Egyptian PM: Some people were paid to protest in Cairo

Prime Minister Hesham Kandil said “a number” of those involved in the tense, sometimes violent protests, which began Tuesday, later confessed to getting paid to participate, according to the state-run Middle East News Agency. He noted, too, that some of the demonstrators were acting on their own and weren’t paid to vent their anger against the United States over an inflammatory anti-Islam film that was privately produced in that country.

Kandil did not say whether the government knew or suspected who paid the demonstrators, according to the MENA report.

Also Saturday, some semblance of normalcy finally returned to Cairo after riot police successfully pushed away demonstrators from the U.S. diplomatic as well as nearby Tahrir Square.