EGYPT

Soon after the polls closed in Egypt Thursday night, the Muslim Brotherhood asserted on its television channel that its candidate Mohamed Mursi was ahead based on the tally from some districts.

Muslim Brotherhood members illegally, but smartly, appeared outside polling stations during Egypt's presidential vote on Thursday.

With few presidential candidates on their side, who will Egypt's eight million Coptic Christians vote for?

Millions of Egyptians lined up at polling stations on Wednesday to vote in the first presidential elections since the fall of Hosni Mubarak

Egypt went to polls Wednesday in country's first free election for a president after weeks of intense speculation and debate. The historic presidential election, contested by Islamists and secularists, heralds the setting up of a democratic system.

In the likely event that no one candidate receives half of the vote, a run-off between the top two candidates will be held the following month.

Graffiti, some containing themes from the Anonymous movement, against Egypt's military rule has littered the streets of Cairo as its citizens' disillusion with the current regime continues to fester.

Leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council gathered in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Monday for a one-day meeting to discuss the possibility of forming a regional bloc similar to the European Union.

Egypt held the first-ever televised presidential debate in the Arab world on Thursday, featuring frontrunners Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, selected from among a total of 13 candidates.

The administrative court suspended the election after it emerged the date had been wrongly set by an independent electoral commission, and not by the military council who rule the country.

The government is also permitting about 500 foreign observers, including 120 from the European Union, to monitor the elections.

Political scepticism may mar the Algerian parliamentary election Thursday even as the ruling government aims at easing the pressure for democratic change created by the Arab Spring revolts last year.

Featured in the latest Google Doodle is Howard Carter, an English archaeologist and Egyptologist known for having a primary role in the discovery of the tomb of 14th-century BC pharaoh Tutankhamun (a.k.a. King Tut). Carter, who discovered King Tut's tomb on Nov. 4, 1922, is illustrated in the Google Doodle on the 138th anniversary of his birthday.

Fighting between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's forces erupted in an oil producing province in eastern Syria, residents and activists said on Sunday, the eve of a parliamentary election the authorities say shows reforms are under way.

Ernst & Young projects that by 2015, money flowing to Africa will reach $150 billion, which will create 350,000 new jobs annually.

A new strain of foot and mouth disease (FMD) has reached the Gaza Strip and threatens to spread further after first being detected in Egypt and Libya in February, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Wednesday.

Early Wednesday morning, an estimated 11 anti-military protesters were killed and 160 injured in front of Cairo's Defense Ministry, when a group of unidentified attackers stormed the demonstration.

A diplomat from the Kingdom said Egyptian forces had detained three Iranian men after uncovering the plot to kill ambassador Ahmed Kattan, but that the Saudis had opted to keep quiet about the plot for fear of stoking anti Saudi-demonstrators in the country.

After a year of revolutionary turmoil that saw tourists flee the Mediterranean hotspot in droves, Tunisia hopes 2012 will mark the start of the recovery in a sector that used to account for almost 7 percent of gross domestic product and employs 500,000 people.

Saudi Arabia said on Saturday it had recalled its ambassador in Cairo for security reasons after protests in Egypt against the kingdom's arrest of an Egyptian lawyer, marking a diplomatic rupture between the long-time allies.

In an alleged bid to curtail freedom of speech, Kuwait is formulating a set of new laws to monitor the usage of social media, Bikya Masar has reported.