The US Embassy in Cairo deleted a controversial tweet about attacks on freedom of expression in Egypt following complaints by President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. The embassy temporarily shut down its account and deleted the tweet, which had linked to a clip by popular US funnyman Jon Stewart denouncing the arrest of
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has demanded that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu present a map for a future Palestinian state before any peace talks can resume, an aide told AFP on Friday. Abbas "wants to know, through a map to be presented by Benjamin Netanyahu to (U.S. Secretary of State John) Kerry, what the
A Cairo court turned down on Saturday a suit filed by a Muslim Brotherhood lawyer demanding that a popular Egyptian satirist’s TV show be banned for allegedly insulting the president and excessive sexual innuendo. Judge Hassouna Tawfiq said that the lawsuit against Bassem Youssef’s “El-Bernameg,” or “The Program,” was dropped because the plaintiff did
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the movement’s North African arm, said French statements that its forces had killed the group’s leader in the Sahara were “blatant fallacy”, a monitoring website said on Saturday. AQIM, as the group is known, did not name the leader but it appeared to be referring to Abdelhamid Abou Zeid,
Five Egyptians were killed and eight wounded during clashes between Christians and Muslims in a town near Cairo, security sources said on Saturday. Four Christians and one Muslim were killed when members of both communities started shooting at each other in Khusus outside the Egyptian capital, the sources said. They said the violence
Students at Egypt’s al-Azhar University surrounded the religious institution on Wednesday, demanding that Grand Mufti Ahmed al-Tayeb, the country’s top cleric, step down. Protests demanding his resignation, and that of the university’s principal Osama al-Abed, began earlier in the week after alleged food poisoning struck more than 500 students. The top cleric dismissed
Israel launched its first airstrike on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday since the Egyptian-mediated truce ended November’s eight-day bout of fighting. “Occupation planes bombarded an open area in northern Gaza, there were no wounded,” the Hamas Interior Ministry said in a statement. An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed there had been a strike in
Veteran Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal was re-elected as head of the Islamic terrorist movement after a meeting in Cairo late on Monday. There had been speculation that Meshaal, 56, who is based in exile, would be forced aside by the movement's leaders in the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since 2007. Meshaal
Egypt is negotiating a loan worth $465 million from the Arab Monetary Fund, the country’s finance minister Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy told Al Arabiya. The proposed package comes on top of the $4.8 billion in aid the country seeks from the International Monetary Fund. Masood Ahmed, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia
A Syrian expert on Middle Eastern affairs believes Iran is angling to fragment Syria and create an Alawite state in order to maintain its power in the region, Today’s Zayman reports. Professor Murhaf Jouejati opposes the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. A member of the faculty at the National Defense University in Washington
