The Coptic language was divided into different dialects according to the regions of Egypt and the length of the Nile Valley. Egyptians lived in varied places — around the marshes, close to the banks of the Nile, in oases, in cities, while many worked in agriculture and dwelt in villages. For this reason, we can trace the dialects in Egypt from the earliest time of the ancient Egyptian language until it appeared clearly and was written in the Greco-Roman era. From studying the early manuscripts and inscriptions onward, philologists have divided the Coptic language into Boheiric, and the Upper Egyptian dialects of Sahidic, Faiyumic, and Akhmimic, as well as secondary dialects that follow.
By Dr. Boulos Ayad Ayad
January 27th, 2007
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The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, arrived in Baghdad on Friday to meet Iraqi and US officials, a US embassy official said.
The new Democrat speaker has helped lead opposition to US President George W. Bush’s plan to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq to bolster a last-ditch security crackdown in Baghdad.
Friday’s blast in the capital hit the Ghazil market an hour before a weekly 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) vehicle curfew in the capital, aimed at protecting mosques over Friday noon prayers.
Bomb attacks killed at least 34 people in Baghdad on Thursday as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned militants from both Shi’ite and Sunni camps they would have nowhere to hide from a coming major crackdown backed by US troops.
On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shi’ite mosque on the outskirts of Mosul, killing seven and wounding 17 more after prayers, a police source said.
After a surge in bombings over the past few days, security forces are on high alert as Shi’ites prepare to mark the climax of the 10-day mourning rite of Ashura on Monday.
Many hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected to converge on the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, for ceremonies banned during Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated, secular rule and now an annual highpoint for majority Shi’ites in the political ascendant in Iraq for the first time.
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January 26th, 2007
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Iran plans to launch a satellite soon using a ballistic missile converted into a launch vehicle, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports.
The conversion of the 800- to 1,000-mile range Shahab 3 missile could be a step in development of an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of as much as 2,500 miles. That would give Iran the ability to strike central Europe, Russia and possibly India and China, extending its range out of the Middle East.
Alaoddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said the satellite launcher has been completed.
Uzi Rubin, the former head of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, in a report to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said he believes Iran wants to launch reconnaissance satellites from its own territory.
“A reconnaissance satellite of reasonable performance should weigh about 300 kilograms (660 pounds),” Rubin said. “Once Iran learns how to put 300 kilograms into earth orbit, it could adapt the satellite launcher into an ICBM that could drop more than 300 kilograms anywhere in the world.”
January 26th, 2007
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An Egyptian court refused Thursday to release on bail a blogger who is on trial on charges of insulting Islam and causing sectarian strife for his Internet writings in Egypt’s first prosecution of a blogger.
Abdel Kareem Nabil, 22, who has been in detention since his arrest in early November, often denounced Islamic authorities and criticized Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his Arabic-language blog. He faces up to nine years in prison if convicted on the charges.
In a statement Thursday, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, called on human rights groups to “pressure the government to drop charges against (Nabil) as a prisoner of conscience.”
Two US congressmen also expressed deep concern about the arrest of Nabil - who also goes by the blogger name of Kareem Amer - and called for the charges to be dropped.
“The Egyptian government’s arrest of Mr. Amer simply for displeasure over writings on the personal weblog raises serious concern about the level of respect for freedoms in Egypt,” Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, and Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank wrote in a letter to Egypt’s US ambassador, Nabil Fahmy.
The Bush administration has not commented on Nabil’s trial, unlike its criticisms of other arrests of Egyptian rights activists in past years.
In 2005, the Bush administration made Egypt - which Mubarak has ruled unquestioned for a quarter century - the centerpiece of what it called a policy priority of promoting democratic change in the Arab world.
But Egyptian reformists say Washington has all but dropped its pressure on Mubarak amid a need for his support on Iraq and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United States was also spooked when Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood made big gains in 2005 parliamentary elections and the radical Hamas movement won 2006 Palestinian elections - raising fears that greater democracy would increase fundamentalists’ power, activists say.
Nabil, whose trial began Jan. 18, has been charged with inciting sedition, insulting Islam, harming national unity and insulting the president.
In Thursday’s session, his lawyers requested he be released on bail during the trial, but the court rejected the motion, Nabil’s lawyer Radwa Sayed Ahmed said.
In his blog, Nabil was a fierce critic of conservative Muslims and in particularly of al-Azhar, one of the most prestigious religious institutions in the Sunni Muslim world.
Nabil was a law student at al-Azhar University, but denounced it as “the university of terrorism,” accusing it of promoting radical ideas and suppressing free thought. Al-Azhar “stuffs its students’ brains and turns them into human beasts … teaching them that there is not place for differences in this life,” he wrote. He was thrown out of the university in March.
In other posts, Nabil described Mubarak’s regime as a “symbol of dictatorship.”
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Abdel-Kareem Nabil’s blog, in Arabic
http://karam903.blogspot.com/
January 25th, 2007
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PARIS (Reuters) - Lebanon obtained $7.62 billion in aid and loan pledges on Thursday to help it recover from war and enable its Western-backed government to weather a growing threat from Hezbollah-led opponents.
But as the promises of aid poured in, there were fresh clashes on the streets of Beirut between pro and anti-government supporters in which four people were killed and 100 injured.
Saudi Arabia headed the list of donors with a promise of $1.1 billion of credits and grants, the United States pledged $770 million and the Arab Monetary Fund and World Bank each offered funding of around $700 million.
“I’m going away really pleased with the level of financial support offered today,” Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told reporters at the end of the meeting. “This conference is an expression of faith in the Lebanese nation and people.”
Lebanon’s efforts to rebuild after its 1975-1990 civil war suffered a serious setback last year when Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas fought a 34-day war that shattered the country’s fragile infrastructure.
The political situation has since deteriorated, with the Shi’ite Hezbollah opposition group spearheading increasingly tense protests aimed at ousting Siniora’s Sunni-led government.
“The people of Lebanon deserve to live in peace. They deserve to make decisions about their political future free from the threat of violence and free from political intimidation,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the conference.
She later told a news conference: “The future of Lebanon is important not only to the people of Lebanon but also to the future of a troubled region.”
DEBT WOES
Lebanon is weighed down by $40 billion of debt, equal to 180 percent of gross domestic product, and Thursday’s pledges should ease, but by no means resolve, its financial problems.
France said $730 million of the pledges were donations, while the rest came in the shape of low-interest loans, grants and development aid — much of it with strings attached.
Only $1.95 billion would be made available this year and $1.21 billion of the total sum came from private-sector pledges.
“In spite of past experience, it is now the duty of the Lebanese to prove that they can work together with the international community to bring back what they lost in the strife that they have faced,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told the closing news conference.
Hezbollah has accused Siniora of being in the pocket of the West, and government opponents have said the Paris conference was aimed at maintaining him in power.
Donor countries denied that and the new U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the pledges would be vital to rebuilding Lebanon, but flatly added: “this will not be enough.”
Ban urged the Lebanese people to seek national reconciliation and “to exercise maximum restraint, refrain from violence, and to engage in continuous and sincere dialogue”.
The amount pledged on Thursday easily exceeded the $4.2 billion offered at a previous donors’ conference for Lebanon in Paris in 2002. On that occasion the United States refused to make any firm commitments, in stark contrast to 2006.
Some donors said they would link their aid to Siniora’s ability to push through a potentially unpopular reform package unveiled this month, which includes plans for privatisations, cutting state spending and hiking taxes.
“Throughout all the ordeals it has suffered, Lebanon has always been capable of finding the strength to pick itself up,” French President Jacques Chirac told the conference.
“I have no doubt that with the help of all of us, it will succeed once again in surprising us with the vigour of its renaissance,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy and Elizabeth Pineau)
Copyright © 2006 Reuters
By Crispian Balmer and Arshad Mohammed
January 25th, 2007
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