Republican Senator John McCain on Wednesday strongly defended a longtime aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton against unsubstantiated allegations that her family has ties to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, repudiating charges leveled by another Republican, Representative Michele Bachmann.

The Dutch Embassy on Monday has said that their policy granting asylum to Egyptian Christians is to be assessed on its own merits, as is the case for any asylum seeker in the Netherlands.

US officials met with a number of prominent Egyptian activists, bloggers and journalists at the US embassy in Cairo on Monday.

Coptic leaders have declined to meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying that she is recognizing sectarian divisions by meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis before requesting to meet with Copts.

The executive office of Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting Egypt’s new constitution is due to hold an urgent meeting tomorrow. Amr Darrag, the assembly’s secretary-general, indicated that the meeting would be entirely devoted to discussing teh Administrative Court ruling expected Tuesday on the dissolution of the assembly. Darrag said the urgent meeting would be followed by a press conference to explain to the public the position of the executive office regarding expected verdicts.

A number of liberal and Christian politicians and public figures have condemned US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Egypt, accusing the United States of harbouring bias towards Egypt's Islamist parties, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Jama'a al-Islamiya have criticized Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi for his statements to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which he stressed that the armed forces would not allow a certain group to dominate Egypt and ignore the rest of the Egyptian society.

The head of Egypt's National Council for Women, Mervat al-Tallawy, said Friday that Egyptian women are excluded from the revolutionary scene due to “social culture and the currents that have taken advantage of the revolution and taken positions, such as political Islam.”

Protesters returned to the presidential palace in Heliopolis Saturday after two days of relative calm, with fertilizer plant workers from Damietta and dozens of Coptic Christians staging two separate demonstrations.

Only 48 hours before a scheduled court verdict on the legality of the Constituent Assembly – tasked with drafting a new constitution – Egypt's quasi-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) denied media reports that it planned to unilaterally dissolve the body.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi will meet the Pope of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia Monday at Egypt's embassy in Addis Ababa.

Saad al-Shater, managing director of the Zad Company and son of the Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Guide Khairat al-Shater, on Sunday said that his company has opened 15 new Zad supermarkets in Nasr City, with more branches planned to open nationwide in the near future.

Ultraconservative Salafists have stepped up efforts aimed at imposing their radical brand of Islam on Egypt's new constitution. The two Salafist parties, El-Nour Party and Asala, have exploited their membership of the Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution to battle hard to change the first three articles of 1971 constitution. They were successful with the first article, but lost with the second and third articles under pressure of the prestigious and moderate Sunni Islam Al-Azhar institution and liberal forces.

As lawmakers, the Muslim Brotherhood have faced the judiciary’s wrath on several occasions, for proposing a bill to revamp the judicial system, and again for questioning the integrity of judges on the heels of some of the most controversial verdicts that have ever impacted politics. But perhaps their greatest battle has been the recent Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) ruling that disbanded Parliament.

SUEZ — As the sun set over Suez’s corniche, couples and families started to arrive at the popular hangout. Couples sat on the bank of the canal, watching the sunset and chatting intimately, while others parked themselves in a nearby garden well-known as a local lovers’ lane.

Grand Imam Ahmed El-Tayeb, Egypt's most senior Islamic cleric, has said the principles of Islamic law must remain the primary source of legislation in Egypt's new constitution.

Amid mounting tension between Egypt's Islamist political forces and the judiciary, Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud described Tuesday's ruling by Egypt's High Constitutional Court (HCC), which overturned a presidential decree reinstating the People's Assembly, as "worthless."

The High Constitutional Court's (HCC) decision on Tuesday night to cancel President Mohamed Morsi's reinstatement of the People's Assembly has provoked an angry response from Egyptian Islamists.

Egypt’s new constitution should preserve the wording of Article 2 of the 1971 Constitution stipulating that the “principles” of Islamic law are the main source of legislation, said the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar on Tuesday, sparking condemnation from Salafi politicians.

The Salafist Nour Party has presented President Mohamed Morsi with a number of names as possible ministers within the new cabinet.

The Muslim Brotherhood called a Tuesday million-march on the Twitter account of the group's official website Ikhwanweb, to support President Mohamed Morsi's Sunday decree that reinstated the People's Assembly, the lower house of Egypt's parliament.