Egyptian liberal opposition leader Mohamed El Baradei said yesterday that the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 had been relaunched by the announcement of an army-sponsored roadmap which removed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

The armed forces ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president today after just a year in power, installing a temporary civilian government, suspending the constitution and calling for new elections.

Relations between Egypt’s Muslims and Christians degenerated to a new low tonight after riots left 12 people dead and a church burned, adding to the disorder of the country’s post-revolution transition to democracy.

At least 57 people have died in fighting between government forces and a rebel militia, according to a Southern Sudanese official.

EGYPT’S military rulers have called for an end to strikes and protests as thousands of state employees, from ambulance drivers to police and transport workers, demonstrated to demand better pay in a growing wave of labour unrest unleashed by the democracy uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

PROTESTERS and regime supporters skirmished in a second day of rock-throwing battles at a central Cairo square while new lawlessness spread around the city.

Another bout of heavy gunfire and clashes erupted around dusk tonight in the Cairo square at the centre of Egypt’s anti-government chaos.

SCENES of mayhem and violence in Cairo added to the fear already running high in the capital of 18 million people after a weekend of rampant looting and lawlessness and the escape of thousands of prisoners from jails in the chaos.

Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak battled in Cairo’s main square today, raining stones, bottles and firebombs on each other in scenes of uncontrolled violence as soldiers stood by without intervening.

A group of 11 European tourists was kidnapped during an adventure safari deep in the Sahara desert today.

A Peruvian geographic society claims the long-disputed source of the Amazon River was correctly identified in 1996 by Polish explorer Jacek Palkiewicz, despite claims by the US-based National Geographic Society to the contrary.

Hundreds of people in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor clashed with riot police today during a protest against government attempts to move them to make room for an open-air museum.

Eighteen people – 17 passengers and a bus driver – died today when their coach plunged into a dugout branch of the Nile River in southern Egypt, the state Mena news agency reported.

Sixteen people, including six children, died today when a microbus they were in fell off a rickety ferry and sank in the Nile River in southern Egypt, security and local officials said.

TENS of thousands of Antarctic penguin chicks could starve to death in the next few weeks as a huge iceberg blocks access to coastal feeding grounds, a New Zealand official said yesterday.

A third of the bottle-nose dolphins swimming off Israel’s Mediterranean coast are too thin, apparently due to a lack of food from overfishing, a researcher said today.

Tens of thousands of penguin chicks could starve to death in the next few weeks as a huge iceberg blocks access to coastal feeding grounds, a New Zealand official said today.

Exiled tyrant Idi Amin, whose eight-year presidency of Uganda is remembered for the torture and killing of more than 200,000 people, was in a coma in a Saudi hospital today.

Fifty two men arrested at an alleged gay gathering have pleaded innocent at the opening of a case that has shocked deeply religious Egypt.