One man was wounded in a firefight between the security detail of Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and alleged thugs Sunday but the security service said the incident was not political in nature.
Bodyguards opened fire at a car carrying five people that had cut into the official convoy as it crossed the capital's October 6 bridge across the Nile.

Egypt denied Sunday that an Arab League Middle East peace plan was amended to include land swaps between Israel and a future Palestinian state, after Qatar suggested Arab acceptance of the proposal.
Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassem had said an Arab League delegation that met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington last month recognized the possibility of a land swap.

Egypt on Sunday condemned Israeli air strikes on Syria, with the Arab League also demanding that the U.N. Security Council act to stop what it called Israeli "attacks" against the war-torn country.
The Egyptian presidency said in a statement the air strikes "violated international law and principles that will further complicate the situation." The raids reportedly targeted rockets destined for Lebanon's Hizbullah.

Australian cattle exporters said they had suspended live shipments to Egypt Saturday after abattoir footage shot by animal rights activists showed "horrific" mistreatment of cows.
The Australian Livestock Exporters' Council, the industry's representative body, said it had urgently halted shipments to Egypt after Animals Australia presented it with footage showing "vicious, cruel and clumsy" practices.

The United States still hopes a conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East can take place soon, a high-level U.S. official said Friday, urging regional players to cooperate.
"I think it could be very soon, if the will exists among the regional parties to engage with each other and to respect each others' needs," said Thomas Countryman, U.S. assistant secretary of international security and nonproliferation.

Hundreds of Salafist Islamists protested outside the Egyptian National Security Agency's headquarters in Cairo on Thursday, accusing the powerful security service of harassing them.
Some of the Islamists briefly tried to break past the gates of the headquarters, an Agence France Presse correspondent said, while others harassed journalists and tried to break an AFP cameraman's equipment.

A prominent opponent of Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi has been detained on suspicion of insulting the Islamist leader, the activist's lawyer said on Wednesday.
Ahmed Douma, a blogger and activist who has called for Morsi's trial over the shooting deaths of protesters, was ordered held for four days by prosecutors in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, lawyer Ali Soliman told Agence France Presse.

At least 161 students have been hit by food poisoning at Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University, in the second such incident this month, prompting President Mohammed Morsi to call on Tuesday for an investigation.
The Health Ministry said the students had been hospitalized after eating tuna salad served on Monday at the university's canteen.

An Egyptian court acquitted Monday a Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya party leader who had been sentenced to death in absentia after a foiled bid in 1995 to assassinate ex-president Hosni Mubarak, a judicial source said.
Mustafa Hamza was a military commander of the fundamentalist group -- an organization outlawed under Mubarak -- which had been implicated in deadly attacks in the 1990s alongside another jihadist group, notably the Luxor massacre which killed about 70 people, mainly tourists, in 1997.

President Mohamed Morsi on Sunday stepped back from a confrontation with the Egyptian judiciary over a proposed new law that would see several thousand judges sacked, proposing a conference to ease disputes.
During a meeting with judges, Morsi agreed to host a conference on Tuesday to resolve disagreements over the proposed new law that would lower the retirement age from 70 to 65, affecting nearly 3,000 judges, his spokesman said.
