KYIV, Dec 13 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s navy accused Russia of deliberately attacking a civilian Turkish vessel carrying sunflower oil to Egypt with a drone on Saturday, a day after Moscow hit two Ukrainian ports.
In a statement on Telegram, the navy said the vessel was called the Viva and had 11 Turkish citizens on board. It added that nobody was hurt and the vessel was continuing its journey to Egypt.
“The strike was carried out in the open sea in Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone, outside the range of Ukrainian air defence systems,” the statement said, accusing Russia of breaching maritime laws.
The navy said it was in contact with the ship’s captain.
On Friday, Russia attacked two Ukrainian ports, damaging three Turkish-owned vessels, according to Ukraine’s navy. A large fire broke out on one of those ships.
The attacks come after Moscow threatened to “cut Ukraine off from the sea” after Kyiv’s attacks damaged three ‘shadow fleet’ tankers heading to Russia to export its oil.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Egypt and Iran, two Middle East nations that target gays and lesbians, have complained to FIFA over a World Cup soccer match in Seattle that is planned to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride.
Leaders in the nation’s soccer federations publicly rebuked the idea of playing the match June 26 at Seattle Stadium, which local organizers say will include a “once-in-a-lifetime moment to showcase and celebrate LGBTQIA+ communities in Washington.”
In Egypt, the soccer federation issued a statement late Tuesday saying it sent a letter to FIFA “categorically rejecting any activities related to supporting homosexuality during the match.”
Seattle PrideFest has been organized in the city since 2007 by a nonprofit which designated the June 26 game for celebration before FIFA made the World Cup draw Friday.
FIFA chose Saturday to allocate the Egypt-Iran game to Seattle instead of Vancouver, where the teams’ group rivals Belgium and New Zealand will play at the same time.
Already, organizers in Seattle have promoted an art contest for the game, including one entry of a rainbow-flagged sun rising over Mount Rainier as a crab goalie goes for a soccer ball while holding a cup of coffee in its pinchers.
“With matches on Juneteenth and pride, we get to show the world that in Seattle, everyone is welcome,” Seattle’s Mayor-elect Kate Wilson wrote on social media. “What an incredible honor!”
FIFA controls only stadiums and official fan zones in World Cup host cities and should have no formal authority over community events like Seattle PrideFest.
FIFA declined comment Tuesday to the Associated Press, and did not address a question if it would consider switching the Belgium-New Zealand game to Seattle.
Angry response in Iran, Egypt
In Iran, where gays and lesbians can face the death penalty, the president of Iran’s Football Federation Mehdi Taj criticized scheduling the match during an interview aired on state television late Monday.
Taj said Iran would bring up the issue during a FIFA Council meeting in Qatar next week. The longest-serving member of the 37-person council chaired by FIFA President Gianni Infantino is Egypt’s Hany Abo Rida.
“Both Egypt and we have objected, because this is an unreasonable and illogical move that essentially signals support for a particular group, and we must definitely address this point,” Taj said. State TV on Tuesday confirmed a complaint would be sent to FIFA.
The Egypt soccer federation led by Ado Rida said of the pride celebration it “completely rejects such activities, which directly contradict the cultural, religious and social values in the region, especially in Arab and Islamic societies.”
It urged FIFA to stop the celebration to “avoid activities that may trigger cultural and religious sensitivity between the presented spectators of both countries, Egypt and Iran, especially as such activities contradict the cultures and religions of the two countries.”
Iran had threatened to boycott the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C. over complaints about five of its nine-person delegation, including Taj, not getting visas to enter the United States.
Iranians are subject to a travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration and the U.S. in the past has denied visas for those with ties to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, like Taj. Iran ended up sending a smaller delegation including the team’s coach.
Tensions remain high between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s nuclear program, particularly after American warplanes bombed atomic sites in the country during Israel’s 12-day war with the Islamic Republic in June. Unlike the 2022 World Cup, however, Iran is not scheduled to play the United States in the World Cup’s opening matches.
Seattle’s response
Asked about the complaint Wednesday, Seattle’s organizing committee said it was “moving forward as planned with our community programming outside the stadium during Pride weekend and throughout the tournament.”
“The Pacific Northwest is home to one of the nation’s largest Iranian-American communities, a thriving Egyptian diaspora and rich communities representing all nations we’re hosting in Seattle,” spokesperson Hana Tadesse said in a statement. “We’re committed to ensuring all residents and visitors experience the warmth, respect and dignity that defines our region.”
Iran, Egypt target LGBTQ+ community
For years, Egyptian police have targeted gays and lesbians, sparking warnings even from the app Grindr in the past. Though Egypt technically does not outlaw homosexuality, authorities frequently prosecute members of the LGBTQ+ community on the grounds of “debauchery,” or “violating public decency.”
Iran also has targeted the LGBTQ community and its theocracy is believed to have executed thousands of people for their sexuality since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Hard-line former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once famously went as far as to claim during a 2007 visit to the United States: “We don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” A crowd at Columbia University responded by laughing and heckling the leader.
FIFA dilemma
FIFA risks being accused of a double standard if it sides with World Cup teams’ federations over the city of Seattle.
At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, FIFA fiercely defended the right of the host nation’s cultural norms to be respected in full by visiting teams.
A group of European federations wanted their team captains to wear a “One Love” armband with some rainbow colors that symbolized human rights and diversity, which FIFA and Qatari officials viewed in part as criticism of the emirate criminalizing same-sex relations. Some Wales fans had rainbow hats removed before entering the stadium.
Qatar also will play in Seattle at the World Cup, on June 24 against a European opponent which could be Italy or Wales.
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AP Sports Writer Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed to this report
ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan praised Pope Leo’s stance on the Palestinian issue after meeting him in Ankara on Thursday, and said he hoped his first overseas visit as Catholic leader will benefit humanity at a time of tension and uncertainty.
“We commend (Pope Leo’s) astute stance on the Palestinian issue,” Erdogan said in an address to the Pope and political and religious leaders at the presidential library in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“Our debt to the Palestinian people is justice, and the foundation of this is to immediately implement the vision of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Similarly, preserving the historic status of Jerusalem is crucial,” Erdogan said.
Pope Leo’s calls for peace and diplomacy regarding the war in Ukraine are also very meaningful, Erdogan said.
In September, Leo met at the Vatican with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and raised the “tragic situation” in Gaza with him.
Turkey has emerged as among the harshest critics of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, in its conflict there with Palestinian militant group Hamas.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Daren Butler)
Tokyo has lost its status as the world’s largest city, with another sprawling Asian metropolis, Indonesia’s vast capital, knocking it off the top spot.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, follows close behind with almost 40 million, while Tokyo’s population stands at 33 million, putting it in third place.
Cairo remains the only non-Asian city among the top 10.
According to the report, released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, urbanization has reshaped the global population landscape.
Cities now house 45 percent of the world’s 8.2 billion people, up from just 20 percent in 1950.
The study found a quadrupling in the number of megacities—urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants—from eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025, with 19 of those in Asia.
The report points to significant growth for cities like Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Hajipur (India), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), all projected to surpass the 10 million threshold by 2050, when the number of megacities worldwide is expected to reach 37.
While megacities draw most of the attention, small and medium-sized cities—defined as those with under 1 million residents—continue to outnumber and outpace megacities in population and growth, especially in Africa and Asia.
Of the 12,000 cities analyzed, 96 percent have fewer than 1 million inhabitants.
What People Are Saying
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Li Junhua said: “Urbanization is a defining force of our time. When managed inclusively and strategically, it can unlock transformative pathways for climate action, economic growth, and social equity.” He added, “To achieve balanced territorial development, countries must adopt integrated national policies that align housing, land use, mobility, and public services across urban and rural areas.”
What Happens Next
Globally, the number of cities is projected to exceed 15,000 by 2050, with most having populations below 250,000.
While rural communities continue to shrink except in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, small and medium-sized cities are expected to drive the next wave of global urbanization, spurring both opportunities and challenges in infrastructure, housing, and climate adaptation.
CAIRO (Reuters) -Egyptian restorers are reconstructing a dilapidated neighbourhood in Cairo’s historic centre, dismantling houses and then rebuilding them with materials from the old structures in a model they hope can be applied to other districts.
The Darb al-Labbana neighbourhood is nestled on a slope directly under Cairo’s more than eight-century-old citadel, a prominent landmark built by Muslim general Saladin, and abutting the back of a historic hospital complex. But in recent decades it had become largely uninhabitable.
The street pattern has remained little changed for centuries. The narrow lanes and alleys followed the same paths as they did in a map drawn up by French cartographers during Napoleon Bonaparte’s occupation of Egypt in 1798-1801.
Many of the existing houses, built more than a century ago on unstable surfaces, were too small by modern standards and lacked plumbing and other infrastructure.
The aim of the restoration plan was to build liveable homes, while keeping the original street plans and facades in place. Foundations were strengthened and new sewage, plumbing and electricity were installed.
“It’s a mini, modern version of the old,” said Nairy Hampikian, an architectural engineer who advised on the project.
The government has been tearing down buildings in other dilapidated areas, and Hampikian has been trying to show that there is a way to preserve them instead.
The Darb al-Labbana neighbourhood was part of the original endowment, or Waqfiya, of the Bimaristan of al-Mu’ayyid, a hospital built in 1420 A.D.
The conservationists spent 2021 and 2022 documenting the buildings in the neighbourhood’s narrow lanes and alleyways, inside and out.
“Fifty percent of the buildings were completely destroyed. Just heaps. Another 20% were half destroyed,” Hampikian said. “The remaining buildings were not liveable.”
Residents were given three choices: move to a new apartment provided elsewhere, accept money to vacate, or accept money to rent a place to live temporarily until the restored apartments were ready.
In 2023-24 restorers began dismantling the buildings, removing the stones, numbering them, then making new structures, many with their original facades.
The project rebuilt 23 completely destroyed buildings and constructed another 15 atop those that were only partly destroyed. Of the 102 families who lived in the area, 52 have decided to return when the project is due to finish next year, 20 of them to their same address.
(Reporting by Patrick WerrEditing by Frances Kerry)
When Wicked: For Good hits theaters on Friday, audiences might think they’re looking at CGI. But those sweeping white rock formations that appear straight out of a fantasy world are very real—and they’re in Egypt.
The film crew for Wicked’s highly anticipated second chapter reportedly spent part of their production at White Desert National Park, a protected area in Egypt’s Western Desert that looks like you’re on another planet. Known for its ghostly chalk formations and endless dunes, the park served as a natural backdrop for some of the film’s scenes.
The real-life “Deadly Desert” of Oz
Located about 370 miles southwest of Cairo, White Desert National Park (officially El-Sahara El-Beida) covers nearly 115 square miles of limestone and chalk shaped by centuries of wind erosion. The result? Towering spires, mushroom-shaped rocks, and gleaming white dunes that look like they belong in another realm—or another world like the great land of Oz.
Wicked: For Good was filmed at this surreal National Park in Egypt
(White Desert National Park)
In the Wicked universe, the “Deadly Desert” separates Oz from the rest of the world, a blinding expanse that few dare to cross. It’s easy to see why the filmmakers chose this location: the stark, bleached landscape perfectly mirrors the mystical and isolating qualities that define Elphaba’s journey.
Why filmmakers chose Egypt
While most of Wicked: For Good was filmed at Sky Studios Elstree in the United Kingdom, director Jon M. Chu and his team reportedly traveled to Egypt for 10 days to capture exterior shots that couldn’t be replicated on a soundstage.
According to reports from Variety, the White Desert’s unique topography provided the perfect contrast to the lush greens of Oz seen in the first film. It’s not the first time the region has doubled as an alien or magical landscape—the park has previously appeared in documentaries and music videos, and its natural light makes it a cinematographer’s dream.
Visiting the White Desert
Unlike most movie sets, fans can actually go here. The White Desert National Park is open year-round and accessible by 4×4 vehicles from Bahariya Oasis. Most travelers visit with local guides who arrange camping permits and overnight stays under the stars.
Wicked: For Good was filmed at this surreal National Park in Egypt
(prebenbphoto)
At sunset, the landscape glows gold, then turns almost silver under a full moon. It’s one of Egypt’s most photogenic destinations, and one of the best places in the world for stargazing thanks to its remote location and zero light pollution.
If you plan to go, visit between November and March for cooler temperatures and avoid the searing summer heat. You’ll need plenty of water, sunscreen, and layers for when the sun sets.
Another way to see the history and sights of Egypt is sailing down the Nile. National Geographic Lindblad Expeditions where passengers will explore Cairo for four days before sailing on the Oberoi Philae for six nights down the Nile. Highlights on the trip include: the Great Pyramid of Giza, private access to the Sphinx, the recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum, Abu Simbel Temple, visiting Luxor at night and more.
The magic behind the landscape
Though details about the scenes shot in Egypt remain under wraps, it’s not hard to imagine Elphaba and Glinda traversing this ethereal terrain. The White Desert’s endless expanse makes it the perfect stand-in for a place where magic meets mystery.
So if you’re looking for a destination that feels straight out of Oz, you won’t find a more spellbinding spot than this stretch of Egyptian desert.
Wicked: For Good may be about friendship and redemption, but its real-life locations prove that movie magic doesn’t always need green screens—sometimes, Mother Nature is just showing off.
ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkey’s main expectation from a planned International Stabilisation Force in Gaza is for it to provide guarantees that the fragile ceasefire will last, its Defence Ministry said on Thursday.
NATO member Turkey has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s devastating two-year assault on Gaza, calling it a genocide. It has emerged as a critical player and mediator in ceasefire efforts, voicing a desire to join the stabilisation force despite Israel’s repeated objections.
At a briefing in Ankara, the ministry also said Turkey believed the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) must ensure unhindered humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza in line with international law.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)
Beard was introduced to Neamatalla, the museum’s founder, by the famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass, the former minister of antiquities for Egypt, and a friend of Nejma’s parents (Hawass is attending the museum’s inauguration). In 2001, Peter, Nejma, and Zara made a trip to Siwa, as well as Luxor, Cairo, and Aswan, and he returned several times.
As Zara writes in her text for the catalogue, “He did not arrive with conquest in his eyes. He came instead as a witness. As someone who believed that beauty, when glimpsed on the verge of disappearance, becomes a kind of moral imperative. We travelled to Egypt as a family. My father was fascinated by everything: the palimpsest of civilizations, the carved stones still half-buried in sand, the exquisite ruins, the legend of the Oracle, the movement of salt across centuries. To him, beauty was inseparable from time. It was not ornamental but geological, shaped by erosion, intention, and the passage of centuries. Every artifact spoke in echoes.”
Like the hotel, the museum was hand-built from Siwa mud and is entirely off-grid. Its collection includes Beard’s iconic large-scale photographs, embellished with hand-painted borders by the Hog Ranch Art Department, a collective of Kenyan friends and artists, which was born in Beard’s property near the Ngong Hills. One gallery displays pages from Beard’s famous diaries, each a small collage artwork in itself. Another is filled with his personal family photos.
Ultimately, the museum is intended to be a “permanent tribute to Peter Beard’s life, his time in Siwa, his work, and as a living testament to the belief that beauty and responsibility to the earth can and must coexist,” as the opening announcement reads. Peter Beard’s legacy may be complex, but there is no doubt of his farsightedness, of his profound understanding of the ways of the world, both natural and human, and of his position as one of the great artists of the 20th century.
Below, “For the Record of the Living,” a poem by Zara Beard.
(Reuters) -Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces agreed to a proposal from the United States for a humanitarian ceasefire, they said on Thursday in a statement.
The war erupted in April 2023 when the Sudanese army and the RSF, then partners in power, clashed over plans to integrate their forces.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz and Nafisa Eltahir; Writing by Enas Alashray; Editing by Alex Richardson)
In a wide-ranging interview with CBS News’ Imtiaz Tyab, Ambassador Tamim Khallaf, spokesperson for Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, discusses the Trump administration’s role in negotiating the ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, and the estimated $70 billion he says will be needed to rebuild the decimated Palestinian territory.
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) -An Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian man in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, health authorities said, as Israel and Hamas traded blame for daily violations of a fragile truce that has largely halted two years of war.
The Israeli military said its aircraft struck a militant who was posing a threat to its forces.
Al-Ahli Hospital said one man was killed in the airstrike near a vegetable market in the Shejaia suburb of Gaza City. His identity was not immediately known.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that its troops were attacked by militants in areas of Gaza where its forces are still deployed as part of the U.S.-backed ceasefire agreement.
Hamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a separate statement, it listed a series of what it said were Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreed in October, which have killed more than 200 people.
At least 236 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israeli strikes since the ceasefire took effect, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Three Israeli soldiers have been killed by Palestinian gunmen in the same period, according to the military, which says its strikes have targeted dozens of militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel will continue to retaliate for, and thwart, any attempts to harm its troops in Gaza and threatened to keep up action against Hamas.
“There are still Hamas pockets in the areas under our control in Gaza, and we are systematically eliminating them,” Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks at the start of his cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu added that any Israeli action in Gaza is reported to Washington. Hamas in its statement said the United States was not doing enough to ensure Israel abides by the ceasefire agreement.
The U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, met on Saturday with Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir during a visit to the region to discuss Gaza, the Israeli military said.
About 200 U.S. troops have set up base in southern Israel to monitor the ceasefire and plan an international force to stabilise the enclave.
There has been little sign of progress on the next stages of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end war in Gaza and major obstacles still lie ahead, including the disarmament of Hamas and a timeline for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
(Reporting by Pesha Magid and Nidal Al Mughrabi; Writing by Maayan Lubell and Pesha Magid; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
CAIRO (Reuters) -Prime ministers, presidents and royalty descended on Cairo on Saturday to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the Pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities.
The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, pandemic and wars in neighbouring countries.
“We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a country whose history goes back more than 7,000 years.”
Spectators including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gathered late on Saturday before an enormous screen outside the museum, which projected images of the country’s most famous cultural sites as dancers in glittering pharaonic-style garb waved glowing orbs and scepters.
They were accompanied by Egyptian pop stars and an international orchestra decked out in white beneath a sky lit with lasers, fireworks and hovering lights that formed into moving hieroglyphics.
By opening the museum, Egypt was “writing a new chapter in the story of this ancient nation’s present and future,” Sisi said at the opening.
The audience included German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, and the crown princes of Oman and Bahrain.
The museum’s most heavily promoted attraction is the expansive collection of treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb, uncovered in 1922, including the boy-king’s golden burial mask, throne and sarcophagus, and thousands of other objects.
A colossal statue of Ramses II that sat for decades in a downtown Cairo square bearing the pharaoh’s name now adorns the grand entry hall.
The complex’s sleek design evoking the Pyramids cuts a marked contrast to the dusty and often outmoded displays in the neoclassical Egyptian Museum that opened over a century ago in central Cairo overlooking Tahrir Square.
The old museum suffered indignities in recent years, including the looting of several display cases during Egypt’s 2011 uprising, when antiquities theft was rife.
In 2014, the beard of Tutankhamun’s burial mask broke off when workers were changing the lights in the display case, then clumsily glued back on. The following year the mask was more properly restored and put back on display.
Officials hope the new museum can end a perception fueled by such events that Egypt has been remiss in caring for its priceless treasures, and add weight to its claims for Egyptian objects held in museums abroad to be returned.
“Is it a national shrine or a global showcase? A gesture of cultural sovereignty or a tool of soft power?” read an article in a special edition of state-run Al-Ahram Weekly devoted to the museum, which it called “a philosophy as much as it is a building.”
“The GEM is not a replica of the Louvre or the British Museum. It is Egypt’s response to both. Those museums were born of empire; this one is born of authenticity.”
The museum’s more than $1 billion price tag was funded in large part by Japanese development loans. Designed by an Irish firm, Heneghan Peng Architects, it covers some 120 acres, making it roughly the same size as Vatican City.
Officials are also betting that the museum, the latest in a series of mega-projects launched or completed since 2014, can accelerate a revival of tourism, a vital source of foreign currency for an economy battered by years of regional conflicts and economic uncertainty.
A series of galleries had been opened late last year but many exhibits were not accessible to the public.
(Reporting by Alex Dziadosz; editing by Mark Heinrich)
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, October 31, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– Today, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia solidified its global leadership in public financial auditing and accounting by winning the chairmanship of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). The announcement was made during the 25th General Assembly of INTOSAI, held in Sharm El-Sheikh under the patronage of His Excellency President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of the Arab Republic of Egypt.
The General Assembly declared Saudi Arabia, represented by the General Court of Audit (GCA), as the Chair of INTOSAI starting in 2031 for a three-year term. Saudi Arabia will host delegations from over 195 countries, led by the heads of Supreme Audit Institutions, assuming leadership of the world’s foremost organization in financial and performance auditing. This role positions Saudi Arabia to steer global efforts in enhancing transparency, public sector governance, and government performance, while reinforcing public trust in national economies.
On this occasion, His Excellency Dr. Hussam Alangari, President GCA, extended his congratulations to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, acknowledging their unwavering support and empowerment of GCA. He emphasized that this achievement reflects the Kingdom’s international standing and global trust, enabling it to play a pivotal role in advancing auditing and accountability worldwide. Dr. Alangari highlighted the transformative developments in organizational independence, technical and human capacity, and methodological innovation that have enabled GCA to achieve its vision of impactful audit, public sector effectiveness, and quality of life for citizens. He added: “Saudi Arabia welcomes the world in 2031, and we look forward to hosting everyone in Riyadh to shape a global future that promotes transparency, governance, and governmental effectiveness.”
This milestone crowns decades of international engagement led by Saudi Arabia through GCA, starting with its early membership in INTOSAI in 1977. Saudi Arabia has consistently taken leadership roles in international and regional organizations, including serving as Chair of the Arab Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (ARABOSAI) for two consecutive terms since 2022, and the upcoming Chair of the Asian Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (ASOSAI) starting in 2027. GCA has also led numerous INTOSAI committees and initiatives focused on capacity building and enhancing the efficiency of peer SAIs in developing countries, reflecting the Saudi Arabia commitment to advancing auditing and accountability globally.
Founded over seventy years ago, INTOSAI is the largest and most prestigious international organization uniting Supreme Audit Institutions worldwide. Today, it comprises over 195 member countries, each represented by its Supreme Audit Institution, working to enhance transparency, governance, and public sector auditing, with the ultimate goal of improving citizens’ lives around the world.
Cairo – Egypt’s government will host dozens of foreign leaders and dignitaries on Saturday as it holds an official opening ceremony for the Grand Egyptian Museum, a $1 billion project decades in the making that was plagued by multiple delays and a ballooning of the budget.
The GEM is one of the largest museums in the world, and the largest dedicated to a single civilization: ancient Egypt. Its subject matter spans some 7,000 years, from prehistory to the end of the Greek and Roman eras around 400 A.D.
The initial cost for the more than 5-million-square-foot, triangular-themed structure about a mile from the iconic pyramids of Giza was estimated at $500 million, but the final price tag was more than double that. Costing over $1 billion, the project was funded through Egyptian resources and international cooperation.
In front of the main entrance stands the imposing 53-foot-high Hanging Obelisk, the only such structure in the world. The obelisk itself is about 3,500 years old, but it sits suspended overhead on a modern structure with a glass floor, so visitors can peer up and view its ancient inscriptions from an angle never before possible.
The Obelisk of Ramses II is pictured before the facade and entrance of the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza near Cairo late on April 6, 2025.
LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Beyond is the Grand Staircase, with 108 steps bringing people up the equivalent of six floors to the main galleries, with colossal statues on view the whole way up.
The GEM has 12 primary exhibition halls, covering about 194,000 square feet.
The number of artifacts on display has nearly doubled initial expectations thanks to Egypt’s wealth of antiquities, with officials saying about 100,000 items will be housed in the halls.
To put that in perspective, if a visitor were to spend one minute looking at each artifact on display in the museum, it would take almost 70 sleepless days to view the entire collection.
The museum’s triangular architecture radiates outward from its entrance toward the three main pyramids of Giza, aligning perfectly with their positions. Its walls and sloping ceilings follow the same lines, rising toward the pyramids’ highest points, but not exceeding the height of the ancient structures, out of respect for their builders.
A view of sunlight pouring into the Grand Egyptian Museum’s main hall, illuminating a row of colossal statues of pharaohs seated in regal poses at the Great Egyptian Museum, on October 15, 2024 in Giza, Egypt.
Mohamed Elshahed/Anadolu via Getty Images
The museum’s interior offers stunning panoramic views of the pyramids. The concept may sound simple, but it required a significant reshaping of the local topography, including the excavation and removal of some 79 million cubic feet of sand, which took workers seven months.
King Ramses II was there first
In the entrance courtyard of the GEM, stands a massive, 3,200-year-old statue of King Ramses II. The statue was moved in 2006 from a busy square in central Cairo to a site near the Great Pyramids, where it stood awaiting the new landmark museum’s construction.
A view of the main atrium with a statue of Ramses II as people visit the Great Egyptian Museum, on October 15, 2024 in Giza, Egypt.
Mohamed Elshahed/Anadolu via Getty Images
The 83-ton statue’s journey took 10 hours, processing slowly through the streets of Egypt under heavy security as people watched on TV.
Later Ramses was moved to a new permanent home, about 400 yards away, and the museum was built around it.
King Tut’s complete collection
The GEM’s main attraction, it could be argued, is the complete collection of the famous King Tutankhamun, the golden boy.
All 5,398 items from the tomb of the 13th pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, who ruled from around 1333 to 1323 B.C., will be displayed together in one place for the first time since they were discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.
The new showroom is six times the size of the one that previously housed much of the Tut collection, at the old Egyptian Museum in central Cairo.
King Khufu’s Boats
The GEM also boasts the King Khufu’s Boats Museum, showing the 4,500-year-old the boats that were designed to be used in the journey to the afterlife.
The two royal boats were discovered in 1954 near the Pyramid of Khufu. It took experts more than 10 years to reassemble the first boat. It is now fully reconstructed and was moved to the museum in 2021. Visitors of the museum can also view the conservation work underway on the second one.
Tourists enjoy a sunset at a restaurant next to the Great Pyramid of Khufu, ahead of the Grand Egyptian Museum’s official opening next Saturday, in Giza, Egypt October 27, 2025.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS
Scholars believe they were either used in Khufu’s funeral procession or they were intended for his journey with the sun god Re in the afterlife.
The long road to the Grand Egyptian Museum
The idea for a grand museum on this site in Egypt dates back more than 32 years. The government first allocated 117 acres for the project at the location in 1992.
At the very beginning of 2002, Egypt launched a massive international architectural competition to find a winning design for the museum. A total of 2,227 architects from 103 countries applied to submit designs, and by August of that year, 1,550 from 83 countries had submitted conceptual drawings.
A couple months later officials had whittled the options down to only 20 designs to put forward for a second stage. In July 2003, the prize – and the massive contract – was awarded to the Irish architectural firm Heneghan Peng.
Tourists view the site of the great Pyramids from the rest zone of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Egypt, Friday, May 23, 2025.
AP Photo/Amr Nabil
The plan was originally for the museum to open in 2010, but a series of events including financial crises, political uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and regional wars delayed the curtain raising.
A government spokesperson said the opening ceremony would draw an unprecedented number of world leaders, with as many as 40 heads of state, including royalty, expected to attend, along with a large number of other senior officials from around the world, though no names have been confirmed.
Egyptian officials hope the new museum will boost the country’s tourism industry, and with it, the still-struggling economy. They have predicted that the GEM will attract some 5 million visitors per year.
CAIRO (Reuters) -Egyptian officials are hoping the inauguration of a vast new museum on Saturday will accelerate the revival of a tourism industry hampered for more than a decade by internal upheaval, a pandemic and regional conflicts.
Officials believe the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, alone could draw as many as 7 million additional visitors annually after it opens on Saturday, helping boost total visitors to around 30 million by 2030.
Overlooking the Giza Pyramids, the 500,000-square-meter edifice will house tens of thousands of artefacts, including what is billed as the complete collection of the treasures of the boy-king Tutankhamun, many displayed for the first time.
The new space includes immersive exhibits and virtual-reality devices, in contrast to cluttered, old-fashioned displays in the older Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo.
Egypt, which has needed repeated bailouts to stabilise its economy, uses the foreign currency it collects from tourism to pay for crucial imports such as fuel and wheat.
Last year the country drew 15.7 million visitors who spent a record $15 billion, according to official figures. Tourism had collapsed to a low of $3.8 billion in 2015/16, the victim of extended political turmoil after Egypt’s 2011 uprising.
However, factors including fraying infrastructure, poor planning and security restrictions have held back the tourism sector’s potential. Even with the recent recovery, Egypt trails regional rival Turkey, which said it had more than 50 million international visitors last year, bringing in over $60 billion.
Ghada Abdelmoaty, an associate professor at the Higher Institute of Tourism and Hotels in Alexandria, said visitor targets were realistic.
“The museum accommodates a huge collection that was previously kept in storage due to lack of display space,” she said.
Popular with many travellers for its Red Sea resorts, Egypt hopes the GEM’s opening will also draw an increasing proportion of cultural tourists.
Such tourists typically stay longer and spend more than those who come mainly for beaches, analysts say.
Official figures don’t say how many tourists come for cultural reasons, but a 2021 study of GEM’s possible impact estimated they made up less than a quarter of the total.
Abdelmoaty put the number of cultural tourists at only 10-15% of all international travellers.
Remon Naguib, chief commercial officer at Orient Hospitality Group, said his company was working to integrate the new museum into “joint programmes” designed to attract visitors to experience both.
Tourists could “come and visit the museum, then spend three nights in a Red Sea destination, including Ain Sukhna, which is just one hour from Cairo,” he said.
ROADS GIVEN FACELIFT, PYRAMIDS ENTRANCE MOVED
Tourism revenues became even more important over the last two years as attacks on Red Sea shipping chased shipping away from the Suez Canal, another major foreign currency earner.
Tourism itself has proven vulnerable to shocks including political violence in the 1990s and 2000s, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine – two countries which accounted for nearly a third of tourist arrivals in 2021. Tourism has also been hurt by the war in Gaza.
To fully capitalise on the GEM’s opening, the museum “has to be complemented by very high-quality tourist infrastructure – hotels, transport, and beyond,” said Ragui Assaad, professor of international economic policy at the University of Minnesota.
That means addressing issues like transport in Cairo, a megacity with an estimated population of 23 million. Roads leading to the new museum have been given a facelift, while a new airport has been built about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the GEM to circumvent clogged streets.
Entrance to the Giza Pyramids has been relocated to the back side to reduce crowding and keep visitors away from the area’s famously aggressive tourist touts.
Tourism Minister Sherif Fathy said last month Egypt had added 5,000 hotel rooms to its existing 235,000 and hoped to add yet another 9,000 before the year ends.
(Reporting by Hatem Maher; Editing by Alex Dziadosz, Patrick Werr, Aidan Lewis)
TfL, to its credit, has made many efforts over the years to try to deal with the problem of hot tunnels, including attaching cooling panels to tunnel walls. The panels, which circulate water to remove heat from the air, were deployed in a trial in 2022, though they are not currently in use. Paul argues that such a system could be prohibitively expensive.
Hassan Hemida at the University of Birmingham says Paul’s water-cooling technology is a “good idea,” though it remains to be seen how much heat it could really remove from a real-life, busy Tube station full of people.
Certain railways simply push the boundaries of our ability to cool things down, says Hemida. He gives the example of super-high-speed trains traveling at, say, 400 kilometers per hour. They force air out of their way at high velocities, meaning the air pressure surrounding heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment on the roofs of those trains can drop significantly. “Then, you cannot suck air into the HVAC system,” he says. Ultimately, that could cause the air-conditioning unit to fail. “I have been contacted by colleagues from China, and they want to find a solution for this problem,” Hemida adds.
More and more train operators are adopting air-conditioning systems as standard, though. London’s still relatively new Elizabeth Line features air-conditioning, for example. And a spokesman for Škoda Transportation, which recently rolled out air-conditioned metro trains in the capital of Bulgaria, says: “Generally, every vehicle we produce now is equipped with AC.” Sharon Hedges, senior engagement manager at Transport Focus, an industry watchdog, adds: “As people think about procuring new rolling stock, these are the kind of things that need to be uppermost in minds now.”
Heat waves are one thing in Britain. What about the Egyptian desert? German tech company Siemens is supplying Egypt with a new set of high-speed trains that can travel at speeds of up to 230 kilometers per hour. The firm’s Velaro trains are used in many places around Europe, but for Egypt, Siemens has really put them through their paces. Last summer, the company took one of the trains to a test facility in Austria and exposed it to unpleasant conditions, including temperatures as high as 60 degrees Celsius and high winds. “We are achieving 26 degree inside temperature at the hottest outside conditions,” says Björn Buchholz, head of HVAC and door systems.
ABU DHABI (Reuters) -Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday that maximalist views on the Palestinian issues are no longer valid, emphasizing the need for security for Israel alongside the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
Gargash said that any annexation in the Palestinian territories would be considered a “red line”, adding that discussions are ongoing regarding sending personnel on the ground in Gaza.
(Reporting by Jana Choukeir and Nayera Abdallah; Writing by Tala Ramadan; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
CAIRO (Reuters) -Gaza mediators — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — stepped up their efforts this week to stabilise the early stages of the truce between Israel and Hamas and to push forward U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan.
WHAT IS THE STATUS OF TALKS?
A Hamas delegation led by the group’s exiled Gaza chief, Khalil Al-Hayya, has been in Cairo for talks with Egypt since Saturday.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance is in Israel on Tuesday after envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. Egyptian officials have also met Netanyahu.
The first phase of the ceasefire involved stopping fighting, returning hostages, increasing aid flows and a partial pull-back of Israeli forces to a “yellow line”.
WHAT HAS EACH SIDE DONE UNDER THE TRUCE?
Israel’s forces have pulled back from some parts of Gaza, but around half of the strip remains under Israeli control. On Monday, the military said it began marking the withdrawal line, warning Hamas and residents to stay away.
Hamas has released all 20 living hostages it was holding and 13 bodies, leaving 15 deceased hostages still in Gaza. Hamas says rubble and other factors may complicate the retrieval of a number of bodies. Israel believes Hamas can quickly return around five more bodies and is stalling. An international task force is meant to locate the rest.
Israel has released around 2,000 Palestinians, including 250 long-serving inmates, but vetoed the release of some prominent militant leaders. It has returned 165 bodies of Palestinians to Gaza.
Israel has also facilitated the entry of more aid trucks through two crossings into Gaza, but UN and Palestinian officials said it remains far from sufficient.
WHAT PROBLEMS HAVE HIT THE TRUCE ALREADY?
There have been continued flashes of violence, particularly around the “yellow line” demarcating Israel’s partial pullback inside Gaza.
Israel began marking out the line on Monday with yellow concrete blocks after repeated incidents of shootings. Israel says it has fired at suspected militants crossing the line. Gaza residents say it has not been clear where the line runs.
On Sunday, Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers in Rafah. Israel responded with airstrikes that Gaza health authorities said killed 28 people. Hamas and Israel later recommitted to the truce.
Inside Gaza, Hamas has reimposed control, killing members of rival groups and those it accuses of collaborating with Israel. Trump signalled his endorsement of that but the U.S. military has said it must stop.
Hamas has said aid is flowing in too slowly. Israel says it is sticking to agreements.
The Rafah border crossing from Egypt to Gaza is also meant to reopen but has not yet done so.
WHAT’S BEING DISCUSSED FOR THE COMING PHASES?
A U.S.-backed stabilisation force is meant to ensure security in Gaza. Its composition, role, chain of command, legal status and other issues are yet to be agreed.
The United States has agreed to provide up to 200 troops to support the force without being deployed in Gaza itself. U.S. officials have said they are also speaking to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Azerbaijan to contribute.
Trump wants Hamas and other factions to disarm and Gaza to be demilitarised. The group has never accepted this and says mediators have not yet officially started discussing the issue with it.
Gaza is to be governed by a transitional committee of apolitical Palestinian technocrats. The composition of this body has not been agreed. Hamas has accepted the formation of this body, but says it would have a role in approving it.
The panel would be supervised by a new international transitional body called the “Board of Peace” headed by Trump. Its formation, and the possible inclusion of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is still to be agreed.
Hamas wants employees of the existing Gaza government it has run since 2007 to stay in their jobs. Israel says Hamas can have no role.
The phasing of further Israeli pull-backs is yet to be agreed, and will depend partly on Israel’s own assessment of how much of a threat Hamas still poses. Hamas says the war will only end when Israel has fully withdrawn.
The Trump plan calls for the Palestinian Authority to be reformed. It is not clear what this would involve or what role it would take in future.
The plan says the truce could ultimately create the conditions for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination. Netanyahu has so far refused to accept the possibility of a Palestinian state.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
JERUSALEM — Israel launched airstrikes Sunday in Gaza after what it said was a Hamas attack on its forces, adding to the two-year-old war’s death toll and rattling a delicate U.S.-brokered ceasefire that had brought a measure of relief to the beleaguered enclave.
The day descended into finger-pointing as each side accused the other of violating the pact that President Trump, just six days earlier, had said would usher in “a golden age” of peace for the Middle East.
The ceasefire compelled Israel to end its months-long blockade of the enclave, but Israel said Sunday that it once again halted aid flows, potentially plunging Gaza once more into famine even as aid groups were clamoring for additional supplies to be trucked in.
Sunday’s strikes constituted the strongest challenge yet to an uneasy truce that came into place Oct. 10 after intense diplomacy — and no little pressure on the belligerents — from Trump and a raft of Arabic and Islamic nations to stop fighting and bring an end to a war that has killed tens of thousands and all but flattened much of Gaza.
War!
— Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister
Live broadcasts Sunday showed blooms of smoke rising across the Gaza Strip, as Israeli warplanes hit multiple areas in Rafah, Khan Yunis and Deir al Balah, killing at least 15 people, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said one one soldier and one officer were killed.
In a statement, the Israeli military accused the militant group Hamas of firing an anti-tank missile at troops in southern Gaza, calling the attack “a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.” The military added that it responded “to eliminate the threat and dismantle tunnel shafts and military structures used for terrorist activity.”
Later, reports of dozens of attacks by Hamas came in from local media.
A wounded Palestinian child is brought to Nasser Hospital after an Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Oct. 19, 2025.
(Jehad Alshrafi / Associated Press)
“Hamas will pay a heavy price for every shot and every breach of the ceasefire,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “If the message is not understood, our response will become increasingly severe.”
The Israel Defense Forces said targets included “weapons storage facilities, infrastructure used for terrorist activity, firing posts, terrorist cells, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites. The IDF also struck and dismantled [nearly 4 miles] of underground terrorist infrastructure, using over 120 munitions.”
Flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes
— Izzat al-Risheq, senior Hamas official, on Israeli strikes
Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, denied any connection to the violence in Rafah, saying that it was “unaware of any events or clashes taking place in the Rafah area” and that it hadn’t had contact with any of its fighters since March, when Israel broke an earlier ceasefire.
Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq insisted that it was Israel — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — that was continuing to violate the agreement and fabricating “flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes.”
“Netanyahu’s attempts to evade and disavow his commitments come under pressure from his extremist terrorist coalition, in an attempt to evade his responsibilities to the mediators and guarantors,” Al-Risheq wrote on his Telegram messaging app channel.
Hamas says Israel has violated the ceasefire 47 times, killing 38 Palestinians and injuring 143 since the truce began Oct. 10.
Israeli twins Gali and Ziv Berman, who were recently released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, are welcomed home as they return from the hospital to Beit Guvrin, Israel, on Oct. 19, 2025.
(Ariel Schalit / Associated Press)
In the days since, Hamas has handed over 20 living hostages kidnapped in its operation on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war; in exchange, Israel released more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Hamas also returned the bodies of 12 other hostages who died in captivity, and said it was still searching for the remains of 16 others.
The Qassam Brigades said in a later statement Sunday that it had recovered another body and that it would deliver it to Israel that day “if field conditions permit.” It added that any escalation “will hinder the search, excavation, and recovery of the bodies.”
Israel still controls just over half of Gaza’s territory.
The violence Sunday sparked calls from Israeli leaders across the political spectrum for a return to the fight against Hamas. A Netanyahu rival — Israeli politician Benny Gantz — said that “all options must be on the table.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist minister in Netanyahu’s government who was against any truce with Hamas, said fighting should resume “with maximum force.” His right-wing ally, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, tweeted a single word: “War!”
Details on what had prompted the Israeli onslaught remained scant. The Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported the incident began at 10 a.m., when Hamas fighters emerged from a tunnel and fired an anti-tank missile at an engineering vehicle. That was followed by sniper fire at another vehicle.
But one Palestinian channel on Telegram seen as close to Hamas said the target was a Palestinian militia that had worked throughout the war with Israel.
The head of that militia, Yasser Abu Shabab, did not respond to questions sent to the militia’s email address.
Relatives grieve as the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire are brought to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza, Oct. 19, 2025.
(Abdel Kareem Hana / Associated Press)
The violence comes a day after the State Department said in a rare weekend statement that there were “credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.”
The State Department warned that “should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire.”
In response, Hamas dismissed what it called “U.S. allegations” as “false” and said that they “fully align with the misleading Israeli propaganda.” It accused Israel of supporting “criminal gangs” that it said were assaulting Palestinian civilians.
“Criminal gangs” was an apparent reference to militias competing with Hamas for control of Gaza. Last week, video emerged of what was said to be Hamas operatives executing accused collaborators in Gaza.
Last week, Trump noted the internal conflicts in Gaza when he repeated his demand that Hamas abide by a key part of the 20-point peace pact: that it disarm. If not, Trump warned Hamas, “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”
The war began after Hamas-led militants blitzed into southern Israel and killed about 1,200 people, two-thirds of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and kidnapped about 250 others.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which says the majority are women and children and which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
