Cairo

CAIRO, Egypt - An explosion in a bustling market in the tourist-packed heart of Cairo's old city killed two people yesterday and wounded at least 18. Some witnesses reported that a motorcyclist set off the blast The old bazaar near al-Azhar mosque was sealed off last night as investigators combed the narrow alleyways for clues. Witnesses said the blast shattered shop windows, leaving the dead and wounded sprawled in the streets. The late afternoon blast was the first bombing that appeared to target tourists in Cairo since September 1997.

IT MIGHT have been an awkward moment for the secretary of state with the Egyptian foreign minister at her side. But Condoleezza Rice didn't show it, when asked about Cairo's jailing of an Egyptian opposition leader. And she certainly didn't duck the question. Her strong sentiments about Egypt's unacceptable detention of Ayman Noor were appropriate. The diplomat, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, kept his thoughts to himself. What could he say? But Ms. Rice's "very strong concerns" about the fate of Mr. Noor can't be the last words on Cairo's harsh treatment of reformers.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians buried Yasser Arafat here yesterday amid chaos and outpourings of grief, after mourners firing guns in the air engulfed the helicopter that carried his flag-draped casket from his funeral in Cairo and briefly wrested the coffin from an honor guard. Crying, screaming and fighting to get closer, members of the crowd overwhelmed police early on and climbed the walls of the presidential compound, awaiting two Egyptian helicopters carrying Arafat's body and some of the Palestinian leader's longtime aides.

An Egyptian grandmother, imprisoned in the state since January in an international custody dispute, moved nearer to freedom yesterday. A three-judge Anne Arundel County court panel reduced - from 10 years to three years - the prison term imposed in January on Afaf Nassar Khalifa, 60. In an eight-page ruling, the Circuit Court panel called the original sentence "excessive." Khalifa is incarcerated at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup on her conviction for helping her daughter, Nermeen Shannon, 34, abduct Adam Shannon, 6. Adam's father, Michael Shannon of Millersville, had legal custody Aug. 25, 2001, when Nermeen Shannon and Khalifa took the boy to Egypt.

An Egyptian grandmother lacks the ability to persuade her daughter to return her two young sons she took from Maryland to Cairo against their father's will, the grandmother's lawyer argued yesterday. Attorney William C. Brennan Jr. said in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court that he is worried that the grandmother, Afaf Nassar Khalifa, is being unduly punished because of an unfounded belief that she could sway her daughter to return the children to their father. Khalifa, 60, is serving a 10-year sentence at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup on her conviction for helping her daughter Nermeen Shannon, 34, abduct Adam Shannon, 6. Yesterday's court hearing, before a three-judge panel, was on a request by Brennan to reduce the sentence.

KFAR MIT EL-EZZ, Egypt - The narrow streets in this village in the fertile Nile Delta are made of mud baked hard under an unforgiving sun. Children play barefoot. Traffic jams occur only when donkey carts, goats and roosters vie for the same bare patch of dirt. But even here, far from the choking exhaust fumes of Cairo, and far from the universities and newspaper headlines that feed anti-war fervor, the American-led invasion of Iraq has taken its toll. The farmers here are hemmed in between the Nile and other villages and thus find it impossible to expand their fields, no matter how large their families become.

CAIRO - Helmeted riot police stood shoulder-to-shoulder yesterday across a broad boulevard, bracing for the approaching demonstrators loudly denouncing America's war on Iraq. Remarkably, the protestors marching outside Al-Azhar, this city's central mosque, and shouting "Our souls, our blood for Saddam" obediently stopped. After their leaders spoke from the back of trucks, the crowd dispersed. No less remarkable, yesterday's protest was officially permitted. The crowd was able to express its anger at the United States, and the Egyptian government thus diverted criticism from itself.

ST. LOUIS - Miguel Cairo of the St. Louis Cardinals could give a seminar on making the most out of a brief opportunity. Cairo wasn't even on the National League Division Series radar screen until the ninth inning of Game 2 on Thursday, but he could easily have won the Most Valuable Player award if they gave one for the first round. Here's his performance in a nutshell: He replaced the injured Scott Rolen on Thursday and drove in the winning run in Game 2, then started last night and had three hits, two runs and two RBIs.

CAIRO, Egypt - When Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, comes to Washington this week, he will undoubtedly deliver the same message chanted like a mantra by Egyptian officials in this capital city - the United States' blind support of Israel is dangerously unhelpful in the abiding war with the Palestinians; putting Iraq in the "axis of evil" and threatening an attack on Saddam Hussein only make matters worse in the Middle East. The Egyptian media are saturated with reports on the daily bloodshed in Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories that describe Palestinian suicide attackers as "martyrs" and their acts as "sacrifices."

Cairo, EGYPT - There was a time when the Americans and the British didn't give a hoot what the Egyptians thought of them. The British were a colonial power, essentially in charge of the country, although there was an Egyptian king. The Americans were hardly a presence until World War II's battles against the Germans brought their armies here. Later, after the 1952 revolution that toppled the Egyptian monarch and led to the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, America began to fill some of the vacuum in foreign interest.