaa Abdel-Rehim, Ashraf Ishaq and Fathia Ahmed Abdel-Rahim.

On 7 November 2008 the Appeals Court ruled that the case be reopened and referred it to the Court of Cassation to set a date for a retrial before a new panel of judges. The attorney-general filed a report requesting the case be reopened in which he revealed major defects in the blood bags.

The report said the bags were infected with bacteria and fungi likely to cause cancer and hepatitis.

Sorour is a member of the ruling National Democratic Party and was a former member in the PA's Economic Affairs Committee. The proceedings began in mid-2007 after an employee at the Health Ministry, Soheir El-Sharqawi, blew the whistle on 300,000 defective blood bags, 37,000 of which had been used while the rest were confiscated -- ripe with bacteria and fungi that could have caused cancer and hepatitis.

Investigations also found violations in the licence granted to HAMIC in providing the bags. The Ministry of Health insisted that no harm had come from the blood bags which contained what they labelled "industrial defects".

Bird flu victim 57

A TWO-year-old Egyptian boy contracted bird flu virus on 4 March, bringing the number of human cases of the avian influenza to 57 in the country. "The boy, Abdallah Nagui Omran, comes from the northern Egyptian governorate of Alexandria, some 220km northwest of Cairo," stated Abdel-Rahman Shahin, official spokesman of the Ministry of Health and Population. On Wednesday, Omran showed symptoms of the disease after being in contact with dead birds. He is listed in stable condition after being admitted to hospital and given the anti-viral drug Tamiflu, said Shahin. This is the second human case of bird flu in less than a week in Egypt, where millions of families raise poultry as a source of food and income. On Sunday, the Egyptian Health Ministry confirmed that two-year-old Youssef Abdel-Azim from Fayoum governorate, some 85km south of Cairo, was infected with bird flu. Egypt is the country most affected by the deadly avian influenza outside Asia. It reported its first H5N1 virus in dead poultry in February 2006 and the first human case in March of the same year. According to the World Health Organisation, some 409 people in 15 countries and regions have contracted the virus and 256 of them died of the disease.

Compiled by Reem Leila