Ahmed Eissa
Senior Staff Writer
Egypt
On Tuesday, Egyptian officials announced that a buffer zone on Egypt’s eastern border with the Gaza Strip was going to be built in order to stop the movement of militants and weapons over the border.
Egyptian authorities issued residents living in the buffer zone a 48-hour period to evacuate their homes, in order to allow for demolition.
After residents protested the decree, military officials suspended the order and began negotiations with locals about the evacuation deadline.
The proposed buffer zone will include water-filled trenches and will stretch 500 yards wide along the nine-mile border.
Egypt announced the move four days after militants attacked a military checkpoint in the Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 31 soldiers.
Hungary
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through Budapest and six other cities on Wednesday to protest government plans to tax internet use in what has been called the country’s biggest anti-government demonstration in years.
The Hungarian government has drafted a law that proposes to implement a fee on each gigabyte of internet data transferred. Under the law’s current draft, internet providers would be made to pay 150 forints per gigabyte of data traffic.
The tax is one of many measures that the government has proposed to tackle its budget deficit.
The ruling Fidesz Party has attracted objections from the entirety of Hungary’s political spectrum over the move. Critics say that the tax reflects Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s increasingly authoritarian style.
The European Union has also condemned the law, contending that it could threaten political freedom.
United States
An unmanned Antares cargo rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) exploded seconds after liftoff on Tuesday night at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia.
Flight safety officers intentionally disabled the rocket via a kill signal after it showed signs of serious malfunctioning.
The rocket was carrying 5,055 pounds of supplies, science experiments on organic food growth in space and meteor observation instruments and equipment.
The Antares rocket model is designed to burn a mixture of liquid oxygen and kerosene for the first four minutes after launching. The rocket involved in Tuesday night’s incident fell and exploded on impact near its launch platform.
NASA officials said that because the ISS has adequate supplies to last at least until next spring, the rocket’s failure to reach the ISS will not cause immediate issues. No one was injured in the failed launch.
