Egypt News اخبار مصر
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Egypt will amend its constitution to make it easier for candidates to run for president, part of long-delayed political reforms that President Hosni Mubarak plans to carry out next year, the parliament speaker said.

The reforms would include changes to an article that had been criticized as opening the way for Mubarak’s son to succeed him, Parliament Speaker Fathi Sorour told the official Middle East News Agency on Monday.

Presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad also noted a change was likely, saying in a statement that Mubarak “won’t oppose considering an amendment to article 76 in order to increase the chances of (political) parties to participate in presidential elections.”

But opposition figures said they feared the announced reform was merely cosmetic and only geared at winning public support ahead of the next presidential election, due in 2011.

“The new proposed amendment is still part of scenario of (Mubarak’s son) inheriting power,” said Hesham el-Bastawisy, a High Court judge and vocal government critic.

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A bomb has ripped through a wedding convoy in Baghdad, killing at least 15 people, four of them children, the interior ministry says.
The car bomb struck a procession of vehicles at dusk in Ur, on the outskirts of Baghdad’s Sadr City.

The bomb came as residents of Sadr City celebrated the lifting of a security cordon around the Shia stronghold.

The blockade was imposed after the authorities suspected that an abducted American soldier might be held there.

Earlier, at least 30 bus passengers were kidnapped by an armed gang on a road north of Baghdad, police say.

At total of at least 19 people were injured in the attack on the wedding party.

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The Pentagon established a new unit to exploit “new media” channels to improve its image, its chief spokesman said, claiming that the move isn’t related to the upcoming U.S. elections, the BBC reported.

The new unit would use “new media” channels to promote its message and “set the record straight”, Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said.

Ruff added that the move would boost the Pentagon’s ability to counter what he described aso “inaccurate” news stories, particularly on the internet.

“We’re looking at being quicker to respond to inaccurate statements,” he claimed.

The newly-established unit is expected to monitor media such as weblogs, hire a rapid response team, and employ “surrogates”, or top politicians and lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows, according to a Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press.

Correspondents say the move could be aimed at winning public support for the Iraq War, one of the main factors that would shape the outcomes of the crucial mid-term elections in which Democrats are contesting Republican control of the Congress.

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The nephew of Egypt’s late President Anwar Sadat was sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday for defaming Egypt’s armed forces, after saying in an interview that Egyptian generals had masterminded his uncle’s assassination.

A member of parliament, 52-year-old Talaat Sadat had accused the government of prosecuting him for political reasons. His trial has been fast as his remarks were broadcast on Oct. 4.

Sadat was taken into custody immediately after the verdict, said his aide, Mohsen Eid, according to the AP.

Within minutes of his sentencing, Sadat’s supporters shouted outside the court: “This is injustice!” “This is unlawful!” Media were not allowed into the courtroom.

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- A witness testified at Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial Tuesday that he survived a massacre by feigning death when Iraqi soldiers shot at Kurdish detainees lying at their feet.

The witness, who testified from behind a curtain to conceal his identity, said he was one of dozens of prisoners who were taken in buses to an execution site in western Iraq in April 1988 during the crackdown by Saddam’s regime on the Kurdish population.

Saddam and six co-defendants are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the Operation Anfal crackdown, which the prosecution says killed some 180,000 Kurds. Saddam and one other defendant are also charged with genocide.

The witness said the prisoners knew they were going to be shot when they arrived at the killing site near Ramadi because they heard gunfire. They recited Islamic prayers that are customary before death, asking for one’s sins to be forgiven.

“The guards took two prisoners at a time from the bus, shot them dead and dragged their bodies to a huge ditch,” he said.

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Pakistan’s largest Islamic group accuses the U.S. of bombing a religious school on the Afghan border on Monday and condemns the Pakistani government for taking responsibility for the “massacre of innocent students”, IRNA reported.

The Pakistani army said that its helicopters fired missiles at the school, claiming that it was used as an al-Qaeda training camp.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said that the raid killed 80 people, making it one of the deadliest military operations in the country.

U.S. and Pakistani military officials denied American or NATO involvement and rejected accusations that children and women died in the strike, which destroyed the building in the remote northwestern village of Chingai that lies in the Bajaur tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

But local people and Muslim leaders said the pre-dawn raid killed innocent students and teachers at the school, known as madrassa.

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Iraq’s prime minister, in a very public demonstration of his influence over the U.S. military, ordered the lifting on Tuesday of a week-old cordon around the Baghdad militia stronghold of one of his key Shi’ite allies.

U.S. troops, at first apparently taken by surprise by the command, abandoned roadblocks within hours around the sprawling Sadr City slum, meeting Nuri al-Maliki’s early evening deadline.

He also ordered the clearing of other checkpoints that have snarled traffic around the capital for the past week as U.S. and Iraqi forces have hunted an American soldier of Iraqi origin who was kidnapped, possibly by Shi’ite militiamen.

A Maliki aide said the move, which follows days of public friction between the prime minister and U.S. officials in the run-up to next week’s U.S. congressional election, had been agreed with the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. military commander.

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The Israeli air force staged mock raids on Hezbollah targets in Beirut and parts of southern Lebanon on Tuesday, according Lebanese security forces.
The warplanes flew at low altitude over the city and dived at targets, but no bombings were reported.

Eight Israeli planes were involved in the operation, Lebanese security officials said.

The mock raid was the biggest show of Israeli air strength in Lebanon since the 34-day conflict ended in August.

Israel has previously warned that it would continue to fly over Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from rearming with weapons smuggled from Syria.

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Morocco became the first Arab state to join an international initiative to fight the threat of nuclear terrorism, the Washington Post reported.

On Monday, the five major nuclear-armed states and seven other countries began a two-day conference in Rabat, Morocco, to discuss the necessary steps to implement the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, which was proposed this summer by the U.S. and Russia at the Group of 8 summit in St. Petersburg.

“We launched our cooperation against nuclear terrorism and established a shield of cooperation to stop such terrorism,” Omar Hilali, secretary general of Morocco’s Foreign Ministry, told a news conference.

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Lebanese television broadcaster Razan Moughrabi will no longer host the ‘Adam and Eve’ portion of the weekly Egyptian television program “Al Bait Baitak” (Our Home is Your Home), after the manager of the Egyptian television station received numerous complaints.

According to the Kuwaiti based daily, Al Qabas, Egyptian audiences prefer watching Egyptian broadcasters instead of Lebanese, fearing that people will stop watching Egyptian programs.

The appearance of Razan on the show throughout the holy month of Ramadan gave rise to criticism from the network, journalists, and viewers who could not accept the idea of a woman like Razan with a daring and outspoken personality.

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