Cairo

WYATT, Mo. - The dramatic, late-night demolition of a levee sent water pouring onto thousands of acres of Missouri farmland Tuesday, easing the Mississippi River floodwaters threatening the Illinois town of Cairo. But the demolition project did nothing to ease the risk of more trouble downstream, where the mighty river is expected to rise to its highest levels since the 1920s in some parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Authorities were considering using techniques similar to the Missouri project to divert an oncoming rush of water.

CAIRO - A commercial airliner left Egypt for Iran on Saturday in what was the first direct passenger flight between the two countries in more than three decades, Egyptian airport officials said. Cairo-Tehran relations have warmed since the June election of Egypt's Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi. Diplomatic relations were frozen after Egypt signed its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Iran underwent its Islamic Revolution. Cairo airport officials say a private Air Memphis flight departed for Tehran carrying eight Iranians, including two diplomats.

Media coverage of the U.N.-sponsored International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo is focused on conservative frenzy over abortion and women's rights. The far more profound conflict in Cairo is the deadlock over Southern population growth versus Northern over-consumption. This is the impasse that emerged at the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Rio. The abortion debate is diverting attention from the fundamental question: Are we consuming the planet to death? Southern delegates in Cairo will argue that the scale of economic activity in the industrialized North, propelled by our enormous appetite for material goods, is the fundamental cause of ecological collapse.

Claude Feninger, 87, of Malvern, who built grand luxury hotels around the world for Hilton, Sheraton and Omni, died Sunday, April 28, of kidney disease at his home. Before his retirement in the early 1990s, Mr. Feninger was president of international operations for Aramark. His responsibilities included servicing the Olympic Games for many years. Throughout his career, Mr. Feninger brought European hotel luxury and services to the United States. On the world stage, he developed, constructed, arranged financing for, and created hotel operations at 85 properties on six continents.

Carmen Weinstein, 82, the leader of Egypt's dwindling Jewish community, known for her tireless work preserving synagogues and a once-sprawling Jewish cemetery, died Saturday. She will be buried Thursday in the Bassatine cemetery she had worked to save since 1978. It is the only Jewish cemetery left in Cairo and is the largest in Egypt. Since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, an estimated 65,000 Jews have left Egypt, most of them traveling to Europe and the West. Some settled in Israel.

CAIRO - Egyptian security forces arrested a close aide of ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi on Tuesday following a siege at his Cairo home, a security official and witnesses said. Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam surrendered to Egyptian security forces after shots were fired, they said. An intelligence official under Gadhafi, Qaddaf al-Dam is among dozens wanted for their role in Libya's 2011 civil war that ended with Gadhafi's capture and killing. Police surrounded his home in the Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek before dawn Tuesday.

WYATT, Mo. - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers exploded a large section of a Mississippi River levee in a desperate attempt to protect the Illinois town of Cairo from rising floodwaters. The corps said the break would help Cairo by diverting up to four feet of water off the river. As of Monday evening, river levels at Cairo were at historic highs, creating pressure on the floodwall protecting the town. The blasts were likely to unleash a muddy torrent into empty farm fields. Brief but bright orange flashes could be seen above the river as the explosions went off. The blasts lasted only about two seconds.

CAIRO, Ill. - A legal fight over whether the Army Corps of Engineers should blast open a levee to relieve the rain-swollen Mississippi River went to the nation's highest court Sunday as the Illinois town the breach is meant to help during record flooding was cleared out. As Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the corps' plan, Cairo, near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, resembled a ghost town as Illinois National Guard troops...

Richard F. Pedersen, 86, a U.S. diplomat who left a career imbued with Cold War politics to become president of the American University in Cairo, died July 11 at his home in Greenport, N.Y. His government career of more than 20 years encompassed posts at the United Nations and the State Department and in Hungary, where he was the U.S. ambassador. Mr. Pedersen left the United Nations in 1969 after attaining the rank of deputy U.S. representative to become counselor to the State Department, advising Secretary of State William P. Rogers during the Nixon administration.

CAIRO - Egypt's protesters stepped up their challenge to the country's ruling military yesterday, as tens of thousands massed to demand that it prosecute ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his family for alleged corruption. Meanwhile, a smaller group tested out the army's tolerance with a march on Israel's embassy. The mass rally in Cairo's central Tahrir Square was the biggest by protesters in weeks, and hundreds remaining there shortly before midnight said they were planning to camp out overnight.