This is the news roundup for the weekend of the first week of September, 2007, compiled from newspapers by Miret el Naggar.

-Prime Minister Ahmed Nazief said that President Mubarak's health is good, and the rumors that his health has deteriorated are all wrong. "The president is very active, and the National Democratic Party intends to maintain him as President until the end of his term," Nazief said. Mubarak heads the NDP that has 317 out of 444 seats in parliament.

-Tamer al Saied, 27, returned from Libya in mid-August and told shocking tails of how he was detained and tortured there. "I used to hear the other detainees screaming, and i would cry out of fear as i waited for the cell door to open and they take me to be tortured." Said he was detained when he asked a police officer in the street why he was arresting another Egyptian, the officer then arrested him as well. He accused the Egyptian embassy in Libya of negligence. " I met many detainees, who have spent years in Libyan prisons without charge."

-A key witness in the case of opposition figure Ayman Nour was found dead in his cell on Thursday. Ayman Hassan had formerly testified against Nour, but then withdrew his testimony saying security forces had threatened they would harm his family. Nour was President Mubarak's main contender in the country's first multi-candidate elections in 2005. He was then imprisoned for allegedly forging signatures to establish his al-Ghad (Tomorrow) party. The trials and charges have been largely deemed by analysts and human rights activists as a farce.

- Reports show that Egypt has reached its highest economic growth in decades, but that high unemployment rates and rising prices hamper this flourish from reaching the masses.

-Around 5000 Bedouins protested on Thursday demanding better services and better treamtment by the local security forces.

-A Norwegian company has won a bid to extract oil and gas from Egypt. The company will invest $50 million over a period of five years.

-A columnist in the opposition newspaper Al Dustour warned that the continuing crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood will create an Islamic void, that might result in other more extremist groups filling it. Over the past year the Egyptian government has fiercly hunted down members of the group. The latest crackdown included scores of parliamentarians and buisnessmen, the latter who finance the group. Now the group's key political figures are in prison and is suffering financially as well.

-Egypt's official newpspaper Al Ahram reported that police forces will install cameras everywhere in Cairo, enabling them to monitor traffic and make traffic flow easily. For those who've never visited Cairo, it has disfunctioning traffic lights, and traffic police are on each corner and crossroad, organizing traffic as a shepheard would organize his herd. But it's still fun to drive, because it's a daily challenge to play the game of getting from one destination to another.

Talk of the town:

As the Muslim's holy month of Ramadan approaches, Egyptians worry about prices of basic groceries as milk, vegetables and bread that recently skyrocketed. In the Arab world Ramadan is a month of feastings and family gatherings, where Egyptians traditionally eat abundantly. Many families this year won't have that privilege. To make things worse, Ramadan coincided this year with the start of schools and universities. So parents not only have to worry about how to put food on the table, but also about tuition fees, uniforms, books etc. In a country where the average annual income of a person is $1,400 (according to the world bank report of 2001) these worries are serious.