Hi Why Egypt Crushes at Squash.

Hi Why Egypt Crushes at Squash.

On Friday, Egypt’s Ramy Ashour won the squash World Open—basically the Wimbledon of squash. The tournament attracts the best players from around the world. But the final game lacked a certain element of suspense: Both players, Ashour and Mohamed El Shorbagy, were Egyptian. Even that was predictable. Egyptians dominated the international rankings this year—including El Shorbagy and Ashour, three of the Professional Squash Association’s top five players based on tournament results are Egyptian. As of Friday, Egypt has won seven of the past 12 World Opens—in the history of the tournament, which began in 1976, only Australia and Pakistan have more World Open titles. Egypt’s prowess in the sport is beginning to extend to international women’s tournaments, junior tournaments, and even American college sports: Egyptian men have won the last three U.S. Intercollegiate Individual Championships, a tournament for the best players attending U.S. universities.

How did so many Egyptians get so good at squash?

The dominance of Egyptian players dates back to squash’s earliest days as an internationally competitive sport. After being invented at a British prep school in the 19th century, the sport spread throughout the empire, including to Egypt. The British built clubs for their colonial officers in Cairo and Alexandria, but Egyptian ball boys and service staff had access to the squash courts in off-hours.

The sport’s first great international champion was F. D. Amr Bey, an Egyptian diplomat who started playing while stationed in England. He went on to win six consecutive British Open championships—then the sport’s biggest international competition—in the 1930s. His success inspired Egypt’s ball boys, one of whom, Mahmoud El Karim, racked up four of his own British Open championships in the 1940s.

Egypt didn’t produce many international champions between the 1950s and the 1990s. Repeated wars and domestic turmoil during the period made it difficult for the country’s best players to travel for tournaments while based in Egypt. “All the top players left the country and lived in Europe, and that’s when the drop [in Egyptian squash] happened,” Amr Shabana, a four-time squash world champion from Egypt, told me. The best players who stayed in Egypt couldn’t tour internationally. “[T]he country was on lockdown,” Shabana said.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hits a squash ball. (Farouk Ibrahim/AP).

But in the late 1980s, Shabana, then 10 years old, and another player named Ahmad Barada, age 12, planted the seeds of Egypt’s resurgence when they started playing together at Cairo’s Maadi Club. Because Egypt’s remaining squash talent couldn’t tour, those players trained and competed in Cairo, meaning Barada and Shabana could practice and compete against some of the country’s best from a very young age. As Shabana explained, “There’s a quote that says ‘you’re only as good as the people around you.’ Around us were the best players—maybe not the best in the world, but we thought they were.” And they were also helped by the geography of Cairo, where, Shabana said, the squash clubs were all within a half hour's drive of one another. (This is in contrast to the U.S., where the major squash hubs are scattered between Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.) The result was a tight squash community centered on Cairo’s clubs. “This is the main reason squash thrived,” Shabana said. “Everybody pushed each other. This was I think quite unique.”

Beyond exposure to top professionals, Shabana and Barada had other advantages. The most noteworthy is that the rules of Egyptian tournaments permitted them to play many more matches than they would have been able to in England or the U.S. A 10-year-old Shabana competed in the bracket for players under 12, the U12, as well as the Under-14, Under-16, Under-19, and men’s tournaments, meaning he could potentially play five matches a day. More rigid conventions in the U.S. and England guide young players to compete in one bracket at a time, meaning they might only play one-fifth as many matches as their Egyptian counterparts have.

At the same time that Shabana and Barada were honing their art on the local level, President Hosni Mubarak—a squash player in his own right—was promoting squash’s prestige at the national level. In 1996, Mubarak brought a major international tournament to Egypt, and had a glass court built in front of the pyramids. Barada, then 19, reached the finals, and Mubarak congratulated him personally. Barada later reached second place in the Professional Squash Association’s World Rankings.

Shabana says Barada’s ranking gave Cairo’s young squash community a new target. Seven years later, at the age of 24, Shabana beat it, becoming the first Egyptian to win the World Open in 2003. After that, Shabana says, “the kids younger than me ... wanted to beat me.”

Mubarak, who was deposed in 2011, increased squash’s popularity, but not its accessibility. The sport remains an upper-class game in Egypt, populated by those who can get access to and pay fees for the same athletic clubs that the British built near the turn of the 20th century. Yasser El Halaby, a four-time Intercollegiate Champion from Princeton, explained to me that squash, for all the glory its players have attained, is not widely played in Egypt. He noted that there are a few thousand people who play squash in the country of some 82 million people. But the game’s profile—El Halaby says it’s Egypt’s second-most-popular sport, after soccer—means it draws some of the country’s best athletes. In most other parts of the world, this is not the case. “LeBron James is not playing squash,” El Halaby pointed out.

* * *

The reasons Egypt became so dominant in squash—the sport’s national prestige, combined with the access talented young people have to the country’s top players—persist to this day. Amr Khaled Khalifa, who in 2010 won squash’s Junior World Championship, the sport’s biggest tournament for players under 19, grew up training at the same club as and hitting with Shabana and Barada. He was just 11 when Shabana became a world champion. “I started playing squash at the Maadi Club, where world champions used to play,” he told me via email. “I had the chance to watch them training, which inspired me to take squash seriously and set my goals.” And, like his predecessors, he played as much as he could starting at a very young age, practicing twice a day and playing 15 tournaments a year.

Despite the fact that this year's squash world champion and the runner-up are Egyptian, Shabana said he believes the end of Egypt’s squash dominance is in sight. “I think it’s changing a bit,” he said. The top Egyptian players are once again living outside of Egypt due to lack of government support for the sport. “I’m living in Toronto, Ramy [Ashour] is mostly based in New York now, [El Shorbagy] is in England, and quite a high percentage of players now go to college in England and America. So there’s a gap,” he said. Though the logic works—it will be hard for the current Egyptian juniors to train with the best players in the world if none of them live in the country—Shabana’s view is contrarian. Results in junior tournaments suggest that an Egyptian successor will rise after the country’s current champion retires.

*See original article on The Atlantic: Click The Following Link Here. 

Hi Egypt hires German firm to bore transport tunnels under Suez Canal.

Hi Egypt hires German firm to bore transport tunnels under Suez Canal.

CAIRO/FRANKFURT (Reuter) - Egypt will use machines made by a German firm to bore at least four tunnels under the Suez Canal, part of an $8 billion project to expand the waterway that the government hopes will raise revenues and foreign currency reserves.

Unlisted Herrenknecht AG was discussing contract details, a spokesman for the company said on Friday, giving no details.

Kamal al-Waziri, chief of staff of the Egyptian armed forces' engineering division, had said on Thursday that the army had contracted a German company to provide machines for three car and train tunnels in Port Said, the northern outlet of the canal into the Mediterranean Sea. The tunnels are being built by Orascom Construction and other Arab contractors.

Half of the budget for expanding the canal was allocated for building six tunnels, the Suez Canal Authority said last week.

Egypt has been battered by political turmoil and violence for more than three years and the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hopes the expansion will almost triple revenues from the waterway by 2023 to $13.5 billion from $5 billion.

Sisi, the former army chief who has put infrastructure mega-projects at the top of his economic agenda, called for the new canal to be built within one year, instead of the five years recommended by international experts.

The development will run alongside the existing 145-year-old waterway - the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia.

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin in Cairo and Hans Seidenstücker in Frankfurt; Editing by Louise Ireland).

Hi Egypt says to repay debts to foreign oil companies within six months.

Hi Egypt says to repay debts to foreign oil companies within six months.

By Ehab Farouk and Lin Noueihed:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt plans to repay all of its $4.9 billion debt to foreign oil and gas companies within six months, the oil ministry said on Thursday, a move it hopes will prompt them to boost exploration and ease the worst energy crunch in decades.

Egypt has delayed payments to oil and gas firms as its economy has been hammered by almost three years of instability since a popular uprising ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Arrears began to accumulate before the revolt, but worsening state finances saw the debts mount to billions of dollars while the government diverted gas earmarked for export to meet domestic demand.

Gas production has steadily declined in Egypt while consumption keeps rising, but firms have been reluctant to increase investment in exploration and production, particularly in costly offshore areas, until the government repays them.

The ministry said in a statement that Egypt planned to borrow $2 billion to help it finance the repayments, seeking to repay 60 percent of the arrears by year-end.

"This offering comes as one of the short-term measures taken by the government to pay the (international oil companies') arrears," Oil Minister Sherif Ismail said in the statement.

He said state oil and gas boards EGPC and EGAS were holding further talks with the companies, in parallel with repayments, to "manage their expectations".

Egypt said in October it had repaid $1.5 billion of the money owed, leaving $4.9 billion outstanding.

But Dana Gas <DANA.AD> said on Wednesday it understood that about half that amount had been repaid, with $700 million more due by year-end.

It expects to get some of that cash and also plans to invest more than $350 million in Egypt over the next few years to drill new wells and redevelop existing wells.

BG Group's <BG.L> earnings have been hit hard by the turmoil as its production and exports of liquefied natural gas from Egypt have been disrupted.

"The Egyptians have paid a big tranche in September and have promised to repay more within a few months, but they have made similar promises in the past and we will have to wait till we see the money," a senior source at BG said.

The gas shortage has left the Arab world's most populous country struggling with blackouts that became almost daily over the summer. The government has also diverted gas away from heavy industries, hitting companies' performance.

Egypt began cutting subsidies on fuel and electricity in July as part of economic reforms aimed at curtailing its budget deficit and curbing growth in energy consumption.

(Additional reporting by Ron Bousso and Karolin Schaps in London and Matt Smith in Dubai; Editing by David Goodman and Susan Fenton).

Hi Egyptian rights groups fear government crackdown looms.

Hi Egyptian rights groups fear government crackdown looms. 

* 2002 law tightly restricts activities, finances of NGOs.

* Rights groups say climate not safe for their work.

* Sisi has presided over broad crackdown on dissent.

By Maggie Fick

CAIRO, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Some Egyptian human rights groups shredded documents on Sunday and instructed their staff to stay home as a government deadline approached for them to register under a Hosni Mubarak-era law they say seeks to eliminate them.

Egypt's government says groups doing the work of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) but not registered as such must correct their status by Monday to comply with a 2002 law it is enforcing while it works on new legislation for the sector.

Human rights groups say the push to enforce the old law aims to restrict their activities and funding, raising concerns that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government is rolling back freedoms won in the 2011 uprising that ousted Mubarak.

"Whatever happens, I don't think that the human rights movement in Egypt is going to be able to work safely," Mohamed Zaree, programme director at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), told Reuters.

He said his group had never tried to register under the 2002 law and refused to do so now because it was "a death sentence for our independence".

Contacted by Reuters on Sunday, neither the Social Solidarity Ministry, which is responsible for NGOs, nor the presidential spokesman were immediately available for comment.

But Social Solidarity Minister Ghada Wali told Reuters last month that the state could not let groups operate unregulated pending a new NGOs law that could take months.

She sought to assuage fears that her ministry would use the 2002 law to starve critical NGOs of funding, saying that from June 30, 2013 to Sept. 30, 2014, it had approved 812 grants to 500 NGOs from 540 donors totalling 835 million Egyptian pounds.

But she also said the government would begin going after improperly registered organisations once the deadline passed.

The government's deadline comes as executives from more than 60 U.S. businesses visit Cairo for a major investment summit.

Foreign investors have looked positively on initial economic reforms enacted by Sisi, who has pledged to revive the economy and combat an Islamist insurgency. He has been less specific on upholding the rights many Egyptians rose up to demand in 2011.

Since toppling elected President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood last year, Sisi has presided over a fierce crackdown on dissent that has seen many thousands jailed.

Though most targeted in the crackdown were Mursi supporters, liberal and secular activists are now also behind bars -- many of them charged with violating a new law that limits protest.

The political climate means trust is low between the government and civil society in Egypt. Some groups have felt particularly exposed since late 2011, when authorities raided 17 local and international pro-democracy and rights groups accusing them of joining a foreign conspiracy against Egypt.

Some groups have refused to register under the 2002 law because it enables tight state control over the activities and finances of registered groups. Others are registered as civil companies or law firms because the government never approved their applications under the 2002 law.

"CLIMATE OF FEAR"

Rights defenders interviewed on Sunday said they were taking precautions such as temporarily closing their offices or working from home. Speaking on condition of anonymity, two groups said they had destroyed documents in anticipation of a raid.

Amnesty International's Egypt researcher Nicholas Piachaud told Reuters that, regardless of what happened on Monday's deadline, the damage had "already been done".

"The Egyptian authorities are sowing a climate of fear which has stopped NGOs from doing their vital work of defending human rights and the law," he said.

Zaree of CIHRS said his group and others already operated under severe constraints, constantly worried their work would be seen by the state as an attempt to "stain the national image".

He cited his group's decision not to participate in last week's United Nations Human Rights Council review of Egypt's human rights record as an example when the group had to stand down, not knowing "what the cost of participating would be."

Egypt defended its record at the meeting, saying that personal freedoms were among its prime concerns.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (PIER), a well-known group, said it tried in 2004 to register under the law but "nothing happened", even after staff went to court to try to get the application accepted. Like other groups doing similar work, EIPR is registered as a limited liability company.

"We really don't see the point of registering under a 12 year-old-law that even the state says is inadequate," said EIPR Associate Director Gasser Abdel-Razek. "Everyone accepts the fact that this is not a democratic law". (Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin, Lin Noueihed and Shadi Bushra, Editing by Lin Noueihed and Tom Heneghan).