Fifteen tonnes of a material used to make explosives have been seized in a town straddling the Suez Canal, the Egyptian army said on Wednesday, one of the biggest such hauls since the start of a campaign against Islamist militants in the nearby Sinai.

Gunmen killed an Egyptian in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday, a medic said.

Chinese tourists no longer have to fly all the way to Egypt to see the Sphinx, because now there’s a life-size one in their own backyard.

Egypt has repeatedly called for negotiations with Ethiopia over the Grand Renaissance Dam but has not received a real response, Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy said.

The world celebrates Thalassemia Day every May as part of efforts to raise awareness of the condition.

Egypt's presidential frontrunner Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Monday the Syrian civil war must be resolved through peaceful means, indicating Egypt would not support an armed intervention there, something previously suggested by some Arab states.

An al-Jazeera reporter held in Egypt since August is in critical health and could slip into a coma after more than 100 days on hunger strike, his brother said on Tuesday.

The number of tourists visiting Egypt in March 2014 reached 755,000, a drop of 32.4 percent below the same month last year, Egypt's official statistics agency CAPMAS said on Tuesday.

Telecom Egypt, the country’s fixed-line monopoly operator, reported a 36 per cent fall in first-quarter net profit on Tuesday, saying business was hit by the weak economy.

Supporters of Nasserist presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi plan to form human chains in ten governorates on Tuesday as part of their campaigning efforts

Egyptian non-petroleum exports declined 11% during the month of April, earning $1.8 billion compared to $2bn during the same month the year before, according to the Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade, and Investment’s monthly report.

There are no ifs or buts about it. The word on the street is “When Al Sissi comes ...” the operative word being “when”. This hypothesis is supported by polls indicating the former army chief can expect to garner between 72-82 per cent of the ballot that is scheduled for May 26 and 27, while his only rival, the veteran leftist politician and leader of the Nasserist Party, Hamdeen Sabahi, can expect no more than two per cent. Such assumptions come with their own risks.

Presidential frontrunner Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on May 11 Egypt's situation will improve in two years, adding that he would not hesitate to resign if there were mass protests against him.

Mahmoud Fawzy, spokesman of a technical committee in charge of amending Egypt's election laws, said the committee will finish drafting amendments for two laws on Tuesday – the 1956 law on the exercise of political rights and the 1972 law regulating the performance of the House of Representatives, Egypt's lower house parliament.

The official campaign for presidential contender Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has spent only 12 million Egyptian pounds so far, Tarek Nour, the campaign's coordinator and chief advisor told Aswat Masriya on Sunday.

An Egyptian court on Sunday sentenced 36 students of the prestigious Al-Azhar university to four years in prison each over violent protests backing ousted president Mohamed Morsi, judicial sources said.

Saudi fuel donations to Egypt from last month through August will be worth more than $3 billion, a top Egyptian energy official said, as part of a financial lifeline from the Gulf helping to ease the country's energy crisis.

The news that a Cairo judge recently sentenced a man to a year in prison for sexual harassment was welcomed by those who have fought for such offenses to be recognised as a crime. But daily insecurities and lax law enforcement leave the deck still stacked against Egyptian women.

Presidential frontrunner Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who ousted elected leader Mohamed Morsi, has prioritised stability over freedoms, insisting it will take up to 25 years for Egypt to achieve “true democracy”.

Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the former military chief who removed Egypt's elected Islamist president and is poised to win the post in elections later this month, said he has plans to make improvements in people's living conditions within two years but will step down if they rise up against him — without waiting for the army to remove him.

A branch of the April 6 Youth Movement, once a leading revolutionary youth group and now outlawed by interim authorities, said on Wednesday it opposes former army chief Abdel Fattah El-Sisi's presidential candidacy but has not yet decided whether or not to boycott the upcoming poll.