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Maltese claims extraordinary discovery in Sahara desert

Explorers just returning from the Sahara desert have claimed they found a remarkable relic from Pharaonic times. Mark Borda and Mahmoud Marai, from Malta and Egypt respectively, were surveying a field of boulders on the flanks of a hill deep in the Libyan desert some 700 kilometres west of the Nile Valley when engravings on a large rock consisting of hieroglyphic writing, Pharaonic cartouche, an image of the king and other Pharaonic iconography came into view. Mr Borda would not reveal the precise location in order to protect the site. He explained the far-reaching implications of the find for Egyptology. “Although very active in the Eastern Desert, as attested to by the innumerable inscriptions they left behind, there is very little evidence for the presence of the ancient Egyptians in the much larger and harsher Western Desert. “The consensus among Egyptologists is that the Egyptians did not penetrate this desert any further than the area around Djedefre’s Water Mountain. This is a sandstone hill about 80 kilometres south west of the Dakhla Oasis that contains hieroglyphic inscriptions. Its discovery in 2003 by the German explorer Carlo Bergmann caused a sensation as it extended the activities of the Pharaonic administrations an unprecedented 80 kilometres further out into the unknown and waterless Western Desert. The find we just made is some 650 kilometres further on!! Egyptologists will be dumbstruck by this news.”

The Western desert lives and breathes at -- wait, what? It's the Sahara? And that's in Africa? Well, fuck you anyway, Mister Man, because I'll use the musical reference anyway!

That said, I love this story for pure gaming potential. Seriously, you can leverage this thing for ten-thousand uses! Alien ancient astronauts, modern conspiracy (and that alone could go either Laura Croft or Delta Green), horror, SF (without even bringing in aliens), any hundred places.

If you want a specific: Why was Tutankamun's central stone in his burial pectoral made of Libyan glass? Is it not in fact a crystal psi amplifier, a precursor of the Throne of the Emperor in 40k? Was it a ritual binding to keep such a monster sealed in burial wraps? A never-triggered SOS beacon?

Man, I love archaeology.

Egypt to apply for first Arabic domain name

By TAREK EL-TABLAWY (AP) – 1 day ago

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt — Egypt will apply for the first Internet domain written in Arabic, its information technology minister said Sunday at a conference grouping Yahoo's co-founder and others to discuss boosting online access in emerging nations.

Tarek Kamel said Egypt on Monday would apply for the new domain — pronounced ".masr" but written in the Arabic alphabet — making it the first Arab nation to apply for a non-Latin character domain. The effort is part of a broader push to expand both access and content in developing nations, where the Internet remains out of reach for wide swaths of the population.

The registering of the domain "will offer new avenues for innovation, investment and growth, and hence we can truly and gladly say ... the Internet now speaks Arabic," Kamel said at the start of the Internet Governance Forum — a U.N.-sponsored gathering that drew Net legends like Yahoo Inc.'s Jerry Yang and Tim Berners-Lee, known as one of the Internet's founding fathers.

"It is a great moment for us," Kamel said of the domain name, which translates as ".Egypt".

The new domains stem from a decision taken at the end of October by the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a key Internet oversight agency, to develop a "fast-track" mechanism for domain names in languages such as Chinese, Korean, Arabic and others that do not use the Latin alphabet.

The decision marks a key step in the Arab world, where a mixture of censorship, limited content and access have stymied efforts to boost Arabic-language content on the Web.

The dearth of content has opened new market opportunities for Internet companies, with Yahoo, for example, recently acquiring Arab online community Web site

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Woho for Egypt but now what? Will the government start using these domains just like we do here in the US with .gov? I think that's a start to show commitment form the Egyptian government to this.

I do though recognize how difficult it this will be on many apps/engines on the web that are use Latin alphabet. I guess this is an evolutionary step on the web.

Google's Eric Schmidt interview on the Future of web saying that Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHxub_yQfig

So how do Arabic domain names will look like? Well, first Egypt in Arabic is three letters (not sure how many bits this is) but it would look like
مصر
Now you might not know but it's written from right to left so the following are examples of to be registered domain names:
تاريخ.مصر
وزارةالثقافة.مصر
اتصالات.مصر
(in order, History.Egypt, CultureMinistry.Egypt, TeleCommunications.Egypt)

Play Video AFP  – Egypt struggles to improve lives of poor

• Slideshow:Head Covering Controversies

AFP/File – A Cairo University student wearing a niqab stands with her luggage outside the university dormitory on …

By Mariam Karouny Mariam Karouny – Mon Nov 2, 8:33 am ET

CAIRO (Reuters) – Rokaya Mohamed, an elementary school teacher, would rather die than take off her face veil, or niqab, thrusting her to the forefront of a battle by government-backed clerics to limit Islamism in Egypt.

Egypt's state-run religious establishment wants teachers like Mohamed to remove their veils in front of female students, sparking a backlash by Islamists who say women should be able to choose to cover their faces in line with their Islamic faith.