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Egyptian Screen Legend Shadia Passes Away

Egypt’s Shadia acts with Abdul Halim Hafez. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Egypt’s Shadia acts with Abdul Halim Hafez. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Egyptian Screen Legend Shadia Passes Away

Egypt’s Shadia acts with Abdul Halim Hafez. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Egypt’s Shadia acts with Abdul Halim Hafez. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Iconic Egyptian actress Shadia passed away on Tuesday at the age of 86 after a long battle with illness, leaving behind a glittering acting and singing career.

She passed away at a Cairo hospital after suffering a stroke and falling into a coma.

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and his wife paid a visit to the hospital upon hearing news of the actress’ deteriorating health.

She started her career of 117 movie roles in 1947 and ended it in 1984. She showed off her acting skills by taking on a wide range of diverse roles, from a desperate women who sells her daughter to feed her family, to an aspiring singer in a rags-to-riches story.

In the mid-1980s and at the height of her career, Shadia shocked her fans by announcing her retirement from singing and acting.

She said at the time that she did not want to play the role of the old woman after viewers had grown accustomed to seeing her as a young lady.

“I do not like people seeing the wrinkles in my face and comparing them to young lady that they used to know,” she remarked.

Despite her retirement however, she remained in the hearts of her fans and her films are constantly aired on television.

Shadia also performed in ten radio shows and the play “Rayya was Skeena”.

It was during that play’s run that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The news did not deter her and she continued on acting in the show until the end of its run. She then traveled to France to receive treatment.

Soon after, she decided to retire and dedicated the rest of her life to religion and charitable work. Shadia donated her house to be transformed in a cancer research center. She shunned the media spotlight and refused all requests to sit for an interview.

Nobel laureate Najib Mahfouz described Shadia as a “very skilled actress who managed to bring the words of my novels to life.”

No one but her could have translated with such excellence words into cinematic art, he added.

Shadia’s brother Khaled Shaker told Asharq Al-Awsat that doctors did their best in treating the actress, but her health gradually deteriorated.

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Varieties

Parisians Will to Get a New Chance of Seine Swimming

People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)
People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)
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Parisians Will to Get a New Chance of Seine Swimming

People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)
People gather on the banks of the Seine River as the sun sets amid a severe heat wave in Paris, France, May 26, 2026. (Reuters)

Swimmers will for the second year be able to cool off at designated points along the Seine River in Paris this summer, authorities said Friday, as well as along the Marne River in the suburbs.

In Paris, the swimming season was to open at three official bathing sites on July 4, the mayor's office said.

The Seine reopened to swimmers last summer for the first time in a century, after Paris poured more than a billion euros ($1.15 billion) into a years-long effort to making the waters clean enough to use in the 2024 Olympics.

Sites this year will again include the Bras de Grenelle near the Eiffel Tower, the Bras Marie -- a short walk from Notre-Dame -- and Bercy, on the eastern side.

Some 100,000 people last year queued to jump in, the city said, despite a slow start to the season with rain disrupting the water quality.

Some 50,000 swimmers jumped into the Marne River in the eastern suburbs last year.

The bathing spots in Joinville-le-Pont, Champigny-sur-Marne, Saint-Maur-des-Fosses and Maison-Alfort would again welcome swimmers. A fifth spot would be added this year at Neuilly-sur-Marne northeast of Paris.

French authorities warned against swimming in parts of the rivers without lifeguards.

Varieties

Independent Researcher Exposes Basic Blunder in Scores of Cancer Studies

Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)
Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)
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Independent Researcher Exposes Basic Blunder in Scores of Cancer Studies

Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)
Researchers at the laboratory. (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute)

An independent researcher has uncovered potential blunder in scores of scientific studies, including cancer-related research, as a result of inappropriate antibody use in laboratory experiments, raising questions about the reliability of some of the results published in prestigious scientific journals.

The researcher found that scientists at Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford and other universities appear to have accidentally used the wrong ingredient in their experiments, muddling two proteins with similar names but entirely different sequences and functions.

Several British media outlets said researcher Sholto David reviewed the full text of 334 research papers to determine whether the antibody used in the studies was correctly intended for p16-ARC or incorrectly used to try and bind p16-INK4a.

P16-INK4a acts as a tumor suppressor by halting the cell cycle and is widely studied in cancer biology and is considered a key biomarker of ageing.

He found astonishing result: 95% of these papers have got it wrong.

“The vast majority of researchers who purchased antibodies have tried to use them to investigate p16-INK4a expression. Only 17 used these p16-ARC antibodies correctly,” he said in his research.

David said the implications are not good, to put it mildly.

“And these are not just insignificant papers. There are papers with hundreds of citations in high impact journals claiming to probe for p16-INK4a with antibodies which do not bind p16-INK4a,” he noted.

Varieties

Indonesia Volcano Erupts, Forcing Airport to Close

Journalists photograph a screen showing the movement of volcanic ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) office in Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on June 5, 2026. (AFP)
Journalists photograph a screen showing the movement of volcanic ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) office in Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on June 5, 2026. (AFP)
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Indonesia Volcano Erupts, Forcing Airport to Close

Journalists photograph a screen showing the movement of volcanic ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) office in Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on June 5, 2026. (AFP)
Journalists photograph a screen showing the movement of volcanic ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) office in Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on June 5, 2026. (AFP)

A highly active volcano in eastern Indonesia erupted several times on Friday, spewing towering ash columns into the sky and forcing a local airport to close, authorities said.

Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores Island erupted at 11:15 am (0315 GMT), sending volcanic material 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) into the air, the national volcanology agency said in a statement.

It came after several other eruptions earlier on Friday.

Lewotobi Laki-Laki falls under Indonesia's second-highest alert level for volcanic activity, with a five-kilometer exclusion zone in force around its crater.

The volcanology agency said residents near rivers should also remain on alert for hazardous floods of volcanic material, known as lahar, if heavy rain occurs.

Authorities have suspended operations at a local airport in the town of Maumere, about 60 kilometers west of Lewotobi Laki-Laki, affecting five domestic flights, airport head Partahian Panjaitan told AFP.

Laki-Laki means "man" in Indonesian, and the 1,584-meter (5,197-foot) volcano is twinned with a calmer 1,703-meter one named Perempuan after the Indonesian word for "woman".

Last July, Lewotobi Laki-Laki spewed a colossal 18-kilometer tower of ash, forcing the cancellation of 24 flights at the international airport on the resort island of Bali.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire".