Egypt's Nabil al-Arabi on Sunday formally replaced his compatriot Amr Moussa as secretary general of the Arab League, state media reported.

On May 15 Foreign Minister Arabi was selected to replace Moussa, whose 10-year tenure was due to expire and who harbors ambitions to run for the Egyptian presidency.

Protesters converged on Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to join camping pro-democracy activists for a demonstration to keep up the pressure on the country's military rulers over the pace of reforms.

Thousands of protesters were in the square including families of victims who died in the uprising to call for the trial of police officers implicated in the deaths, Agence France Presse reported.

A top International Monetary Fund official said Thursday that the crisis lender is still ready to support Egypt after Cairo withdrew its $3 billion loan request last week.

Ratna Sahay, the Fund's deputy Middle East director, rejected accusations that the planned facility had politically tough secret conditions to force privatizations and end subsidies.

Fenugreek seeds exported from Egypt to France and Germany may have caused an E. coli outbreak that has killed 48 people in Europe, the European Food Safety Authority said Wednesday.

A "rapid risk assessment" conducted by the EFSA and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), "has thus far shown" that Egyptian seeds exported in 2009 and 2010 may be implicated, it said in a statement.

Head of the Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc, former premier Fouad Saniora, on Wednesday noted that “no one can assert with certainty the release date of the indictment” of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the case of former premier Rafik Hariri’s 2005 assassination.

Asked about reports that the release of the indictment was imminent and the possible impact on the new government, Saniora said he did not believe the reports were aimed at “challenging the current government or embarrassing it regarding the issue of the ministerial Policy Statement.”

Around 50 people were injured in overnight clashes between protesters and police in central Cairo, officials said, as new scuffles erupted on Wednesday morning.

Anti-riot police were deployed around Tahrir Square -- the epicenter of protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February -- and near the interior ministry building in central Cairo, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

Egypt's ruling military council remains committed to holding parliamentary elections in September, despite mounting calls for a delay, a military source told Agence France Presse on Monday.

"The military council insists on what it has already announced regarding (holding) elections at the end of September, in accordance with the result of a referendum" held in March, the source said.

Egypt remanded an Israeli spy suspect in custody for 15 days on Saturday despite Israel's insistence he was innocent of espionage, judicial sources said.

Ilan Grapel, a U.S.-Israeli joint citizen who was arrested in a Cairo hotel on June 12, is to remain in detention for the "needs of the investigation," the two sources said.

Egypt has withdrawn its loan request to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, an adviser to Finance Minister Samir Radwan told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

"We have decided not to have recourse to loans from the international financial institutions," Abdelfattah al-Gebali said.

Hundreds of supporters of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak clashed with his foes in central Cairo on Friday and dozens were injured, the official MENA news agency reported.

A small gathering of pro-Mubarak demonstrators swelled into an 800-strong protest by early evening to demand the immediate release of the former president who is in custody on charges of killing anti-regime protesters.