Cairo, May 8 (EFE).- An Egyptian appeals court upheld on Wednesday the acquittals of 24 allies of ousted President Hosni Mubarak who were accused of instigating an attack by government supporters on protesters in February 2011. The defendants, including two former leaders of parliament, were charged with having orchestrated what became known as the "Battle of the Camel." The Cairo criminal court found all 24 of the accused not guilty after a trial that ended last October, but government prosecutors appealed.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces fired tear gas to disperse a small group of hardline Islamist protesters who were attempting to scale the walls of the state security headquarters in a Cairo suburb late Thursday night. Around 2,000 protesters from several Salafi Islamist groups had staged a protest earlier on Thursday night outside the security headquarters against what they said was a return to the force's pre-revolution methods.

By Tom Perry and Yasmine Saleh CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi increased the influence of his Muslim Brotherhood over government in a reshuffle that replaced two ministers involved in crucial talks with the International Monetary Fund over a $4.8 billion loan. The changes fell well short of the opposition's demand for a complete overhaul of Prime Minister Hisham Kandil's administration and the installation of a neutral cabinet to oversee parliamentary elections later this year.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi said Tuesday his government will no longer privatise state firms, in a break with a policy launched in the 1990s by his ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak's regime. There will be "no more sale of the public sector, that is finished... and we will no longer do away with workers," he said in a televised May Day speech before workers in Helwan, south of Cairo. "Encouraging the private sector and private investments does not mean an alternative to the public sector, which must be developed," said the Islamist president who was elected last June.