What can the government do when maverick journalists (the same ones who gave a platform for an alleged Islamist threat against the lives of prominent Coptic businessmen) get their hands on a locally licensed - and therefore uncensorable - publication?

The ghosts of last February’s mini press-purge have returned, chains-a-rattling, to haunt the Egyptian government in 1999. In what has to rank as one of the slicker moves in recent Egyptian political history, the major players from the banned Al-Destour and the lively Rose El-Yousef of old have teamed up in a bold gambit to seize control of a fully licensed, uncensored and nearly untouchable Egyptian newspaper.