[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/41/SOAP_poster.jpg]

;: __CAIRO, Egypt (AP)__ -- Customs officers at Cairo's airport have detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said.

[More than one thousand families have lost a loved one.|http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060204/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_ship_sinks;_ylt=AsL1FvHqffzVxhsRnV.Cvdas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--] They have lost a member of the family that already had it the hard way; a manual labourer in the Gulf. Most of them trying to collect as much few money as they could, so they can help their own family survive.

In other words, a tragic crisis.

__Do you think anyone cares ? Non at all.__

For the government. It is acceptable to do a careless job in anything. And in this tragedy it will be so. From the preventive measures, the rescue and up to the investigation. For the government those lives are of no value whatsoever. We have been conditioned to this. We find it normal and acceptable for the government to do a lousy job in anything. But it is not mutual. The government is never held accountable.

;: ... World Health Organization officials say, the birthplace of polio appears for the first time to have ceased to be a source of transmission of the virus, with no new cases recorded in Egypt over the past 12 months ...

[read it in full|http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0601250204jan25,1,7561871.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed]

This is great news and I hope that we can keep it up. I hope that the keen detection of new cases and strict and wide spread immunization continues with the same level. I hope not but I think that we still have a high risk of finding new cases though, this was only a year with no new cases.

Alaa reports that armed state security forces detained the Egyptian journalist Ahmad Abdollah "Abo Islam". They broke in to his house on Monday. Five bloggers visited him and knew from his son that state security forces threatened his family at gun point and confiscated computer hard drives, CDs and books. He was a member of the Labour "El A'aml" party, former editor in ASha'ab newspaper and published two other newspapers. Currently he writes on a website called Balady Net. Abo Islam runs the Center for Islamic Enlightenment, which aims at bringing different religions closer together.

This is [a story that touches anyone|http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/Newsdesk.nsf/Lebanon/26F370B1EA84B395C22570C3002B12BC?OpenDocument]. Her smile now is far more powerful than the bomb.

Aljazeera responds to the [leaked memo about US wanting to bomb their HQ|http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16397937%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=exclusive%2d%2dbush%2dplot%2dto%2dbomb%2dhis%2darab%2dally-name_page.html] using [web 2.0|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0] tools. They are [blogging in first person narrative of personal stories just like bloggers do and allowing comments|http://dontbomb.blogspot.com/]. They are [using flickr|http://www.flickr.com/photos/23885066@N00/]. They are [tagging the photos|http://www.flickr.com/photos/23885066@N00/tags/aljazeera/]. They chose a [creative commons license for their photos|http://www.flickr.com/photos/23885066@N00/66454223/]. And you can send them emails to their [gmail account|mailto:dontbombus@gmail.com].

I wonder when will they store their video on archive.org, let us locate their reporters using google maps and hear their first podcast ?

[http://mostafa.foolab.org/files/159562_7005.jpg]

I have nothing new to say. Probably people reading this already know that the moral stigma of HIV is getting more people infected. The ignoramuses fearing that people would be promiscuous because of sex ed, are helping no one. Arguments against teaching teenagers about sex, drugs and condoms are no longer justified. I think more delays in introducing such classes will be a landmark failure in proper reasoning by the Egyptian society.

From the [latest UNAIDS|http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4457208.stm] report ([full text|http://www.unaids.org/epi2005/doc/EPIupdate2005_html_en/epi05_11_en.htm]):
;:Official data from Egypt indicate an epidemic that is driven mainly by unprotected sex—with heterosexual intercourse accounting for about one half of HIV cases where the mode of transmission was noted, and sex between men for a further one fifth. Injecting drug use was the mode of transmission in just 2% of HIV cases. Yet, researchers have encountered high levels of risky behaviour among injecting drug users in Cairo, for instance, with more than half the surveyed injectors saying they used non-sterile injecting equipment in the previous month (Elshimi, Warner-Smith and Aon, 2004).