The best way to deal with Europe's growing refugee crisis is to close national borders to stop an "Islamic invasion", Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders says.

The Sinai Peninsula, Egypt (CNN)The Sinai Peninsula is the new front line in the battle against ISIS. But the men defending Sinai aren't soldiers or police. They are Bedouin tribe members, who say they have stopped the terror group without firing a shot.

Egyptian police said on Monday they killed a top Islamic State group operative in the capital implicated in a string of attacks including the murders of a Croat and an American.

Ministry of Interior forces killed an alleged Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis leader during an attempt to arrest him in Al-Marg neighbourhood in Cairo, according to a ministry statement.

An Egypt court has officially endorsed a decision to place 18 Muslim Brotherhood members on a "terrorist list", in a case mired in legal labyrinths as judges and prosecutors begin applying recent counter-terrorism legislation attempting to define terrorism and terrorist entities.

Muqtada Al-Sadr, one of Iraq’s influential Shi'ite leaders, has invited Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the top religious academy in the Sunni Islamic World, to make Jews their common enemy and to set doctrinal differences aside.

A top Cairo-based leader of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis was killed in an exchange of fire with the police in el-Marg area, northeast of Cairo, according to a Monday police statement.

Former Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and 17 other leaders were put on the list of “Terrorist Entities and Individual” for three years per a court ruling, state official newspaper al-Waqaei al-Masryia reported.

Egypt's Court of Cassation overturned Sunday the life sentences of the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and eight others, who will face a retrial for accusations of murder and inciting violence.

Nour Party candidates who won seats in the first stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections took many by surprise when they revealed their intent not to deal with parliament's female employees as long as they don't wear the niqab — a long black cloth that covers the female face.

Muslim leaders trying to build the first mosque in the northeastern state of New Hampshire face many of the same struggles other houses of worship contend with: Lack of funds and shrinking attendance.

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.