While calling on his fellow Copts to maintain calm despite their frustration and grief over a church bombing that left 25 dead on New Year's Eve, Coptic Pope Shenouda III asked the Egyptian government to address Christians' main complaints.
"We believe in the rule of the law and order but we want equality, and if certain laws can't bring us such equality, then they should be amended," the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church told Egyptian state television on Monday. "I believe that the state has a duty to solve Copts' problems."
Riots have spread across Egypt over the last three days, with thousands of Coptic protesters demanding an end to what they call religious discrimination. Scores of demonstrators and police officers were injured in violent clashes.
"I plead with our sons to calm down," Shenouda said. "We can't prevent people from expressing their sorrow, yet I ask them to express it without violence."
In the suburb of Shubra, downtown Cairo, some 500 Muslim and Coptic activists, politicians and other civil society leaders led a protest to show solidarity with the Egyptian Coptic minority and to denounce Saturday's deady assault.
Marchers shouted the slogans, "A Muslim and a Copt hand in hand to create a new dawn," and "Not a police state, not a religious state, we want Egypt to be a secular state," as they carried banners showing the crescent along with the cross, which has been a historical symbol of unity between Egyptian Muslims and Copts.
Protesters were swiftly surrounded by police officers, who feared that clashes might erupt between the protesters and bitter Coptic inhabitants of the area.
The neighborhood of Shubra is one of few suburbs in the capital where large communities of Christians live alongside Muslims.
Following political protest that swept across the nation for the last two weeks,Tunisian President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali began hurriedly shuffling his Cabinet in an apparent attempt to stave off anger over his autocratic rule and failed economic policies.
In a televised speech on Tuesday, Ben Ali promised more jobs for university degree holders but at the same time threatened to punish those taking part in the demonstrations.
"The use of violence in the streets by a minority of extremists against the interests of their country is not acceptable," the 74-year-old president said. "The law will be applied firmly against anyone resorting to violence and disorder."
The moves are part of Ben Ali's attempts to cool down national tempers and stave off further demonstrations against rampant unemployment and poor living conditions in the North African country.
Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and head of the ruling National Democratic Party's policies committee, said his stance on running in next year's presidential elections remains the same as it was in 2005: He's noncommittal.
Answering a reporter on whether his party's winning of an absolute majority in the new parliament would encourage him to be the NDP candidate come 2011, the younger Mubarak said that he "gave an answer to this question five years ago and I've already replied to this question three, four times a year since then. My answer is still unchanged."
One person was killed and others injured when Tunisia's National Guard members opened fire on angry protesters in the town of Menzel Bouzaiene over the weekend.
The state-run news agency TAP quoted an unnamed security official as saying that guard members were forced to use their weapons in self-defense after "a group of individuals set ablaze a railway engine and set fire to three National Guard vehicles before raiding the city's National Guard station."
The source added that several guard members were burned, including two who fell into a coma. Mohamed Fadel, leader of the secondary school union in Menzel Bouzaiene, identified the man who died as Mohamed Ammari, 18.
"Several thousands took part in the riot. Many arrests have been made and the whole town, which is located in the governorate of Sidi Bouzid, has been sealed off by security officers," Fadel told Agence France-Presse.
The death comes as riots and demonstrations against unemployment and poor living conditions entered their ninth day in Sidi Bouzid. Unrest scattered across the region after the suicide attempts of two young persons last week.
The apparent suicide of a 24-year-old unemployed man sparked clashes between young protesters and police in the Tunisian central town of Sidi Bouzid, 165 miles south of the capital, Tunis, this week.
A member of the Tunisian General Union for Labour told AFP that Hussein Nagi Felhi was electrocuted after climbing a high-voltage electric pole. The state news agency, TAP, confirmed the death without referring to it as a suicide.
Union member Ali Zarei said that Felhi shouted "no for misery, no for unemployment" before ending his life by touching the pole energized with 30,000 megawatts. The death triggered protests met with tear gas after scores of jobless youths hurled stones at police and set fire to an administrative building in a nearby town.
An Egyptian businessman and two Israelis have been ordered to appear in court to face espionage charges that include spying for Israel, Egypt's state security attorney announced this week.
According to the state, Tarek Abdel Razek Hassan, a 37-year-old Egyptian, accepted $37,000 for providing two Israeli intelligence officers with information about potential recruits at a number of communications companies in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.
More than 200 African asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are being held captive by smugglers along the Sinai border with Israel, a report issued by Physicians for Human Rights Israel claims.
In a survey of more 100 Africans between the ages of 19 and 66 who attempted to cross from Egypt to Israel with the help of smugglers, victims said they were held in steel containers, tortured and raped by traffickers who demanded ransoms of up to $8,000.
Most of the migrants said that they were beaten and deprived of water and food through long periods of their custody, as 23% reported being burned with hot irons and 38% of the female respondents said that they were sexually abused by their captors.
Based on testimonies of hostages' relatives -- who heard hostages being tortured over the phone to speed up ransom payments -- the report states that there are about 220 Eritreans held captive by smugglers in the Sinai Peninsula.
A YouTube video showing a Sudanese woman pleading and crying as she was flogged in public by police officers has prompted an inquiry by the country's judicial authorities.
"An investigation was started immediately into the lashing of a woman as seen on a website, and the implementation of sanctions that go against what is outlined in the criminal code," the judiciary said in a statement published in a number of Sudanese state-run newspapers.
The video, which has been circulated around the Internet over the last two days, shows a woman in a long black dress and a headscarf being whipped by two blue-uniformed police officers in what appears to be a government yard; a Sudanese flag stands nearby.
One of the officers is heard saying that the unidentified woman's sentence is "50 ... lashes," while others laugh in front of the camera when they realize that the incident is being filmed.
Consumer inflation in Egypt has fallen to its lowest rate in 15 months, to 10.2% in November, compared to 11.7% the previous month, the state's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics announced this week.
The decrease has given the Egyptian Central Bank room to keep its benchmark interest rates unchanged in December to support economic growth. The food and beverage index shrunk 2.24% compared to a decline of 0.16% last month, leading to a decrease in the annual food price inflation to 17.1% year-over-year in November from 19.9% in October.
Egypt's economy has expanded 5.6% in the third quarter of the current fiscal year after the 5.4% increase achieved during the previous three months. Economists predict that the most populous Arab country will reach a 5.5% GDP growth in the fiscal year 2010/2011.
Nonetheless, such growth is still below the 7% achieved during the three fiscal years through June 2008, which was halted by the global financial turmoil that affected revenue from the Suez Canal, tourism and foreign direct investment.
-- Amro Hassan in Cairo
Photo: A woman shopping for vegetables in Cairo. Credit: Reuters
Calling the recent legislative elections "a moral and a political catastrophe," the Independent Coalition for Elections Observation is urging President Hosni Mubarak to dissolve the new parliament.
The coalition of three Egyptian human rights organizations has questioned the constitutionality of the new parliament, especially after numerous violations and irregularities were reported and documented before and during the electoral process.
"The elections were full of widespread violations that brought Egypt at least 15 years back," the coalition said in a statement. "Transparency standards were overlooked at the largest scale. Rigging and forging the citizens’ will has become the 'law' regulating this election. This was further consolidated by the abolishment of judicial supervision which was replaced by a high commission, the majority of which is formed by the ruling party, with limited powers."
Egyptian authorities called in three U.S shark experts to help in the investigation of shark attacks that left one tourist dead and four others severely injured in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh.
The decision was prompted by the death of a 70-year-old tourist from Germany, who died minutes after she was mauled by a shark on Sunday. Sharm El Sheikh is renowned for scuba diving and Red Sea reefs, which help make tourism one of the country's most lucrative industries.
"The American experts will form an advisory team to try to assess and advise on the best course of action following the shark attacks in areas north of Naama Bay in Sharm El Sheikh this week," a statement issued by the Egyptian Chamber for Diving and Water Sports read.
