Egyptian maximum wage from January 2012

Following Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri’s instruction to enforce a maximum wage in the public and government sectors that is 35 times the minimum wage, the Ministry of Finance has announced the decision will be applied from January 2012.

Iraq's Vice President barred from overseas travel

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• Iraq's Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi (pictured in 2010) has been barred from travelling …

Iraq's Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi has been barred from travelling overseas, officials said on Monday, the latest development in a political crisis shortly after US troops completed a pullout.
Hashemi and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak, both Sunnis and members of the secular Iraqiya bloc, have come under increasing pressure, with three of the vice president's bodyguards arrested in connection with "terrorist activity" and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki calling for Mutlak to be sacked.
"A five-member judicial committee has decided to prevent Tareq al-Hashemi and a number of his guards from travelling overseas due to issues related to terrorism," a senior security official told AFP.
State broadcaster Al-Iraqiya TV also reported the travel ban.

UN condemns Egyptian military's violence

Egyptian soldiers have clashed with hundreds of protesters for a fourth straight day, pelting each other with stones in the heart of the capital, Cairo.
As the violence continued, Ban Ki-moon, the UN general-secretary, on Monday condemned excessive use of force by Egypt's security forces.
Ban Ki-moon "is highly alarmed by the excessive use of force employed by the security forces against protesters, and calls for the transitional authorities to act with restraint and uphold human rights, including the right to peaceful protest," his office said in a statement.
Police and soldiers using batons again drove stone-throwing protesters out of Cairo's Tahrir Square, hub of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February, early on Monday.

The Naked Truth About Freedom

An activist publicly posting her nude picture: libertine or traitor? By Pakinam Amer

Ever since controversy exploded over Egypt’s ‘Nude Revolutionary’, a question has been haunting me: Was Aliaa El Mahdy the first Egyptian young woman ever to pose nude for non-pornographic purposes? Probably not. But her photograph, reportedly taken in October and publicized on November 12 by a friend, has been treated by both media and the public as an unprecedented act of rebellion or debauchery — depending on what side of the fence they stood on.

I first became aware of the situation when the hashtag #NudePhotoRevolutionary cropped up on my Twitter time line. Intrigued, I looked up the website created by a 20-year-old, self-professed feminist featuring a picture of herself standing naked save for a red pair of shoes and sheer thigh-high stockings. I’m not a stranger to nudity as an act of protest — or nude art for that matter — but I did blink a few times with a tinge of shock when I first saw it.

Summer fun

Egypt's Olympic football team qualified for London 2012, 

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Egypt beat Senegal 2-0 to qualify for an Olympics for the first time since 1992 in Barcelona.
Morocco and Gabon also qualified from Africa. Senegal will get another chance to try and reach London via a play-off scheduled for next April against a team from Asia.

Round two: tougher battles

 As they seek to consolidate their lead in the second round of parliamentary elections, Islamist parties face some uphill competition 

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LINING UP: An all-male queue of voters at a polling station in Giza yesterday wait to cast ballots for the new parliament, while women voters queue below

The second stage of People's Assembly elections began yesterday. Polling in the nine governorates of Giza, Beni Sweif, Sohag, Aswan, Menoufiya, Sharqiya, Beheira, Ismailia and Suez continues today, with run-off elections scheduled for 21 and 22 December.