Saudi Arabia: 2 million in Mecca for start of hajj

October 02, 2014

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia sought to assure the public that the kingdom was safe and free of health scares as an estimated 2 million Muslims streamed into a sprawling tent city near Mecca on Thursday for the start of the annual Islamic hajj pilgrimage.

Earlier this year, Saudi authorities banned people from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea — the countries hardest hit in the Ebola epidemic — from getting visas as a precaution against the virus. The decision has affected a total of 7,400 pilgrims from the three countries.

Ebola is believed to have sickened more than 7,100 people in West Africa and killed more than 3,300, according to the World Health Organization. The hajj sees massive crowds every year from around the world gather around the cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca as part of a five-day spiritual journey meant to cleanse the faithful of sin and bring them closer to God. All male pilgrims dress in simple, white robes as a sign of equality before God.

The kingdom has not discovered a single case of Ebola so far and is taking all measures to ensure the safety and health of the pilgrims, said Manal Mansour, the head of Saudi Health Ministry's department for prevention of infectious diseases.

"The most important precaution that (the kingdom) has taken was to restrict visas from the affected areas," she told The Associated Press. Upon arrival to the kingdom, pilgrims were asked to fill out "medical screening cards with data" and asked about their travels in the past 21 days, Mansour said.

There were other health concerns related to the hajj earlier this year. The kingdom had to improve its anti-infection measures after it was hit by an upswing in the number of people who had contracted a respiratory virus known as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the spring. There have been more than 750 cases of MERS in the kingdom since 2012, of which 319 people died, including several health workers.

Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, told the AP that the kingdom is also facing continuous threats from terrorists, but is prepared to ensure a safe hajj. Saudi Arabia and four other Arab countries are taking part in U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida fighters in Iraq and Syria. Militants have vowed revenge.

Al-Qaida militants launched a series of deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia aimed at toppling the monarchy around a decade ago, though none were directed at Mecca. No major attacks have happened in recent years during the hajj.

"We have confronted al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia and we have defeated them," Al-Turki said. "But of course at the same time being we are still considering the threat, which is a continuous threat, and therefore we have actually enforced our security readiness at all the borders of Saudi Arabia."

Pilgrim Zaid Ajaz Amanea from the United Kingdom said he felt safe. "I don't have to fear anything from anybody because I'm coming to God's house," he said. The routes for hajj pilgrims and inside the Grand Mosque housing the Kaaba have thousands of security cameras, many of them hidden. The kingdom says there are some 70,000 security personnel guarding the hajj this year. Saudi's interior minister toured hajj sites to check on their readiness over the weekend.

The state-owned Saudi Gazette newspaper reported that the commander of hajj security forces has warned pilgrims against politicizing the pilgrimage. He said anyone who tries to propagate political views during the hajj, which brings Sunnis, Shiites and Muslims of all schools of thought to Mecca, will be severely punished.

The pilgrimage is a central pillar of Islam and all able-bodied Muslims are required to perform it once in their lives. Saudi authorities said there are 1.4 million international visitors for the hajj this year. Some 600,000 pilgrims from the kingdom itself are also expected to take part.

On Thursday, pilgrims headed to Mina, about five kilometers (three miles) from Mecca, where they will spend the night in prayer and supplication. Some pilgrims wore surgical blue masks to be extra careful.

"I'm afraid of the normal flu, I'm not scared of Ebola or anything like that," said Nayef Aboulein, a Saudi pilgrim.

Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Dubai pushes ahead on world's biggest airport plan

September 08, 2014

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Dubai's ruler has endorsed a $32 billion expansion plan for the city's second airport that aims to make it the world's biggest, the emirate's airport operator said Monday in the latest sign that the Middle East's brash commercial hub is determined to move on from its 2009 financial crisis.

The approval sets in motion a vast building project that will boost capacity exponentially at the airport known as Al Maktoum International at Dubai World Central. Backers envision it will eventually handle more than 200 million passengers per year.

The first phase of the expansion alone aims to build enough runway and terminal space to handle 120 million passengers a year and 100 mammoth Airbus A380 double-decker jets at any given time. The world's busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, handled 94.4 million people last year.

Paul Griffiths, chief executive of state-backed airport operator Dubai Airports, said he aims to have the first phase of the expansion complete in six to eight years. That part of the project includes adding two new runways and two large concourses housing dozens of aircraft gates each.

"It's a very aggressive time scale ... but I think that we have a track record here of doing remarkable things in a remarkably challenging time frame," Griffiths said in his office at the city's main airport, Dubai International.

As later phases are completed, the new airport will eventually boast five parallel runways spaced far enough apart so they can all be used at the same time, and have enough gates for hundreds of wide-body planes.

Dubai World Central opened for cargo flights in 2010 with a single runway in the desert south of central Dubai. It received its first passengers in October at a single terminal that is mainly used by smaller airlines and low-cost carriers.

The currently larger Dubai International ranked as the world's seventh busiest airport last year, handling 66.4 million passengers. It too is being expanded, with a new concourse expected to open next year.

Griffiths says Dubai needs to expand to keep pace with the rapid growth of airline traffic into the emirate. Much of the increase comes from hometown airline Emirates, the region's largest carrier and the world's biggest user of both the A380 and Boeing 777 long-haul jets.

Emirates is expected to move its hub to the new airport shortly after the first expansion phase is complete, freeing up space in the older airport for the well over 100 other airlines that already operate from it.

Griffiths is confident Dubai will be able to generate the funding needed to complete the project given the importance of aviation to Dubai's economy. Officials say the industry contributes $22 billion annually to the local economy and supports some 250,000 jobs.

"The aviation sector has demonstrated that there is a very compelling economic case to suggest creation of further capacity is a very sensible thing to do," Griffiths said. "I'm sure that the government will come up with the appropriate funding to make the project a reality."

Dubai is still recovering from the effects of its financial crisis, which sent property prices plunging and forced it to accept a multibillion-dollar bailout from neighboring Abu Dhabi. The local economy has bounced back strongly since, though Dubai and its state-linked companies still carry tens of billions of dollars in debt. The International Monetary Fund has warned of the possibility of another property bubble forming, and analysts question how Dubai can make good on the debt it still owes.

"There are still plenty of reasons to think that the emirate's debt problems are far from over," Jason Tuvey, an analyst at London-based Capital Economics, wrote in a research note last week. That has not stopped officials from announcing plans for headline-grabbing projects reminiscent of the pre-crisis boom.

On Sunday, a property development company controlled by Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum laid out plans for a $2.7 billion theme park and resort complex near the new airport and the site of the World Expo that Dubai is due to host in 2020.

The expansion of the new airport is unlikely to be ready by the time the Expo kicks off, Griffiths said.

Bahrain: Protesters dismiss government plans

September 19, 2014

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — Thousands of opposition supporters rallied in the tiny island nation of Bahrain on Friday to protest a proposal by the country's leadership for legislative, security and judicial reforms.

The rally by members of the Shiite opposition came a day after the crown prince, Sheik Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, issued a statement summarizing proposed changes that included redefining electoral districts, promises of judicial reform and new codes of conduct for security forces.

The statement follows on-and-off again talks between opposition members and the government aimed at bringing about a political solution to more than three years of unrest. Bahrain is a strategically important Western ally, which hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. An opposition movement dominated by the country's Shiite majority is demanding greater rights from the ruling Sunni monarchy.

The government moved to crush an Arab Spring-inspired uprising in 2011 with the help of security forces from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring Gulf Arab states. Dozens of protesters have been killed, as have some members of the security forces.

Protesters and opposition leaders on Friday dismissed the government's plan as offering too little toward their goal of greater power-sharing in the kingdom. "We consider this letter to be a unilateral approach," said Abdul-Jalil Khalil, a leading member of the main Shiite opposition bloc, al-Wefaq.

N. Korea No. 2 visits South for rare talks

October 04, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's presumptive No. 2 led members of Pyongyang's inner circle in a rare trip Saturday to South Korea for the close of the Asian Games, with the rivals holding their highest level face-to-face talks in five years.

After months of tensions, including a steady stream of insults between the divided neighbors and an unusual number of North Korean missile and rocket test firings, expectations for any breakthrough weren't high, but even the visit itself was significant, allowing valuable contact between confidants of North Korea's authoritarian leader and Seoul's senior official for North Korean affairs.

The North Korean delegation to the games in Incheon was led by Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People's Army and considered by outside analysts to be the country's second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un. Hwang is also a vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission led by Kim and a vice marshal of the army.

The visit comes as rumors swirl in the South about the health of Kim, who has made no public appearances since Sept. 3 and skipped a high-profile recent event he usually attends. A recent official documentary showed footage from August of him limping and overweight and mentioned his "discomfort."

The two sides met briefly in the morning, and Unification Ministry spokesman Lim Byeong Cheol told reporters that the North Korean officials would hold their main talks over lunch with South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and national security director Kim Kwan-jin before flying back home later Saturday after the games' closing ceremonies.

The success at the games for both Koreas, which were in the top 10 for gold medals, is a source of pride for all Koreans, said one of the North Korean officials, Kim Yang Gon, a secretary in the ruling Workers' Party and senior official responsible for South Korean affairs, according to the YTN TV network.

"As I watched some people (in the stands) shouting unification slogans and waving unification flags on TV, I'm proud that the sports sector is taking the initiative in terms of the national unification," said Choe Ryong Hae, another Workers' Party secretary who is also chairman of the State Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission.

It wasn't clear what the officials talked about. Lim said there were no plans for the North Koreans to meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. High-level North Korean visits to South Korea have been highly unusual since inter-Korean relations became strained after Park's conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, took office in early 2008 with a tough line on the North. Attacks blamed on North Korea in 2010 killed 50 South Koreans.

The last such senior visit south was in 2009, when senior Workers' Party official Kim Ki Nam and spy chief Kim Yang Gon, the same official who visited Saturday, came to pay their respects to the late liberal South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The North Koreans met President Lee, conveyed a message from then leader Kim Jong Il and discussed inter-Korean cooperation.

One South Korean analyst saw Saturday's talks as a crucial moment for inter-Korean ties over the next few years. If no progress follows Saturday's talks, the rivals' strained relations will likely continue until Park, who took office in early 2013, finishes her single five-year term, said analyst Cheong Seong-chang at the private Sejong Institute.

Cheong speculated that the North Korean officials were probably carrying a message from Kim Jong Un. The visit could also be part of an effort to show that Kim has no problem making high-profile political decisions and has no serious health issues, he said.

Besides the North Korean test firings of about rockets and missiles this year, both sides have leveled harsh criticism at each other, with North Korean state media calling the South Korean president a prostitute.

The Asian Games participation by the North was welcomed as a step forward. North Korea boycotted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Summer Olympics, both in Seoul, but attended the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, the 2003 University Games in Daegu and the 2005 Asian Athletics Championships in Incheon. Those last three came during an era of liberal governments in Seoul that were more accommodating to Pyongyang.

North Korea had said ahead of these games that it wanted to send both athletes and cheerleaders but later balked at sending cheerleaders because of what it called South Korean hostility.

Hong Kong protests subside after tumultuous week

October 06, 2014

HONG KONG (AP) — Student-led protests for democratic reforms in Hong Kong subsided Monday but a few hundred demonstrators remained camped out in the streets, vowing to keep up the pressure until the government responds to their demands.

Schools reopened and civil servants returned to work Monday morning after protesters cleared the area outside the city's government headquarters, a focal point of the demonstrations that started the previous weekend. Crowds also thinned markedly at the two other protest sites, and traffic flowed again through many road that had been blocked.

The subdued scenes left many wondering whether the movement, which has been free-forming and largely spontaneous, had run its course, and what the students would do next. Early talks between the government and the students have started, but many disagreements remain. Students say they will walk away from the talks as soon as the government uses force to clear away the remaining protesters.

"This is definitely not the end — we've never set a timeframe for how long this should go on. It's normal for people to go home, to come and go," said Alex Chow, one of the student leaders. "It's up to the government now. This is the first step, but the pressure has to continue."

The number of protesters had swelled into the tens of thousands last week to express opposition to China's decision to screen all nominees in the first direct elections for Hong Kong's leader, promised by Beijing for 2017. The activists want open nominations and the resignation of the current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, who has refused to step down.

The previous weekend, police fired tear gas and pepper spray on unarmed protesters, prompting some to defend themselves with umbrellas and homemade masks. That galvanized public support for the demonstrations, and on both weekends, tens of thousands of protesters have turned out in the streets.

But on Monday the numbers were down to just a couple hundred in the main protest site of Admiralty and in the Mong Kok area, where some scuffles broke out over the weekend between protests and residents. About 25 protesters, mostly students, refused to budge from their site outside the government headquarters, and some say they plan to stay for as long as they can.

Police said they had arrested 30 people since the start of the protests. Protesters, meanwhile, complained the police were failing to protect them from attacks by mobs intent on driving them away. Differences and confusion within the movement became clear on Sunday, when several leaders announced a retreat from key sites — even as others declared there was no withdrawal, or urged protesters to regroup in one main area. The movement, broadly known as Occupy Central — a campaign founded by law professor Benny Tai last year — has no central leadership, and coordination has come from several different student groups.

One faction, Scholarism, is led by 17-year-old Joshua Wong and draws many younger students, while the Federation of Students represents mostly university students. But many who took part say they follow no particular group or leader.

"We support the students, but we are not following their lead. We came out here on our own," said protester Angel Chan, 27. "People here are here for themselves, and their future, and the future of Hong Kong."

Lawmakers and politicians have played almost no role in the movement. "The credit goes to the students who brought so many people to occupy the government offices," said Martin Lee, a veteran pro-democracy lawmaker in the city.

On Monday, many remaining protesters were undeterred by the dwindling number of participants. "I think the government is waiting for us to get up. They always say the protests must end and are trying to use violence to stop it," said Jackie Ho, 18. "But I think they just want to scare us."

Ho said she wanted to stay until the demonstrations were over — though she is also worried that she is losing time on her studies. Louis Chan, also 18, said he needs to return to university to clock his attendance, and he was not sure achieving universal suffrage — the students' original goal — is now likely.

"I did think it was possible, but now I don't think so because they (the Hong Kong government) don't give any response and China is also very much against this," he said.

Associated Press Writer Joanna Chiu contributed to this report.

Tiananmen legacy looms over Hong Kong protests

October 06, 2014

HONG KONG (AP) — The legacy of the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square looms larger in Hong Kong than in mainland China, where the Communist Party has virtually erased all public mention of it. In this former British colony, hundreds of thousands attend candlelight vigils each anniversary to commemorate the grim end to the Beijing movement that was vanquished before many of the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong's streets were even born.

Hong Kong's student-led protesters insist they are not challenging communist rule, just details of Beijing's plans for political reforms in the city. But many of their elders fear the protesters risk going too far if they stay in the streets in defiance of demands to leave in the biggest challenge to China since it took control of Hong Kong in 1997.

One urging the Hong Kong protesters to bide their time is reform-minded Bao Tong, former aide to then-Communist Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang, who spent the last 16 years of his life under house arrest after sympathizing with the students who occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square to seek democracy on the mainland.

"The seeds have already been sown, and they need time to lie fallow," Bao wrote in a commentary Sunday for Radio Free Asia. "Take a break, for the sake of future room to grow. For tomorrow," wrote Bao, who has been under house arrest himself after spending seven years in prison.

The memories of the June 4, 1989, military assault that ended the sit-ins in Tiananmen, killing hundreds, are vivid among Hong Kong people old enough to have lived through the exhilaration of the protests and the gloom that followed the crackdown. Many of Hong Kong's 7.2 million people moved to the city to escape poverty, political pogroms and repression of dissent in the mainland, and they value the city's democratic, Western-style civil liberties.

Benny Li, 46, was a university student in Shanghai at the time of the Tiananmen protests and has been living in Hong Kong for several years. "I participated in the 1989 protests because I wanted the same things that Hong Kong people want now. All my friends in my generation, and those younger than us probably, morally support Hong Kong protesters. We agree with and understand what they are doing," Li said.

The protesters who have camped in some of the city's busiest commercial districts for over a week, and the tens of thousands of their supporters who have poured into Hong Kong's streets, are exercising civil liberties nonexistent in the Chinese mainland, where the government bans public dissent, censors the media and harshly punishes those deemed to be challenging the Communist Party's monopoly on power.

Hong Kong's protesters are peacefully condemning China's decision to require that a committee of mostly pro-Beijing figures screen the candidates for the city's top leader in the first-ever direct election in 2017. The protesters also have demanded Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying resign. He has refused.

The protests in Hong Kong, like those in Tiananmen, are a legacy of student and intellectual dissent stretching to the anti-colonial May Fourth movement of 1919. Jeffrey Huang, 22, was sitting with other protesters in Hong Kong's Admiralty area, where traffic was blockaded for an encampment festooned with canopies, banners and posters. He said he learned about Tiananmen during secondary school when teachers talked about it at an assembly marking the June 4 anniversary.

"For us, we believe that democracy will help us improve our lives in general and we think that not having democracy is the cause of many problems in Hong Kong, for example the high property prices," said Huang, who recently graduated from law studies.

"The government pays much attention to the property developers because they maybe have the power to elect the chief executive," he said, "and people think if there is more democracy the chief executive and the government will be more accountable to the citizens ... instead of to the privileged class only."

So far, China's central government has lashed out at the protests, branding them illegal and saying Leung has its full support in restoring order. But it has left the handling of the crisis to Hong Kong, which has its own legal system and police — a force of 28,500 officers and 4,000 auxiliary police who at times have appeared hard stretched to keep order with tens of thousands of people in the streets.

Given that the heavily guarded main garrison of the People's Liberation Army is just next door to the central government headquarters and Leung's office, the possibility of an intervention by the mainland authorities, however uncertain, weighs on many minds.

Those fears were reinforced when police deployed tear gas and pepper spray on Sept. 28 in an attempt to disperse the protesters — a strategy that backfired and drew still more people into the streets in sympathy for the non-violent, young activists, leading the authorities to adopt a less confrontational approach.

Repeated warnings and appeals to everyone to go home and stop blocking the roads, issued by Leung and other top officials in recent days have emphasized the government's desire to see the protests end peacefully, while also acknowledging the rights of protesters, and those opposed to the disruptions caused by their lengthy blockades, to peacefully express their views.

The most potent legacy of Tiananmen in Hong Kong, some say, is the passion driving so many of its residents to spend days and nights in the street, risking entanglements with the police and protest opponents, for the sake of attaining the "universal suffrage" they were promised when Beijing claimed control 17 years ago.

"I'm worried about police clearing the site but I'm not scared. Because I won't yield to police violence. After they clear the site, I will come back," said Larry Lai, a 20-year-old college student. The point, they say, is to ensure their voices are heard.

Jackie Ng, 43, was a first-year university student in the Chinese mainland at the time of the Tiananmen protests. She brought her husband and young son to the protests in Admiralty. "I was so moved to see this happening in Hong Kong. It reminds me a lot of what happened in 1989," she said.

Associated Press writers Joanna Chiu and Wendy Tang contributed to this report.

Hong Kong police arrest 19 in protest clash

October 04, 2014

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong arrested 19 people, some believed to have organized crime ties, during a night of running brawls stretching into Saturday as mobs tried to drive pro-democracy protesters from the streets where they've held a weeklong, largely peaceful demonstration.

At least 12 people and six officers were injured during the clashes, Senior Superintendent Patrick Kwok Pak-chung said. Protest leaders called off planned talks with the government on political reforms after the battles kicked off Friday afternoon in gritty, blue-collar Mong Kok, across Victoria Harbor from the activists' main protest camp.

Police struggled for hours to control the battles as attackers pushed, shoved and jeered the protesters. Those arrested face charges of unlawful assembly, fighting in public and assault, Kwok said, adding that eight men are believed to have backgrounds involving triads, or organized crime gangs.

The protesters urged residents to join their cause and demanded that police protect their encampments. The Hong Kong Federation of Students, one of the groups leading the demonstrations that drew tens of thousands of people earlier this week, said they saw no choice but to cancel the dialogue.

"The government is demanding the streets be cleared. We call upon all Hong Kong people to immediately come to protect our positions and fight to the end," the group said in a statement. They demanded the government hold someone responsible for the scuffles, the worst disturbances since police used tear gas and pepper spray on protesters last weekend to try to disperse them.

"Of course I'm scared, but we have to stay and support everyone," said Michael Yipu, 28, who works in a bank. The allegations that organized crime members were involved in the clashes fueled jitters Saturday at the movement's main camp, on a highway outside government headquarters. There were frequent calls for supporters to rush to barricades after sporadic rumors that people were coming to attack them.

"Many people are gathering here and they are very determined to unite against the triad members," said Amy Ho, 21, who was studying translation at university. The standoff is the biggest challenge to Beijing's authority since it took over the former British colony in 1997. Earlier Friday, the students had agreed to talks with the government proposed by Hong Kong's leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. But his attempt to defuse tensions fell flat as many protesters were unhappy with his refusal to yield to their demands for his resignation.

The cancellation of the talks — prompted by clashes with men who tried to tear down the makeshift barricades and tents set up by the demonstrators — left the next steps in the crisis uncertain. It was unclear if those scuffles were spontaneous or had been organized, although some of the attackers wore blue ribbons signaling support for the mainland Chinese government, while the protesters have yellow ribbons.

On social media, an image circulated purportedly calling on people in the "silent majority" to gather and agitate the protesters in Mong Kok for 300 Hong Kong dollars ($38), promising bonuses for extra destruction. The information could not be verified and calls to a mobile phone number listed on the notice did not go through. Protesters also accused police of working together with triads to use force to attack them, but police denied it.

At least some of those opposed to protesters were residents fed up with the inconvenience of blocked streets and closed shops. "It's not about whether I support their cause or not. It's about whether what they are doing is legal or not," said Donald Chan, 45. "It is illegal. It has brought chaos to the city."

The chaos prompted calls from police and other top officials for everyone to avoid violence and go home. "We should not use violence or disrupt social order in any situation," Leung said. "All people gathering in those areas should disperse as soon as possible and restore social order, so that daily lives will be restored to normal."

The protesters have been in the streets since Sept. 26, pledging to preserve Hong Kong's Western-style legal system and civil liberties. They want the Chinese government to reverse a decision requiring all candidates in the first election for Hong Kong's leader in 2017 to be approved by a mostly pro-Beijing committee. The demonstrators want open nominations.

Leung had appeared at a news conference late Thursday night where he refused to resign and said he had asked Hong Kong's top civil servant, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, to engage in talks with protest leaders. Before those talks were called off Friday by the students, Lam said she had begun organizing the discussions.

China's government has mostly kept quiet during the crisis, other than to call the protests illegal and support the Hong Kong government's efforts to disperse them. On Friday, the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily accused a small group of demonstrators of trying to "hijack the system" and said the protest effort was doomed to fail.

The front-page editorial said there is "no room for concessions" on the candidate screening issue, noting that Hong Kong "is directly under the jurisdiction of the central government; it is not a country or an independent political entity."

Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Kelvin Chan contributed to this report.