Cairo  - Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity, arrived in Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday.

The trip was al-Bashir's latest in a tour of countries that, like Egypt, have not signed the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court (ICC), and so are not obligated to act on the warrant the court issued for al-Bashir earlier this month.

Cairo  - Cairo's Gazira Club sprawls lazily across a verdant island in the Nile.

In the days of the monarchy, it was reserved for English officers. And while it was nationalized after the revolution in 1952, the club remains a bastion of Cairo's elites and upper-middle classes.

If anyone in the Arab world's most populous country has felt the effects of the world financial crisis, they are likely to be found here.

Cairo - Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri Tuesday demanded Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir "repent" for kicking the terrorist group's leaders out of Sudan and called on the Sudanese people to "prepare for a guerrilla war against the West."

"The Bashir regime is reaping what it sowed. It expelled those who took refuge in Sudan, including Osama bin Laden," al-Zawahiri said in a message released Tuesday according to the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks messages from terrorist groups.

Ramallah/Cairo - Palestinian factions will reconvene in Cairo in early April to hash out an agreement on a "national unity" government, representatives of Palestinian factions said Tuesday.

The talks, which were suspended on Thursday after parties failed to agree on such issues as the composition of the new government and whether it will recognise Israel, will reconvene after the March 30 Arab League summit in Qatar, Cairo's official MENA news agency reported.

Cairo  - Nine paintings stolen ten days ago from an Egyptian museum, were found near the scene of the crime, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture said on Thursday.

"Security authorities informed me that they found the paintings near the palace after the police received an anonymous phone call telling them where the paintings were," Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni said.

The paintings were stolen from Mohammed Ali Pasha's palace, a historical building that houses major art works.

The identity of the thieves remains unknown.

Gaza City/Cairo  - Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum announced on Thursday that the Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo to flesh out the contours of a national unity government had concluded the first round of talks after nine days of intense negotiations.

Barhoum, in a statement released in the Egyptian capital, said that leaders of 13 Palestinian factions, including Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, would leave Cairo for consultations with other faction leaders.