
Egypt to prepare investment package for U.S. companies, says PM
The directive came during a meeting on Sunday to follow up on efforts to enhance Egypt-U.S. economic ties, according to a cabinet statement.
Madbouly stressed the government's interest in bolstering the strategic and historical ties between the two nations and its keenness to overcome any obstacles to joint cooperation. He noted that there are many promising opportunities available for American companies, given the significant incentives the Egyptian government offers to foreign investors.
The meeting was attended by the ministers of planning, foreign affairs, and investment, while the minister of industry and transport participated via video conference.
Minister of Industry and Transport, Kamel al-Wazir, reviewed investment opportunities that have been presented to U.S. companies in sectors including ports, maritime transport, and industrial zones.
Minister of Planning and Economic Cooperation, Rania Al-Mashat, discussed development cooperation with the United States, including projects funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Foreign Minister Badr Abdel-Aty and Minister of Investment and Foreign Trade Hassan El-Khatib also reviewed their respective ministries' efforts to support bilateral ties, trade, and U.S. investment in Egypt.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Madbouly instructed all relevant authorities to coordinate on preparing the set of promising investment opportunities and to follow up on presenting them to American companies to enhance U.S. investments in Egypt.
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Egypt Independent
3 hours ago
- Egypt Independent
Gabbard releases more Russia documents to accuse Obama of ‘manufacturing' intelligence
One day after President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of treason over the intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and sought to help Trump, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a highly sensitive congressional report she claimed was more evidence of a 'treasonous conspiracy.' The release of the redacted report, written during the first Trump term by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, was the latest step in a multi-faceted effort from Gabbard and other Trump allies to attack the FBI's Russia investigation and the intelligence community's assessment on Russian election interference. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday evening that the Justice Department was creating a strike force to assess the evidence released by Gabbard and 'investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard's disclosures.' Speaking from the White House podium on Wednesday, Gabbard stopped short of accusing Obama of treason, deferring to Justice Department lawyers. But she alleged that 'the evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.' 'They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true,' she said. Gabbard insisted the Russian goal in 2016 was to sow distrust in American democracy — not to help Trump, a key judgment of the 2017 assessment that Republicans have long challenged. But her claims that the Obama administration 'manufactured' the assessment are not supported by the newly redacted House report — or CIA Director John Ratcliffe's own review of the intelligence assessment, which he released earlier this month. Ratcliffe's review argued the assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win the 2016 election should not have been a so-called high confidence judgment, which indicates the intelligence community's level of certainty, and it took issue with some of the analytic procedures underpinning the assessment. But Ratcliffe's review found that 'the overall assessment was deemed defensible.' The House report — which involved intelligence so sensitive it was kept in a so-called 'turducken,' or a safe within a safe, at CIA headquarters — took a similar stance on the key judgment that Russia sought to help Trump, arguing that the assessment made analytical leaps based on relatively thin sourcing and failed to weigh contradictory intelligence highly enough, but neither argued that it was 'manufactured.' Still, the release of the House Intelligence Committee review, led by former Rep. Devin Nunes when now-FBI Director Kash Patel was a top aide, was a long-sought victory for Trump — in large part because it pushes back against a similar review conducted by the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, which found the intelligence supported the conclusions that Putin interfered to help Trump and there were no 'significant tradecraft issues' in the preparation of the assessment. Gabbard's decision to publicize the report when multiple predecessors had declined to do so, including Ratcliffe during Trump's first term, comes at a moment when her standing within the Trump administration had been in question. In June, Trump publicly undermined Gabbard's assessment on Iran's nuclear capabilities and she was absent from at least one major national security meeting to discuss Israel and Iran. CNN reported at the time that the president viewed her as 'off-message.' Former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper dismissed Gabbard's allegations on Wednesday, calling them 'patently false and unfounded' on CNN's 'The Source.' Referring to the House Republican report, he said, 'I can attest to the inaccuracies in that report on things they said about me, which were wrong or false.' 'I'd be going dark' Democrats accused Gabbard of jeopardizing intelligence community sources and methods by releasing the report. 'The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe,' Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. 'And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.' One Democratic congressional source said intelligence agencies were still in the process of proposing redactions to the document ahead of its release, but that Gabbard declassified the report Wednesday before the process had been completed. An ODNI official said the decision to declassify the document was made by Trump and 'he has constitutional authority to declassify and is not under the same consultation obligations' normally required between intelligence agencies. A former senior US intelligence official said they were alarmed by some of the material in the report that remained unredacted, warning it could alert Moscow to how intelligence was collected and potentially endanger sources. The report includes an explanation from the classified assessment that some judgements are based on a human intelligence source with secondhand access for several specifics, including Putin's order to pass collected material to WikiLeaks, Putin's views on Hillary Clinton, and details about 'specific, planned Russian Foreign Intelligence Service efforts.' 'It should also scare the crap out of any source we have who reports on politically inconvenient subjects,' the intelligence official said. 'If I were them, I'd be going dark about now.' In 2017, the US extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government. Trump and his allies in Congress have sought to release the House Intelligence Committee report for years now. The material that was being scrutinized was so sensitive that the CIA would only let congressional staffers view it at CIA headquarters, requiring their work stay locked up at Langley. The committee brought in its own safe for its files — which became known as the 'turducken' — that remained locked away at the CIA during the Biden administration. It's not clear whether the full extent of the classified House Intelligence Committee report was redacted, declassified and released on Wednesday. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump allies pushed Ratcliffe, who was then the director of national intelligence, to release a redacted version of the report. But Ratcliffe ultimately did not so do amid strenuous objections from CIA and NSA officials, who warned it would damage sources and methods and US relationships with allies. Instead, the report was part of a large collection of documents brought to the White House in the final days of the first Trump administration, which were redacted so they could be declassified and released. The redacted documents were not ultimately released before Trump left office in 2021, though he did so in March. But an unredacted copy of the documents — including the highly sensitive intelligence that was redacted from what was released Wednesday — went missing and was apparently never found. US intelligence officials scrambled to assess the potential damage of the binder's contents becoming public after it went missing at the end of the first Trump administration, according to a source with direct knowledge of the events. There are hints at why the intelligence agencies were so concerned with the report in the declassified version released Wednesday. The report includes redacted lines that detail what signals intelligence the assessment had relied upon, as well as what Putin was being told and how it was obtained. 'One scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment' The House document provides one of the most detailed glimpses to date into the raw intelligence relied upon by analysts to produce the 2017 assessment — but one that is impossible to compare to the Senate review that reached the opposite conclusion on the judgment that Putin was aspiring to help Trump. Much of the documentation for that panel's reasoning remains classified. The House report accuses Obama administration intelligence leaders of relying on thinly sourced and uncorroborated intelligence to conclude that Putin preferred Trump, while alleging that the assessment suppressed intelligence that Putin did not care who won and that Russia's intelligence services allegedly possessed damaging information about Clinton that was not released before the election. The January 2017 assessment does note there was a disagreement on the level of confidence in that assessment: the CIA and FBI had high confidence, and the NSA had medium confidence. But the GOP report argues that the conclusion was flawed, based upon previously unpublished intelligence reports, including three that were 'substandard.' One report, based on a single human source the House panel said was biased against both Trump and Putin, contained a claim that Putin was 'counting' on Trump's victory, according to the committee. That claim was interpreted in different ways by different analysts but was ultimately used to reach the 'aspire' judgment, the report said. 'One scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin 'aspired' to help Trump win,' the report states. The Ratcliffe-led CIA in its review found that the 'aspire' judgment was 'plausible and sensible, but was an inference rather than fact sourced to multiple reporting streams,' noting that it also rested on an assessment of 'the public behavior of senior Russian officials and state- controlled media, and on logic.' It said that the assessment authors had properly interpreted the sentence fragment. The report also details what US intelligence knew about Russian intelligence material collected on Clinton that was not released before the election, including allegations about her health, which Republicans wrote 'would have created greater scandals' than the hacked materials from John Podesta released by WikiLeaks. Republicans questioned why this information wasn't released if Russia was trying to help Trump (CNN was unable to confirm the origin or veracity of any of the allegations). CNN reached out to Clinton aides for comment. The GOP report criticizes the assessment's inclusion of the infamous and discredited dossier written by British intelligence official Christopher Steele, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and alleged coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. A summary of the dossier was included as an annex in the January 2017 assessment, after CIA officials objected to including it in the report itself. The intelligence analysts who prepared the report told the Senate Intelligence Committee the dossier played no role in the analysis of Russia's interference. Special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump's first term, spent four years investigating a wide range of topics, including potential wrongdoing by the FBI and intelligence community during the 2016 post-election period. He never accused any US officials of any crimes related to the 2017 intelligence assessment. This story has been updated with additional details. CNN's Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.


Egypt Independent
3 hours ago
- Egypt Independent
Limited aid enters Gaza: A fight for survival as starvation deepens
One hundred sixty-one aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip from Thursday until dawn Friday, utilizing the Zikim crossing in the north and the Kerem Shalom crossing. An Egyptian source informed Al-Qahera News Channel that the aid shipments primarily consisted of flour, baby formula, and other food supplies, with aid continuing to flow for the third consecutive day. The source also clarified that the Israeli delegation departed after receiving Hamas's response, with negotiations expected to resume next week following a review of Hamas's proposal. The population of Gaza has been suffering from a severe and rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis, with starvation and malnutrition reaching catastrophic levels. This dire situation is primarily a consequence of the ongoing conflict, the extensive blockade, and severe restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid. Even before the recent escalation of conflict in October 2023, Gaza's population, numbering around 2.3 million Palestinians, was already highly vulnerable due to a prolonged blockade and economic deterioration spanning over 15 years. This had led to high rates of poverty and reliance on external aid. Impact of recent conflict The current crisis deepened dramatically following the start of large-scale military operations in October 2023. This conflict has: Destroyed local food production: What little local food production existed has been largely wiped out due to military operations. Decimated infrastructure: Critical infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, schools, shelters, bakeries, and water systems, has been extensively damaged or destroyed, hindering the ability to provide basic necessities. Mass displacement: A significant portion of Gaza's population, estimated at 1.9 million people (90%), has been displaced, often multiple times, leading to overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in shelters. Aid restrictions and access challenges Despite international calls, the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza has been severely restricted. While some aid is allowed to enter, it is widely considered insufficient to meet the overwhelming needs of the population. Key challenges include: Limited crossings: Access points for aid are limited and subject to strict controls. Security inspections: Aid trucks face prolonged and complex security inspections. Internal distribution issues: Even once aid enters Gaza, ongoing fighting, a breakdown of law and order, and Israeli military restrictions make safe and efficient distribution within the enclave extremely difficult. Aid convoys have reportedly come under fire, and distribution points have become dangerous. Fuel shortages: Severe fuel shortages further complicate the delivery of aid and the functioning of essential services like hospitals and water pumps. Escalating hunger and disease The culmination of these factors has led to an unprecedented level of food insecurity: Catastrophic hunger: According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the leading international authority on food crises, the entire population of Gaza is facing crisis-level or worse food insecurity, with hundreds of thousands at risk of famine. Malnutrition surge: Organizations like the UN World Food Program (WFP) and UNICEF report alarming rates of acute malnutrition, particularly among children and pregnant/breastfeeding women. As of July 2025, nearly 100,000 women and children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Starvation deaths: The Gaza Health Ministry and UN agencies have reported a surge in deaths due to starvation and malnutrition-related complications, including dozens of children. Some reports suggest hundreds, predominantly children, have died due to hunger. Disease outbreaks: The lack of food, clean water, adequate sanitation, and functioning healthcare facilities has created conditions ripe for widespread disease outbreaks, further weakening a population already on the brink. International response and accusations Human rights organizations and UN agencies have described the situation as a 'man-made disaster' and a 'slow-motion genocide,' accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war through its blockade and military operations. They have repeatedly called for an immediate and lasting ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian access, and protection of while denying these accusations, maintains that it allows aid in and blames Hamas for diversion and UN agencies for distribution failures The ongoing crisis in Gaza represents one of the most severe humanitarian emergencies globally, with experts warning that famine is not just a risk, but silently unfolding.


See - Sada Elbalad
8 hours ago
- See - Sada Elbalad
US Allows Chevron to Resume Oil Operations in Venezuela
Taarek Refaat The administration of President Donald Trump has authorized Chevron Corp. to resume oil production in Venezuela, according to a source familiar with the decision. While full details remain undisclosed, the development follows a prisoner exchange agreement under which 10 American detainees were released from Venezuela, and 250 Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador were returned to their country. A key element of the deal is that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's government will not directly benefit from any revenue or taxes, according to the source, who requested anonymity. Following the announcement, oil futures pulled back, as traders weighed the potential increase in global supply. Brent crude rose just 0.1% to $68.57 a barrel as of 1:05 p.m. in New York. The White House did not immediately comment. The decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. 'Chevron conducts its global operations in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and U.S. sanctions frameworks, including those related to Venezuela,' Chevron spokesperson Bill Turenne said in a statement. The U.S. had previously revoked Chevron's license to operate in Venezuela earlier this year as part of efforts by President Trump to exert pressure on the Maduro regime. That suspension was welcomed by national security officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio. With the new license, the Houston-based oil major is now authorized to resume production at its Venezuelan sites after operations were halted in May. The move could reintroduce critical U.S. dollars into Venezuela's struggling economy. Chevron's license had become a key bargaining chip in talks between Washington and Caracas. Within the Trump administration, officials were divided: Rubio pushed for a hardline approach, while Special Envoy Ric Grenell and others favored a more transactional relationship. Supporters of the decision argued that excluding U.S. firms would only strengthen China's influence in Venezuela. With oil prices and U.S. energy dominance being central to Trump's agenda, restoring Chevron's operations carried strategic weight. Shortly after taking office in late January, Grenell met with Maduro in Caracas, negotiating the resumption of direct deportation flights and the release of six American prisoners. In May, a seventh U.S. citizen was released, days after a Venezuelan child, whose parents had been deported, was returned to Venezuela from the U.S. Over 8,000 Venezuelans have now been repatriated. Chevron remains a lifeline in Venezuela's battered oil sector. It was the only major U.S. oil firm still active in the country. While the Biden administration granted a limited license in 2022 for Chevron to resume oil production and exports, it restricted operational expansion. Chevron's joint ventures with PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company, produced over 240,000 barrels per day as of May 27, when the previous license expired. That volume represented roughly 25% of national output, helping to lift the country's total production above 1 million barrels per day. Before sanctions, the U.S. imported around 250,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan crude, primarily for Gulf Coast refineries. Valero Energy, the third-largest U.S. fuel producer, was the largest importer by the end of 2024, followed by Chevron, which processes the oil in its own refineries and sells to others. read more CBE: Deposits in Local Currency Hit EGP 5.25 Trillion Morocco Plans to Spend $1 Billion to Mitigate Drought Effect Gov't Approves Final Version of State Ownership Policy Document Egypt's Economy Expected to Grow 5% by the end of 2022/23- Minister Qatar Agrees to Supply Germany with LNG for 15 Years Business Oil Prices Descend amid Anticipation of Additional US Strategic Petroleum Reserves Business Suez Canal Records $704 Million, Historically Highest Monthly Revenue Business Egypt's Stock Exchange Earns EGP 4.9 Billion on Tuesday Business Wheat delivery season commences on April 15 News Israeli-Linked Hadassah Clinic in Moscow Treats Wounded Iranian IRGC Fighters Arts & Culture "Jurassic World Rebirth" Gets Streaming Date News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Videos & Features Tragedy Overshadows MC Alger Championship Celebration: One Fan Dead, 11 Injured After Stadium Fall Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Arts & Culture South Korean Actress Kang Seo-ha Dies at 31 after Cancer Battle Business Egyptian Pound Undervalued by 30%, Says Goldman Sachs Sports Get to Know 2025 WWE Evolution Results News "Tensions Escalate: Iran Probes Allegations of Indian Tech Collaboration with Israeli Intelligence" News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks