BBC News with Fiona MacDonald
Egypt's president-elect Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood has taken an informal oath of office before tens of thousands of supporters in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Mr Morsi declared that there was no power above people power, telling the crowd that they were now the source of sovereignty and authority in Egypt. All Egyptians, he said, would be treated equally.
"All those who voted for me and all those who didn't, I am for you. No one's legal rights will be transgressed. This is democracy."
Mr Morsi, who's Egypt's first civilian president, has his official inauguration on Saturday.
In a further boost to overcome the eurozone debt crisis, the lower house of the German parliament has decisively approved two of Chancellor Angela Merkel's key policies. They voted in favour of a permanent eurozone rescue fund as well as the fiscal pact which aims to prevent countries from running up excessive debts. But the pact still faces political obstacles, as Steve Evans reports from Berlin.
The so-called fiscal pact is the measure by which Chancellor Merkel set such great store as the means to put economies in the eurozone back on their feet. But there are still problems in Germany. In that the country's president has indicated he won't sign it into law until a legal position is clarified. It all illustrates just how hard it is for Chancellor Merkel to get measures she thinks are essential through the German democratic procedure.