CAIRO: “What happened on April 6 and May 4 is nothing but a failed attempt, said Safwat El-Sherif, head of the Shoura Council, speaking to Rose Al-Youssef newspaper. “They think that the society is unaware or oblivious to facts, El-Sherif said. He, however, considered both strikes an opportunity for the National Democratic Party (NDP) to …

CAIRO: Egyptian border guards shot and killed a man attempting to cross the Egyptian border into Israel, news agencies reported Thursday. An unnamed official from the North Sinai police department told the Associated Press that the man died from a gunshot wound to the chest sustained after he ignored calls to stop. The official also …

GENEVA: Muslim countries have won a battle to prevent Islam from being criticized during debates by the UN Human Rights Council. Religions deserve special protection because any debate about faith is bound to be very complex, very sensitive and very intense, council President Doru-Romulus Costea said Wednesday. Only religious scholars should be allowed to discuss …

CAIRO: Egypt is firmly back in the diplomatic saddle after having played the central role of mediator in securing a truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, analysts say. After months of talks, it was Cairo that announced the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on Tuesday. Hours before the truce was to …

Cairo: The Muslim Brotherhood must be assimilated into the arena of Egyptian politics because they are “too powerful and too representative for there to be either stability or genuine democratisation without finding a way to incorporate them, said a report issued by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) Wednesday. The report highlighted that this incorporation …

CAIRO: Members of the People’s Assembly (PA) will hold discussions on the fate of the Agrium fertilizer plant in Damietta today to bring an end to the controversy that has gripped the governorate and halted construction on the project since April. The PA had commissioned a fact-finding committee on the issue which presented its findings …

AL-ARISH: Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, a security official said, to allow Palestinians to return to the Hamas-ruled territory after receiving medical treatment. The move came the day after a truce between Hamas and Israel was announced to begin on Thursday, including a loosening of Gaza’s border closures, but the …

RAFAH, Egypt: An Egyptian security official says that a US military delegation is setting up tunnel detection equipment to counter smuggling on the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip. The delegation, which includes engineers, is also training Egyptian border guards to use the equipment, the official added on condition on anonymity because he was not …

CAIRO: State Security Investigations began a search for American tourist Suzan Tamood Dong for allegedly possessing a documentary film containing footage marring Egypt’s image and inflaming sectarian tensions, sources told Daily News Egypt. Ahmed Hassan Sayed, owner of Ghazal Studio for Photography at the Marriot hotel in Zamalek, filed a complaint against the tourist after …

CAIRO: Egypt s state-owned news agency says Hamas and Israel have agreed on a truce which is to begin on Thursday. The MENA agency cites an unnamed high-level Egyptian official as saying that both sides have agreed on the first phase of an Egyptian package to end the violence in the coastal strip. It says …

CAIRO: The new US ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey presented her credentials to President Hosni Mubarak at the Presidential Palace Monday. Scobey was confirmed as the new ambassador in a Senate hearing on March 14, replacing predecessor Francis J. Ricciardone, who had been criticized by rights groups in Egypt for what they perceived as his …

CAIRO: Egypt will allow United Nations officials access to Eritrean asylum seekers on its territory, the Egyptian foreign ministry said Sunday. The move comes after rights group Amnesty International last week charged that the Egyptian authorities had deported around 200 asylum seekers to Eritrea where they risk torture, and were preparing to expel another 1,400 …

RAMALLAH, West Bank: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Israeli settlement activity on Sunday, saying new construction projects on disputed land were having a negative effect on Mideast peace talks. Rice made the comments during her latest attempt to prod Israelis and Palestinians toward a final peace deal by the end of the year. …

EL-ARISH: Egyptian authorities on Friday refused to allow an Israeli truck carrying 32 tonnes of tiles into Egypt after high radiation levels were detected in the shipment, a security official said. Egypt stopped the Israeli truck from entering Egypt through Al-Oja border crossing [Nitzana in Hebrew] because radiation detection equipment showed a high presence of …

CAIRO: Amnesty International criticized Egypt on Thursday for deporting 200 Eritreans seeking asylum, saying the Africans would be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment at home. The rights group said Egypt was preparing to deport an additional 1,400 Eritreans, despite UN High Commissioner for Refugees guidelines discouraging the return of asylum seekers to Eritrea …

WASHINGTON: People around the globe widely expect the next American president to improve the country s policies toward the rest of the world, especially if Barack Obama is elected, yet they retain a persistently poor image of the US, according to a poll released Thursday. The survey of two dozen countries, conducted this spring by …

CAIRO: Israel joined a new round of Egyptian-brokered negotiations on a proposed truce in and around Gaza on Thursday after deciding to give the talks one last go while preparing for military action if they fail. Amos Gilad, a top aide of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, arrived in Cairo for a meeting with Egyptian Intelligence …

CAIRO: The fact-finding committee commissioned by the People’s Assembly to investigate the case of the Agrium plant in Damietta has cleared the project of any impropriety. The committee’s findings are yet to be presented to the assembly, but have been submitted to house speaker Fathi Sorour. The committee’s report concluded that there was no indication …

BEIRUT: The Lebanese Premier’s Office responded to Israel’s call for direct talks, saying that the bilateral issues between the two countries had been addressed by United Nations Security Council resolutions 425 and 1701, and were therefore non-negotiable. Last Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that following the opening of talks with Syria, he would …

JERUSALEM: Israel decided on Wednesday to suspend plans to invade the Gaza Strip in order to give Egyptian-brokered truce efforts more time to succeed. The decision came despite a new spike in fighting. Hours earlier, an Israeli shell reportedly aimed at a group of Gaza militants slammed into a nearby house and decapitated a six-year-old …

CAIRO: Prosecutor General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud has repealed the verdict issued by the Cairo Criminal Court that exonerated those accused in the Hidelina case of providing defective blood bags to the Ministry of Heath. One of the exonerated defendants was MP Hani Sorour, owner of the Hidelina factory, and the prosecutor general repealed the verdict due …

AL-ARISH: Israel has handed over six Egyptian Bedouins suspected of drug trafficking to Egyptian authorities, a security official told AFP on Wednesday. “The six had sneaked into Israel illegally about 10 days ago probably for drugs smuggling, the official said. They were arrested once they arrived in Israel and spent several days in custody there …

TEHRAN: A major Iranian state-owned company has told its single employees to get married by September or face losing their jobs, the press reported on Tuesday. “One of the economic entities in the south of the country has asked its single employees to start creating a family, the hard-line Kayhan daily reported. The paper did …

CAIRO: Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy’s Sunday announcement that gas export prices would be reviewed was perceived as a victory for the opposition campaign, but its spokesman still expressed concern. In a statement released by the popular campaign to prevent Egyptian gas exports Monday evening, spokesman Esmat El Sadat indicated his “unease over Fahmy’s comments to …

CAIRO: Government officials say President Hosni Mubarak will stay away from an Arab mini-summit in Libya to avoid an encounter with Syria s president. The mini-summit in Tripoli on Tuesday was initiated by Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi to work out an Arab response to a French proposal to set up a European, Middle Eastern and …

GAZA CITY: They squander their days watching TV and surfing the web instead of studying, but it s not for lack of discipline: Gaza students accepted at foreign universities are stuck at home because Israel and Egypt won t let them leave the blockaded territory. The students plight made headlines last week when US Secretary …

CAIRO: Standing before a row of black-clad central security police, lawyers from all over Cairo crammed into the small forecourt of the Lawyers’ Syndicate to protest against proposed amendments to the lawyers’ laws. The protest comes on the eve of what is expected to be the final vote on the amendments, which, according to sources …

CAIRO: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that continued Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank was the biggest obstacle to peace. “We consider [the building of] settlements the main obstacle to progress on any of the issues being negotiated, because we feel that settlements are eating Palestinian land bit by bit, Abbas …

AL-ARISH: Egyptian border forces arrested 44 African migrants on Sunday as they tried to cross the dangerous desert border into Israel in the hope of finding work, a security official said. Fifteen Eritreans, including four women, and an Ethiopian man were arrested by a dawn patrol along the porous border in the Sinai peninsula, the …