CAIRO: Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb said Al-Azhar does not consider itself to be part of the political scene but that the centuries-old religious institution has a national role to play to stem the danger of polarization between political forces that are "honest in their patriotism, but differ in their methods." In a previous meeting on Wednesday, Al-Tayeb had called for reconciliation between all political powers and for consensus over Al-Azhar’s proposal for a set of entrenched constitutional clauses.

CAIRO: Egyptian troops moved into a town on the Gaza border on Saturday for an anticipated operation against militants who attacked a gas pipeline to Israel and police stations, security officials said. The officials said tanks and more than 1,000 soldiers and policemen, deployed on Friday and Saturday, would try to restore order to a lawless section in the north of the Sinai peninsula, and then move southwards to a mountainous region where armed outlaws were hiding.

CAIRO (Updated 2) – Clashes erupted on Monday between Mubarak's loyalists and anti-Mubarak protesters outside the Police Academy, New Cairo where Mubarak and his two sons are being tried, the official Middle East News Agency reported.

CAIRO – Military prosecutors are reported to have started interrogating a female political activist called Asmaa Mahfouz, a member of the 6 April protest movement, for what a source says is inciting murder. The source told the Arabic-language daily Al-Ahram that Mahfouz wrote on the wall of her Facebook account that armed groups will have reason to carry out assassinations in the future, if the courts do not sentence policemen and officials accused of killing peaceful demonstrators in January and profiteering from their jobs.

CAIRO/ARISH: High-level officials in North Sinia denied Friday that the forces deployed in the afternoon were intended to launch any security operations in the province recently subjected to a series of attacks by armed militants. Hundreds of joint army and police forces were deployed across the province, around vital buildings in North Sinai and across the border with the blockaded Gaza Strip.

CAIRO - Driven by Arab buying, Egyptian indexes rebounded on Sunday amid low volumes, traders said. Volume totalled LE226 million ($38 million), they added. The country's benchmark index EGX 30 rose by 0.73 per cent to 4,626 points. The broader indexes EGX 70 and EGX 100 gained 1.46 and 1.26 per cent to 586.52 and 874.79 points respectively.

CAIRO - April 6th Youth Movement, a protest group established in 2008, is due to hold its first internal elections on September 9 in the group's temporary office in central Cairo, a spokesman for the group said Wednesday.

CAIRO - In a bid to gain their support, Mohamed ElBaradei, a potential candidate for Egypt's presidency, has promised the nation's 8 million disabled that post-revolution Egypt will “fully consider equality and solidarity”.

CAIRO: The European Union made their latest installment in the effort to support and work alongside the developments occurring the Middle East and North Africa region by implementing the EU Special Representative for the Southern Mediterranean Region, Bernardino León. León, who has assumed several roles in countries undergoing transitional governments as well as published several books and articles on the Arab Muslim world, was quick to issue his commitment to Egypt by saying, “This mandate is intended to spur more dialogue, more understanding and more efficiency. The goal is to achieve cohesion between countries like Egypt and the EU. My intention is not only to visit Egypt but to stay in this country as well.”

CAIRO: Dozens of protesters holding an open sit-in at the State TV building Maspero demanding affordable government housing denied media reports claiming they met government officials to discuss their demands. "Security officials told us that we can talk to government officials about our demands only after we end the open sit-in," Mamdouh Khairy, 32, member of the delegation that represents the protesters, told Daily News Egypt.

CAIRO: A number of lawyers representing martyrs’ families threatened to take measures towards referring ousted president Hosni Mubarak's case to an international tribunal if the court refuses to allow them to attend the trial. Twenty-eight of the lawyers who met at the supreme court on Tuesday, were denied entry in the opening Aug. 3 session. Others who just recently joined the case, said that the court is not being fair and warned of an escalation if it fails to respond to their demands.

CAIRO: Clashes between families in the Upper Egyptian governorate Sohag escalated Tuesday as Central Security Forces dispersed residents with tear gas and rubber bullets, according to eyewitnesses. Clashes between a family from the town of Gerga and another from Naga' Owais village left three dead and 21 severely injured. They are now receiving treatment in Sohag General Hospital, and the Educational and University Hospitals.

CAIRO – Egypt's Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has agreed in principle to launch a million-man march "For the sake of Egypt' in the iconic Tahrir Square on Friday 12 provided that work would not be intercepted in any way, Al-Youm Al-Sabea website reported on Tuesday. Sharaf emphasised that Egyptians have the right to demonstrate and protest without halting production as Egypt now is in dire need of every second to boost its economy.

CAIRO: Presidential hopeful Mohamed ElBaradei criticized Sunday evening the way the ruling army council and the caretaker government have been running the country over the past six months. ElBaradei, also the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said during the event hosted by El-Adl political party that "bad management" is apparent on different levels.

CAIRO: The lawyer representing Egypt’s ex-interior minister Habib El-Adly for his involvement in killing protesters will ask the court to order a ballistics test to compare the bullet shells retrieved after the clashes with the Interior Ministry’s weapons. Lawyer Essam El-Batawy told Daily News Egypt Monday that the court, as the only authority with that jurisdiction, must order a full examination into the compatibility of the bullets and guns to prove whether police really attacked peaceful protesters during the January 25 uprising.

CAIRO – Egyptian reserves of natural gas, which account for about 1 per cent of the global reserves, could run out by 2017. Despite this, we export gas to a number of countries, including Israel. If we run out of gas, we’ll have to start importing it, paying global prices for it in hard currency. In the meantime, Egypt has made huge losses by exporting gas to countries like Israel for shockingly low prices.

CAIRO – Former Egyptian minister of agriculture Youssef Wali was detained on Monday for a further 15 days, pending investigations into charges that he allowed carcinogenic pesticides into Egypt when he was in office, the official Middle East News Agency reports.

CAIRO – Life is going to back normal in the City of Girga in the Upper Egyptian Governorate in Sohag, about 650km

CAIRO: A number of prominent lawyers from across the political spectrum set up Saturday a new team to represent martyrs' families in the case of killing protestors in which ousted president Hosni Mubarak, ex-Minister of Interior Habib Al-Adly and six of his aides are charged.

CAIRO: During its annual iftar Saturday, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) called for political unity between all national currents in order to go through the transitional period “peacefully and safely”. The group also demanded the swift transfer of power from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to a civilian authority according to the time schedule set out in the SCAF’s constitutional decree, respecting people’s will and using democratic means to manage ideological and political conflicts.

CAIRO - Egypt's finance minister said on Sunday the government would not sell any more state firms but also reassured investors that the state had no intention of nationalising companies, the state news agency MENA reported.