#Supermoon Photos: Amazing Full Moon Views for July 2014

#Israel girls army

12 killed in soldiers’ bus rammed by #Sinai suicide car bomber #Egypt

A suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into one of two buses carrying off-duty soldiers in Egypt’s turbulent northern Sinai region, killing 10 and seriously wounding 35, military officials said.

They said the bomber struck as the buses travelled between the border town of Rafah and the coastal city of el-Arish. The explosion damaged bothvehicles. The 10 victims were the bus’s driver, three members of a security detail and six of the off-duty soldiers, according to a statement by Colonel Mohammed Ahmed Ali, a military spokesman.

“The precious blood of our sons strengthens our resolve to cleanse Egypt and shield its sons from violence and treacherous terrorism,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

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The wounded were being treated in military hospitals, he said.

The soldiers belong to the 2nd Field Army, which is doing most of the fighting against Islamic militants waging an insurgency against security forces in Sinai. The buses were on their way to Cairo, the officials said.

The northern Sinai region, which borders Gaza and Israel, has been restless for years, but attacks have grown more frequent and deadlier since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was ousted in July.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but suicide car bombings are a signature method by militant groups linked to or inspired by al-Qaida. It was the latest in a series of similar attacks targeting army and police facilities and checkpoints. In August, gunmen pulled 25 police conscripts off minibuses in the Sinai and shot them dead by the side of the main road linking Rafah to el-Arish.

Northern Sinai’s violence occasionally has spilled over into cities in the southern part of the peninsula as well as mainland Egypt, targeting police, soldiers and politicians. In September, the Interior Minister, who is in charge of the police, survived an assassination attempt by a suicide carbomber. Earlier this week, a senior security officer who monitors Islamist groups, including Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, was shot dead as he drove in Cairo’s eastern Nasr City district.

Post by ‎البلد El-Balad‎.

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Female genital mutilation in #Egypt #UNICEF #women_right

Female genital mutilation in Egypt "the highest in the world."

According to UNICEF, 91% of women in Egypt are victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) - the largest number in a single country in the world.



The image below was shared by CNN in 1996 and caused outrage, and shows a 10-year-old girl being mutilated at a barbershop in Cairo.

Due to this, there are many misconceptions surrounding the legality and religiosity of FGM.

FGM was illegalized in Egypt in 1996 (except in hospitals). However, it was the death of an 11-year-old girl in 2007 that led to the complete ban of FGM in Egypt.

In 1997, Egypt's Al-Azhar Institution, the highest authority in the Sunni Islamic world, stated that female circumcision is "un-Islamic" and has nothing to do with religion. The former Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi, even declared that his own daughter had not undergone the operation.

--> In the past two years, Al-Azhar has reiterated that FGM is un-Islamic and should not occur under any circumstances. Nevertheless, Al-Azhar's calls were silenced during Morsi's regime which was dominated by ultra-conservative Islamists.

While more than three-quarters of Egyptian girls are said to have had their genitals mutilated by this illegal act that violates basic human rights, the government (both current and past) continues to ignore the problem and fails to raise awareness.

Prevalence of FGM in Africa. For more detailed maps, see Mackie and UNICEF 2013, p. 26.

--> Information about the prevalence of FGM has been collected since 1989 in a series ofDemographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). In 2013 UNICEF published a report based on 70 of these surveys, indicating that FGM is concentrated in 27 African countries, as well as in Yemen and Iraqi Kurdistan, and that 125 million women and girls in those countries have been affected

The practice is mostly found in what political scientist Gerry Mackie describes as an "intriguingly contiguous zone" in Africa, from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east, and from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south, intersecting in Sudan.^[72] According to UNICEF, the top rates are in Somalia (with 98 percent of women affected), Guinea (96 percent), Djibouti (93 percent), Egypt (91 percent), Eritrea (89 percent), Mali (89 percent), Sierra Leone (88 percent), Sudan (88 percent), Gambia (76 percent), Burkina Faso (76 percent), Ethiopia (74 percent), Mauritania (69 percent), Liberia (66 percent), and Guinea-Bissau (50 percent).

Around one in five cases is in Egypt. Forty-five million women over the age of 15 who had experienced FGM were living in Egypt, Ethiopia and northern Sudan as of 2008, and nine million were in Nigeria.^[74] Most of the women experience Types I and II. Type III is predominant in Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan, and in areas of Eritrea and Ethiopia near those countries. USAID estimated in 2008 that around eight million women in Africa over the age of 15 were living with Type III.

Outside Africa FGM occurs in Yemen (23 percent prevalence), among the Kurds in Iraq (giving the country an overall prevalence rate of eight percent), Indonesia and Malaysia.^[76] It has been documented in India, among the Bedouin in Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and by anecdote in Colombia, Oman, Peru and Sri Lanka.^[77] There are indications that it is performed in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, although no nationally representative information is available for those countries.^[78] There are also immigrant communities that practise it in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, Scandinavia, the United States and Canada.^[11]

In 2013 UNICEF reported a downward trend in some countries. In Kenya and Tanzania women aged 45–49 years were three times more likely to have been cut than girls aged 15–19, and the rate among adolescents in Benin, Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria had dropped by almost half.^[79] In 2005 the organization reported that the median age at which FGM was performed had fallen in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya and Mali. Possible explanations include that, in countries clamping down on the practice, it is easier to cut a younger child without being discovered, and that the younger the girls are, the less they can resist.

WHO LIVES IN A HOUSE LIKE THIS? #egypt #Masonic

Browsing the internet, we came across this monster house listed for sale in Obour City. Anyone got 4.2 million LE spare?

Often, when we pass derelict housing areas or deserted buildings, on the edge of the city, we wonder what it might be like to buy a house, pimp it out, and turn it into some sort of minimal, modern art-deco tower amongst the sepia sea of unfinished buildings. At no point did we ever think to turn one into this...

The villa, which is listed for 4.2 million LE on Dubizzle.com, looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie, and features primitive gothic elements, as well as garish focal points, like a massive Lord of The Rings-style eye and jungle scene. There are dinosaurs in the eye. The gates look like pirate ship wheels. There's just weird shit everywhere. Ahhhh! What is this place?

--> Unfortunately we could not contact the owner for comment but if you have 4.2 million LE lying around and always fancied yourself to own a crib that Dali would be proud of, we suggest you find out more about this 12 bedroom monster house in Obour. House warming party?

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