Egyptian police and military officers have arrested and detained over 300 children during protests in Cairo over the past year, in some cases beating or torturing them, Human Rights Watch said today. Frequently, these children were illegally jailed with adult prisoners, tried in adult courts, and denied their rights to counsel and notification of their families, Human Rights Watch found.

After three days of clashes on Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Street, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil on Wednesday broke his silence on the issue, stating on his official Facebook page: "We respect different opinions and different political efforts."

Egypt has reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund's technical team, currently on a visit to Cairo, for a $4.8 billion loan, the fund announced Tuesday.

The Journalists Syndicate decided to withdraw from the Constituent Assembly, following a meeting on Tuesday, to protest a number of draft articles and what it said was negligence of its proposals.


The financial assets of Ahmed Shafiq and his three daughters have been frozen by an order of the justice ministry.

Egypt will cooperate with Sudan in facing Egypt-bound locust swarms, Agriculture Minister Salah Mohamed Abdel Momen said Tuesday, assuring that locusts that are reportedly near the Sudanese side of the border do not pose a danger to Egypt.

Clashes that began on Monday evening flared up again after a day of calm on Tuesday evening with both protesters and police throwing rocks at one another in the area surrounding Mohamed Mahmoud Street.

Months-old internal divisions and ideological disagreements among the 100-member Constituent Assembly – the body tasked with writing Egypt’s new constitution – have reached a crescendo on Sunday as more than 30 non-Islamist members have decided to withdraw from the Assembly’s ranks, accusing representatives of Islamist forces of doing their best to draft a constitution aimed at turning Egypt into a radical Islamist state.

Since the eruption of last year's January 25 Revolution, Egyptians have lived through anxious nights filled with fear and violence. But nothing has been more painful than the four days of clashes in November of last year on Cairo's now-iconic Mohamed Mahmoud Street.

Nearly 26.4 percent of Egyptian children are poor, according to a government report released Monday, which also said that 8.11 percent of those children are food insecure, while 9.4 percent cannot afford education.

Clashes broke out between police and army officers on Monday evening outside a police department in New Cairo’s Fifth Settlement, said eyewitnesses.

Constituent Assembly members who withdrew from the constitution-drafting panel had recently agreed to the controversial articles that they said were the reasons for their withdrawal, the assembly said.

Major secular political figures, announcing their withdrawal from the body writing the new constitution, said that passing the proposed constitution would be equivalent to signing off on Egypt’s downfall.

Egyptian border authorities have allowed 400 political activists to cross into the Gaza Strip to express solidarity with Palestinians, as Israeli airstrikes pounded the coastal enclave for a fifth day, organizers said.

The spokesperson for the Egyptian armed forces, Colonel Ahmed Ali, has issued an official statement regarding the clashes between military police and residents of Quorsaya Island earlier Sunday that resulted in the death of one civilian.

Students and activists protested outside the Cabinet building Sunday to denounce the government’s handling of the train and bus collision in Assiut that claimed the lives of 52 people, 50 of whom were children.

Egypt will pump the full amount of natural gas to Jordan as specified in a previous agreement by mid-December, according to Egypt’s petroleum minister.

Ahmed Maher, founder of the April 6 Youth Movement and member of the Constituent Assembly, announced that he is joining some other members of the assembly and withdrawing his membership.

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil will visit the Gaza Strip on Friday as Israel presses a major air campaign against the territory, the ruling Hamas government said on Thursday.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi rejected on Thursday what he called Israel's aggression in Gaza and said he had spoken with US President Barack Obama about ways to bring it to a halt.

Acting on orders from the Illicit Gains Authority, officials at Cairo International Airport have banned Khaled Mounir Thabet, nephew of former President Hosni Mubarak’s wife Suzanne, from traveling.