Last update: 2018-07-04 11:46:32
Egypt’s minister offers 60,000 Egyptian pounds for anyone who passes the foreign language exam administered by the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf. This new push to enhance language abilities is part of a plan to increase English and French language skills of mosque preachers, writes Ahmed Fouad of Al-Monitor.
In an exposition by the Guardian, American immigrants from major U.S. cities explain their fears and hopes on Independence Day. Greisa Martinez, one of the young people interviewed, hopes Americans will take time on the holiday to reflect on the newly imposed immigration policies of the country being celebrated.
Previously, an agreement between Germany’s Angela Merkel and the Christian Social Union (CSU) seemed impossible. However, according to the Economist, yesterday Merkel sat down with Horst Seehofer, the interior minister of the CSU to draw up a compromise. 5 hours later, an agreement that seems to appease Seehofer’s call for stricter border control was established.
About 700,000 refugees have fled to Bangladesh since August of last year. Currently, hundreds-of-thousands of these Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh’s Cox Bazar- “a sprawling city built out of plastic sheets and bamboo,” are threatened by monsoon rains, explains Siegfried Modola of Al Jazeera. Because the refugees have been forbidden from building anything resembling a permanent structure, their makeshift homes are extremely susceptible to erosion and flooding from rains.
Can democracy work in the Middle East? Shadi Hamid, writer for the Atlantic and senior fellow at the Project on U.S. relations and the Islamic World at the Brookings Institute, explains the possibility, and even necessity of incorporating Islam present in the Middle East into the system of democracy. He writes that incorporation of Islam into democracy should not only be a concern in the Middle East but in the West as well.
