Egypt picks site for First Nucler power plant

CAIRO (Reuters) -- Egypt has picked a site on the Mediterranean coast for its first nuclear power plant, part of a plan by the Arab world’s most populous state to shift away from oil and gas, the official news agency Mena said on Wednesday.

Egypt, which aims to start an international bidding process for its first plant this year, plans several nuclear plants and last year signed a deal with Australia’s WorleyParsons for a nuclear power consultancy.

President Hosni Mubarak gave his seal of approval to the Dabaa site on the country’s north coast, Mena reported, after Electricity Minister Hassan Younes had earlier said studies concluded that the location was the most suitable.

Officials say Egypt’s combined oil and gas reserves will last roughly three decades, encouraging a shift to alternative energy sources, including nuclear and solar. Egypt already has wind farms in operation on its eastern Red Sea coast.

Egypt aims to set up four nuclear plants by 2025, with the first to start operating in 2019.

The nuclear program could add capacity of up to 4,000 megawatts (MW) by 2025, officials say. Egypt now has installed capacity of about 23,500 MW, but is straining to meet demand during an unusually hot summer, leading to intermittent power cuts across the grid. Egypt has said it aims to add an additional 58,000 MW of capacity to the grid by 2027.

Camels, interesting

Umm Sayhun, Jordan

Large Camel, Small Truck

I wanted to speak for just a moment on the scale of camels. Simply put, they're massive.
I think most folks don't realize just how large a camel really is. I'm not a petite fellow, and the camels in use around Petra utterly tower above me. I'm generally lucky to come up to the base of their tails.
The average fully grown Arabian camel stands 6ft 1in (1.85m) at the shoulder and 7ft 1in (2.15m) at the hump. The hump rises about 30 inches out of its body.
Camels can run at up to 40 mph in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 25 mph. Most have a life expectancy of approximately 40 to 50 years.
While researching the misbaha (a string of prayer beads that come in sets of 33 or 99) that I've seen some of the Bedouin men and women carrying around with them, I happened upon this quote in a photo caption:

Muslims believe that there are 99 known names for Allah, which are contemplated while carrying the beads. As the myth goes, only the camel knows the 100th name, and for this reason he is always smiling.

Bedouin Camels with Saddles: Like almost all the other camels in Petra, these animals aren't used for rides as much as they are for tourists posing on (or with) them for photos.

Mohamed Hamaki single/Coke ad Egyptian

Morocco’s airports handle record 1.6 million passengers in July; passenger numbers up 15% in first seven months

TAP Portugal has taken advantage of the growing Moroccan market and launched a route between Lisbon and Marrakech in June. The strongest growth has, however, been recorded in Fez, Nador and Tangier where Ryanair and Spanair have launched routes this spring.

Being on the periphery of Europe appears to be an advantage at the moment, at least when it comes to generating air travel (just look at Turkey). Morocco, in no small part thanks to its ‘open-skies’ deal with the European Union, is continuing to report impressive passenger traffic growth across its airports in 2010. In each of the last three months (May, June and July), traffic has grown by between 15% and 20%. Even in ‘volcanic April’, passenger numbers were up almost 8%.

Source: ONDA

Casablanca remains the country’s dominant airport, accounting for just over 49% of all air passenger traffic in the first seven months of 2010. Passenger numbers have grown by 14.6% to just over four million. Overall, year-to-date growth across all airports is also, coincidentally, 14.6%. The fastest growing airports are Fez (39.2%), Nador (37.3%) and Tangier (21.8%), while the relative laggards are Agadir (+8.3%) and Rabat (-2.4%). New scheduled routes started this year include London Stansted to Fez (Ryanair since 4 May), Pisa to Fez (Ryanair since 7 April); Barcelona to Nador (Spanair since 18 April), and Brussels Charleroi to Nador (Ryanair since 9 April).

July demand reaches all-time high

Last month, Morocco’s airports handled a record 1,587,234 passengers up almost 20% on last July, and beating the previous record set last August of under 1.4 million.

Collection of Images in Petra

Tatiana and Aidric with Tourist Crowd in Front of the Treasury: I took many photos in Petra this day, but perhaps is this one of my favorites. The overwhelming presence of the tourists, the location, the sleeping infant, and Tatiana looking less than thrilled at the people around us.

Looking Out from Inside a Tomb

Lovely Rose Sandstone Patterns: I had Tatiana place her hand in the photo for scale.

Tatiana and Aidric Inside One of Petra's Tombs

Bedouin with Camels on the Colonnaded Street

Massive Desert Beetle

Sandstone Archway

Tatiana Changing Aidric's Diaper

Car Parked in Petra Alcove

Sandstone Patterns

Aidric and Tatiana Exploring Urn Tomb

Family Feet in Petra's Sand

The Petra Aftermath: Our Filthy Feet

Mahmoud Khalil's museum Statue of Cupid smashed

It seems that there is a curse in the Mahmoud Khalil’s museum because today a historical statue for Cupid at the garden was smashed in to pieces right after the visit of the public persecutor Abdel Magid Mahmoud !!
This happened in less than 24 hours of the Van Gogh’s painting theft !!

Broken Cupid (Youm7)

This Cupid statue’s value was estimated by millions too considering its history !! Already I do not know what it was doing at the garden when it was supposed to be inside according to those who working at the museum.

Mahmoud at the museum (Getty)

Abdel Magid Mahmoud , the public persecutor visited the museum today and he found out the 27 cameras and alarm devices in the museum are and were all broken during the crime !!
He found out that there are 7 guards only protecting this big museum with multimillion treasures and those guards are not capable of protecting anything at all !!
Mahmoud has banned the head of the arts section Mohsen Shalaan and other 8 employees at the museum from travel till the end of the investigation. There is no doubt that those who stole it had some help from inside , the canvas was cut from inside the frame for God sake , this needs time !!
Shalaan accused minister Farouk Hosni of neglecting the museum for more than a decade and that the surveillance cameras were broken for the last 15 years.
Most people are sure that Hosni will get away from this scandal as he always does.

Updated #1

• Here is a video shot in the museum from a year ago based on the date of its upload , this video shows the level of neglect in the museum , already I assume that this video was shot by a mobile phone without a permission from the administration !! You can watch it after the break

• By the way Youm 7 published this video as if it were their exclusive finding with no credit to the one who filmed , in fact they re-uploaded again to their account !!!
• During my search in Youtube I found a clip showing the museum before the theft.
  

Petra, Jordan

Umm Sayhun, Jordan

Petra was established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans—a nomadic Arab tribe that migrated from western Arabia and settled in modern-day Jordan, dominating the lands during pre-Roman times.
As the Nabateans forsook their purely nomadic lifestyle and settled in Petra, they grew rich by levying taxes on passing caravans to ensure safe passage through their lands. Taxing the popular trade routes turned out to be much more effective than raiding them.
Excavations have demonstrated that it was the ability of the Nabataeans to control the water supply that led to the rise of the desert city, creating an artificial oasis. The area is visited by flash floods and archaeological evidence shows that the Nabataeans controlled these floods by the use of dams, cisterns and water conduits. These innovations stored water for prolonged periods of drought, and enabled the city to prosper.

An overview of Petra's tourist trail—learn more. This map can be viewed in detail on Google Maps.

The entrance to Petra is a long, winding sandstone chasm known as the Siq. To reach the start of it, visitors must first walk about a half-mile along the wide valley known as the Bab as-Siq.

Aidric running in the Bab as-Siq

Obelisk Tomb and Bab as-Siq Triclinium

The first major monument visitors encounter in Petra is actually two separate monuments, stacked on top of each other: the Obelisk Tomb (on top) and the Bab as-Siq Triclinium (below).
The four great obelisks of the tomb, along with a figure in a niche in the center, guard a rock-hewn cave containing burials. The lower half, the Bab as-Siq Triclinium, functioned as a dining room (triclinium) where feasts were held in honor of the dead. The interior is a single room with rock-carved benches on all three sides.

This Petra tomb was built by the Nabateans in the 1st century BC. The most intriguing part of this structure is the mixture of Egyptian, Greek, and Nabatean-styled architecture.

Inside Petra's Siq

The Siq is not technically a gorge, as it was formed not by erosion but tectonic forces, which caused the rock to split dramatically in half. It was only then that the waters of the Wadi Musa flowed in and the winds blew through the newly-formed chasm, gradually rounding the sharp edges into smooth curves.
Along with the strategic protection offered by the passage (that is no wider than seven feet in some places), the resident Nabateans also leveraged the Siq's downward slope for water management. The original channels cut into the walls to bring water into Petra are visible, and in some places the 2000-year-old terracotta pipes are still in place—in one location they were arranged so that both people and animals could drink from them.
Along the Siq are some underground chambers, the function of which has not yet been clarified. The possibility that they were tombs has been excluded and archaeologists think it unlikely that they were dwellings. The majority consensus is that they housed the guards that defended the main entrance to the city.
During its prime, the Siq was used as the grand caravan entrance into Petra. These trade caravans passed through the city bound for Giza in the south, Bosra and Damascus in the north, eastward to the Persian Gulf, and to Aqaba on the Red Sea.
The floor of the Siq was later paved by the conquering Romans—a section of which was uncovered intact in 1997 when over six vertical feet of sediment and gravel accumulation was removed (to lower the path).
The Swiss government paid for the restoration of the Siq, and when the gravel and earth was dug away and the path was sadly resurfaced in concrete. This certainly took something away from the romance and atmosphere of discovery in the passage (and created more of a Disney theme park sensation), but it does make it possible to walk without keeping one's eyes fixed on the ground.

Nabataean Religious Processions
Some historians speculate that the primary function of the Siq was akin to the ancient Graeco-Roman Sacred Way. Some of the most important rituals of Petra's spiritual life began as a procession through the narrow canyon, while it also represented the endpoint of the pilgrimage by Nabataean pilgrims. Many of the wall niches that are still visible today along the Siq's walls were designed to hold figures or representations (called baetyls) of the main Nabataean god, Dushara. These small sacred sites served as touchstones of the sacred for pilgrims and priests, offering them a link to the more ornate temples, tombs and sanctuaries in the city's heart, reminding them that they were leaving the outside world, and on the threshold of what was for many a holy city.

Today's Siq is a lovely meandering path between beautifully-colored sandstone cliffs towering 300-600 feet high. If by good luck (or good planning) you succeed in passing through it when nobody else is around, the mood is wonderful. Although if a tour group or a bevy of students is there, you can hear their voices echoing from several hundred feet away.

Inside the Siq

Petra guards inside the Siq

Tourist in horse-drawn cart

Tatiana standing next to a relief of the Treasury

Wearing Aidric

Siq Statue Fragments: Supposedly this is of a man leading a camel.