Politics/headline news
Mubarak's "historic" trip 
(cairolive.com, June 7, 2002) A brief look at the president's schedule

Education
Exam-time again
(cairolive.com, June 6, 2002) Households with children at school or university have begun the annual "fort mentality" rite accompanying final exams. Across the country students are fretting about the next few weeks, with their intense schedule of tests, after which the long-awaited summer fun begins.
The hardest hit are always the high schoolers, facing a month of thanawiyya amma final secondary exams, and a frightening selection process for college and the next step in their lives.
The papers, as always, are filled with news and anecdotes relating to final exams, one of the most interesting of which appeared in Al-Wafd. A female student, reported the paper, gave birth while taking her final examination at Mounofiya University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The paper also reports that an unusually high number of cases of cheating have been discovered this year at this university.
Minister of Education Hussein Kamel Bahaaeddin, meanwhile, released a strict decree against the use of mobile telephones by students, TAs, proctors, professors, during final examinations at all schools and universities in the country. In an attempt to improve the environment in which the testing is taking place, he also released a similar ban on smoking cigarettes.

To see a larger version of the photo above, as well as more photos and news from previous years' exam times, click here, and here.

Movies
And soon thereafter
(cairolive.com, June 6, 2002) Timing played a crucial role in the recent acquisition by the Egyptian TV Union of the rights to broadcast the mega-blockbuster Titanic into Egyptian homes. Not planning to show the film before July, when school and university exams should finally be over, the union did not mind waiting until the cinematic and video rights to the film had expired, and thus got a great deal at $5000 for one showing of the movie, reports Al-Akhbar. Before July it would have cost some $250,000. 

Commentary
Lost children
(cairolive.com, June 6, 2002) Amal Al-Dorra's son Mohammed became one of the most poignant symbols of the Al-Aqsa Intifada after the image of him being gunned down by the Israelis while coming home from shopping with his father reverberated around the world.
Earlier this week, Amal, who is three months pregnant, said she hopes for a boy to carry the name of the son she lost in the ongoing struggle against Israeli occupation. She also added, in an interview with Al-Sharq al-Awsat, that she is quite certain that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon knows the truth -- that a Palestinian mother's womb can have a stronger impact than even the strongest Israeli nuclear weapons.
On the other side of the coin, Al-Akhbar recently presented the results of a shocking study carried out in coordination between an Israeli University and an international health organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. Some 25% of male Israeli school children aged 6 to 11 carry a handgun to school, says the study.

Commentary
Begging at halftime
(cairolive.com, June 6, 2002) Poking fun at the World Cup soccer mania going on in Egypt and the world, Al-Wafd's Wednesday edition featured a cartoon showing a beggar in the street watching a soccer game on TV, with a sign in front of him that reads, "Due to the circumstances of the world cup, we will only be accepting donations before and after the games."

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