Egypt has new information minister

In continued efforts to overhaul the interim government, Egypt appointed a new information minister on Saturday. The post had been abolished after the January 25 uprising ousted former President Hosni Mubarak on February 11.

Former Editor-in-chief of the al-Wafd party newspaper Osama Heikal was sworn in on Saturday in the presence of military chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.

Tantawi called on Heikal to “reorganize the Egyptian media and draw up a plan that addresses all the shortcomings that came from abolishing the post of minister of information,” a military source was reported as saying by AFP.

The position was removed during a government reshuffle on February 22, just days after Mubarak stepped down after the 18-day anti-regime protests.

Under Mubarak, the ministry was little more than a regime mouthpiece, and its abolition was one of the demands of protesters who ended the former president’s 30-year rule.