Slogans and partisan chants rang out all night in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, ahead of Wednesday’s much anticipated World Cup qualification play-off between Egypt and Algeria. Watch the videos...

After last weekend’s tense football game pitting Egypt’s Pharaohs against Algeria’s Fennecs (the Pharaohs won 2-0), irate Algerian football fans vandalised several Egyptian businesses in Algiers. Our Observer was there. Read more...

The Algerian team bus was attacked by stone-throwers last night as it made its way from Cairo airport to the hotel where the players are staying for Saturday's World Cup qualifier with the Egyptian Pharaohs. Five players were injured in the attack. Read more and see the videos...

Talk over Saturday's qualifier between Egypt and Algeria has long gone off topic. Football itself forgotten, web users have jumped at the chance to use the match as an excuse for a bitter quarrel, where no subject is off-limits. Read more...

The Algerian Fennecs take on the Egyptian Pharaohs for a place in the 2010 World Cup on November 14. With a week still to go before the game, things have already turned nasty, both countries accusing the other of corruption. Read more...

Question: What are these thin strips of plastic encapsulating a reddish liquid, and why have they prompted such outrage in Egypt? Answer: an artificial hymen, made in China and complete with fake blood. Read more...

Every day, the people of Al Khosos, in Qalyubiyah province north-west of Cairo, are confronted by heaps of rubbish and noxious odours. The problem, our Observer tells us, is one of waste collection, which has got worse since Egypt culled its pig herd because of concern over the A (H1N1) virus – or swine flu. Read on...

During a visit to a secondary school a few weeks ago, Egypt's highest Sunni authority came across a teenager wearing the full veil. Flabbergasted, he humiliated the girl, asking her "Why wear the niqab in a class full of girls?!" He then forced her to remove it. Read more...

UNESCO will choose its new general director this evening. It's Farouk Hosni, Egyptian Culture Minister since 1986, who looks set to succeed Koïchiro Matsuura at the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. But will the man who pledged to "burn" Israeli books really fit the bill? Read more...

A few months ago we brought your attention to the advertising world's most outrageous plagiarists, exposed by a Kuwaiti blogger. This time, it's a young Egyptian showing up a local TV station for its unoriginal ideas. But he's treading on dangerous ground. Read more...