CAIRO

Egypt has pledged to lift emergency laws that grant security organs sweeping powers to arrest and detain suspects without recourse to the courts, the press reported on Thursday. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif declared the government’s intention to abrogate the laws in a speech to parliament late on Wednesday.

Prince Charles stirred a small controversy in Egypt even before his scheduled arrival in the country on Monday, as some Islamic scholars objected to plans to award him an honorary doctorate. Al-Azhar University has decided to give Prince Charles the award in appreciation of his interest in Islam and his promotion of greater understanding of Islam in the West.

Egypt unveiled a sleek fleet of eco-friendly, natural-gas run taxis on Wednesday that will soon pick up tourists on Cairo’s pollution-choked streets. The 150 bright yellow Volkswagon taxis are the first wave of about 1 500 cars that will be introduced to the crowded, chaotic metropolis where thousands of dirt-stained cabs belch noxious fumes and dominate the streets.

The death toll from a suspected cholera outbreak in southern Sudan has risen to 89 amid continued efforts to stem the epidemic, the World Health Organisation said in a statement on Monday. The United Nations health agency said 4 906 cases of acute watery diarrhoea were reported, 89 of them fatal, over the past month.

The death toll from a suspected cholera outbreak in southern Sudan has risen to 68 but the fatality rate of the epidemic is on the decline, the United Nations’s health agency said on Tuesday. The outbreak has hit two major southern Sudanese towns, the administrative capital Juba and Yei near the border with Uganda.

Osama bin Laden promised never to be captured alive and declared the United States had resorted to the same ”barbaric” tactics used by Saddam Hussein, according to an audiotape purportedly by the al-Qaeda leader that was posted on Monday on a militant website.

The most dangerous form of bird flu was confirmed on Friday in Egypt, the second African country hit after Nigeria, while France, Europe’s largest poultry producer, said the rapidly spreading H5N1 virus has probably also penetrated its borders. Meanwhile, new cases were confirmed on Friday in Austria, Slovenia and Italy.

A team of experts has located the ferry that sank this month in the Red Sea, killing about 1 000 people, an Egypt transportation ministry spokesperson said on Friday. The team found the Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98 on Thursday about 89km from the Egyptian port of Safaga at a depth of about 800m.

Senegal may have struggled to qualify for the African Nations Cup but their coach Abdoulaye Sarr said on Sunday they feared nobody even with an imposing semifinal on Tuesday against hosts Egypt. Sarr admitted playing the four-time winners would be a tough experience but the manner in which the 2002 finalists were improving gave him hope.

Many people were feared dead on Friday when an Egyptian ferry with about 1 400 on board, including many Muslim pilgrims, sank in the Red Sea during a crossing from Saudi Arabia to Egypt. Twenty bodies were recovered amid fears of a much higher death toll, while survivors were battling for their lives in lifeboats in heavy seas.

The United Nations Children’s Fund on Wednesday declared that Egypt is free from polio, a disease that has plagued this country since as far back as the ancient times. The announcement comes just more than a year after the last positive sample of polio was detected in Egypt and almost two years after the last case of polio was reported.

Nigeria rallied to beat Senegal 2-1 and both teams clinched the final berths in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations on Tuesday. Zimbabwe upset Ghana 2-1 in the other Group D match which tied both with Senegal on three points. While Nigeria finished with a perfect three wins to win the group with nine points, Senegal went through on goal difference.

A German archaeological mission stumbled on a mystery with the discovery of three partial pharaonic statues in Luxor, Egyptian officials announced on Monday, because one appears to date to a later period than most previous finds at the site. Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced the discovery on Monday.

Confederation of African Football (CAF) officials on Saturday admitted that they had made a mistake when they announced earlier in the week that Cameroon captain Rigobert Song established a new Nations Cup record when he played his 25th game at the finals.

In Africa or in Europe, Samuel Eto’o keeps scoring. Changing continents made no difference for the prolific FC Barcelona striker, who scored a hat-trick to lead Cameroon to a 3-1 victory over Angola in an African Nations Cup match on Saturday. Côte d’Ivoire had a narrow win over Morocco and the Democratic Republic of Congo beat Togo.

Egypt kicked off their bid for a record fifth African Cup of Nations title by beating Libya 3-0 on Friday. Tottenham forward Mido scored the first goal of the 16-nation tournament in the 17th minute and Mohamed Aboutrika made it 2-0 five minutes later by driving in a free kick from 18m. Egypt dominated the opening match of the three-week tournament against their neighbours and rivals.

The Egyptian authorities freed more than 230 Sudanese who had been detained and threatened with expulsion after police brutally broke up a protest in Cairo, the United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday. Thousands of riot police wielding batons and water canons broke up a three-month sit-in in central Cairo on December 30, killing at least 28 Sudanese refugees.

Benni McCarthy scored the winning goal in the 45th minute on Saturday, and South Africa beat Egypt 2-1 in an African Cup of Nations warm-up match. The visiting South Africans took the lead in the 13th minute when Egypt’s Amr Zeki scored an own-goal. Zeki equalised in the 21st by converting a penalty.

An Egyptian youth who may have been a drug dealer can thank Islamic law he was ”sleeping on the job”, because that got him off charges of drug possession, the Akhbar al-Yom daily reported on Saturday. The unnamed 25-year-old was freed by a criminal court in Damanhur, near Cairo.

Egypt agreed on Wednesday to delay the deportations of more than 600 Sudanese detained after police forcibly broke up a protest outside the United Nations refugee agency’s offices in Cairo, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. ”They will postpone the deportations that were planned for tomorrow,” said Astrid van Genderen Stort, a UNHCR spokesperson.