May 18, 2013 Egyptian security officials say clashes between Muslims and Christians in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria left one man dead of a heart attack. Officials say the clashes in the city's el-Dekheila suburb erupted when a Coptic man allegedly sexually harassed a Muslim woman. Residents of the area fired birdshot and threw Molotov cocktails at one another during the Friday night fighting. P ...

CAIRO, May 17, 2013 (AFP) Hundreds of people marched on Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday calling for Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi to resign and demanding early elections, AFP correspondents and local media reported. The demonstration was called by a number of opposition groups, including the Al-Dustur party of former UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei and the April 6 movement which spearh ...

 CAIRO, May 17, 2013 (AFP) Egyptian police closed the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Friday in protest at the kidnapping of colleagues in the Sinai peninsula, a security source and witnesses said. Three policemen and four soldiers were abducted on Thursday by armed men who are demanding the release of a group of prisoners held at a police station in the North Sinai town of El-Arish, official media repor ...

CAIRO, May 16, 2013 (AFP) Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Thursday summoned his defence and interior ministers over the kidnapping hours earlier of policemen and soldiers in the Sinai peninsula, the official MENA agency reported. The crisis talks at the presidential palace come after unidentified gunmen kidnapped three Egyptian policemen and four soldiers in the lawless Sinai peninsula, security officia ...

by Mai Yaghi GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, May 16, 2013 (AFP) Junk-food starved Gazans can now order Kentucky Fried Chicken to go thanks to a new smuggling service which brings takeout from Egypt via a network of underground tunnels. It's not exactly "fast" -- taking several hours to arrive, with the Palestinian delivery company behind it charging hefty prices to cover the cost of fuel and transport. ...

CAIRO, May 16, 2013 (AFP) Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Thursday summoned his defence and interior ministers over the kidnapping hours earlier of policemen and soldiers in the Sinai peninsula, the official MENA agency reported. The crisis talks at the presidential palace come after unidentified gunmen kidnapped three Egyptian policemen and four soldiers in the lawless Sinai peninsula, security officia ...

CAIRO, May 16, 2013 (AFP) Unidentified gunmen on Thursday kidnapped three Egyptian policemen and four soldiers in the Sinai peninsula, security officials said. The servicemen were travelling to Cairo when the minibuses they were in were stopped at gunpoint in Al-Wadi al-Akhdar region which lies east of  El-Areesh in north Sinai, they said. The three captured policemen are from the Central Security Forces, t ...

CAIRO, May 15, 2013 (AFP) An Al-Qaeda-linked cell broken up in Egypt at the weekend planned to bomb the French and US embassies in Cairo, state news agency MENA quoted investigators as saying on Wednesday. "The accused planned suicide car bombings outside the embassies of France and the United States in Egypt," MENA said In the case of the French mission, the motive was to register a protest "against French ...

CAIRO, May 14, 2013 (AFP) A Coptic Christian teacher in an Egyptian primary school will face trial for allegedly insulting religion and evangelising, a judicial source said on Tuesday. The trial of Dimyana Ubeid Abdel Nour will begin on May 21, the judicial source said. She has been freed on bail of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,900) ahead of the hearing. According to London-based rights watchdog Amnesty Inter ...

CAIRO, May 14, 2013 (AFP) A campaign calling for the ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and for early presidential elections has gathered over two million signatures, organizers told Agence France Presse. The "Tamarod" (Rebellion in Arabic) campaign seeks to withdraw confidence from the Islamist leader because he has failed the revolution that brought him to power, they said. Since its launch nearly ...

CAIRO, May 12, 2013 (AFP) Ex-president Hosni Mubarak, on trial for the death of protesters during Egypt's 2011 uprising that toppled him, said future generations would judge him "fairly" in an interview published on Sunday. "I have said in the past that history would bear witness and judge, and I am still certain that future generations will judge me fairly," Mubarak told Al-Watan newspaper on the sidelines ...

CAIRO, May 11, 2013 (AFP) Egypt's military chief on Saturday ruled out intervention in the country's polarised politics after the army handed power to Islamist President Mohamed Morsi last year, state media reported. General Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who is also defence minister, called for the country's divided factions to adopt "a formula for an understanding," warning the alternative could be "extremely dang ...