Spotlight
Germany will review its relations with violence-torn Egypt, the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement following her talk Friday with French President Francois Hollande.
"The chancellor explained that the government, in view of the latest developments, would review its relations with Egypt," the chancellery statement said.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Friday for urgent European consultations on the escalating crisis in Egypt.
The two leaders discussed the crisis by telephone and "called for an immediate end to the violence" and for the foreign ministers of the EU to meet quickly next week over the deteriorating situation in Egypt, the French presidency said in a statement.

The U.N. refugee agency said Friday it was scrambling aid in northern Iraq after thousands of Syrians crossed the tightly-controlled border in a sudden and unexplained influx.
The vast majority of the new arrivals were women, children and elderly people from embattled Aleppo in northwestern Syria or communities in the northeast, closer to Iraq.

Hundreds of Hamas supporters rallied on Friday at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound in protest against Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief who ousted Egypt's Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.
Some 600 people affiliated with the Palestinian Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip held the demonstration after Friday prayers, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Morocco has dismantled a "terrorist" cell whose members had ties with leaders of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and plotted attacks, the interior ministry said on Friday.
Four suspects were arrested when authorities "dismantled a terrorist cell," it said in a statement.

Thousands of Islamists protested Friday across Egypt, sparking violence that killed at least 70 people and turned parts of Cairo into battlefields after police authorized the use of live ammunition.
The clashes came two days after 578 people were killed in Egypt as police cleared two Cairo protest camps set up by loyalists of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, in the country's bloodiest day in decades.

Britain on Friday urged tourists visiting the Red Sea resort of Hurghada to stay in their hotels following a warning by Egyptian police in the wake of violent clashes this week.
Hurghada and other resorts such as Sharm el-Sheikh are excluded from the Foreign Office's advice against all but essential travel to Egypt, as they are deemed far removed from the political unrest centered around Cairo.

The U.N. refugee agency said Friday it feared that Syrian war exiles in Egypt could get caught up in its spiraling crisis, amid international condemnation of the bloody military crackdown.
"We are watching the situation very closely," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki lobbied Friday for international help to protect the new round of peace talks with Israel in the face of what he said were Israeli attempts to 'derail' the negotiations.
"Our concern here is really how we could preserve, protect the process from being derailed by Israel and what kind of mechanisms are needed by the international community in order to protect that process," Maliki said after talks in Sofia with his Bulgarian counterpart Kristian Vigenin.

The U.N. refugee agency said Friday it was scrambling aid in northern Iraq after thousands of Syrians crossed the tightly-controlled border in a sudden and unexplained influx.
The vast majority of the new arrivals were women, children and elderly people from embattled Aleppo in northwestern Syria or communities in the northeast, closer to Iraq.
