[Khartoum, Sudan; November 18. Image via Getty]

An Algerian football fan cheers for her team ahead of the 2010 World Cup qualification play-off between Egypt and Algeria in Khartoum on November 18, 2009. Sudan's security forces threw a tight security cordon around Khartoum to prevent violence between fans of Algeria and Egypt, who will clash for a place at the football World Cup finals. AFP PHOTO/KHALED DESOUKI (Photo credit should read KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Khartoum, Sudan; November 17. Image via Getty]

A Sudanese woman smiles after getting tickets for the World Cup qualifier football match between Egypt and Algeria from the Egyptian embassy in Khartoum on November 17, 2009. Thousands of Algerian and Egyptian fans descended into Khartoum for the decisive match between the two Arab rivals as Sudanese police went on high alert after weekend unrest. AFP PHOTO/KHALED DESOUKI (Photo credit should read KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Rafah, October 14. Image via Getty]

The widow and children of Palestinian Yusef Abu Zuhri mourn during his funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 14, 2009. Hamas charged that Abu Zuhri, the brother of one of the Palestinian Islamist group's chief spokesmen, was tortured to death in an Egyptian prison, a claim denied by Cairo. Abu Zuhri was arrested in April in the Sinai town of el-Arish following what Egyptian security officials said was a tip-off from members of the rival Fatah party who had fled Gaza when Hamas seized power there in June 2007. AFP PHOTO/SAID KHATIB (Photo credit should read SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images)

The abuse reportedly started in the 1970s when the victim was only 11 and continued to the present day. The unidentified man's wife says she "never suspected" her husband was abusing their daughter. • In response to the arrest and imprisonment of a journalist in Sudan for wearing trousers, Egypt's top Islamic authority has said that he is cool with women wearing pants. However, he is not a fan of "stretch" pants, which he deems "unacceptable." • Raymond Clark III was charged with the murder of Yale grad student Annie Le today, and Le's fiance issued a statement thanking people who were involved in preparations for "a wedding that was not to be." • A 23-year-old British student who was sexually assaulted in her apartment in India broke down recently in court while the defense lawyer was questioning her. He asked her whether she bathed, and whether she drank or smoke. She said she was humiliated by his questions, and found testifying almost as traumatic as the original assault. • Perhaps unsurprisingly, a study found that if one spouse smoked or drank heavily and the other did not, the relationship was more likely to deteriorate than if both engaged in the behavior. • Yesterday the Yemeni government defended their attempts to halt child marriages in a written statement. They cited a law introduced to parliament in February that would have set the minimum marriage age at 17, but did not pass due to conservative opposition. • A report released by the CDC indicates that 1 in 3 girls aged 13-17 has received the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine. The report also notes that vaccination varies dramatically state by state, with Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi falling far behind. • A 65-year-old man named Abraham Kortotki won the $20,982 first prize at an Atlantic City casino's ladies poker tournament. Unsurprisingly, some women are miffed, especially second-place finisher Nicole Rowe, who intended to use the cash to help recover from a mastectomy. • Now that the Hofstra University freshman who had accused five men of gang-raping her recanted her statement, Amanda Hess has written am interesting piece on rape culture. A snippet: "Rape culture does not only tell men to assert ownership over whichever female body they desire. Rape culture also tells women not to claim ownership over their own bodies. Rape culture also informs women that they should not desire sex. Rape culture also tells women that saying yes makes them bad women." • Surprise, surprise: Teen birth rates are highest in the most religious states. More here, here and here. • Want to wash all this bad news from your mind? Pictures of fishing cats!

[Gaza Strip, September 15. Image via Getty]

A Palestinian woman sits near a graffiti reading �Hamas� in Arabic as she waits to travel to Egypt through the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip on September 15, 2009. US envoy George Mitchell sought a deal on the thorny issue of West Bank settlements as he met Israel's prime minister aiming to pave the way to resume stalled Middle East peace talks. AFP PHOTO/ SAID KHATIB (Photo credit should read SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images)

[Gaza Strip, August 3. Image via Getty]

A Palestinian girl waits with her mother to board a bus bound for Egypt at the Rafah border terminal in the southern Gaza Strip on August 3, 2009. The Egyptian government opened its Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip — the only one that bypasses Israel — for three days. The coastal strip has been under Israeli blockade since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control in June 2007. AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED ABED (Photo credit should read MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images)

A study found that 83% of Egyptians and 98% of foreigners experienced harassment in Cairo. Daniel Williams of the Times interviewed a group of girls who practice karate to "keep bad people away." A monthly magazine in Cairo has been running testimonials about women's harassment experiences, including the story of a woman whose buttocks were groped when she was walking with a friend. And Madiha el-Safty, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo, says, "Changes for women are surface improvements. There is a deeper cultural problem: male hostility toward women who want to do more than stay at home."

Safty remembers a Cairo, less than 20 years ago, in which women could wear sundresses and short skirts. Now most wear long sleeves and headscarves, but the traditional wisdom that such coverings protect them from the advances of men seems untrue. 72% of the women who reported harassment were wearing headscarves at the time.

Egypt's National Council for Women, which should by all rights be addressing these issues, is in denial. Mohamed Nasef, a spokesman for the organization, says reports are "exaggerated," but also that harassment "happens everywhere." Of course, no one would use the everyone's-doing-it argument to excuse, say, murder, but obviously public humiliation, inappropriate touching, and even rape aren't crimes that the National Council for Women takes seriously. So far only one man has been convicted of harassment in Egypt, and National Council for Women leader Suzanne Mubarak says, "Egyptian men always respect Egyptian women." Since their government won't defend them, Cairo's women and girls must defend themselves. Karate student Nada Gamal Saad says, "No one is going to touch me when I can hit them real hard."

Covered Up, and Harassed, in Cairo [New York Times]

[Cairo, June 4. Image via The Official White House Photo Stream]

President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Thursday, June 4, 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a 'new beginning between the United States and Muslims', declaring that 'this cycle of suspicion and discord must end'. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

This official White House photograph is being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way or used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

[Tel Aviv, June 4. Image via Getty]

An Israeli woman in a Tel Aviv cafe watches US President Barack Obama delivering a speech to the Muslim world during his visit to Cario on June 4, 2009. Obama rebuked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to halt West Bank settlement expansion and reiterated his backing for a two-state solution in his landmark address. AFP PHOTO/JONATHAN NACKSTRAND (Photo credit should read JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images)

• Scientists have come a little bit closer to solving the mystery of what gets sperm in the mood for fertilization. • Aw: a Girl Scout troop from St. Louis decided to use its earnings from the cookies sales to fund a care package for Gene McNeill, a soldier currently serving in Afghanistan. •  President Obama has officially recognized April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month. •  The number of women over 55 who use Facebook has grown roughly 550% in the past six months, making the group one of the quickest growing sectors of the Facebook population. •  A member of the Egyptian parliament has proposed a law that would allow television stations to broadcast the hanging of rapists. Many people are against the law, on the grounds that it would encourage the public to sympathize with the rapists, and possibly lead to more girls marrying their attackers in order to save them from public death. •  On a slightly more positive note, April 18th has been declared the first anti-harassment day in Egypt. • A 30-second ad for Girls Gone Wild interrupted an early broadcast of the Good Friday service at the Vatican on a Philadelphia cable network. The network blamed it on (what else?) a "glitch." • According to this article from the Wall Street Journal there is a war happening, a diaper war. • Two female workers are filing a lawsuit against NYC's Department of Environmental Protection. They claim that the department is rife with sexism, and that over the years they have "grown numb" from finding pornography on their trucks and being called "bitches" and "dykes." •  This fancy feline is being hailed as the UK's only vegetarian cat. Like the most difficult dinner guests, Dante will only eat organic fruits and vegetables. •  Just in case you've been dying to know all about Scott Peterson's life on death row, People has published a helpful guide to the murderer's daily life. • Scientists believe that postpartum depression may serve an evolutionary function. •  A Brazilian woman was refused entry to the UK after border officials discovered that her suitcase was full of lingerie. Officials suspect that she is involved in the sex industry. •  Even though no one asked them, PETA has faxed Michelle Obama's office a letter that urges the first family to "snip" their new dog. • More for the "unsolicited advice" file: Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan advises Obama to keep his "pack leader" frame of mind when playing with the puppy. • Via BoingBoing, the strange case of a man who has "alien hand syndrome" and has been know to engage in involuntary public masturbation. •  A Mississippi State University professor asked his students to submit beautiful and ugly words. He found that words with more syllables are more likely to be considered beautiful (like "eloquent"). • Reversing their previous decision, prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty for Casey Anthony, mother to murdered toddler Caylee Anthony, whose body was found late last year.

Hagelof was living with her husband in his native Egypt when they (apparently illegally) adopted a child from the Coptic Christian Church, but she says no money changed hands. Botros, originally Egyptian, flew with her husband to adopt twins from the same orphanage and gave the orphanage nearly $5,000 for expenses and as a donation. When Hagelof went to the U.S. Embassy get her child a passport to visit the states and Botros went to get passports and entry visas, they both carried documentation claiming to be the birth mothers of the children, despite their ages and, in Botros' case, the fact that she hadn't been living there. U.S. Embassy officials, concerned that something illegal was going on — which it apparently was — reported them to Egyptian authorities, who arrested both couples, the doctors that forged the birth certificates, the nun that arranged the adoptions and the lawyer that set Botros up with the nun on trafficking charges.

Botros' husband, Andros, blames the embassy for their plight. Asked through the bars of the courtroom cage what had happened, he replied, "Well, our American Embassy, instead of helping the people, they put them in jail."

Actually, the U.S. embassy is probably specifically prohibited from abetting Americans in criminal enterprises. The Egyptian authorities suspect that the nun, doctors and lawyers are part of a larger conspiracy to traffic in children, which the Americans deny.

It has become a high-profile issue since Suzanne Mubarak, wife of the president, embarked on a campaign to stamp out human trafficking. She recently told CNN that human trafficking "exists in all societies."
"I came to realize what an insidious crime this was and how it was just really built on profit. On not only low morals, on no morals at all," she said.
And that's how the prosecution seems to be framing this case, using a law passed last year that provides for tough penalties for human trafficking.

Both women claim that they didn't know adoption was illegal in Egypt, though they did show up at the embassy with documents showing they'd given birth to their adoptive children, making one wonder if they didn't have some idea that they were doing something unacceptable. Cases like these in which Americans seemingly flout the laws of certain countries for the purposes of adoption (assuming that there really was nothing more nefarious going on) serve to make it much harder for potential adoptive parents to work within adoption-friendly countries because of the negative publicity.

Egypt Says Adoptive Moms Were Human Smugglers [CNN]

Cleopatra directly ordered Arsinöe's death in order to protect her claim to the Egyptian throne. Scientists are now using her remains to piece together an image of what she may have looked like—and what the famous Queen of the Nile may have looked like, as well. "Evidence obtained by studying the dimensions of Arsinöe's skull shows she had some of the characteristics of white Europeans, ancient Egyptians and black Africans, indicating that Cleopatra was probably of mixed race, too," writes Daniel Foggo of the Times of London. [Times Of London]

It's no secret that freedom of speech is severely curtailed under Egypt's National Democratic Party regime. Human rights abuses are rampant; some estimate that 18,000 are currently imprisoned under the state's permanent "state of emergency law" — although it's hard to say for sure, as people can be arrested without charges. Meanwhile, the government keeps a tight reign on media and political organizations, and basically prohibit public assembly. What can't they monitor? Facebook.

Facebook is growing fast in Egypt — the NY Times Mag piece estimates 800,000 users — and it's easy to see why: while the government might be able to crack down on web pages, social networking sites are too wide-ranging to block completely. As author Samantha Shapiro finds, young people — traditionally politically apathetic — have taken advantage of this mode of assembling and the relative freedom of speech provided by the internet's anonymity. As a result, Facebook is something of a hotbed of dissent - as well as the wide-ranging opinions and crackpottery inherent to online communities. While it makes for some strange bedfellows, it's also served as a means of organization previously lacking amongst Egyptian activists. Most recently, Facebook has served as the nexus for organizing support for Palestinians in Gaza; groups range from philanthropic to angry to activist.

Perhaps the best-known product of the Egyptian Facebook phenomenon is the April 6 Youth Movement, which Shapiro describes as

a group of 70,000 mostly young and educated Egyptians, most of whom had never been involved with politics before joining the group. The movement is less than a year old; it formed more or less spontaneously on Face-book last spring around an effort to stage a general nationwide strike. Members coalesce around a few issues — free speech, economic stagnation and government nepotism — and they share their ideas for improving Egypt. But they do more than just chat: they have tried to organize street protests to free jailed journalists.

In fact, when site founder Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed Rashid was jailed after organizing a strike on April 6, she became something of a cause celebre: known as "the Facebook Girl," she brought attention — probably not all welcome — to the power of the new medium. But despite the risks, the rewards have already been substantial: one blogger was able to post video footage of police brutality from his phone, while another has documented the harassment women face in street demonstrations: in both cases, they've helped bring the perps to justice.

It will shock no one to hear that our own government has taken note of Facebook's potential in this regard: the State Department is seeking to harness its organizational powers. But can it ever have the same power here? Ours is a culture in which "donating your status" qualifies as Facebook activism, and probably keeps company with gifts, pokes, in-jokes and all manner of first-world fol-de-rol. (Not that I'm guessing people don't waste hours in Egypt, too.) That's a luxury, sure, but also a very stark contrast. We talk and read so much about the philosophical implications of the internet in terms of privacy and interaction: it's interesting to be reminded of its fundamental purpose: to connect with others and to serve, not as a sinister or independent entity, but as something that works for people.

Revolution, Facebook-Style [New York Times Magazine - not online yet]

Younis was able to break free from the scene before it went any further, but other women were not so lucky. When the protesters — who were agitating for political reform — were released, many had been stripped of their clothes, and were left half naked and sobbing in the street. Younis, a first-time protester who had previously attended rallies as part of a PBS crew, submitted a CD of photographs from the attack as part of a lawsuit against the police. The state declined to press charges.

Younis is now a well-known blogger and winner of the New York-based Human Rights First award for courage. She continues to call for the arrest and trial of the Interior Minister, along with the officers who assaulted her and the 30 other women. Although the victims have yet to see their assailants come to justice, Younis believes that through new media technologies like blogging and digital video, Egyptian women can gain ground against the oppressive government.

Egyptian women are also claiming their freedom within the religious realm. In another story on Egyptian women in the Western press today, the AP reports that mosques, which have long been considered a man’s space, are now seeing greater numbers of female visitors than ever before. While these women aren’t “Western-style feminists,” and do not seek to change the faith’s teaching, their increased presence in the mosques is challenging assumptions on women’s place in society. Hana Mohammed, leader of a prayer group in a tiny mosque on the outskirts of Greater Cairo, says that "women realized there was more to life than just cooking and taking care of a husband. Women wanted to understand how her faith really was a way of life — why did she have to wear hijab, why were men allowed to marry four women." For Mohammed, and many like her, the ability to enter a mosque and pray is considered a religious awakening, and a significant step for both their freedom and faith.

Egyptian Activist Takes Fight For Freedom Online [Christian Science Monitor]
Looking To Deepen Their Faith, Egyptian Women Make A Claim On An All-Male Zone: The Mosque [AP]

Read More: Nora Younis' Blog