The Egyptian Health Ministry is slaughtering pigs in Cairo's Mokattam slum, in a precaution against swine flu. No cases, suspected or otherwise, triggered the crackdown, other than general pandemic fears these days.

The authorities are being met with rioters, who say they're having their livelihood taken away. Mokattam Slum, of course, has a lengthy relationship with Urbana.org: several Global Urban Treks have spent the summer there.

Scott Bessenecker writes of pig butchers in Mokattam here.

Mokattam is a Christian slum. 250,000 mostly-Coptic Christians live there, having been segregated away over the centuries by the authorities. (These are, Philip Jenkins has recently reminded us, some of the oldest Christians in the world.) So we can't understand this story without keeping in mind the religious angle.

Anyway, here's the Beeb, who barely mention religion: