Cairo, Jan 9 : The death of a Pakistani Taliban chief would be avenged both "inside and outside the US", according to the Al Qaeda bomber who killed seven officers of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a Dec 30 attack in Afghanistan.

In an alleged video message aired Saturday on the Doha-based al-Jazeera news channel, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi said: "We will never forget the blood of our Emir Baitullah Mehsud.

"To retaliate for his death in and outside the US will remain an obligation on all exiles who were harboured by Baitullah Mehsud," he added.

Cairo, Jan 7 : Huge crowds of Christians clashed with police in the southern Egyptian town of Nagaa Hamadi Thursday after a shooting outside a Coptic Christian church that left six teenagers and one policeman dead.

Footage aired on Qatar's al-Jazeera satellite television network showed police using batons to beat back angry crowds of Christians protesting the delay of the victims' burial outside the hospital morgue where the bodies were being kept.

The crowds dispersed after the corpses were released, local parishioners told DPA, adding that the bodies had been buried.

Sana'a/Cairo, Jan 3 - Yemen will fight terrorist groups on its soil, the country's foreign minister said Saturday, as the government welcomed a planned international conference on growing extremism in the poor Gulf country.

Security forces meanwhile began a clampdown along Yemeni coasts in efforts to prevent infiltration by Islamist militants from neighbouring Somalia.

Cairo/Dubai, Dec 31 - Dubai was the glitz, the glamour and the good life for many. The buildings were the fanciest, newest and tallest. The emirate had little water, but the champagne flowed freely.

The city state's leaders, and the tourists and investors who flocked for the gold rush came to expect nothing but the best.

The property market climbed with the towers vying to be the world's tallest, driving a quarter of the emirate's economic growth. But while the towers still stand, some incomplete and their future uncertain, the property market has come crashing to the ground, its future equally in doubt.

Cairo, Dec 25 : The Taliban Friday released a video purporting to show US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured in Afghanistan nearly six months ago.

The US military has not yet publicly verified the video, but the US-based monitoring group IntelCenter said that "initial analysis indicates the hostage appearing in the video is Bowe Bergdahl".

In the video, produced in December 2009, Bergdahl identifies himself, gives background about himself and his deployment, and is shown eating, wearing Afghan clothes, IntelCenter said.

Cairo, Dec 24 : An airstrike Thursday killed 30 men suspected of plotting attacks against Yemeni and foreign targets on behalf of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a security official said.

The pre-dawn strike targeted a meeting of Al Qaeda members in eastern Yemen's Shabwa province, an official from Yemen's High Security Committee told Yemen's state-run 26 September website (26sep. net).

Cairo, Dec 22 (IANS/AKI) Jihadist websites were flooded with messages of condolences to Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri over his mother's death. Umayma Azzam, died Sunday from a heart complaint in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, at the age of 75.

She died at Cairo's al-Salam hospital, where she was admitted earlier last week.

In a message posted to the Arabic news website Moheet, Azzam's brother Mahfouz al-Azzam said he was proud of his nephew al-Zawahiri who he said "defends the principles of Islam".

Cairo, Dec 21 (RIA Novosti) Egypt is set to officially ask Germany to return a 3,300-year-old statue as it is believed to have been illegally taken out of the country in the early 20th century, an official has said.

Egypt maintains that the priceless limestone bust of Nefertiti, queen of ancient Egypt and wife of monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten, was taken out of the country in 1914 through fraudulent documents. It has been on display in Berlin's Neues Museum since 1924.

Cairo, Dec 17 : Egypt is building an underground wall along its border with the Gaza Strip in a bid to curtail the network of smuggling tunnels, a government-owned newspaper confirmed in a front-page editorial Thursday.

Egypt has been under international pressure to curtail the lucrative smuggling trade in basic commodities, drugs, weapons, livestock, motorbikes, and now, reportedly, cars through the tunnels since the imposition of a blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas solidified its control of the territory in 2007.

Cairo, Dec. 12 : Condemning the recent terror strikes in Pakistan, the Al Qaeda has denied its involvement in the series of terror attacks in the country in the recent past, saying such strikes were ‘un-Islamic.’

In it’s latest English language video, Qaeda blamed the US and Pakistani intelligence services for the bloodshed in the country.

Cairo, Dec 5 - At least five people were killed and as many as 70 were missing after two ferries collided Friday night in northern Egypt, security sources told the German Press Agency dpa.

Emergency workers were at the scene of the accident, near the northern Egyptian city of Rashid, police said, and had rescued at least 10 people. (dpa)

Algiers/Cairo, Nov 26 : After more than two decades the Algerian national football team will take part in the 2010 World Cup, carrying to South Africa the hopes and aspirations of the Arab World as their lone representative.

In the 1980's Algeria was one of the strongest teams on the continent and played in the 1982 and 1986 World Cup finals and won the African Cup of Nations in 1990 at home.

Gaza/Cairo - Senior officials from Hamas headed for Cairo Monday for talks on a prisoner swap deal involving an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza strip for over three years.

Media reports have indicated that deal is near which would see the soldier, Gilad Shalit, returned to Israel in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians being freed from Israeli jails.

Ayman Taha, a Gaza-based Hamas spokesman, told reporters that the deal could be finalized on the eve of the Muslim holiday Eid el-Adha, due to begin Friday.

Shalit was snatched during a cross-border raid that three Gaza Strip militant groups launched on June 25, 2006. Negotiations over his release have so far not been fruitful. (dpa)

Cairo  - Police in the United Arab Emirates cracked down on youngsters at shopping malls who violated so-called "decency laws," media reported Saturday.

Scores of youngsters were detained by police in the Ras Al Khaimah emirate for sporting "unusual hair cuts" and clothing that showed parts of their bodies immodestly, the Gulf News reported.

Some of the teenagers were given haircuts by the police, in an effort to enforce the conservative code of the Gulf country.

Cairo - The head of the Orascom groups, Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, said Tuesday that his investments in North Korea were forward-looking as he expects the peninsula to be united.

Orascom Telecom Holdings runs a mobile network in the isolated north, and Sawiris estimated it had nearly 80,000 subscribers in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which he described as a "miracle."

"We sometimes expect miracles," said Sawiris, who made the list of Forbes 50 wealthiest people in the world last year.

Cairo - Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak on Tuesday urged his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas not to step down, saying Egypt "fully supports" the Palestinian president, Mubarak's spokesman said.

"President Mubarak called on the Palestinian leader to continue his national endeavours, assuring Abbas that the Palestinian arena is still in dire need of his role and efforts for his people and their just cause," Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awad, said after Mubarak and Abbas met in Cairo.

Cairo  - An international human rights group on Tuesday concluded that government neglect has condemned Cairo's poor to living conditions that place their lives in peril.

In a report released Tuesday, the London-based group Amnesty International said the government was failing to prevent rock-slides in areas around informal settlements that house millions of Cairo's poor.

Most recently, in September 2008, at least 107 people were killed and 58 were injured when a rock-slide hit the overcrowded, eastern Cairo slum of Manshiyet Nasser.

At the Cairo International Film Festival, renowned Malayalam filmmaker, Adoor Gopalakrishnan was given the lifetime achievement award for working in the industry for so many years.

Known most for his national award winning movies, Swayamwaram, Naalu Pengal, etc, Adoor was very happy about the recognition that he and his country got at the festival and felt that honesty and hard work is never wasted.

-Sampurn Media

Cairo  - Egypt is to create the world's first Arabic language internet domain, with registration opening Monday, the country's telecommunications ministry said Monday.

Website owners will now have the option of using ".msr" in the Arabic script, which means ".Egypt," instead of the more common ".com" or in the local instance ".com. eg."

Last month, Icann, the organization that regulates the internet, decided to allow non-Latin domain names, opening the way for Chinese, Korean and other scripts to feature at the end of addresses.

Cairo  - Egypt defeated Algeria 2-0 at their World Cup qualifier match Saturday evening in Cairo, setting up a playoff match later this month between the two teams, who have seen tensions between them escalate in recent days.

The win sent jubilant Egyptians to the streets, with throngs of people celebrating into the night in various parts of the country.