Egypt

The sun is high and it's a slow day for selling and there's not much for a camel trader to do except scatter hay and greens and listen to the big beasts munch. Sounds like shoes walking through gravel. Essam Ammar lifts a cellphone from his tunic. "Hi, Ahmed. No, I won't lower the price." Eyes roll. Ammar pulls the phone from his ear and looks at it; Ahmed's words crackle in the air. Click. It's not even noon. The day seems in retreat. "I've been doing this for 29 years," says Ammar, who wears a white-lace cap and an even snowier pinstriped vest, a risky choice amid blowing dust and rubbish fires.

CAIRO - Seizing a moment in history they never imagined, the two old men walked arm in arm into a polling station on a day that was thoroughly and wonderfully Egyptian: Opinion polls were unreliable, intrigue was high, and there was a sense of destiny to rekindle the grandeur of the nation's ancient past. But it was also unlike any other day in this troubled land that has veered from euphoria to disgust to resilience: The name Hosni Mubarak wasn't on the ballot, and the two men didn't already know the outcome when they walked into the polling booth in an election that was as thrilling as it was unpredictable.

Bothaina Kamel is a novelty and a provocation in a single breath. The only woman running for Egypt's presidency, she travels without an entourage, wears a bracelet that says "Make poverty history," can outlast the most exasperating heckler in the crowd, and has no chance of winning. "I want to create culture shock. Yes, a woman is running for president," says Kamel, a television presenter and ex-wife of a former cultural minister. "Some people have come up to me and asked, 'Is it even legal for a woman to run?

CAIRO - The race for Egypt's president is tightening as a surge by a former prime minister has raised fresh conspiracy theories that remnants of deposed leader Hosni Mubarak's regime are angling for power. The first round of voting begins Wednesday, but many Egyptians are still undecided in what is largely a contest between Islamists and two men connected to the old regime. The drama has been intensified by a last-minute swell in popularity for Ahmed Shafik, a retired air force general appointed prime minister in the weeks before Mubarak's government fell last year.

In an article about terrorist incidents affecting tourism in Egypt ("Egypt's Breakthrough Tourism Plan Goes Bust," Feb. 21), Frank De Lelys, owner of Superior Travel in Century City, was quoted as saying, "To take that out on a country and its tourism, which is vital to Egypt, is just plain stupid." Your story stated that there have been three terrorist incidents directed against tourists in the past month alone, including a bomb thrown at a tourist bus. If De Lelys is so brave, let him take his family to Egypt on vacation.

MUSIC Seun Kuti and his band Egypt 80 throw down hypnotizing Afro-beat laced with North African jazz and a jubilance befitting his familial legacy. Alternating between spry horns and call-and-response hollers, Kuti's long-form jams sport guitar licks were as dry as a desert crag; the band's overjoyed shouts are as welcome a long drink of water. Royce Hall, UCLA. 8 p.m. Fri. $20. uclalive.org.

EGYPT Slide show The temples, tombs and pyramids of ancient Egypt will be the topic of a wide-ranging presentation by Vince Trotter of Smithsonian Journeys Travel Adventures. When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 56 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. BICYCLING Workshop Learn how to lube a chain, fix a flat tire and make other minor adjustments along the way in the "Basic Bike Maintenance" class.

Whether it's seen as a clever little gadget to help a woman keep a secret or a devilish deception that threatens Islam, the Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is not welcome in Egypt. The kit allows a bride who is not a virgin to pretend that she is. A pouch inserted into the vagina on her wedding night ruptures and leaks a blood-like liquid designed to trick a new husband into believing that his wife is chaste. It's a wink of ingenuity to soothe a man's ego and keep the dowry intact.

A bus accident in southern Egypt on Sunday left eight American tourists dead and 21 injured, the official MENA news agency reported. The bus was carrying 37 American tourists visiting ancient archeological sites when it slammed into a disabled truck parked along the roadside, MENA reported. A statement posted to the website of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo said the staff was "deeply saddened by the traffic accident that has led to deaths and injuries among American tourists. " MENA reported that helicopters had been dispatched to evacuate survivors of the crash.

U.S. stock-index futures fell as investors speculated that Egypt's crisis would slow the global recovery. Futures on the Standard & Poor's 500 index expiring in March tumbled 0.4% to 1,267 during trading Monday morning in Tokyo, while Dow Jones industrial average futures retreated 79 points, or 0.7%, to 11,696. Middle East shares sank Sunday, sending Abu Dhabi's index down 3.7%, its biggest drop in 14 months. "The situation in Egypt is the catalyst for a downturn," said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Minneapolis-based Wells Capital Management, which oversees about $340 billion.

CAIRO - A mechanic hammered a fender and boys wandered amid tin and rust as Adham Bishr, his opinions flaring on an agitated afternoon along the Nile, said Egypt's next president should give him a job, not tell him how to worship God. Men gathered around Bishr in a scrap of shade, arguing over inflation and politics before disappearing into the grit and anger of a neighborhood at Cairo's edge. The men, mostly unemployed drivers, mill hands and laborers, want work; their sons, college students with dim prospects, wonder whether the future will bring enough money to take a wife.

AGA, Egypt - After an unfriendly journalist was tossed off, Amr Moussa's campaign bus headed north to the Nile Delta, where barefoot boys and peasants greeted him with horns, drums and two dancing horses. Moussa arrived as both novelty and sensation, a front-runner in Egypt's first freely contested presidential election. The former diplomat who once negotiated with world leaders walked roads strewn with hay and spotted with manure, giving speeches on dignity and chatting with elders near herds of sheep and sheds full of broken farm equipment.

CAIRO — Egyptians gathered in living rooms and cafes Thursday night to mark another first in their troubled political odyssey toward a new democracy: a televised presidential debate that was as captivating as it was surreal. The two leading candidates, former Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and Islamist favorite Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, clashed in an exchange that would have been fiction during the 30-year rule of deposed President Hosni Mubarak. The spectacle was a rare moment in a region enthralled by Arab uprisings but largely dominated by autocrats and political uncertainty.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - The stage along the sea was a politically crafted advertisement for Egypt's diversity: An unveiled woman chatted with a bearded Islamist and a retired soccer star shared the spotlight with a young hero from last year's revolution. A roar erupted from a crowd, mostly students, when a white-haired man in a linen blazer raised his arms. As fireworks flashed in the night sky, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh called for national unity to end military rule and unrest that have soured the euphoria since Hosni Mubarak was forced from power.

CAIRO - At least 11 people were killed Wednesday when unknown attackers armed with guns and firebombs clashed with protesters near Egypt's Defense Ministry in an escalation of violence highlighting political divisions that threaten the country ahead of this month's presidential election. Assailants stormed about 500 demonstrators at dawn, many of them supporters of Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist preacher recently disqualified from the presidential race. Police did not intervene for hours, and authorities said as many as 200 people were wounded in the nation's worst violence in months.

Congratulations on the magnificent Travel section ["Sinking of the Titanic"] I had the pleasure of reading April 15. And the photo on the cover pretty much captures the poignancy of the Titanic tragedy. Good job. Bob McLaughlin San Simeon Access for the disabled I read with interest Catharine Hamm's article "Disabled-Accessibility Is Hit or Miss" [On the Spot, April 15]. My spouse is disabled, and we share the same difficulties as Susan St. Laurent, the disabled traveler in her article, although on a different level.

CAIRO - Osama Abdel Hadi was born into the Muslim Brotherhood. His father, a history professor, was respected within the Islamic movement and Hadi grew up steeped in piety and resistance to Hosni Mubarak's secular police state. He prayed in Cairo's ancient mosques and knew the names of Brotherhood members held in Egypt's jails. The group was his spiritual and intellectual buttress, and, amid the failings of other parties and opposition ideologies, he carried the Brotherhood's precepts as he entered university to study political science.

CAIRO - The decorum of diplomacy has devolved into embarrassing headlines and testy one-liners in the increasingly strained relations between Egypt and Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Egypt's Sinai peninsula had become a "kind of Wild West" overrun by militants, terrorists and arms smugglers. Over the weekend, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had suggested massing more Israeli troops along the border with Egypt. That drew a bit of mafia parlance from Egypt's military ruler, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi: "Our borders, especially the northeast ones, are inflamed.