In his first public comments on the latest scandal to hit the Vatican, Pope Francis has told followers in St Peter’s Square that the theft of documents describing financial malfeasance inside the Holy See was a crime but pledged to continue reforms of its administration.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq targeted the militants with 23 air strikes on Wednesday, the U.S. military said in a statement.

The Islamist militant group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, which has been waging an insurgency against the Egyptian army, claimed in an audio recording released online on Wednesday that it was responsible downing the Russian plane over Sinai on Saturday.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is trying to force the Obama administration’s hand to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.

In the country he rules with absolute power, Pope Francis has chosen for himself one of the worst views. The pontiff's small suite of rooms in the Vatican's Santa Marta guest house looks out beyond the enclave's walls on to a small street and the rear of a petrol station.

The Middle East Council of Churches met in Cairo with the Catholicos Aram I, the Catholicos of the Armenian Orthodox in Lebanon, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Patriarch of the Syriac Catholics and the head of the Lutheran Church in the holy land.

The Court of Cassation reduced a sentence handed down on leading figures of the Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday.

A suicide bomber detonated a car full of explosives at the main gate of a police club in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula early Wednesday, killing at least three police and wounding 10 others in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

A suicide bombing outside a police club in North Sinai's al-Arish city left five people and the bomber dead on Wednesday morning, a prosecution official told Aswat Masriya, in an attack claimed by a Sinai-based militant group.

The Islamic State group on Wednesday insisted it brought down a Russian plane that crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, providing no new details but challenging sceptics to prove otherwise.

Egypt's Cassation Court has cancelled a March decision by late prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat to put Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and 17 others on a "terrorism list."

Egypt’s High Administrative Court rejected Tuesday a total of 20 appeals against a decision banning academic students wearing niqab (a veil that covers Muslim women’ face but not usually the eyes) to conduct their final exams, Youm7 reported.

Egypt’s Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) will publish Friday sermons in English, Youm7 reported the Ministry’s statement Tuesday.

The United States and its allies conducted 15 air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and seven in Syria on Monday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement.

The Al-Nour Party candidates for the second round of elections have started their campaigns in the streets throughout the governorates.

The first phase of the 2015 parliamentary elections has seen a significant improvement for women and Coptic candidates for the first time since 1952, according to the Maat Foundation for Peace, Development, and Human Rights.

The Sinai Peninsula, where a Russian passenger jet crashed Saturday killing all 224 people on board, is home to jihadists and local tribes hostile to the central government.

A lower court in Kuwait on Monday sentenced five men to 10 years in jail each for raising funds for the Islamic State jihadist group.

Muslim Brotherhood, 6th of April, and Revolutionary Socialists banned from student union elections The Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education will start accepting candidacy applications on Monday for student union elections after announcing the exclusion of students belonging to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, the 6th of April Youth Movement, and the Revolutionary Socialists.

A court in Egypt today ordered a retrial for 77 Muslim Brotherhood supporters, who were earlier sentenced between five to ten years in prison for taking part in violent acts in the coastal city of Alexandrian in 2013.

The Vatican's own police force has arrested a monsignor and a laywoman in its latest probe into the leak of confidential documents. The Vatican said both people were members of the commission established on Pope Francis' order to investigate the Church's finances. They were being held on suspicion of leaking confidential documents to the media.