OSLO, Norway: China and 18 other countries have declined to attend this year's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honoring imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, Nobel officials said Tuesday as China unleashed a new barrage deriding the decision.

CAIRO: The few seats that the opposition have won in this year’s parliamentary elections could cause rifts in political parties and groups, especially those that have either boycotted or called for the boycott of the runoff round on Dec. 5.

CAIRO - Sunday’s parliamentary election runoffs have resulted in a ruling National Democratic Party (NDP)

SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Egypt) - Illegal feeding may have sparked a rampage by a killer shark that has terrorised holidaymakers in Egypt's popular Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, a marine expert said on Tuesday.

CAIRO - Egypt plans to bring in simpler procedures to secure mortgages, aiming to lift the number of customers by 15,000 next year, boosting the nascent market for housing loans, an official said on Tuesday.

CAIRO - The Higher Election Commission has accepted applications from three judges asking not to continue to oversee Parliamentary

CAIRO: Opposition groups protested “the rigging and fraud of the People’s Assembly elections” in front of the Journalists’ Syndicate on Saturday, a day before the runoff elections, with protesters calling for discrediting the PA.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Updated) - A shark killed a German tourist in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh Sunday, the fourth attack in days, an official in the Southern Sinai Governorate said.

CAIRO - Egypt went to the polls on Sunday for second-round runoffs in a parliamentary election that President Hosni Mubarak's party is poised to win almost unopposed in the face of an opposition boycott.

CAIRO - Ismail Serageldin, the Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Saturday receives the Millennium Excellence Award for Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize 2010, under the theme “Reshaping Africa: New Values, New Strategies” for scientific research in Africa.

CAIRO: Female opposition candidates said the 64-seat quota allocated for women in the 2010 parliamentary elections proved a “failure” and described it as “a method to guarantee the ruling National Democratic Party’s (NDP) additional seats in the People’s Assembly.”

CAIRO: Al-Wafd opposition party will fire the dissident members who decided to compete in the People’s Assembly (PA) runoff elections despite the party’s withdrawal, spokesman Mohamed Sherdy told Daily News Egypt on Friday.

CAIRO - A reshuffle of Egypt's cabinet could soon take place but Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif is likely to stay in place, a state news website quoted sources as saying on Friday.

CAIRO: Egypt lobbied last year to delay southern Sudan's secession vote for four to six years because it feared the new state could fail and the division could imperil its share of Nile waters, a leaked diplomatic cable showed.

CAIRO: The Muslim Brotherhood accused Tuesday the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of ballot-rigging during this week’s People’s Assembly (PA) elections, and said it is considering pulling out of the race.

CAIRO: The US Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey responded to leaked documents of embassy dispatches by the site Wikileaks Tuesday, saying that it did not represent official US foreign policy.

CAIRO - International film stars strutted down the red carpet on Tuesday evening at the 34th Cairo International Film Festival, which opens as Egypt attempts to regain its stature as the hub of Middle Eastern cinema.

CAIRO (Updated) - Heavyweights in the ruling National Democratic Party on Monday were declared winners in the legislative elections, the most acrimonious in the nation's parliamentary history.

CAIRO: Violence, polling station closures, vote forgery and restrictions on polling station monitors raise serious doubts about the probity of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, rights groups said Monday.

CAIRO--Scores of activists from different political powers Monday night protested outside the independent Press Syndicate against alleged vote fraud.

CAIRO - Several candidates from Egypt's National Democratic Party Monday won seats in the legislative elections as the party, in power for more than three decades, is expected to sweep the polls.