An Egyptian appeals court has postponed until Monday a request by lawyers to appoint new judges in trials involving ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, judicial sources said.

The court met Saturday and decided to examine the request two days later so that some of Morsi's co-defendants whose lawyers made the request could be present, they said.

The Gaza Strip's militant Hamas rulers have said they plan to let private contractors take over the running of the Palestinian territory's border crossings with Egypt and Israel.

"The government is to give the private sector the opportunity to handle the technical management of crossing points from the Gaza Strip," Hamas deputy prime minister Ziad al-Zaza told Agence France Presse on Saturday and said that a commission of seven businessmen would be dedicated to the project.

The United States on Thursday denounced what it said was the growing use of security forces by repressive regimes to crackdown on a worldwide groundswell of pro-democracy protests.

"The fundamental struggle for dignity, for decency in the treatment of human beings... is a driving force in all of human history," Secretary of State John Kerry said as he released his department's 2013 human rights report.

Al-Jazeera television on Thursday organized a "global day of action" in solidarity with its four journalists detained in Egypt over accusations of supporting the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Dozens of staff of the Doha-based satellite news channel staged a five-minute gathering at the network's headquarters.

An appeals court in Egypt on Thursday upheld 10-year jail terms for two railway workers convicted after a 2012 train crash killed 47 schoolchildren, judicial sources said.

The children, aged between 4 and 12, were on a school trip when a train hit their bus on a railway crossing in Manfalut, 360 kilometers (220 miles) south of Cairo.

A member of Morocco's ruling Islamist party was cleared on Thursday of accusations by the Egyptian ambassador that she threatened him during a telephone call denouncing president Mohammed Morsi's ouster.

Khadija Mansour, 25, was arrested after she rang the embassy in Rabat in December to protest that the Egyptian authorities had no legitimacy following the army's overthrow of the country's first freely elected president in July, her lawyer Toufik Moussaif said.

About 100 Sudanese journalists and activists staged a silent vigil on Thursday in support of a global campaign to support Al-Jazeera television journalists detained in Egypt.

"Working as a journalist is not a crime," said a banner held by the protesters who gathered on a street near the Qatar-based satellite channel's Khartoum office.

A court in Egypt on Thursday suspended the espionage trial of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after defense lawyers requested that the judges in the case withdraw.

The case, one of three already opened against Morsi, comes amid a relentless government crackdown targeting him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since the army removed him last July.

Egypt's new premier worked Wednesday to form a government tasked with organizing a presidential election expected to bring the army chief to power at a time of insecurity and economic woes.

The new government faces a host of challenges, ahead of an election seen as a major step in a roadmap outlined by the interim authorities after the military ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July.

Militants blew up a pipeline in Sinai late Tuesday that transports gas to Jordan, security officials said, in the fourth such attack this year in the restive peninsula.

Militants planted explosives under the pipeline south of the city of Al-Arish in an area called Lehfen, they said.