Fox News

The case of the Iranian pastor sentenced to death for his faith has attached a human face to the horrible situation of Christians in the Middle East. While Youcef Nadarkhani awaits the death sentence for practicing his religion in Iran, scores of Christians across the Middle East are fleeing their countries amid rising hostility. Sadly, the religious diversity of the Middle East is rapidly vanishing.

The Independent

Protesters marched in Port Said on Thursday, one day after rioting left more
than 70 people dead.

If the British tend to believe in the cock-up theory of history, in the Middle East it's the opposite. Barely had the first casualty been recorded in the Port Said football riot on Wednesday night than the airwaves were filled with the suggestion that the whole disaster had been encouraged, if not actually orchestrated, by the military government.

The New York Times
 
The economy is teetering, peaceful demonstrators have been tried in military courts, anti-Christian violence has spiked and ministers appointed by the military have hounded civil society groups.

 
 Members of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
 
ONE year after the revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military is closing down civil society organizations and trying to manipulate the constitution-writing process to serve its narrow interests.

The Guardian, London
 
The desire to finish what started a year ago is as strong as ever. The Arab spring is in midwinter; soaring hope has turned sour and disillusion now reigns.


Relatives of victims killed in violence at a football match in Port Said wait
to receive the bodies at a morgue in Cairo.

One of the many features which made Egypt's deadliest night of football different from similar stadium disasters at Hillsborough or Heysel is the widespread belief that the violence was planned.

Washington Post

Aside from Egypt, perhaps no place in the world was more galvanized by the events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square last year than Washington. American policymakers and foreign policy experts on both sides of the aisle rallied behind the cause of the young men and women who braved violence at the hands of the country’s notoriously vicious state police to march for freedom.

As the US electoral process grinds on and Republican primary debates fold into state primaries and caucuses, candidates’ views on national security and foreign policy are being carefully scrutinized by voters who consider them crucial components of the total policy package a candidate will carry into the Oval Office.

Daily News Egypt

 
 
 CAIRO: The Maspero Youth Union announced that it will organize a protest Thursday in front of the Journalists' Syndicate, to condemn what they called violations against the Coptic residents of Sharbat village in the district of Amreyya in Alexandria.

USA Today

Jan. 6, 2012 photo, a woman and child attend Christmas Eve mass at a
Coptic church in Qena, Egypt.

CAIRO — From her home in a labyrinth of stonewalled alleyways, Samia Ramsis holds a key chain bearing the face of the Virgin Mary as she sits in her yellow pajamas on the morning of Orthodox Christmas.