An Egyptian court on Tuesday acquitted a television show presenter on charges of trying to incite President Mohamed Morsi's murder, a judicial official said.

Tawfiq Okasha, who hosted a show on his Faraeen television station, was put on trial after several people complained to the court that he called on Egyptians to overthrow Morsi and kill him.

Advocacy group Amnesty International has called for the release of an Egyptian journalist facing military trial under a controversial law that allows the army to court-martial civilians.

The army arrested Mohamed Sabry, a freelance video journalist and an activist who opposed military trials, in the eastern Sinai peninsula while he was working on a story for the Reuters news agency, Amnesty International said.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has said he will urge U.S. President Barack Obama to free the blind sheikh jailed for the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

Morsi told CNN in an interview aired Monday that he was hoping to travel to the United States before the end of March 2013, and he planned to raise the case of Omar Abdul Rahman, serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.

The Egyptian army foiled a bid early Monday to attack a Coptic church in the Rafah border town with Gaza as the minority Christian community began celebrating its Christmas, MENA news agency reported.

"Army units foiled an attack against the Rafah church at 1:00 am (23:00 GMT Sunday) and seized a car packed with explosives and weapons near the church," the official news agency said.

A rising budget deficit, falling foreign exchange reserves and a sliding currency are adding to the woes of Egypt's fragile government even as it battles a raft of political and social problems.

It is against this background that Cairo is to resume talks on Monday with the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan, which many see as a prerequisite for the country's recovery.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi told CNN Sunday he backs Syrian calls for Bashar Assad to be tried for war crimes, and predicted Assad's regime would fall in the country's bloody civil war.

"The Syrian people, through their revolution, and through the movement will, when the bloodshed stops, move to a new stage where they will have an independent parliament and the government of their choosing," Morsi said, according to excerpts released by the network.

Egypt's minority Coptic Christians celebrate on Monday their first Christmas under Islamist rule and amid a climate of fear and uncertainty for their future.

"I do not really feel safe," says Ayman Ramzi, who feels his community threatened by the rise of Islamists in the world's biggest Sunni Arab nation.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi reshuffled his cabinet on Sunday, reports said, in the face of an economic crisis and ahead of fresh talks with the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8-billion loan.

Ten new ministers were sworn in, including Finance Minister Al-Morsi al-Sayyed Hegazi, whose predecessor Mumtaz al-Saeed headed the IMF loan negotiations which stalled during political unrest in December.

The key interior and finance ministries look set to change hands in an Egyptian government reshuffle expected to be announced on Sunday, the official MENA news agency reported.

The agency said Saturday it had learned that Finance Minister Mumtaz al-Said, a key point man in talks with the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8-billion loan, will be replaced by economist El-Morsi El-Sayed Hegazy.

Faruq Hosni, who was Egypt's culture minister for more than two decades under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, was cleared on Saturday of corruption charges, a judicial source said.

A criminal court in the Giza suburb of Cairo "found Faruq Hosni not guilty on charges of corruption and illegal enrichment," the source said.