Muslims arrived by the millions for pilgrimage
MECCA, Saudi Arabia — Millions of Muslims from around the world gathered Sunday in Mecca for the start of the annual Islamic hajj pilgrimage.
Men and women draped in white robes circled the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site, seven times in a ceremony anticipating the official start of the pilgrimage today.
King Abdullah has invited 1,000 guests, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi nejad, to this year’s hajj.
Over the next two days, an estimated 2.5 million pilgrims will move out of Mecca to Mount Arafat for Tuesday’s climax of symbolically stoning the devil.
By Friday, more than 1.6 million pilgrims had arrived in Mecca, according to the Central Hajj Committee. The Health Ministry said about 254 pilgrims, many who were elderly, have died of natural causes since arriving.
The pilgrims are massed in tent cities on the outskirts of Mecca. For many believers, the hajj is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cleanse their sins in what is one of the most important rites for Muslims.
Leaking offshore oil rig plugged
MEXICO CITY — Oil workers have capped a damaged oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that spilled crude and natural gas for almost two months after a high-seas crash, Mexico’s state-owned oil company said Sunday.
At least 21 workers were killed in the Oct. 23 wreck with a drilling rig in a storm.
Petroleos Mexicanos workers injected concrete into the well after installing a new valve assembly — blocking the well “definitively,” the company said.
Roughly 420 barrels of oil per day spilled from the damaged platform since late October. Pemex said “the latest reports indicate that no oil has reached beaches in recent weeks.”
French journalist kidnapped in Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia — A French journalist was kidnapped Sunday in northern Somalia by gunmen who apparently were demanding a $70,000 ransom, authorities and a media watchdog said.
Reporters Without Borders identified the reporter as cameraman Gwen Le Gouil and said he was doing a story on trafficking in illegal migrants. Without citing sources, the group said it appeared he was kidnapped by human traffickers demanding $70,000.
“The man has been abducted by armed men,” said Yusuf Mumin Bidde, a deputy governor in Puntland, a semiautonomous region. “He had no security with him.”
A local government minister in Puntland said a rescue operation was underway.
Reporters Without Borders said Somalia is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists outside of Iraq.
Rocket blasts off from Brazil
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazil and Argentina successfully launched a rocket into space Sunday in the first joint space mission by the two South American nations.
The VS30 rocket, which carried experiments from both countries, blasted off from Brazil’s Barreira do Inferno launch center in northern Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil’s Space Agency said in a statement.
Pope scolds hedonists
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI warned Sunday against seeking happiness in drugs or other “artificial paradises” and the self-centered quest for “pleasure at all costs.”
Instead, the pope held up Mother Teresa — the Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor in India and elsewhere — as an example.
“Every day, she lived next to misery, human degradation and death,” the pope told thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square. “Yet she offered the smile of God to everybody.”
The pope spoke during the traditional Sunday noon Angelus prayer.
