CAIRO (Updated) - Egypt and Israel sought on Sunday to defuse a diplomatic crisis over the killing of five Egyptian security personnel during an Israeli operation against cross-border raiders, but crowds of Egyptians protested at the Israeli embassy in Cairo overnight.

CAIRO: A lone protester became a hero to an exultant crowd of Egyptians and many more online by hauling down the Star of David flag atop Israel's embassy in Cairo after the border killing of Egyptian policemen. More than 1,000 protesters gathered outside the Israeli embassy early Sunday and let off celebratory fireworks when the man clambered to the top floor of a high-rise housing the mission, replacing the flag with an Egyptian one.

CAIRO: Most of Egypt's prominent political powers including Islamic groups agreed on Wednesday on a charter of constitutional principles proposed by Al-Azhar as slong as it is advisory not binding. "This consensus over the charter allows it to be a guide while drafting the constitution," Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb said at the meeting.

CAIRO - Presidential hopeful Ayman Nour submitted documents to the Parties Affairs Committee seeking approval for a new party.

CAIRO - An Egyptian lawyer started legal proceedings to challenge a decision by the judge trying former president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons to ban the live broadcast of the trial, insisting that the decision is illegal and unconstitutional.

CAIRO – The Egyptian army on Tuesday arrested four gunmen in the Sinai peninsula as they prepared to detonate

CAIRO: Services on Egypt’s three telecom operators were disrupted in parts of Alexandria on Tuesday afternoon, and some users in Cairo experienced slower internet connections due to “downtime” in a submarine cable.

CAIRO – The nation’s medical experts have warmly welcomed the application of the new Organ Transplant Law, expressing hopes that it will treat an organ trade wound that has festered in Egypt for years. When it comes to the practical level, however, the same experts start to realise the enormity of the challenges facing the application of this law in the making.

CAIRO - Liberal political groups and a traditional Islamist party on Monday launched a coalition, "The Egyptian Bloc", to challenge powerful Islamists in a November parliamentary election.

CAIRO: Six months on, women say they are yet to reap the benefits of a revolution that explicitly called for equality and social justice, with women missing from key positions that are helping shape the country in its transitional phase.

CAIRO (Updated) - The judge presiding over the trial of Hosni Mubarak on Monday ordered TV cameras out of the courtroom until the case concludes, enraging opponents of the deposed president who vowed to challenge the decision with protests in downtown Cairo.

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.