A five-day extension of a Gaza truce appeared to be holding despite a rocky start on Thursday, fanning cautious optimism of progress in the indirect negotiations underway in Cairo between Israel and major Palestinian factions, including Hamas.

Police and military troops tightened their presence on the entrances of greater Cairo (including Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia) on Thursday ahead of protests that the Muslim Brotherhood called for staging on 14 August, which marks the dispersal of Rabaa al-Adaweya and Nahda sit-ins.

A Cairo criminal court will issue its verdict in the retrial of Hosni Mubarak on 27 September. The former autocrat is being tried on charges related to the killing of protesters in the January 2011 uprising. He started his testimony on Wednesday by defending his 30-year rule, and denying charges of ordering the killing of protesters.

The trial of an orphanage manager who was caught on tape violently beating children in his care is scheduled to begin on Wednesday at Omraneya misdemeanour court.

Police have clashed with dozens of Cairo University students, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported. Students let off fireworks as they attempted to protest in Nahda square near the campus. The police responded with tear gas, forcing them to retreat back to the campus.

Nine alleged militants were killed by Egyptian army troops in North Sinai, announced army spokesman Mohamed Samir on Tuesday.

In their meeting on Tuesday, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed to continue military-technical cooperation between the two states.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi arrived early on Tuesday in the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi for a brief visit upon an invitation by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, state news agency MENA reported.

Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) report on the Rabaa sit-in dispersal is “full of negativity and bias in how it handled the violent events that Egypt experienced over 2013″, Egypt’s State Information Services alleged Tuesday.

Two explosive devices were used to detonate a high-pressure electricity tower in Sharqia governorate Tuesday, reported Youm7.

In Maadi, a doorman’s son was injured when a foreign object he was playing with exploded. The victim, apparently, did not know the object was a bomb.

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said that the number of youth in Egypt between 18-29 reached 20 million, 51.8 percent of whom are poor.

Two major secular electoral alliances have been formed in recent days, with the objective of entering the coming parliamentary elections and winning a majority in the new House of Representatives.

A group of human rights organizations in Egypt demanded that the fact-finding commission researching the pro-Morsi sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Al-Nahda last year release its results

A US Congress delegation arrived late Monday at Cairo's International Airport for a visit that is scheduled to last for a few days, state-run news agency MENA reported.

Ministers of planning, finance and investment discussed on Monday alternative funding sources for the new Suez Canal project in a joint meeting with the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will visit Sochi, Russia on Monday for two days to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

The story of Islam Yakan, a recent graduate of Ain Shams University, has been picked up by Egyptian media sites after pictures from his Twitter account depicting him wielding a sword spread across the internet. Yakan claims to have joined the Islamic State (also known as Daish and previously as the Islamic State in al-Sham (ISIS)) in the name of jihad. Aside from Yakan, there are also reports that members of the recently established Ansar Beit al-Maqdis have allegedly traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside ISIS and adopt their skills and tactics. With local terror attacks on the rise, many fear that regional jihadi groups may be eying Egypt, but analysts say while those groups may attract disaffected youth, they are unlikely to gain ground here.

The Suez Canal–one of the world’s vital trading routes–is set for the first major expansion in its 145-year history.

Islamist militants’ recent territorial gains in the region will most likely take the centre stage of Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi’s talks in Saudi Arabia, according to analysts.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that his country would not return to Egyptian-mediated truce talks with Palestine if militants from Gaza continued to fire rockets, Reuters reported.