Suzanne Mubarak

It took Suzanne Mubarak a year after her husband became president to decide what kind of first lady she wanted to be. Then she accepted the challenge of an American professor and went into the slums. For eight years, she has worked among her country's teeming poor to bring education and hope to impoverished children. Mubarak describes herself as a "hands-on social worker."

Hours after Egypt's former first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, was ordered detained as part of the widening corruption investigation of her husband's regime, she was hospitalized after reportedly suffering a heart attack, officials said Friday. The manager of a hospital in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el Sheik told the state news agency MENA that she had been transferred to intensive care. The hospital official told the news agency that the former first lady would undergo tests over the next 24 hours to determine whether she had suffered a heart attack.

Hours after Egypt's former first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, was ordered detained as part of the widening corruption investigation of her husband's regime, she was hospitalized after reportedly suffering a heart attack, officials said Friday. The manager of a hospital in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el Sheik told the state news agency MENA that she had been transferred to intensive care. The hospital official told the news agency that the former first lady would undergo tests over the next 24 hours to determine whether she had suffered a heart attack.

It took Suzanne Mubarak a year after her husband became president to decide what kind of first lady she wanted to be. Then she accepted the challenge of an American professor and went into the slums. For eight years, she has worked among her country's teeming poor to bring education and hope to impoverished children. Mubarak describes herself as a "hands-on social worker."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's grandson died abruptly, the president's office said Tuesday, declining to give a cause of the 12-year-old's sudden death. Mohammed Mubarak passed away Monday after a "health crisis lasting two days," the president's office said in a brief statement. State media reported that he had been flown to Paris for emergency treatment, where he was joined by his grandmother, Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak.

Ten of the Arab world's first ladies joined activists in an unusual gathering Saturday to push for the improved status of women in their male-dominated societies. Queen Rania of Jordan, Egypt's Suzanne Mubarak and others were using their charisma and influence to campaign in behalf of women at a three-day meeting of female leaders and campaigners for equality of the sexes.

Egypt will put Hosni Mubarak, its president for three decades, on trial in connection with the deaths of protesters during the uprising that forced him from office, prosecutors said Tuesday, raising the prospect that the region's push for reform would force a modern Arab strongman to face justice before his own people. Adel Said, a spokesman for Egypt's prosecutor general, said Mubarak could face the death penalty on charges that he conspired in the killings. But the announcement appeared aimed at least in part at appeasing victims' families and blunting a major demonstration planned for Friday.

As the United States was celebrating its liberty Tuesday, a prominent Egyptian American scholar was under lock and key in Cairo while police investigated charges related to a documentary he was making about free elections. The unexpected arrest last week of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a sociologist and one of this country's leading exponents of tolerance toward the Coptic Christian minority, sent a shiver through the ranks of independent civic organizations here.

When George Clooney realized that most Americans already recognized the significance of his adopted cause -- resolving the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan -- he decided to take his show on the road. He invited a few other actors and athletes to travel to China and Egypt, two countries that have clout with Sudan's government, to see whether celebrities could do anything that politicians and diplomats couldn't.

Among the many politicians making the rounds in Hollywood in recent weeks, there is one notable exception: Hillary Rodham Clinton. The senator from New York -- who raised more than $1.2 million from the entertainment industry for her reelection campaign -- hasn't been to town since spring, leaving some supporters wondering if she's trying to distance herself from the West Coast glitterati in preparation for a presidential run. "It's about Sen.

The decades have done their work. Cavernous and crumbling, the Baron's Palace is the sort of place where dreams go to die and ghost stories linger. The nearly 100-year-old landmark mansion, a wild flight of architectural fancy, through the years has sunk into a pitiful state.

The director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina touched down in Los Angeles long enough to urge support for Egypt's ambitious new library complex, near the vanished intellectual hub of the ancient world. Ismail Serageldin, a Cairo-born polymath and former World Bank vice president, had flown into town last week from Bozeman, Mont., and such distant cities as Sydney, Australia. After showing slides of the old and new Alexandrian libraries at the J.