Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

The past month has been hectic and difficult as is obvious from the month delay in publishing Arab-West Report. I have been visiting old friends of Dr. Meinardus after he passed away such as Dr. Isaac Fanous. The two men had been cooperating a lot together Meinardus helping Fanous to better understand Coptic history and traditions which Fanous in turn used in his revival of Coptic art.



Much time went again into the application for NGO status but the Council of State ruled on October 9 that the decision was to be postponed to January 22 2006. That seems to be going from postponement to postponement seriously hampering our work since we do need a legal status to approach different funding agencies. The work has grown that much with both the day-to-day operation and the building of a web-based electronic documentation center that this is no longer possible to fund with income from subscribers only.



We have again lost an editor and advertised for a replacement. The editor is definitely needed in order to be able to send work out faster. Too much work has come on the shoulders of too few people. It would have been much easier to find funding for an editor if the Council of State would have granted us NGO status. We now have to continue struggling to deal with a massive workload without having the proper funding for additional staff. That is unfortunately but we are despite all obstacles determined to make this initiative work!



The past month we also had lots and lots of problems with the ADSL provider frequently sending e-mail did not work and the support from this provider has been very poor indeed.