Cairo, Protest | featured news

Police have fired tear gas to stop protesters from approaching the presidential palace in Cairo as tens of thousands take to the streets to demonstrate against the assumption of nearly absolute powers by the nation's Islamist leader....

Egyptian police arrested protesters in Cairo on Saturday after days of anti-U.S. demonstrations over a film denigrating the Prophet Mohammed.

So the Associated Press did a careful investigation of the ‘Sam Bacile’ who supposedly directed the hate film, ‘The Innocence of Muslims.’ And AP found that probably he does not exist, but is a persona used by a convicted Coptic Egyptian fraudster, Nakoula Bassely Nakoula.

President Obama spoke with the leaders of Libya and Egypt late Wednesday to discuss security for U.S. personnel in the wake of attacks on diplomatic posts in both countries. In a phone call with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Obama "underscored the importance of Egypt following through on its commitment to cooperate with the United States in securing U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel," according to a statement issued by the White House.

For all the harrowing images of the deadly attack on the American mission in Benghazi, the Obama administration is grappling with the possibility that its far bigger long-term problem lies in Egypt, not Libya.

Mitt Romney’s attempt to exploit the violent anti-U.S. demonstrations in Egypt and Libya to portray Obama as soft on America’s enemies backfired almost immediately, when it became clear the statement from the US Embassy in Cairo he had cited was issued before the demonstrations began.

The film at the centre of the protests in Libya and Egypt is called Innocence of Muslims and was apparently shot in the US. The full version is said to run for two hours, but so far all most people have seen is a collection of extracts found on Facebook and Youtube - with one trailer running to 14 minutes.

"I was not sure I was going to live," says Derrik Sweeney after arriving in St. Louis. He and two others had been arrested in Cairo and accused of throwing firebombs. Three American college students detained for several days in Egypt as deadly protests swept Cairo have flown home to freedom, one describing an ordeal so terrifying he wasn't sure he would survive it.

Clashes erupted between riot police and protesters in Cairo's Tahrir square Saturday after police dispersed a sit-in by demonstrators demanding the ruling military transfer power swiftly to a civilian government.

Thousands of Egyptians converged on Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to demand reforms in a turnout dubbed "correcting the path of the revolution."