Egypt plans to repay all of the $4.9 billion debt owed to foreign oil and gas companies within six months, the oil ministry said on Thursday, a move it hopes will prompt them to step up exploration and ease the worst energy crunch in decades.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued on Wednesday a decree allowing the deportation of foreign defendants and convicts "whenever the [state's] supreme interest necessitates so."

Disputes emerged once again Wednesday between the Cairo Criminal Court and the defendants in the 2011 Cabinet Protests Case involving political activist Ahmed Doma and 260 other defendants following the referral of defense lawyer Khaled Ali to prosecution on charges of “disrupting court order.”

Two Egyptian courts convicted dozens of anti-coup Egyptians on Wednesday, including nine minors, handing out sentences that range anywhere between one and 25 years.

Cairo: A car bomb outside a fast-food restaurant in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula wounded ten people late on Tuesday when it exploded as security forces were evacuating a heavily populated area, security and medical sources said.

SHARQIYA, Nov 12 (Aswat Masriya) – An explosion occurred on the Sharqiya railroad early Wednesday, leaving no injuries behind, a security source said.

A Cairo court postponed on Tuesday the trial of political activist Alaa Abdel Fattah and 23 others for violating last year's protest law until November 17. The court ordered Abdel Fattah's preventive detention on October 27 alongside 19 other defendants pending their retrial.

Egyptian presidency on Wednesday denied a report in a Saudi newspaper that President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi had been the target of a botched assassination attempt last month.

An Egyptian court sentenced three Germans and six Egyptians to five years jail on Tuesday for stealing fragments of a pharaonic artefact from Cairo's Great Pyramid, a judicial source said.

The U.S. sent its biggest-ever trade delegation to Egypt, the latest sign that the allies have repaired the rift that followed the army’s ouster of an elected president last year.

Egypt’s parliamentary elections will be held before the end of March 2015, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the president, told a visiting US business delegation on Monday, his office said.

After what it says has been a lengthy investigation, the Egyptian government has taken action to shut down the 17 February Schools of the Martyrs, alleging that they are connected to the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and do not have legal permits to operate.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will head to Italy late November for trade talks, the Ministry of Industry and Foreign Trade said Tuesday, noting that Minister Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour and Italian ambassador Maurizio Massari discussed preparations for the visit in a meeting this morning.

US President Barack Obama has expressed his support to ‘net neutrality’ calling for stronger rules to protect equality in accessing the internet.

Egypt's top prosecutor referred on Monday two drivers implicated in a school bus crash which killed 18 last week to the criminal court for murder, among other charges.

Foreign journalists operating in Egypt have faced 184 violations since the January 2011 uprising which toppled former President Hosni Mubarak, a rights group said on Monday.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi met on Sunday 9/11/2014 with Planning Minister Ashraf el-Arabi and Supply and Internal Trade Minister Khaled Hanafi.

The latest report by the Egypt-based International Development Center’s Democracy Index revealed that 643 protests, with average of 21 protests daily and one protest every hour, have took place in October, marking an increase of 130 demonstrations in September, which saw 513 protests.

Egyptian Minister of Interior Mohamed Ibrahim met on Sunday with the German ambassador Hansjörg Haber to discuss the development of the cooperation between Egypt’s and Germany’s security apparatuses, which includes exchange of information about “terrorist elements”.

Tourist occupancies in Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt remain at the same level recorded last week, according to an official with the Egyptian Chamber of Hotels. He explained that average occupancy rates currently stand at 55%.

Egypt once again expressed its “full support for Libya’s state institutions” and asserted its full respect for the will of the Libyan people on Saturday.