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With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is due to inaugurate on Saturday the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum, widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry.With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the GEM houses thousands of artefacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of over $1 billion.More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates five million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display.In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment”, describing the museum as “Egypt’s gift to the world” and a “new chapter in the history of Egyptian civilisation”.Preparations for the much-delayed inauguration have been shrouded in secrecy.Authorities have not named the dignitaries expected to attend, but have promised “kings, princes, heads of state and government leaders”.Organisers have also been tight-lipped on the new display for the iconic gold mask of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun.Starting Tuesday, the museum will be open to regular visitors who can view 4,500 of about 5,000 funerary objects previously scattered across the country, including at the colonial-era Egyptian Museum in central Cairo.Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday held a high-level meeting “dedicated to advancing preparations” for the inauguration, according to an official statement.- ‘Symbolic dimension’ -During the meeting, Sisi urged enhanced coordination to ensure the opening ceremony is held “in a manner befitting Egypt’s position, reflecting its leadership in the field of museums and global culture, and contributing to the promotion of tourism in the country”.”Emphasis was placed on the symbolic dimension of GEM, which is set to become an international cultural and scientific hub, contributing to enhancing tourism promotion in Egypt,” the statement added.During a final inspection visit to the site on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said the event reflected Egypt’s role “as a cradle of civilisation and a global leader in culture and museum innovation”.The inauguration had been set for July 3, but was postponed when Israel attacked Iran on June 13, sparking a 12-day war that closed airspace across much of the Middle East. Even before that, the project had faced a series of setbacks, including political unrest and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.In a bid to reach the widest audience possible, Egyptian state-linked conglomerate United Media Services announced a strategic partnership with TikTok seeking to “share Egypt’s unparallelled civilisational story with audiences across the globe”.Following years of instability, Egypt’s tourism industry — which accounts for about 10 percent of the country’s workforce — has been recovering.In the 2023-2024 fiscal year, tourism revenues stood at $14.4 billion, up 34.6 percent compared to the previous year.Around 15 million tourists have visited Egypt in the first nine months of 2025, accounting for $12.5 billion in revenues and marking a 21 percent increase on the same period last year.

Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men rallied in Jerusalem on Thursday to protest against military conscription in their community, an issue that has caused a major strain in Israel’s right-wing ruling coalition.The vast crowd were demonstrating to demand a law guaranteeing their right to avoid Israel’s mandatory military service — long promised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Crowds of men set fire to pieces of tarpaulin as hundreds of police officers cordoned off several roads across the city, AFP correspondents reported.Demonstrators packed onto the tops of buildings, petrol stations, bridges and balconies above a sea of fellow protesters, some of whom held signs declaring: “Better to go to prison than to the army.”A helicopter flew overhead as people gathered to take part in collective prayers.Abraham, 27, who studies in a Jerusalem religious seminary known as a yeshiva and declined to give his full name, said the goal was to preserve a lifestyle lived according to the Torah, the Jewish holy text. “We don’t go to the army not because we are selfish, but because we try to preserve ourselves, what the Torah tells us and the rabbis tell us,” he told AFP.”There were hostages, and we mourned their deaths, we prayed for them three times a day, and for the soldiers,” he said, referring to the captives abducted during Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. Israeli police said one man fell from a height during Thursday’s rally and was subsequently pronounced dead by medical personnel.- Crackdown -The mass demonstration follows a recent crackdown on ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers, with thousands of call-up notices ignored and several deserters imprisoned.Under a ruling established at the time of Israel’s creation in 1948, when the ultra-Orthodox were a small community, men who devote themselves full-time to the study of sacred Jewish texts are given a de facto pass from army service.This exemption has come under mounting pressure since the start of the war in Gaza, as the military struggles to fill its ranks.In June 2024, the supreme court ruled that the state must draft ultra-Orthodox men, declaring their exemption had expired.A parliamentary committee is now discussing a bill expected to end the exemptions and encourage young ultra-Orthodox men who are not studying full-time to enlist.”The Israeli government, the supreme court and the attorney general have turned against them and want to put them in prison — but it will not happen,” Rabbi Avraham Bismut, a resident of Beit Shemesh, told AFP.Whether the exemption should be scrapped has been a long-running point of contention in Israeli society, with Netanyahu pledging that his government would pass a law enshrining the waiver.But he has so far failed to deliver.”We feel that a decree from above has been placed upon us: such severe persecution of the world of Torah and its scholars,” said protester Arik, who also gave only his first name.Responding to the call of two ultra-Orthodox parties — one of which forms a key part of the ruling coalition — men travelled from all over Israel to join Thursday’s rally.Police announced the mobilisation of 2,000 officers in Jerusalem and, later in the evening, moved to disperse the crowds.Knesset member and opposition figure Avigdor Liberman denounced the rally, writing on X that it was a “spit in the face of our heroic soldiers!”- Vital support for coalition -The issue has placed Netanyahu’s coalition — one of the most right-wing in the country’s history — under severe strain.In July, ministers from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party resigned from the cabinet over the issue, though the party has not formally left the coalition.The other ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism, has already quit both the government and the coalition.The Sephardic Shas, which holds 11 seats in the 120-member Knesset, has warned that unless military service exemptions are anchored in law, it will withdraw its support — a move that could topple Netanyahu’s fragile coalition, now down to 60 seats.Some ultra-Orthodox rabbis fear that conscription will make young people less religious, but others accept that those who do not study holy texts full-time can enlist. Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 14 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, or about 1.3 million people, and roughly 66,000 men of military age currently benefit from the exemption.According to an army report presented to parliament in September, there has been a sharp increase in the number of ultra-Orthodox Jews enlisting, but the numbers still remain low, at a few hundred over the past two years.lsb-mib-acc-jd/dc/jw

Powered by its sovereign wealth fund of nearly $1 trillion, Saudi Arabia is backing its new AI firm Humain, entering a highly competitive sector some fear is a bubble ready to burst.The company, launched in May, is bankrolled by Saudi’s powerful Public Investment Fund, which has played a key role in financing the kingdom’s so-called gigaprojects — major developments aimed at boosting and diversifying its oil-reliant economy. Humain this week signed a number of deals during the Future Investment Initiative conference (FII) in Riyadh, where its CEO doubled down on the stated goal of Saudi Arabia becoming the third-largest provider of AI infrastructure, behind the United States and China.But Riyadh’s ambitions to become a global AI hub face fierce competition from the neighbouring United Arab Emirates, which have invested in AI for years, as well as challenges over acquiring advanced US technology, including powerful chips.”Our ambition is really, really massive,” Humain’s CEO Tareq Amin told delegates at the FII conference.Humain has vowed to offer a wide range of AI services, products and tools, along with a powerful Arabic large language model.In August, the company unveiled its debut Arabic chatbot that boasted of being able to comprehend the language’s myriad dialects while also being mindful of Islamic values.  – Deals -On Tuesday, state-backed oil giant Saudi Aramco announced plans to acquire a “significant minority stake” in Humain to scale up operations and “accelerate its growth in the AI sector”, according to a joint press release.Aramco’s President and CEO Amin Nasser gushed over the potential of AI, saying the technology and digitalisation had the ability to double an oil well’s productivity. Humain also signed a $3 billion deal with private equity giant BlackStone’s AirTrunk to build data centres in Saudi Arabia and struck an agreement with US chipmaker Qualcomm.For Robert C. Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, Humain, like other “nascent” Saudi tech entities, seeks “to assure audiences that the kingdom’s tech ambitions are very real, feasible, and exciting”.”The fast pace of the tech agenda in the neighboring UAE, which is a key regional investment hub, heightens the need to do this,” he added.- ‘Our goal’ -AI-related spending is skyrocketing across the globe, with total investments in 2025 alone expected to reach nearly $1.5 trillion, according to US research firm Gartner.The Gulf’s two largest economies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are vying to secure access to US technology.The oil-producing countries have an advantage in the race to build sprawling data centres — offering ample land, abundant energy supplies and ready access to finance along with backing from authorities.  But many challenges remain. “The kingdom’s capital means little if it doesn’t have permission from Washington buy the advanced chips needed for its data center ambitions — either for training or operating AI,” Vivek Chilukuri, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told AFP. Chilukuri added that Saudi is also facing an acute shortage of AI talent and is competing not only with “more established and well-capitalized US firms” but also with the UAE.There are also concerns over the impact of AI, with companies across the globe shedding tens of thousands of jobs, while economic returns remain uncertain. The spending spree has also prompted painful memories of the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, when vast investments were wiped out.Yet optimism was in no short supply this week in Riyadh. “It’s exciting to be in this region now because there is so much motivation from the very top levels of government to want to be leaders in AI,” said Adam Jackson, the head of Middle East operations with the tech firm CIQ. “We are not in the AI race to compete,” added a female employee from Humain, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity because she did not have permission to speak to the press.”We are there to be at the top with the US and China. That’s our goal and vision.”

More than 24,000 tons of UN aid has reached Gaza since the start of a ceasefire earlier this month, a UN official said on Thursday while calling for NGOs to be allowed to assist in its distribution.While aid volumes are significantly up compared to the period before the ceasefire, humanitarians still face funding shortfalls, the UN says, as well as issues coordinating with Israeli authorities.”Starting from the ceasefire, we brought over 24,000 metric tonnes of aid through all the crossings, and we have restarted both community- and household-based (aid) distributions,” said the UN Resident Coordinator Office’s deputy special coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Ramiz Alakbarov.The World Food Programme’s Middle East regional director Samer AbdelJaber said in 20 days of scale-up following the ceasefire they “have collected about 20,000 metric tons of food inside Gaza.”Gaza is still in the grip of a dire humanitarian crisis following Israel’s devastating offensive on the Palestinian enclave, which has left tens of thousands of people dead and reduced much of its critical infrastructure and housing to rubble.Looting in the coastal strip was also considerably down, Alakbarov added, easing the distribution of aid.”I’m very proud to say that 15 outpatient therapeutical program sites have been made operational, including eight new sites in the north, with a very commendable effort by UNICEF,” Alakbarov said.”The implementation of the 20-point (US peace) plan remains to be the central point and the central condition for us to be able to deliver humanitarian assistance in a holistic manner,” Alakbarov said.He called on Israel to allow NGOs to participate in the delivery of aid in Gaza.”The persisting issue of registration of NGOs remains to be a bottleneck issue. We continue to emphasize the essential role of NGOs and national NGOs, which they play in humanitarian operations in Gaza, and we have escalated this now,” he said.The US military has set up a coordination center in southern Israel to monitor the ceasefire and to coordinate aid and reconstruction, but aid agencies are pushing for greater access for humanitarian convoys inside Gaza.Israel has withdrawn its forces from Gaza’s main cities, but still controls around half of the territory from positions on the Yellow Line, and has resisted calls to allow aid through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. “The good news is that because of the US brokered ceasefire, we are now getting in a lot more aid than we were able to get in before, we are scaling up as part of our 60-day, life-saving plan,” said UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher in a pre-recorded message.”This is real progress, but it’s a drop in the ocean. It’s just a start of what we’re going to need to do,” Fletcher said that only one-third of the $4 billion flash appeal has been funded.