Canada Soccer sponsor offers financial support to resolve dispute with women's team

Mon, March 6, 2023 


GE Appliances says it is offering sponsorship money in hopes of helping resolve the labour impasse between Canada Soccer and the women's national team.

The company sent a letter to interim Canada Soccer president Charmaine Crooks expressing its "deep concern" regarding the dispute between the two sides and said it's prepared to put up $100,000 "in incremental sponsorship activation funding, explicitly targeted to support the women’s team program."

The amount is additional money to GE Appliances' existing sponsorship of Canada Soccer.

"I think this dispute between Canada Soccer and the women's national team had gone on for a fair amount of time," chief brand officer Bob Park told The Canadian Press. "We really wanted to get involved, really to be a positive force in soccer.

"We're really in soccer for one big reason, and we want to be known as a true corporate supporter of the game in Canada. In order to do that, we want to align with a partner, in this case Canada Soccer, and we expect that our brand values are shared and they exhibit those values in their actions.

"Of late, that's been a little bit more of a challenge, so we wanted to offer up some solutions."

The move comes four days after Canada Soccer and the women's team agreed in principle upon an interim deal on compensation for 2022.

The sides have been at odds for some time, with the women's team going on job action in February before quickly returning to the pitch due to Canada Soccer threatening legal action. The team competed at the SheBelieves Cup in protest shortly after.

Crooks was named interim president on March 1 following Nick Bontis's resignation from his post, acknowledging "this moment requires change."

With the women having said more needs to be done to achieve labour peace and the Women's World Cup coming up in July, Park believes the time is now to settle things.

"The time for us all to show up, for our sport and its players, is now," he said in the letter. "Our players and our teams have never seen more success. And the opportunity to grow the beautiful game in Canada has never been greater."

Park, who said he spoke with Canada Soccer general secretary Earl Cochrane regarding the financial offer and it being directed to the women's team, hopes other sponsors could join in to help.

"(It's) really to encourage other sponsors or potential sponsors or current sponsors to come forward and pitch in as well."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 6, 2023.

Abdulhamid Ibrahim, The Canadian Press

ALBERTA

Paramedic turnaround time in leaked email is a target not a mandate, AHS says

Mon, March 6, 2023 

The Alberta government denies that it issued an order requiring paramedics to off-load their patients at ERs within 45 minutes regardless of the capacity of medical staff. 

(Ose Irete/CBC - image credit)

The province says it never issued an order requiring paramedics to off-load their patients at ERs within 45 minutes regardless of the capacity of medical staff.

On Monday, the NDP Official Opposition released an email it says a distraught unit manager sent to staff in the ER at Calgary Foothills Hospital on Friday. It says that patients will be offloaded by paramedics in 45 minutes or less at Calgary ERs starting on March 15, regardless of whether there are staff at the hospital available.

The unidentified manager says in the leaked email that the directive was mandated by the government.

"I know this comes as a big shock to all of us and I am not sure how we are going to manage this," they write. "Please know if there was anything I could do to prevent this I would but this is being mandated from the government."

In Monday's question period, NDP Leader Rachel Notley said the plan is dangerous and dishonest.

"How is the premier going to implement this plan safely, Mr. Speaker?" she asked.

Health Minister Jason Copping said the government didn't issue an order. He said the 45-minute turnaround is an objective set by the Alberta EMS Provincial Advisory Committee.

The committee chaired by UCP MLAs RJ Sigurdson and Tracy Allard released its report with 53 recommendations in January.

Not a mandate

Alberta Health Services spokesperson Kerry Williamson echoed Copping's statement that the 45-minute timeframe is a target, not a mandate.

"No one will be abandoned in a hospital," he wrote. "AHS is working hard to meet these targets by making numerous steps to improve offload times.

"The origin of the email is unknown at this time. It is concerning that such an email has been sent as this is not a directive or a mandate, it is a target to work toward."

Premier Danielle Smith said the government set aside money in last week's provincial budget to add 114 full-time-equivalent nurses to emergency rooms.

They would be in charge of receiving patients from paramedics and getting them into the ER.

Notley said it would be impossible to hire that number of nurses before March 15.

"Can't go down to the nurses' store and pick up a pallet of nurses," she said.

Notley added that frontline staff have not been told that reinforcements are coming.

She said the government is more focused on generating "pretend statistics" in news releases than actually protecting the health-care system.

SIR KEIR'S LABOURTORY PARTY

Labour sets out plan for tax review to provide businesses with stability

PATRICK DALY, PA POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

6 March 2023, 3:30 pm

A future Labour government would commit to a review of business taxes and move away from an “11th hour approach” which the party says is holding back investment.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, in a speech to manufacturing sector leaders on Tuesday, is due to commit to a review of corporate taxes in a bid to create a stable investment environment.

Setting out Labour’s approach if it wins power at the next election, Ms Reeves will say that a Sir Keir Starmer premiership will “put an end to uncertainty” for firms when it comes to the taxes they face.

She will argue that the “answer is not unfunded tax giveaways” – as seen during the short-lived Liz Truss premiership – but that the priority should be using the tax system to support investment into the UK.

Following reports Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will refuse to bow to Conservative pressure to row back on plans to increase corporation tax in his Budget next week, Labour said it supported the hike.

Under proposals agreed while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was chancellor, corporation tax is due to rise to 25% from 19% next month.

Labour officials said the party’s review will look at how investment allowances “work best alongside the current rate of corporation tax”, with the Opposition outfit “dismissing the siren call of some that the government should cut corporation tax”.

The party instead argues that Britain should be in “lock step” with G7 nations on the rate of the business tax, and investment should be incentivised “through targeted allowances” to promote growth.

Labour also said the taxation review will set out how to build more stability and certainty for business into the tax system, including by potentially establishing a “road map for tax” which lasts over a parliament – usually around a five-year period.

Thirdly, the promised review would consider how to affordably support investment in the tax system and whether the current system of capital allowances is fit for purpose.

Finally, Labour would investigate how the tax system can effectively encourage investment of profits and revenue rather than more share buybacks and dividends.

Speaking at the Make UK Conference in central London, Ms Reeves is expected to say that business leaders she has met have a “deep sense of frustration” due to “too much being squandered amidst political dysfunction and economic instability”.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will give his Budget speech next week (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

She is set to add: “Central to a mission-based approach – central to strong investment – are stability and certainty in place of chaos and an 11th hour approach that hampers investment and growth.

“Nowhere is that clearer than in our tax system.

“In recent years, corporation tax has gone up and down like a yo-yo while the Government has papered over the cracks with short-term fixes like the super-deduction.

“So it’s no wonder businesses are unable to plan and our investment rates are cratering.

“The answer is not unfunded tax giveaways – we’ve seen where that takes us.

“But Labour knows that there is a role for the tax system in supporting investment.

“As chancellor, I will put an end to that uncertainty by providing stability in business taxation and so today I can announce that Labour will do a review of the business tax regime.

“The review will look at how we can build more stability for businesses in the tax system, and drive that crucial investment forward.

“What businesses need are certainty, consistency and incentives for investment. Labour will provide that.”

Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands said: “We don’t need Labour to do a tax review to know that they’d put taxes up on business.

“Corporation tax remains lower than it was at any point of the last Labour government.

“Only the Conservatives have a plan to support businesses with our five priorities for Britain.”

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

Israeli attack puts Syria’s Aleppo airport out of service: Report

Syrian state media says Israeli missile attacks damaged the runway at the Aleppo International Airport.

A view of the Aleppo International Airport, Syria, in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake, February 14, 2023

 [File: Firas Makdesi/ Reuters]

Published On 7 Mar 2023

Israel has launched an air raid on Syria’s Aleppo airport, damaging its runway and taking it out of service, according to Syrian state media.

The SANA news agency said the missile attacks took place early on Tuesday morning.

Citing a military source, SANA said Israel “carried out an air attack from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, west of Latakia, targeting Aleppo International Airport”. SANA said the raid “caused material damage” to the airport and “put it out of service”.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

There was no comment from Israeli officials.

The city of Aleppo, which suffered widespread destruction in Syria’s civil war, was again heavily damaged in the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria last month. A number of countries have since sent aid shipments to the city’s airport.

For almost a decade, Israel has carried out hundreds of air attacks against suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons transfers and personnel deployments in neighbouring Syria, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.

The raids, which in recent months have targeted Syrian airports and air bases, are part of an escalation of what has been a low-intensity conflict with the goal of slowing down Iran’s growing entrenchment in Syria, military analysts say.

Iran, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has expanded its military presence in Syria in recent years and has a foothold in most state-controlled areas and thousands of members of militias and local paramilitary groups under its command, according to Western intelligence sources.

Iran’s proxy militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now hold sway in large areas of eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and in several suburbs around the capital, Damascus.

On February 19, Israeli air attacks targeted residential areas in Damascus, killing at least five people and wounding 15, according to Syrian state news.

On January 2, the Syrian army said Israel’s military fired missiles towards the capital’s international airport, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers.

Paraguayan peasant farmers demand government attention to their needs

Online News EditorMarch 6, 2023

 

Asuncion, Mar 6 (EFE).- Dozens of Paraguayan peasant farmers on Monday staged a demonstration in downtown Asuncion to denounce the government for failing to comply with an accord it signed last September which sets forth that it will provide them with seed and fuel as well as help them manage their debts to financial entities.

“Our main demands are the issues of healthcare, education and support for peasant family agriculture,” the president of the National Cane Farmers Organization (ONCA), Felix Nuñez, told EFE.

In addition, the demonstrators – who set up improvised tents using plastic sheets and lighted bonfires around the Agriculture and Livestock Ministry – are demanding that the government authorize the state-run National Development Bank to acquire the agricultural debts of certain peasants who, Nuñez said, “are about to lose their homes.”

Nuñez said that last September the farmers agreed with the administration regarding support for the agricultural sector and “to date, six months later, nothing has happened.”

The government announced last September that it had reached an agreement with peasant leaders that included, among other things, the delivery of fuel for their tractors along with corn seed and agricultural lime with which to prepare the soil before planting.

The National Intersectional Coordinator (CNI), to which ONCA belongs, confirmed that the farmers will not leave the capital until their demands are resolved, according to statements collected by the daily Ultima Hora.

The National Peasant Federation (FNC) has called a march for March 30 to demand an “end to persecutions, accusations and evictions of peasant communities.”

EFE –/bp

A short interview with North Korea economy expert Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Sanctions are far from a major factor in the regime’s decision-making right now, he told Daily NK

By English Editor
- 2023.03.07 

In this picture published by state-run media on February 9, the Kim family can be seen walking together. (Rodong Sinmun-News 1)

Daily NK English Editor Robert Lauler recently conducted an email-based interview with Dr. Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, a Nonresident Fellow with the Stimson Center and editor for North Korean Economy Watch. The short interview focused on several issues facing the North Korean economy, including the country’s state-run food shops, China-North Korea trade, and sanctions.

Daily NK (DNK): We have learned in recent months from grassroots reporting about state-run food shops, which have been established to provide food at prices lower than what can be found in markets. How does the emergence of these state-run food shops fit within your conception of the current status of North Korea’s economy? Based on the limited information we have about them, do you see them as a grave threat for the development of the DPRK’s market economy?

Dr. Silberstein: I don’t think the food shops per se pose a grave threat for the market economy. They are a strong government intervention, for sure, that meddles with the incentive structure of the economy and decreases profits for farmers in an artificial way. The real problem would be if the state would enforce their monopoly, which they still have in law but not in practice. That would mean forcing people to only purchase from the state shops and, most critically, farmers to sell to the state at fixed prices. This would be a major escalation in the regime’s economic oppression.

DNK: For many months now, there have been reports speculating about the restart of trade with China. Daily NK, for its part, has reported recently on expectations inside the country that full-scale trade could resume in March. Some observers have suggested that any restart of trade with China will be very much different than pre-COVID trade because of the DPRK government’s desire to exert greater control over trade activities. Where do you stand on this issue?

Dr. Silberstein: I completely agree and I think this is one of the reasons the regime has enforced such a strict border lockdown for such a long time. It seems to be part of a domestic political struggle for resources or, rather, the control of the distribution of those resources. So when trade really re-opens (because I do think it’s a matter of “when” rather than “if”), it’ll likely be much more dominated by state-owned firms that are, both in theory and practice, truly controlled by the state, unlike entrepreneurs that “wear the red hat” and use only the name and trading rights of a state company. This will be a significant setback for the non-state controlled part of the economy. The question is how far the state will take it and how much force it’ll use to enforce its plans.

DNK: The Arduous March was a major famine that took place in the late 1990s. This term has become a byword for “mass starvation” in the country ever since. You’ve noted that North Korea isn’t quite at 1990s-levels yet, but that the economy is “incredibly fragile” and that current policies are both “messy” and “dangerous,” and that “further entrenchment from global trade” would be potentially “disastrous.” But with increasing Chinese aid and reports about an increase in Russian aid, wouldn’t support from those two countries alone stave off a disaster in the country?

Dr. Silberstein: Yes, I believe so and this is likely what will happen. So in that sense, and I’ve often stressed this point, the food situation is fragile only to a limited extent because the system looks so completely different today from the 1990s. The markets are one thing but precisely because the situation is incredibly fragile, China has almost routinely shipped aid to North Korea to stave off disaster. Even though the support may not be all that much in total volume, it still plays a critical difference since margins are so thin.

DNK: On top of the grave economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea is still under sanctions from the international community, including some additional sanctions slapped on South Korea independently a couple of weeks ago. Trump’s maximum pressure campaign did appear to push the Chinese to implement their sanctions more effectively, causing losses in foreign currency for the DPRK. But now in 2023, do you believe that the current sanctions regime is effective to induce changes in decision-making by North Korea’s leadership?

Dr. Silberstein: In a word, no. Sanctions are far from a major factor in the regime’s decision-making right now. It’s mostly by the regime’s own choice that trade remains at such low levels. I believe it could be expanded rapidly and quite significantly if the regime wanted to do so. The most central trade restrictions right now appear to be on the part of North Korea. Neither China nor Russia (though economic exchange with the latter remains very limited) really has any clear reason to implement UN sanctions on North Korea given the post-cold-war-low point in relations with the west.

Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.

California oil company must pay $65M over oil spills


SANTA MARIA, Calif. (AP) — A defunct company that spilled more than a million gallons of crude oil and wastewater in California must pay more than $65 million in penalties and cleanup costs, federal prosecutors announced Monday.

A federal court entered a final judgment last week against HVI Cat Canyon Inc., formerly known as Greka Oil & Gas Inc., a U.S. Department of Justice statement said.

The federal government and the state of California had sued the company, alleging that it was negligent and responsible for repeated crude oil spills into U.S. and state waterways along the central coast from ruptured storage tanks, corroded pipelines and overflowing injection ponds.

The judgment finalizes a Feb. 25 ruling by a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The judge found the company liable for 12 spills into federal waterways from 2005 through 2010 that dumped 26,584 barrels (about 1.1 million gallons) (4.2 million liters) of crude oil and wastewater.

“The spills evinced a pattern of reckless disregard for good oilfield industry practices, and a series of negligent acts or omissions by HVI concerning oil spill prevention, and pipeline and facility inspection and maintenance,” the judge wrote.

OIL SPILLS


Oil leak from sunken Philippine tanker prompts swimming bans


Shipping companies reach $97M California oil spill agreement


Firm: Faulty weld, pressure on pipe led to Kansas oil spill


Companies agree to pay $45M over California oil spill

The firm also committed 60 violations of federal regulations at 11 facilities amounting to nearly 87,000 days of violation, the ruling held.

HVI Cat Canyon was held liable to the United States for $57.5 million in civil penalties and cleanup costs, along with $7.7 million to California in penalties in addition to nearly $200,000 for damage to natural resources and for cleanup costs.

The Santa Maria-based company, which owned and operated facilities in Santa Barbara County, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and a spokesperson couldn’t immediately be found.

A message left for an attorney who at one point represented the firm wasn’t immediately returned.

However, when the lawsuit was filed in 2011, then-company president Andrew deVegvar told the Los Angeles Times that most of the spills were minor and none caused harm to the environment. He also said the company fully complied with federal regulations.

From homemakers to home builders: Venezuelan women breaking ground


By AFP
Published March 6, 2023

Women in Venezuela are building their own homes with the help of a government program to encourage construction in the midst of an acute housing crisis - 

Copyright AFP/File KARIM JAAFAR

Margioni Bermudez

Ursulina Guaramato and Claudia Tisoy, both homemakers in their forties, apply a special glue to a complex network of pipes in an apartment block they and other women are building with their own hands in Caracas.

On this project in Antimano, a poor neighborhood of the Venezuelan capital, 80 percent of the workforce is made up of women, most of them single mothers.

Some cut reinforcing bars, some prepare concrete mix and others lay pipes.

They are making use of a government program that encourages construction by providing materials and technical guidance to first-time builders at no cost in a bid to tackle an acute housing shortage in a country battling a severe economic crisis.

It was not planned that the workers on the Antimano project would be mainly women.

In Venezuela, a deeply Catholic and conservative country, construction work is still viewed as the domain of men.

“We live in a patriarchal society but we are breaking paradigms,” Ayari Rojas, a spokeswoman for the builders, told AFP.

The development will have two structures of six stories each.

Most of the construction work has been completed and the first apartments of 95 in total are due to be finished this year.

The 75 workers on the project — most of whom now live in cramped quarters shared with relatives — are building these apartments for their own families.

But eight years ago, when they started, none knew anything about plumbing or masonry, let alone building plans or construction materials.

“Crafts and pastry used to be my thing,” Guaramato said, smiling as she measured a piece of PVC pipe.

Now she is the on-site reinforcement bar (rebar) expert.

Tisoy said she was “proud to see so many women here learning.”

“We are all here not just building homes, but a community.”

She plans to move into the building with her four daughters and a one-year-old grandson.


– ‘Warrior’ –


The builders include nurses, teachers and beauticians.

Yrcedia Boada, one of the workers, told AFP the women are often at the receiving end of insults about their perceived “manliness” in a society rife with machismo.

“We have suffered horrible derogatory comments,” she said.

The project has had to overcome numerous setbacks, not least delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, hyperinflation that has plagued the country for years, and international sanctions affecting the flow of goods, including building materials.

Luis Perez, Guaramato’s 19-year-old son, is one of 20 men on the project.

He started to help out two years ago, has learned much about masonry and carpentry since, and hopes to study auto mechanics.

“It is the first time I have known a woman who is a rebar master and I feel very proud because she is my mother,” he told AFP.

“My mother is a warrior.”

Robert Reich: Why Warren Buffett Is Wrong And Joe Biden Is Right About Stock Buybacks – OpEd

 March 7, 2023  

By Robert Reich

Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in America, defended stock buybacks in his highly anticipated annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, released a few days ago. 

“When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).”

Buffett may be correct about buybacks being good for shareholders, for the simple reason that each remaining outstanding share has more corporate profit behind it. 

But the Oracle of Omaha is dead wrong about buybacks being good for the country. They merely enrich people who own shares of stock (the richest 10 percent of Americans own 92 percent of the stock market) rather than add to the productive capacity of America. 

Many pundits (including Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times’s DealBook) are failing to draw the distinction — assuming that if stock buybacks are good for corporations and their shareholders, they must be good for America. 

Rubbish

To take but one recent example: Last year, the Norfolk Southern Railway enjoyed record revenue and operating income — $3.2 billion in the fourth quarter alone, a remarkable 13 percent year-over-year increase.

How did the railroad accomplish this? By cutting nearly 10,000 jobs — reducing its workforce by a third while running fewer, longer trains. Some trains now stretch longer than 2 miles. It made these changes despite warnings that they worsened safety risks. 

The corporation also refused to provide its remaining workers with sick leave. And it failed to invest in improved safety equipment. (As I noted last week, the railroad mounted a major lobbying blitz against stronger safety regulations.)

And what did Norfolk Southern do with all the money it saved from cutting its workforce, running longer trains, refusing sick leave, and scrimping on safety? 

Over the past two decades, it has boosted shareholder payouts by 4,500 percent (along the way enriching Warren Buffett and other investors). 

Specifically, it has spent billions on stock buybacks — hitting a record $4.7 billion in buybacks and dividends last year. 

Then it went off the rails, literally, releasing a toxic plume over East Palestine, Ohio. 

On Saturday it went off the rails again, near Springfield, Ohio, although thankfully this Norfolk Southern train wasn’t carrying hazardous materials. 

Companies don’t get better because of buybacks. Shareholders only get richer. While railroads spent more on stock buybacks than rail safety, Warren Buffett’s wealth increased by $42 billion.

Researchers at Deloitte point out that buybacks and dividends have soared as a share of GDP, while corporate investments in equipment and infrastructure have stagnated. Many of the social costs of this failure to invest have been shifted to the public-at-large, as we saw in East Palestine. 

Stock buybacks don’t create more jobs. They don’t increase wages. They don’t grow the economy. 

Before 1982, it was illegal for corporations to purchase their own stock to artificially prop up share prices. Then Ronald Reagan’s SEC adopted a rule protecting corporations from being charged for this kind of stock manipulation.

Jump ahead to 2017 and the Trump-GOP tax cuts added fuel to the fire. Since then, stock buybacks have more than doubled, reaching a record high $1.2 trillion in 2022 alone.

That’s $1.2 trillion that did not go into improving quality of life for American workers or building the American economy. It just went straight into the pockets of already-wealthy shareholders and CEOs.

Once again, Wall Street gains at the expense of working families.

Which is why the Inflation Reduction Act imposes a 1 percent tax on buybacks. And why Biden wants to raise it to 4 percent. The Stock Buyback Accountability Act of 2023, introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden, would do just this.

From the standpoint of America as a whole, Biden is exactly right about stock buybacks. Buffett is utterly wrong.



Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

Sphinx-like statue of Roman emperor unearthed in Egyptian temple

March 7, 2023 —

Cairo: Archaeologists have unearthed a Sphinx-like statue believed to be a depiction of a Roman emperor and the remains of a shrine in an ancient temple in southern Egypt.

The artefacts were found in the temple of Dendera in Qena Province, 450 kilometres south of the capital Cairo, the Antiquities Ministry said in a statement.


A sphinx statue believed to be have been made in the likeness of a Roman emperor was uncovered from an archaeological site in Qena, Egypt.CREDIT:MTA/AP

Archaeologists believe the statue’s smiling features may belong to Claudius, who extended Rome’s rule into North Africa between 41 and 54 AD.

The ministry said archaeologists would conduct more studies on the markings on the stone slab, which could reveal more information about the statue’s identity and the area. The statue is much smaller than the towering, well-known Sphinx in the Pyramids of Giza complex, which is 20 metres high.

The archaeologists also found a Roman-era stone slab with demotic and hieroglyphic inscriptions.


The site also contains a shrine to the Ancient Egyptian god Horus dating back to the Roman era.

CREDIT:MTA/AP

The limestone shrine includes a two-layer platform and a mud-brick basin from the Byzantine era, the ministry said.

RELATED ARTICLE

Egypt unearths 250 mummies in ancient necropolis

Such discoveries are usually touted by the Egyptian government in hopes of attracting more tourists, a significant source of foreign currency for the cash-strapped North African country.


AP