The only female judge to sit on Egypt's highest court said Tuesday she has filed the first legal challenge against the country's highly contentious constitution, which cost her the seat she held.
Egyptians voted on Saturday in the second and final phase of a referendum on an Islamist-backed constitution that has polarized the nation, with little indication that the result of the vote will end the political crisis in which the country is mired.
The military's role in post-revolutionary Egypt is being scrutinized as backers and foes of the country's Islamist president are organizing massive rallies for Tuesday.
Several hundred Egyptians marched toward the presidential palace in Cairo on Sunday to protest the president's decision to keep on schedule the referendum on a disputed draft constitution set for next week.
Clashes between supporters and opponents of Egypt's Islamist president erupted Wednesday outside his palace, where they attacked one another with clubs and firebombs in violence that pointed up the growing political division in the Arab world's most populous country.
Tensions heightened in advance of massive anti-government protests scheduled for Friday and Saturday after an Islamist-controlled panel hurriedly approved Thursday a final draft of Egypt's constitution that, among its new dictates, would grant Muslim clerics a role in interpreting some legal matters — angering critics and worrying minorities in this secular Islamic nation.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered Tuesday in the center of Cairo to protest their democratically elected president's recent decrees granting himself near-absolute power, chanting slogans against the Muslim Brotherhood and accusing him of trying to become Egypt's new dictator.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government is asserting its dominance in ways that raise the specter of an autocracy similar to the regime Egyptians toppled almost two years ago, an Egyptian opposition leader warned foreign-policy specialists in Washington.
Tunisia's fledgling democracy is threatened by a weak opposition that fails to offer a viable alternative to the well-organized Islamists in power, and discontent is taking the form of riots with extremist overtones instead.
