Judge keeps his job THE GENERAL Assembly of the Cairo Court of Appeals has given its head Judge Abdel-Moez Ibrahim a vote of confidence. In the emergency meeting, 154 judges voted for Ibrahim to stay in his position while 101 voted for a no-confidence motion. Ahmed El-Zend, the head of the Judges Club, announced the final results saying that the General Assembly agreed that Ibrahim will remain in his post. The meeting was held at the request of several judges who demanded that Ibrahim be sacked. During the general assembly, Ibrahim took the floor and apologised to Mohamed Shukri, the presiding judge of the recent controversial NGOs trial who had excused himself from the case when Ibrahim asked him to lift a travel ban on foreigners working in NGOs involved in foreign funding before a trial was held. After three weeks of heated debate, the General Assembly decided to hold a secret ballot to decide if Ibrahim remains. Voting began at 3pm on Tuesday when four ballot boxes were taken to the headquarters of the Cairo Court of Appeals. Several judges claimed that Ibrahim's involvement in the case was interference and a betrayal of judicial independence. Ibrahim headed the committee that supervised Egypt's first parliamentary elections since Hosni Mubarak's ouster and is part of the committee overseeing the upcoming presidential race. Exchange of fire ISRAELI troops opened fire at a group of suspects along the Egyptian border on Tuesday, two of whom had crossed from Egypt, a military spokesman said, indicating that several of them were wounded. The incident took place at 2pm, the army said. Also during the afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paid a visit to another area of the Sinai border to examine the ongoing construction of a vast barrier along the frontier to halt the influx of smugglers and immigrants, his office said, without specifying at what time he was there. "During a routine patrol along the Israel-Egypt border, the force identified two suspects driving ATVs [all-terrain vehicles] from Israeli territory towards Egypt," the spokesman said. "At the same time, two infiltrators crossed from Egypt into Israel." The soldiers fired warning shots, then fired towards the legs of the four suspects, hitting two of them, he said. "The infiltrators then crossed back into Egypt along with one of the two from the Israeli side," he said, saying one had driven over the border on his quad bike. Once they crossed the border, there was "an exchange of fire with Egyptian security forces," he said. Palace possessions safe ARTEFACTS and documents exhibited in Egypt's presidential palaces or stored in the country's treasuries are safe and sound. After 12 months of going through Egypt's 25 presidential palaces, a judicial committee supervising an inventory said all their possessions were intact. A report claiming that former president Hosni Mubarak and his family had seized some of the palaces' artefacts was unfounded. The committee inventoried all presidential palaces and affiliated museums and drew up a list of their possessions then compared them with what was documented in official papers. In a press conference held on Monday, Ahmed Idris, head of the inventory committee announced that no documents or artefacts were missing or had been looted in any of the presidential palaces. The Weights and Measures Authority said that all precious metals, including gold, silver, diamonds and precious stones, matched the documented inventory and had not been changed. But Idris added that the palaces were being neglected and could be looted after a contract with the company responsible for securing the palaces had ended after Mubarak's ouster. Idris said the committee also detected water leakages in some palaces and found unique items and manuscripts scattered on floors. He urged the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) to put all palaces on Egypt's heritage list. Abdine Palace in downtown Cairo, Al-Orouba Palace in Heliopolis and the Tea Kiosk in Al-Montaza Palace in Alexandria are the only palaces registered. The committee recommended turning the palaces into museums and charging an entrance fee to generate income for their maintenance. The villa in which Syrian political refugee Abdel-Hamid Serraj lived while in asylum was the only presidential building not part of the inventory. A collection of 953 Mercedes-Benzes were among the possessions in the palaces. Some belong to the intelligence bureau and the Armed Forces while others were given to Mubarak as gifts by Arab and non-Arab states.
