A Christian high school student who challenged the Education Ministry's exam protocol resulting in a public outcry, has declined to meet with Pope Tawadros II, the church said Wednesday.

The Sohag Criminal Court ruled Thursday to sentence 119 Muslim Brotherhood defendants accused of torching a church in Upper Egypt in 2013 to sentences ranging from 10 years and life in prison, Youm7 reported.

A criminal court issued prison verdicts against 119 defendants on charges of the arson of St Mary’s Church in Sohag governorate, state media reported.

Muslim Brotherhood lawmaker Mohammad al-Falahgi was arrested on terror charges in 2013 and held in prison, but never convicted. Earlier this year, after pleading for medical help, he died “handcuffed to the hospital bed,” according to his son Osama.

Egypt's prime minister Ibrahim Mahlab has asked justice minister Ahmed El-Zend to form an independent committee to investigate the case of a Thanaweya Amma (High School) student who got zero marks in all her summer exams, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported on Tuesday.

Sources within the Nour Party speaking on condition of anonymity said the party is not fielding Nader Bakkar, the party assistant president, in the upcoming parliamentary elections, replacing him instead with Ashraf Thabet, from the Western Delta constituency.

A Muslim Brotherhood leader has died in a Cairo prison, in the latest spate of deaths of anti-regime opponents in detention camps in Egypt.

Syrian state TV says seven people were killed and more than 40 wounded by a car bomb in the port city of Latakia.

Two bombs exploded Wednesday in front of a shopping mall in Qena, causing damage to some residential flats, state media reported.

Egypt's Grand Mufti Shawky Allam, one of the country's most senior religious authorities, denounced on Tuesday the Islamic State's burning of four Iraqi Shia fighters earlier this week, describing it as "barbaric and cowardly."

One of the most culturally significant pieces of architecture in the world has been destroyed, the United Nations said on Monday.

Police forces thwarted, in the early hours of Tuesday, a suicide bombing attempt that targeted a security checkpoint in the city of Al-Arish in the North Sinai governorate, according to a statement by the Ministry of Interior.

A suicide bombing attempt in North Sinai's al-Arish city was "thwarted" on Tuesday and the assailant was killed in a gunfire exchange, the Interior Ministry said.

Al Shabaab militants attacked an African Union (AU) base in southern Somalia early on Tuesday, the Islamist group and residents said, with unconfirmed reports that dozens of AU soldiers were killed.

The Islamic State jihadist group has blown up parts of the Temple of Bel in Syria's ancient city of Palmyra, a monitor and activists said.

Egypt’s Ministry of Education is under fire after it was discovered that around 40 students of Thanawyia Amma (secondary education or high schools) received zeros in all final exams that enable them to enter universities.

The administrative court in Alexandria upheld on Monday an earlier decision that had been made by the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar determining that female instructors should be the only ones to teach women's issues to female students.

The mayor of a remote, Islamic State-held town in western Iraq says some 200 residents are detained by the group after clashes there.

The Islamic State group strung up four Iraqi Shia fighters with chains and burned them alive, according to footage posted online, the latest gruesome execution video from the jihadists.

The Islamic State jihadist group has executed more than 90 people, a third of them civilians, over the past month in areas of war-torn Syria under its control, a monitoring group said Sunday.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador in Cairo on Sunday to protest comments he made after a judge sentenced three Al-Jazeera English journalists to three years prison each for reporting "false news."