Egypt

For some college students in Philadelphia, the protests in Egypt hit close to home. Students - either from Egypt or with family members in the country - over the past week have been trying to learn of their relatives' well-being, with varying degrees of success. Some have been able to reach their loved ones. Marwa Ibrahim, a Penn junior from Egypt, has gotten through to her family in Cairo by calling their land line by using Skype. "They are all safe, mainly because they haven't been going outside," Ibrahim wrote in an e-mail.

CAIRO - An unpredictable new element has entered Egypt's wave of political unrest: a mysterious group of masked young men called the Black Bloc who present themselves as the defenders of protesters opposed to the Islamist president's rule. They boast that they're willing to use force to fight back against Islamists who have attacked protesters in the past - or against police who crack down on demonstrations. The youths with faces hidden under black wrestlers' masks have appeared among stone-throwing protesters in clashes with police around Egypt the past five days in the wave of political violence that has shaken the country.

The dispute started innocuously enough. Perhaps it was just a burst of populist rhetoric intended to wow the domestic audience. Egypt suggested more than two months ago that when the worldwide pact banning the spread of nuclear weapons comes up for renewal in April, it will not sign on unless Israel does as well. Since Israel never signed the original pact and plans not to sign this one either, a diplomatic conflagration of the first order has resulted. Israeli-Egyptian relations are at their lowest point since Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin came to office in 1992, perhaps even since the Camp David accords of more than 15 years ago. Not only have conciliation talks failed to douse the controversy, but they also have fueled more and more vitriol in the two countries' newspapers and in their parliaments.

ILOVED the op-ed "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Brotherhood?" by Sarah Salwen, who manages an entire article on the Muslim Brotherhood and its role in Egypt's future, yet somehow manages to avoid the subject of sharia law, the very root of the Brotherhood's ideology. Salwen also believes they want free and fair elections, an end to violence and a democratic process. Actually, they want none of this. The Brotherhood is the Taliban. The Brotherhood is al Qaeda. The Brotherhood is the cornerstone of a worldwide agenda to bring sharia to every part of the globe.

A well-traveled friend once offered this advice about going to Egypt: "When you arrive at Cairo Airport, get on the next plane to Luxor. " Cairo, he said, was dirty, dusty, noisy, crowded, expensive and not the kind of place where you'd want to spend a lot of time. I didn't take his advice, but, at first glance, he was right. This city is all he said it was - and a whole lot more that he didn't bother to mention. For Cairo is, in many ways, a distillation of the thousands of years of human history that has been played out along the banks of the Nile; of the layers of civilization that have been stacked, one upon another, present upon past, millennium upon millennium.

A 20-year-old Philadelphia woman told a federal courtroom yesterday that she married Omar Rashaad Bey in an Islamic ceremony in Egypt when she was 14. Four years later, she ended the marriage after learning that Bey was sleeping with her older sister. Bey, 33, of 20th Street near Emily, was sentenced yesterday to eight years in jail by U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois for having sex with three underage girls - all of whom were under 16 at the time - in Egypt between 2004 and 2007.

A big city, even this city of neighborhoods, can't be too puritanical when it's trying to create attractions to meet all kinds of tourists' interests. But it does need to tread carefully when a night club seeks a zoning variance that could upset the plan for a particular part of the city. In this case, the Egypt club at the corner of Columbus Boulevard and Spring Garden wants a waiver of zoning rules so it can host adult entertainment, including erotic variety shows. Barry Gutin, Egypt's vice president for operations, says the club already hosts some shows in that vein - such as male dancers who strip down to G-strings - and wants to make sure it has the zoning permission to do so. Mr. Gutin concedes the zoning variance would allow Egypt to present striptease and topless acts, but insists the club doesn't intend to create the "full-blown strip joint" civic groups fear.

The demonstrations on the streets of Egypt touched Philadelphia on Monday night, as shaken tourists and students made their way home to this region - or at least out of a country embroiled in protest. Joanne Carmine, a Center City insurance executive with the Ace Group, was on I-95, being driven home by her son in the final leg of a sometimes frightening journey that began amid burned-out buildings in Cairo, took her to Germany, and led at last to Dulles Airport outside Washington. Deen Novelli, a 2010 Temple University graduate who was studying Arabic at the University of Alexandria, arrived in Athens, Greece, after leaving on a State Department flight.

The whirring of fax machines has sent shudders through Cairo's large expatriate community. Islamic militants trying to topple President Hosni Mubarak have sent warnings in recent weeks to Western news agencies, urging international investors and other foreigners to clear out or get caught in the cross-fire. The implicit threats, designed to cripple the already ailing economy, seemed to echo "sentences of death" issued last fall by Islamic militants in Algeria. Those have been carried out with a bloody vengeance, claiming the lives of more than 30 foreigners since September, including two French citizens last week.