Angry residents of an Egyptian village beat a man to death and dragged his body through the streets on Sunday after he allegedly raped and murdered a teenage girl, a security official said.

The killing in the Nile Delta village of Quesna in Menufiya province is the latest lynching case with vigilante justice on the rise amid growing lawlessness.

The pro-secular protests rocking Turkish cities have sent ripples across the Arab world, unnerving Islamist leaders who have long touted Turkey as a successful model of political Islam, analysts say.

Thousands of Turks have joined in mass anti-government demonstrations, defying Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's call to end the worst civil unrest of his decade-long rule.

An Egyptian court in the retrial of fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak for alleged complicity in the killings of protesters barred lawyers in civil cases from the proceedings at a brief session on Saturday.

Presiding judge Mahmoud al-Rashidi adjourned the court to Monday, shortly after opening the second hearing in Mubarak's retrial, a criminal case.

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi rejected as "absurd" opposition calls for an early election less than a year into his term of office, charging in comments published Friday that such calls violated the constitution.

"We are a country with a constitution and a legal system," the Islamist Morsi said in the interview with leading state-owned daily al-Ahram.

A hot air balloon accident that killed 19 tourists in Egypt was caused by the "grave" pilot error that caused a gas leakage, a police forensic report has found.

The interior ministry report blamed the manager of the hot air balloon port and the pilot for the February 26 accident that killed the Asian and European tourists.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour on Tuesday stressed that Lebanon cannot accept that Hizbullah be labeled as a “terrorist organization,” noting that Lebanon is still committed to the so-called self-dissociation policy.

Ahead of leaving Beirut for Cairo, where he will take part in an extraordinary meeting for Arab foreign ministers on Wednesday, Mansour said: “The meeting will be focused on the Syrian issue and the latest developments in this regard.”

A Cairo court on Tuesday sentenced 43 Egyptian and foreign NGO workers to jail terms ranging from one to five years for working illegally, causing outrage abroad and raising fears for the future of civil society work.

The sentences follow trials which came in the wake of raids in 2011 on the offices of foreign NGOs, many which had operated without licences under ousted president Hosni Mubarak but which the new authorities deemed were receiving funds illicitly.

An aide to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has apologized after she failed to inform politicians holding talks with the president that they were live on air, allowing viewers to watch them cook up plans to sabotage a dam in Ethiopia.

"Due to the importance of the topic it was decided at the last minute to air the meeting live. I forgot to inform the participants about the changes," presidential aide for political affairs Pakinam El-Sharkawi said.

President Mohamed Morsi Monday warned that Egypt would not allow its share of the Nile to be diminished by "one drop" after Ethiopia began diverting the Blue Nile as part of a giant dam project.

"We cannot let even one drop of Nile water be affected," Morsi said during talks with political and religious leaders broadcast live on state television.

An Egyptian opposition youth activist was on Monday sentenced by a Cairo court to six months in prison for insulting President Mohamed Morsi.

Ahmed Duma, who was tried for calling Morsi "a criminal and murderer" during a television broadcast, was also ordered to pay a fine of 200 Egyptian pounds (22 euros).