By Reuters | 21 Nov 2012

Egypt has reached a preliminary agreement with a team from the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan, a minister said on Tuesday.

The deal is seen as a vital step for shoring up Egypt’s battered finances and rebuilding the confidence of investors, who have been looking to the IMF to give its seal of approval to the government’s economic program.

“We have a preliminary agreement with the technical team of the IMF,” Planning and International Cooperation Minister Ashraf al-Araby told a news conference with the head of the IMF delegation, Andreas Bauer, and other IMF officials.

Source : AP | 05 Oct 2012

Internal feuds are threatening to unravel the political party of Egypt’s ultraconservative Islamist Salafis, as pragmatists try to shake off the control of hardline clerics who reject any compromise in their stark, puritanical version of Islam.

By Tony Karon | Time.com | 26 Jun 2012

Egypt marked a milestone on Sunday by announcing the election of Mohamed Morsy as its first civilian president — but it’s a very early milestone on what remains a long, perilous journey toward democracy.

Source : Reuters | Cairo | 19 Jun 2012

The Egyptian chapter of the "Arab Spring" ended not as it was scripted by the revolutionaries of Tahrir Square.

They deposed a military dictator, secured the first free presidential race in their history, and then may have lost it to a die-hard Islamist president. Not only this. The generals who had stood behind Hosni Mubarak remain firmly entrenched.

By Esam Al-Amin | Counterpunch | 30 May 2012

The Egyptian people are still in shock ever since the announcement of the results of the presidential elections late last week. They refuse to accept an outcome that sees Gen. Ahmad Shafiq, the last Prime Minister of deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak, having received more than 5.5 million votes, or about 24 percent of the votes cast, less than one percent behind the frontrunner and Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Dr. Muhammad Mursi.

By Reuters | Amman/Cairo | 17 Jan 2012

Mazen Dajani, chief executive of Jordan's CTI Group, says the Arab Spring accomplished what the global financial crisis of 2008-9 did not: It pushed his company, one of the world's largest shippers of cement, into the red.

By Sarah El Deeb |Associated Press| 11 Jan 2012

CAIRO (AP) — The head of Al-Azhar, the pre-eminent institute of Islamic learning in the Sunni Muslim world, put forward a Bill of Rights on Tuesday upholding freedom of expression and belief ahead of the drafting of Egypt’s new constitution.

By Thomas L. Friedman : The New York Times | Cairo | 10 Jan 2012

With the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the even more puritanical Salafist Al Nour Party having stunned both themselves and Egyptians by garnering more than 60 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, we’re about to see a unique lab test for the Middle East: What happens when political Islam has to wrestle with modernity and globalization without oil?

By IslamToday & Agencies | 9 Jan 2012

The draft bill proposed by leaders of Al-Azhar to reform the oldest Sunni Muslim institution has sparked controversy among some young preachers, who dismiss it as a move by the old guard to tighten their grip on power.

By Jack Shenker |The Guardian | 31 Dec 2011

Despite the crucial role played by the military in Egypt’s upheaval, little is ever heard from those at the heart of the armed forces: the ordinary, mid-ranking personnel whose loyalty to the military, or lack of it, could yet determine the outcome of the revolution.