Alaa Shahine

Kidnappers killed five Chinese oil workers on Monday out of nine they had been holding hostage in central Sudan for more than a week.

Sudanese forces were struggling through rain and harsh terrain to try to rescue nine kidnapped Chinese oil workers, the government said on Monday.

The fifth estate is a grouping that is slowly growing both in readership and respectability.

Kidnappers have snatched nine Chinese oil workers in central Sudan, the third such incident over the past year in the oil-producing region.

Sudan's president, accused of genocide by the ICC, launched a national initiative on Thursday to bring peace to Darfur.

Fallout from the global financial crisis is not over and more consolidation could occur in the financial sector, the IMF said on Monday.

The video shows a poorly lit hospital nursery filled with premature babies. Doctors are trying to resuscitate some babies after a power failure.

Social tensions in Egypt over the past year have eroded overwhelming expectations that Gamal Mubarak will succeed his father President Hosni Mubarak at the helm of the most populous Arab country. An unprecedented wave of labour strikes and public anger over high prices and poor wages, may eventually drive the main pillars of the ruling elite to look into other scenarios.

The United Nations in Sudan accused a rebel group on Monday of blocking access to a mountainous area in Darfur where 20 000 people are trapped after fighting between the government and rebels. Ameerah Haq, the UN humanitarian chief for Sudan, said an assessment mission to the Jabel Moun area was denied access by the Justice and Equality Movement.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Wednesday that Danes will not be allowed to set foot in his country after Danish newspapers reprinted a satirical cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. Protests and rioting erupted in 2006 in Muslim countries around the world when the cartoons first appeared in a Danish daily.

Egyptian police detained dozens of members of the Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday, expanding a crackdown on the country's strongest opposition group ahead of local elections in April. The Islamist group poses the most serious challenge to the ruling National Democratic Party in the April 8 elections for local councils.

Several Darfur rebel commanders have agreed in principle to hold talks in southern Sudan to unify their positions ahead of possible peace talks with the government, a group of mediators said. Efforts to unify the positions of the many Darfur rebel groups have gathered pace but the fragmentations have derailed the prospects of unity talks.