San Francisco bay area Norma Supe, a 63-year-old nurse from Union City, and 66-year old Patti Ganal, of Los Gatos, recounted their brief but intense experience as hostages in Egypt, after being snatched Friday from a minivan on a tour of Sinai.

The two women, Ganal’s husband and two other Americans had finished a tour of the sixth-century St. Catherine’s Monastery, located at the foot of Mount Sinai where the Old Testament says Moses received the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments.

Supe and Ganal were abducted for several hours by armed Bedouin tribesmen. Their Egyptian tour guide, Hisham Zaki, was allowed to go with the women and serve as translator.

“I was not afraid at all because I know God has sent us here,” Ganal, a devout Christian and tour leader to Egypt, Jordan and Israel said in Cairo.

The kidnappers said several times they would not harm the women. Zaki said they were seeking leverage to pressure the government to release two relatives, including one of the kidnappers’ sons. The Bedouins drove for a few hours through the mountains, and suggested to the women that they were doubling as new tour guides. At one time they stopped, made a fire for the women to stay warm and prepared coffee and tea. The women were also served pita bread, dates and other dried fruit.

The abducted women hesitated to call the men “captors,” saying that the kidnappers were kind, polite and hospitable. They talked about religion and tribal rights. One even put out his cigarette in the car when one hostage said the smoke was bothering her.

The Bedouins released Zaki and the women after negotiations with tribal leaders in the peninsula.

Ganal and Supe were invited by the South Sinai Governor for dinner in a hotel in St. Catherine and for a night at a hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh. The official paid for flights from Sharm el-Sheikh for the tour group.

The five Americans visited the pyramids this weekend and were planning a visit to the coastal city of Alexandria. The group planned to return to the U.S. on Tuesday.

“All of this is an unforgettable memory,” said Norma Supe. “Maybe God had a purpose for this. It was probably to encourage more faith in me.”

CBS San Francisco

More and more travelers are looking for both relaxation and ways of improving their health whilst being on vacation.  Holiday makers can now combine these two aspects by visiting the ancient world of Egypt and its Fifth International Yoga Festival which takes place at the Domina Coral Bay Elisir Hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh from 26 April to 1 May 2012.

The First International Yoga Festival was held five years ago in 2008 and was the first of its kind in Egypt and the Middle East. Its success has grown annually since then and now attracts hundreds of visitors from throughout the globe every year.

The festival’s theme in 2012 is “Egypt Back to Freedom”. It stands for the freedom of the people of Egypt and expresses the highest goal of yoga, Kaivalya – freedom.

Visitors can experience gentle introduction classes, challenging dynamic yoga classes as well as partner yoga and relaxing Thai yoga massages. Interesting workshops teach new techniques and help to open up and relax the mind.

For further information and to register, visit egyptinternationalyogafestival.com.

Easier Travel

The slow improvement, according to the new Minister of Tourism, Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, indicates that the recovery underway will settle down to normal levels by September 2011. From Europe, there were positive signals. From Russia, in particular, 220,000 tourists arrived in March and April. In 2010, Egypt hosted 2.8 million Russian tourists. Italy also reported an improvement, and tourism officials are confident that the beaches of Sharm El Sheikh, in particular, will return to be as popular as in past days.

The recovery plan for Egypt will stretch around the world and foresees an advertising campaign of high impact that will involve the hard copy media, the major television channels, and the web sites and social networks that have been of great support to the struggle of Egypt’s people. “We rely now on their support for the tourism recovery,” said the minister.

Last-minute news announced that the curfew in Cairo will be withdrawn from June 16.

etn

The newly created production unit is an implementation of the new antiquities law which establishes the intellectual property rights and trade mark of the MSAA production of replicas. According to the law, the MSAA is the only foundation with permission to produce exact replicas on a 1:1 scale.

The production unit employs 40 skilled artists and painters.

Ahram Online

Egypt will reopen beaches at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after a spate of shark attacks temporarily forced their closure.

New measures are being put in place to ensure the safety of swimmers in the future, authorities said.

Watch stations, manned by divers, would be set up to monitor the coast, and that speed boats would continuously patrol the waters.

Swimmers will also have to remain within designated areas and refrain from feeding sharks.

BBC News

The World Green Conference, held recently in Abu Dhabi, urged local, regional and international travel industries to prioritize sustainability in order to preserve the environment for future generations.

During one conference session entitled “Formulating a National Green Tourism Strategy,” governmental representatives from the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Thailand, Egypt and the US, discussed the importance of formulating a national green tourism strategy balanced between investment, incentives and regulations.

Hisham Zaazou, senior assistant to Egypt’s minister of tourism, highlighted at the conference the country’s experience with the Green Sharm Initiative–the green tourism strategy for Sharm al-Sheikh. Sustainability advocates hope this paradigm is embraced to help foster substantive change in Egyptian green tourism policy.

Egypt’s aims for Sharm al-Sheikh to be the first MENA country to “transform a leading touristic city into a world class green destination, while providing thriving socio-economic development opportunities to its community,” Zaazou said.

The Green Sharm Initiative targets reforms in emission, water supply, waste management and biodiversity by 2020. The aim is to reduce emissions by 36 percent while decreasing water use in existing hotels by 13 percent and 28 percent for new hotels. The initiative also targets water waste reduction in supply networks by 75 percent. In terms of waste management, the aim is to achieve level 3 in solid waste management best practice. Finally, biodiversity degradation should be reduced at an annual rate of 5 percent.

Excerpted from an article by Hoda Baraka for Al Masry Al Youm

A German woman has been killed in a shark attack while snorkelling off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, officials say.

The death comes after four people were injured in similar attacks at the resort earlier in the week.

Egyptian authorities had re-opened the waters after saying they captured the sharks involved in the earlier attacks.

Now all the resort’s beaches had been closed again for watersports, with the exception of Ras Mohammed, a nature preserve south of the city, Egypt’s Tourism Minister Zuhair Garana told AFP news agency.

Officials say they are baffled by the repeated attacks and are consulting marine biologists.

Shark experts and local observers have offered a number of possible explanations for the attacks. Some say overfishing in the Red Sea may have driven sharks closer to shore. Others said predatory sharks could have been drawn to the area after a ship carrying Australian sheep and cattle for sacrifice during last month’s Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha dumped the carcasses of animals which had died dying during the voyage.

BBC News

Egyptian officials killed an endangered whitetip shark on Thursday after two attacks on Russian tourists in successive days earlier in the week. The shark was captured and examined for its stomach contents, officials said.

Another shark, a mako, was also captured, but the ministry of environment was late Thursday still contemplating whether it would release the marine animal back into the wild.

The oceanic whitetip species, which are commonplace in the Red Sea’s deep waters, is not known to attack humans. The whitetip is also listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a threatened species.

Officials in the area believe the same shark was responsible for a separate attack the day before that injured another Russian couple while they were swimming near the beach.

All four individuals have been airlifted to Cairo where they are receiving medical attention and are currently in critical condition.

Egypt has on average one to two fatal shark attacks annually.

Excerpted from an article by Joseph Mayton for BIKYAMASR

The Ministry of Tourism on Wednesday instructed Egypt’s Chamber of Diving and Water Sports (CDWS) to suspend all diving activities in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. The closure is expected to remain in place until the end of tomorrow.

The move follows three separate shark attacks north of the Sinai Peninsula’s Naema Bay, in which three Russian tourists were injured, within the last 24 hours. The victims had been snorkeling near local coral reefs at different times of the day when the attacks occurred.

The victims–one man and two women–are currently receiving medical treatment.

According to instructions from the Ministry of Tourism, all beaches will be closed to the public and all diving and water activities halted, except in the Ras Mohammed Nature Preserve.

Shark fishing has been strictly proscribed in the Red Sea since 2001.

According to Reuters, the last person to die from a shark attack in Egypt was killed while snorkeling near Sharm el-Sheikh in 2004.

Excerpted from a report by Lina Attalah for Al Masry Al Youm

Dolphins seen swimming in the tiny pool of a villa in Egypt’s Red Sea coastal town of Hurghada are part of plans to erect a dolphinarium in Makadi Bay, in an effort to attract more tourism. Leading the campaign to house the dolphins for visitors viewing are hotel owners in the area.

The Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA) has launched a petition against the captivity of the dolphins and the water conditions they are being held in.

According to HEPCA and international activists, the animals are from Japan, likely from the Cove in Taiji, where tens of thousands of dolphins are slaughtered annually. Dolphins that escape the murder are then transferred across the globe to dolphinariums and zoos, including the one in Sharm el-Sheikh – Dolphina Park.

Top international dolphin advocates, including Richard O’Barry of The Cove, are to arrive in Egypt on Sunday in a growing effort to put an end to the dolphinaria in Egypt and protect dolphins from the exploitation of Taiji.

HEPCA’s Managing Director Amr Ali said in a statement that his organization and the local government are hopeful that the dolphinarium in Hurghada will be canceled before its gates are open.

Excerpted from an article by Joseph Mayton for  Bykia Masr