Babylon & Beyond: Triumph over sexual harassment

Sexual harassment may no more go unpunished in Egypt. In a landmark verdict this week, a Cairo court sentenced a truck driver to three years in prison for groping a woman.

The crime happened last summer when Sherif Gomaa Gibrial slowed his truck and reached out and grabbed Noha Roushdy's breast while she was walking near her home. Roushdy wouldn't let it pass. She ran and and grabbed onto the truck, forcing Gibrial to stop.

By insisting on taking her harasser to court, Roushy broke the silence and shame many Egyptian women and tourists face when they confront profanities and assaults. In a patriarchal society, where the blame for sexual harassment is squarely put on the victim, harassed women prefer to remain discreet. However, Roushdy's insistence on justice and her cause celebre case may change such attitudes.

Sexual harassment is deemed one of Egypt's most insidious crimes.According to a report issued last summer by some local women's advocacy group, 83% of Egyptian women have been exposed to sexual harassment. Feminists have been complaining that there is no strict legal code to fight the phenomenon.

"This verdict will make young men think a thousand times before committing sexual harassment," said Roushdy.

The 27-year-old documentary director decided not to hide from society; on the contrary, she was brave enough to appear in court and have her photo taken by different news organizations.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

Photo: Roushdy in court (al-Masry al-Youm/ Mohamed Hossam Eddin)

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Babylon & Beyond: Hey, you're not dying!

The man pictured on the cigarette pack appears to be dying.

He’s breathing through an oxygen mask, a wheezing testament to the ills of tobacco.

Only the man is not sick: He’s Hamdy Balala, an Egyptian driver for an ad company who finds himself the unwitting icon of a lawsuit.

Khaled Shaaban, a lawyer, says Balala’s posed picture, stamped on cigarette packs across the country, has duped and frightened the public.

Shaaban has sued Egyptian Health Minister Hatem El-Gabali for trickery. He wants the minister to resign. That’s not likely. Egypt has among the highest percentages of smokers in the world — 60% of adult males light up daily.

But Shaaban is passionate: “The simplest thing we want to see in an authority figure is credibility,” he told Egypt Today magazine. “If he deceived the public then he will never be credible, and he will never gain the public’s trust in any of his actions.”

The drama has become farce, especially for Balala, a heavy smoker with no health problems, who wanted to earn extra money posing for a public service advertisement. Now he’s teased by friends. Strangers accost him on the street.

He stopped talking to reporters after a picture surfaced on Facebook showing Balala smoking while holding up a cigarette pack with his hospitalized image.

Ah, the strange things that can happen when a noble idea gets marketed.

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

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Yann Arthus-Bertrand: Earth From Above

Road interrupted by a sand dune, Nile Valley, Egypt. Dunes cover nearly one-third of the Sahara, and the highest, in linear form, can attain a height of almost 1,000 feet (300 m). Barchans are mobile, crescent-shaped dunes that move in the direction of the prevailing wind at rates as high as 33 feet (10 m) per year, sometimes even covering infrastructures such as this road in the Nile Valley. [map] (© Yann Arthus-Bertrand)

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Earth at Night
Credit: C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive

Explanation: This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat. Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Theabove image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites.