News Blog

More than two million Muslims began their annual Haj pilgrimage in Mecca today amid tight security.The pilgrims, including Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, started the week-long religious event at the Saudi Arabian city with a three mile walk to the holy site of Mina.The faithful, wearing white robes, make the symbolic trip tracing the journey made by the Prophet Mohammed more than 1,400 years ago.Sleeping at night in tents before heading further south to Mount Arafat, where the Prophet is believed to have received the last passage of Islam's holy book, the Koran.
The Haj climaxes on Tuesday, when the faithful will spend the day praying and asking God's forgiveness at the summit.
During the pilgrimage Muslims numbering nearly 2.5 million will walk anti-clockwise seven times around the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure in Mecca toward which all followers of Islam pray.Also among the pilgrims were 1,000 residents of the Gaza strip who were allowed by Israel to leave the territory as a gesture of goodwill.Yesterday 491 Palestians were taken by bus through the Erez checkpoint, which is controlled by Israeli troops and normally closed to civilians.
Another 500 pilgrims are expected to be allowed through today, befor heading to Jordan and flying on to Saudi Arabia.
The move came as 10,700 Chinese Muslims, an isolated minority in the communist state, were given permission to travel - and fulfil their faithful duty of making the pilgrimage if they can.They will join president Ahmadinejad, the first Iranian leader to take part in the event since the 1979 Islamic revolution, who was invited by Saudi King Abdullah.Before leaving, he said: “If I made a mistake or in one of my speeches or said something that was not in line with the interest of the nation and has hurt the nation or I was not able to defend its rights, then I ask people to forgive me."His invitation is a highly symbolic move as the pilgrimage has in the past caused major diplomatic strains between the two regional heavyweights.Relations reached an all-time low in July 1987 when 402 people, mostly Iranians, were killed in clashes between Iranians and Saudi security forces during the Haj.Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini subsequently accused the kingdom of being a lackey of the United States that was unable to look after holy sites.But the two countries have tried to give an impression of unity in recent years, vowing to work together to end the political crisis in Lebanon and bring stability to Iraq.

Scientists think they have discovered the energy source of auroras borealis, the spectacular color displays seen in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.New data from NASA's Themis mission, a quintet of satellites launched this winter, found the energy comes from a stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun. The energy is then abruptly released in the form of a shimmering display of lights, said principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California at Los Angeles. Results were presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting. In March, the satellites detected a burst of Northern Lights over Alaska and Canada. During the two-hour light show, the satellites measured particle flow and magnetic fields from space. To scientists' surprise, the geomagnetic storm powering the auroras raced 400 miles in a minute across the sky. Angelopoulos estimated the storm's power was equal to the energy released by a magnitude 5.5 earthquake."Nature was very kind to us," Angelopoulos said. Although researchers have suspected the existence of wound-up bundles of magnetic fields that provide energy for the auroras, the phenomenon was not confirmed until May, when the satellites became the first to map their structure some 40,000 miles above the Earth's surface. Scientists hope the satellites will record a geomagnetic storm next year and end the debate about when the storms are triggered.

Amy Winehouse’s estranged mother, Janis Winehouse, penned an open letter to her daughter, 24, urging her to come home and seek help. She writes:“We want to help you, but we know that unless you want to be helped, unless you come to us — anything we tried would be in vain. So this letter is my way of making sure you know … that all you have to do is come home to us, Amy, and we’ll do everything in our power to get you well again. After all, you are still my baby and you always will be. So just pick up that phone and tell me what’s troubling you… Wherever you are, whatever you need, we’re here for you day and night.”The full version of Amy’s mother’s letter was published in the UK’s News of the World. It’s very nice, heartfelt and, of course, likely to fall upon deaf ears.
Amy Winehouse looking pretty coherent… relatively speaking of course.The singer has faced some hard times lately. She nixed her tour to support her incarcerated husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, who is being held without bail after allegedly trying to buy off a witness in a pending assault case against him.Winehouse was recently spotted wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night in just a bra and jeans, looking for her dealer having been asleep.In a recent statement, Amy Winehouse — who nabbed six Grammy nominations in spite of her personal woes — apologized to fans for the recent troubles.“Thank you for all your kind letters and emails,” she said. “I am grateful for all your support.”

London: A family branded “worse than the neighbours from hell” have been banned from going out together.Forty-eight-year-old Leslie Brien, and sons Dean, 26, Darren, 23, and Jimmy, 18, cannot even step out of their front door with each other without police permission.
It follows 69 complaints about them including threats to kill, battery, street fighting, slashing tyres, domestic abuse, fraud, drink driving, disorderly behaviour and drug possession with intent to supply.They are also banned from pubs, being drunk, fighting, and even parking badly outside their home in Buckfastleigh, Devon.Neighbours have branded them “the Buckfastleigh Mafia” and Gipsy Lane where they live “Beirut”, a court was told.Totnes magistrates heard that Jimmy Brien and some friends invaded the home of a disabled neighbour for up to six months - smashing down the door if it was locked.They would smoke cannabis and steal his possessions. Finally, he and three terrified families moved away.The Briens - who did not attend the hearing - have been banned from every pub in the area since 2004.Police said an eviction notice had been served on them by Teign Housing and they were investigated by environmental health and social services. Prosecuter Alison Hooper said they were “worse than the neighbours from hell”.She added: “They are intimidating and abusive. They regularly threaten the public and police. Unless people live in Gipsy Lane they will not go down it unless they have to.
“Within a 20 mile radius, people fear for the safety of themselves and their families at the hands of the Briens. They’re absolutely petrified of them.”Police lawyer Peter Quinn said: “This is by far the worst order I have come across. People are emotionally and mentally terrified by them.”Teignbridge councillor Anne Fry said: “I am glad we have been able to take this necessary step to help protect our community from the damaging actions of the Brien family.”

The teenager who killed eight shoppers yesterday after opening fire on a crowded mall left a suicide note predicting: “Now I'll be famous.”Robert Hawkins, 19, who had a history of depression and had broken up with his girlfriend two weeks ago, also wrote that he was “sorry for everything”.The high school dropout yesterday left the note at the home of the Maruca-Kovac family who had taken him in after he was thrown out by his parents.He had just been fired from his McDonald's job for allegedly stealing $17 before driving to the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, and beginning his bloodbath.President George W Bush had come within two miles of the centre during a morning visit to the Midwest city."He wanted to go out like a star," said Andrew Bigler, who described himself as a friend of bespectacled Hawkins."He had a rough life. He was a good guy. I loved him."Wearing a camouflage vest, Hawkins headed to the third floor of the Von Mauer department store, pulled out an SKS assault rifle and opened fire.He gunned down shoppers in the store's customer service department before spraying bullets at others on a floor below as they looked up an escalator towards the screams and pandemonium.In total, he hit 13 people in the crowded complex, killing eight and injuring five before turning the gun on himself. Last night, Debora Maruca-Kovac, who invited Hawkins to live with her after her 17- and 19-year-old sons befriended the killer, said: “I had a feeling it was him.”

The surgical nurse, who described the youth as “very troubled” had witnessed victims of the mall shooting being brought in to the hospital where she works."He was depressed, and he had always been depressed," she said. "But he looked like he was getting better."Hawkins, who earned a high school equivalency degree after dropping out of Papillion-La Vista High School, earned his driving licence after moving in with the Maruca-Kovacs.And five months ago he started working at a McDonald's restaurant near their home in the middle-class suburb of Bellevue.The teenager was not on any medication for mental illness, but he had been treated in the past for depression and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Mrs Maruca-Kovac revaled. Though he had his troubles, Hawkins was gentle and loved animals, Maruca-Kovac said.But he also had a drinking problem and would occasionally smoke marijuana in his bedroom, she said.The youth had been due to attend court for allegedly being caught in possession of alcohol.The minimum drinking age in all U.S. states is 21.

Maruca-Kovac continued: “He didn't cause a lot of trouble. He tried to help out all the time. He was very thankful for everything. He wasn't a violent person at all."Hawkins had lived with several friends for a couple days at a time before landing at Maruca-Kovac's house last year, she said."He was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted," she explained. "I felt sorry for him. I let him stay, and we tried to get him on his feet."

Mrs Maruca-Kovac said she found the handwritten note on the floor by his bed.She then called Hawkins' mother, whom she said she knows only as "Molly." The woman went to her house, retrieved the suicide note and took it to authorities.Mrs Maruca-Kovac did not hear about the shooting - which began around 1.50 pm - until she arrived at work, where she saw patients being wheeled in.
In the note Hawkins he didn't want “to be a burden anymore" to his family.At the top of the note was his "will," which said that his green Jeep Cherokee was to go to his mother, and that "my friends can have whatever they want."He ended the note by saying that now he would be famous.Police said they had no reason to think Nebraska's biggest lunchtime bloodbath was connected to the Bush visit but FBI agents were said to be checking for a possible link.