BBC wrote:Egypt's interim Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi has unexpectedly announced the resignation of his government.
Mr Beblawi said the decision was taken "in light of the current situation the country is going through".
It comes amid a series of strikes, including one by public sector workers and rubbish collectors, and an acute shortage of cooking gas.
Mr Beblawi was appointed in July after the military overthrew President Mohammed Morsi following mass protests.
Since then, more than 1,000 people have been killed and thousands of others detained in a crackdown by the security forces on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement to which Mr Morsi belongs.
Militants based in the Sinai peninsula have meanwhile stepped up attacks on government, police and military personnel, killing hundreds.
'Difficult responsibility'
Mr Beblawi did not give a clear reason for the cabinet's resignation in his televised address.
He acknowledged that Egypt had witnessed a sharp rise in strikes, but said no government in the world could have fulfilled all the demands of its people in such a short period of time.
"The cabinet has over the past six or seven months shouldered a very difficult responsibility... in most cases the results were good."
"The country is facing huge dangers. It is time we stood together to protect it and help it get out of this narrow tunnel," he added.
"This is neither the time for demands by public workers nor the time for personal interests, but the time for us to put our country's interests above all others."
Mr Beblawi also noted that his government had completed the first part of the road-map outlined by the interim authorities by holding a referendum on a new constitution in January.
Government spokesman Hani Saleh told the AFP news agency that there was a "feeling that new blood is needed".
Good news, right? They resign for the good of the country, surely? Well, Al-Arabiya has another theory:
Al-Arabiya wrote:Egypt’s government resigned on Monday paving the way for army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to announce his presidency bid.
Sisi, who is expected to run for president, was part of the cabinet, serving as defense minister. The government resigning has effectively opened the way for Sisi to run for president since he would first have to leave his post as defense minister in any case.
“This (government resignation) was done as a step that was needed ahead of Sisi’s announcement that he will run for president,” an Egyptian official told Reuters.
The official said that the cabinet had resigned en masse as Sisi did not want to appear to be acting alone.
Sisi has unveiled a political roadmap meant to lead to elections after toppling Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood following mass unrest against his increasingly arbitrary rule.
The military chief has already secured the support of Egypt’s top military body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to launch a presidential bid.
Already, the career infantry officer trained in Britain and the United States has been acting in a somewhat presidential manner. He paid a highly publicized visit to Russia earlier this month, when he secured the Kremlin’s goodwill, its blessing for his likely presidential bid and negotiated a large arms deal.
Well, that was to be expected, another military dictatorship. GG democracy!
That sounds about right. I initially figured that Beblawi figured out where the wind was blowing and resigned before he could be arrested and forced out of power, as with Morsi.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” -Jean-Luc Picard
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." -Margaret Atwood
CAIRO — At a news conference late last week, an Egyptian Army doctor confidently announced that the country’s military had developed a cure for the virus that causes AIDS, as well as hepatitis C, one of Egypt’s gravest public health threats.
The doctor, Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdul Atti, said the cures were the result of 22 years of his own study. At some point, he added, military intelligence had taken on his research as a secret project.
Now it was being revealed to the world.
“Defeating the virus is a very easy process, but God grants wisdom to whoever he wants,” said the general, who boasted that the treatments had cured 100 percent of AIDS patients and more than 95 percent of hepatitis C cases.
An Army video played at the news conference showed the devices used in the treatments at work. Some patients were hooked up to boxlike machines. Others were monitored by doctors holding what looked like a hand exerciser attached to an antenna that swiveled, following the patients as they walked.
Independent experts were skeptical about the inventions and treatments. In recent days, as news of the discovery spread, it seemed easy to dismiss as the latest embarrassment imposed on Egyptians by their leadership, like the episode a few months ago, when the authorities opened an investigation into a puppet accused of aiding terrorists.
There was fatigue at another round of absurdity.
“I was an analyst,” H. A. Hellyer, an Egypt expert with the Brookings Institution, wrote on Twitter. “And then I had to explain terrorist puppets, spy storks and AIDS cures in koftas,” he wrote, referring to part of the Army treatment that somehow involved ground meat.
This was potentially more damaging, though, to public health as well as the reputations of Egyptian scientists and doctors; Egypt reportedly has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C, which can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. In the reactions to the announcement, there was anger at what some saw as political opportunism by the military — the video opened with heroic scenes of soldiers at war — as well as a familiar disregard.
This week, Egyptians had other reasons to feel ignored. On Monday, without warning or explanation, the prime minister announced that the government was resigning.
By Wednesday, a new prime minister had been named, leading a government that was beginning to look very much like the old one. As Egyptians were left to ponder the reasons for the change, one political party leader said the public was being treated like a child.
In the news conference, General Abdul Atti and other officials insisted that the research was sound, saying it had been reviewed by top academics. Clinical trials had yielded “spectacular results,” a health ministry official said, and plans were in place to start producing more devices.
Some of the backlash came from unexpected quarters. Dr. Essam Heggy, a planetary scientist and an adviser to Egypt’s interim president, told a newspaper that it was a “scandal for Egypt” that “hurts the image of scientists and science” in the country.
“The real achievement is to realize our problems and resolve them together,” he wrote on Facebook, “not to invent illusionary solutions to real problems.”
Others complained that General Abdul Atti’s announcement, which praised the army, seemed connected to politics and the expected presidential candidacy of Egypt’s military chief, Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, who was sitting in the audience when the presentation was made.
Dr. Gamal el-Ebaidy, a prominent surgeon and hepatologist, said he doubted the reported discoveries and was concerned that they might have been announced for “the sake of the elections.”
“Medicine has nothing to do with politics,” he said.
