Entertainment
With presidents and royalty in attendance, Egypt unveils $1bn cultural ‘GEM’
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty descended on Cairo on Saturday to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the Pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities.
The inauguration of the $1 billion Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, pandemic and wars in neighbouring countries.
“We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a country whose history goes back more than 7,000 years.”
Spectators, including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, gathered late on Saturday before an enormous screen outside the museum, which projected images of the country’s most famous cultural sites as dancers in glittering pharaonic-style garb waved glowing orbs and sceptres.
‘New chapter for Egypt’
They were accompanied by Egyptian pop stars and an international orchestra decked out in white beneath a sky lit with lasers, fireworks and hovering lights that formed into moving hieroglyphics.
By opening the museum, Egypt was “writing a new chapter in the story of this ancient nation’s present and future,” Sisi said at the opening.
The audience included German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, and the crown princes of Oman and Bahrain.
The museum’s most heavily promoted attraction is the expansive collection of treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb, uncovered in 1922, including the boy-king’s golden burial mask, throne and sarcophagus, and thousands of other objects.
A colossal statue of Ramses II that sat for decades in a downtown Cairo square bearing the pharaoh’s name now adorns the grand entry hall.
The complex’s sleek design, evoking the Pyramids, cuts a marked contrast to the dusty and often outmoded displays in the neoclassical Egyptian Museum that opened over a century ago in central Cairo overlooking Tahrir Square.
Old museum looted
The old museum suffered indignities in recent years, including the looting of several display cases during Egypt’s 2011 uprising, when antiquities theft was rife.
In 2014, the beard of Tutankhamun’s burial mask broke off when workers were changing the lights in the display case, then was clumsily glued back on. The following year, the mask was more properly restored and put back on display.
Officials hope the new museum can end a perception fueled by such events that Egypt has been remiss in caring for its priceless treasures, and add weight to its claims for Egyptian objects held in museums abroad to be returned.
“Is it a national shrine or a global showcase? A gesture of cultural sovereignty or a tool of soft power?” read an article in a special edition of state-run Al-Ahram Weekly devoted to the museum, which it called “a philosophy as much as it is a building.”
“The GEM is not a replica of the Louvre or the British Museum. It is Egypt’s response to both. Those museums were born of empire; this one is born of authenticity.”
The museum’s more than $1 billion price tag was funded in large part by Japanese development loans. Designed by an Irish firm, Heneghan Peng Architects, it covers some 120 acres, making it roughly the same size as Vatican City.
Officials are also betting that the museum, the latest in a series of mega-projects launched or completed since 2014, can accelerate a revival of tourism, a vital source of foreign currency for an economy battered by years of regional conflicts and economic uncertainty.
A series of galleries had been opened late last year, but many exhibits were not accessible to the public.
Imagine Jenna Ortega in Hereditary. Creepy, right? Also… almost real.
The Wednesday star just dropped a surprising confession while chatting with Kid Cudi on his podcast – she auditioned for Ari Aster’s now-iconic horror film when she was just 12.
“I think I auditioned for Hereditary, which obviously wouldn’t have made any sense, especially for, like, my disposition as a kid, so I understood,” she said.
She did not even have the full script – just a couple of mysterious pages.
“I didn’t know what I was looking at… it was like two pages of just ominous words that as a 12-year-old went over the head,” she explained. Still, something clicked: “I feel like this is an important movie.”
She was not wrong.
The role eventually went to Milly Shapiro, while Toni Collette led the film – and horror history was made.
Watching it later in theaters, Ortega had a full-circle moment: “This is the one that I said was going to be in.”
Rejection, though? Never her villain origin story. “I never really question it… what’s meant to be mine will come to me.”
In fact, she almost quit acting altogether – until YOU happened. On set, one experience, and suddenly: “Yeah, there’s no way I could let this go.”
Fast forward, she’s now booked, busy… and finally learning how to cook.
Hollywood almost lost her. Imagine that horror story.
Love is strong… but tour schedules? Brutal.
Demi Lovato and husband Jordan Lutes (aka Jutes) are about to hit a relationship milestone – their first wedding anniversary – and unfortunately, they will be celebrating it miles apart.
Jutes, gearing up for his European tour in May and North American run in August, admitted the timing could not be worse.
“It’s one of those things where we get sad when we talk about it,” he shared. “So we’re like, ‘We won’t think about it yet.’ It’s gonna be tough, there’s no way around that.”
Romantic? Yes. Ideal? Not even close.
Still, he is not letting distance win. “We’re just gonna pretend,” he joked. “As soon as tour is over and we’re together, we’re gonna celebrate and that’ll be awesome. It’s part of the job and we’ll just have to FaceTime a ton and figure it out. We’ll get through it.”
Between shows, Jutes is riding high on his new single Disassociate and prepping what he calls his “biggest” tour yet – funded largely by fans.
“People coming to the show is by far the most important thing to me,” he said. “Nothing is going to replace showing up and a bunch of fans being there singing your songs.”
And Demi? Still his biggest fan.
“She believes in me more than I believe in myself,” he said. “We love to see each other win—seeing her win makes me feel better than seeing myself win.”
As for marriage rumours being “hard”? Jutes is no buying it: “Should we pretend to fight or something?”
Sean Diddy Combs filed a new appeal in the court for his immediate release with a new argument against his allegedly unfair trial.
The 56-year-old disgraced music mogul presented the argument through his legal team Alexandra Shapiro and Nicole Westmoreland in New York on Thursday, April 9.
They claimed that the Bad Boy Records founder ought to be freed under the First Amendment, according to the details obtained by Page Six.
Shapiro and Westmoreland argued that Diddy was wrongfully convicted under the Mann Act, while he was involved in the creation of independent adult tapes, which is legal under US laws for freedom of speech.
The Last Night rapper’s legal team claimed that the Judge Arun Subramanian who was in-charge of the case, used the wrong allegations against Combs to sentence him strongly.
“We made it abundantly clear. The District Court should not consider the acquitted conduct,” Shapiro said, adding that Combs’ sentence is the “highest sentence ever imposed on a Mann Act defendant under the same-based defence level.”
The attorneys demanded immediate acquittal and release of the music mogul or at least his freedom and resentencing to lesser time.
However, Assistant US Attorney Christy Slavik called the whole argument “meritless” marking the distinction between Diddy and adult filmmakers.
He also doubled down on Judge Subramanian’s “correctly applied” ruling given the “aggravated manner in which [Combs] committed his Mann Act offenses.”
Combs was was convicted of transportation for prostitution in July 2025 after his arrest in September 2024.
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