Egyptian independent and opposition newspapers refused to publish their Tuesday editions in protest against lack of press freedom in the country's draft constitution, set for a popular referendum on December 15.
The move was in order to "stand up to tyranny," independent daily Al-Tahrir said on its website.

Italian archaeologists have discovered two Greco-Roman statues at ancient temple in Egypt, the antiquities minister said on Monday.
The two seated lions adorned water spouts used as part of the drainage system from the roof of the Ptolemaic-era temple in Egypt's Fayyum region, south of Cairo.

Egypt's most senior judges announced on Monday they would delegate judicial officers to oversee a referendum on a controversial draft constitution, overriding calls for a boycott, a presidential aide said.
The Supreme Judicial Council's announcement that judges would monitor the December 15 vote across the country comes as a blow to President Mohamed Morsi's opponents, including judges, who had hoped to delegitimize the referendum.

Five German tourists and two Egyptians were killed in a bus crash near an Egyptian Red Sea resort on Sunday, police officials said.
The tourists died when two buses crashed inside a resort near the popular tourist destination Hurghada, the officials said.

Egyptian judges refused on Sunday to oversee a referendum due in less than two weeks on a controversial new constitution drafted by an Islamist-dominated panel, sharply upping the stakes of a standoff with the Islamist president.
The announcement by the Judges Club, which represents judges nationwide, came after Egypt's top court began an open-ended strike in the face of a mass protest outside the courthouse by supporters of President Mohamed Morsi opposed to their ruling on the legality of the panel that drew up the draft charter.

President Mohammed Morsi called on Egyptians on Saturday to vote in a December 15 referendum on the controversial draft constitution at the heart of a political crisis, amid mass Islamist rallies in Cairo.
Morsi made the announcement following a ceremony where he received a copy of the charter from the head of the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly, boycotted by liberals and Christians, that adopted it the day before.

Islamists rallied on Saturday in support of President Mohammed Morsi's new expanded powers and the drafting of a contested charter, in a clear show of Egypt's deepening polarization.
The demonstration in the heart of Cairo comes a day after tens of thousands of Morsi opponents converged on Tahrir Square to protest against the president's decree and the speedy adoption of the draft constitution.

Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei on Friday slammed President Mohamed Morsi and an Islamist-dominated panel that approved a new draft constitution, in a message on his Twitter account.
"The president and his constituent assembly are currently staging a coup against democracy. Regime legitimacy fast eroding," he wrote.

U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay has urged Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to reconsider a decree handing himself sweeping powers, cautioning it clashed with international rights conventions, her office said Friday.
Pillay had sent a letter to Morsi, stressing that a number of measures laid out in his declaration last week "are incompatible with international human rights law," her spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva.

Egyptian activists were to rally Friday after a Islamist-dominated panel rushed through a draft constitution, escalating the political stand-off between President Mohammed Morsi and his opposition.
A spokesman for former Arab League chief Amr Moussa said the opposition leader would later Friday head a march to Tahrir Square, where activists are staging a sit-in protest against a decree by Morsi granting himself broad powers that shield his decisions from judicial review.
