Week of 18 January 2021

EGYPT: Scandal and arrests over ‘immoral’ cakes, generating debate – a pastry chef in Cairo has been arrested over cakes which were decorated with icing in the shape of genitals. Images from the birthday celebrations at the Gezira Sporting Club were shared widely across social media and blurred versions featured in tabloid newspapers. BBC Arabic dedicated a segment of their ‘Trending’ programme to discussing the debate that had sprung up on social media about the cakes. There have been a number of prominent stories concerning arrests in Egypt over the past few years for violating family values and immorality, including the story of two TikTokers who were arrested but later acquitted earlier this month.

ITALY: Earlier this week, the Italian Government led by Giuseppe Conte barely managed to weather a crisis following a split in the parliamentary coalition supporting it. Italia Viva, the centrist party led by former PM Matteo Renzi, left the coalition apparently due to disagreements on the post-Covid economic strategy. In separate confidence votes, PM Conte secured a slim majority in the Chamber of Deputies (321 out of 630) but only a plurality in the Senate (156 for, 140 against, 16 abstaining out of 321 senators). While winning a plurality allowed Conte to avoid an outright crisis, it will be hard for him to get significant pieces of legislation through, and some observers think a snap election may eventually be triggered before the current Parliament expires in 2023.

RUSSIA: Arrests in the face of opposition protests – top aides of Alexei Navalny, the man described by BBC News as ‘the most prominent face of Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin’, have been arrested ahead of a large demonstration planned for Saturday. Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent last August and nearly died, but returned to Russia this week, where he was immediately arrested. The protests are aimed at influencing Navalny’s release or the length of any sentence he is handed. The Guardian has reported, though, that even in prison, Navalny represents a threat to Putin. This week Navalny’s team released a massive-scale investigation into Putin’s wealth. The video, called ‘Putin’s Palace’ and published on YouTube on Tuesday 19th, is just under two hours long and has amassed almost 60 million views.

UNITED STATES: On Wednesday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States. It was a historic inauguration from several points of view. Biden is the oldest sitting president and the first former vice president to ascend to the presidency since George H.W. Bush; Harris is the first woman, first Asian American and first African American to become vice president. Upon taking office, Biden immediately signed 17 executive orders aimed at undoing some of Trump’s legacy – measures ranged from rejoining the Paris Agreement to stopping the construction of the wall on the Mexican border.

Week of 7 December 2020

AUSTRALIA: Wildfire season is off to a dramatic start in Australia, as Fraser Island, a popular getaway near Brisbane, was severely damaged by fires in the last few days. The fire on Fraser Island reminded many of the tragic 2019–20 wildfire season, which made headlines across the world before Covid-19 and caused hundreds of casualties and an estimated A$100 billion worth of damages. The current season has been quieter so far, but experts argue that climate change is making Australia more fire-prone by the year due to the higher incidence of droughts and heatwaves. 

ITALY & EGYPT: Italian prosecutors are going to charge four senior members of the Egyptian security services over their alleged participation in the disappearance and murder of Cambridge PhD student Giulio Regeni, in early 2016. Regeni was tortured and killed in unknown circumstances while he was living in Cairo to work on his doctoral project about Egypt’s labour movement. The latest developments mark a further delicate moment in the already tense relations between Italy and Egypt following the murder. 

LEBANON: Hassan Diab, the acting prime minister of Lebanon, has been charged with negligence alongside three former ministers over the blast that destroyed a large part of the city on 4 August. Including the latest four charges, 37 people have now been declared ‘suspects’ in the case. The catastrophic explosion, which killed over 200 people, was triggered by the combustion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate and has been widely chalked up to the country’s long history of corruption. 

USA: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the attorneys general of more than 40 states have formally accused Facebook of taking illegal actions to out-compete and buy its rivals. The lawsuit focuses on Facebook’s acquisition of former rivals Instagram (in 2012) and WhatsApp (in 2014), which have helped the social network cement its global dominance and for which it paid sums that appear minuscule in hindsight. Facebook officials have replied that the accusations are unfounded, since regulators approved the acquisitions when they took place. This lawsuit represents the U.S. government’s most forceful and hostile action against Big Tech to date.