Hossam el-Hamalawy
Twelve dead in a building collapse, while fires continue.
And after blaming the surrounding poor slum residents, “junkies” and street vendors for the National Theater fire, now Farouk Hosni, Mubarak’s minister of culture, is accusing the theater workers!
The Muslim Brothers are boycotting the student union elections in Cairo and Ain Shams Universities to protest security interference. Just like before, thugs were allowed into Ain Shams U campus to assault the student activists.
Correction: No clashes happened in Ain Shams on the same scale as 2006. The plainclothes thugs were indeed brought to campus, and there was a stand off. But no fighting happened as MBs decided to withdraw from the elections.
From the Daily News Egypt:
Egyptian stocks hit a two-year low Tuesday as traders returned from a week-long religious and national holiday to find little to cheer about amid a financial crisis that has shaken global markets.
The Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange’s benchmark CASE 30 Index was down by over 16.6 percent, to 5,888.59, in mid morning trading, a drop that analysts attributed to the market reacting to precipitous slides in other world markets over the past few days.
So far this year, the CASE is down over 4,650 points, or 44 percent.
CASE officials temporarily halted trading after shares of several major companies plummeted below the 10 percent threshold, Egypt’s Middle East News Agency reported.
Analysts said some companies saw their shares drop by as much as 40 percent, albeit on low volume trading.
“There is an element of panic in the market,” said Wael Ziada, head of Egypt research with EFG Hermes. Ultimately, “it’s not very different from the losses in the markets, in general, over the past few days.”