Cruising sceptic Diane McDermott spent a week around Dubai and its environs, taking in dubious marketplaces, majestic building, and the Brilliance of the Seas.

Scientists have found new evidence they say supports the theory that a knuckle bone and other human remains found under a church floor in Bulgaria may be of John the Baptist.

SYRIAN security forces opened fire on protesters outside a mosque in a Damascus suburb, close to a building that members of the Arab League monitoring mission were visiting, activists say.

Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters outside a mosque in a Damascus suburb, close to a building that members of the Arab League monitoring mission were visiting, activists say.

A truck carrying the coffin of Guinea’s late dictator was paraded through the streets of the capital today.

Pilgrims circled the Kaaba – the huge black cube in the centre of the Grand Mosque in Mecca – raising their hands heavenward in prayer Saturday, asking for God’s bounty and forgiveness.

Rescue workers searching for signs of life at a four-story building that collapsed in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, ended their operation yesterday, having found no new survivors.

Rescue workers searching for signs of life at a four-story building that collapsed in Islam’s holiest city ended their operation today, having found no new survivors.

Rescue workers today still hoped to find survivors from an eight-storey hostel building that collapsed in Islam’s holiest city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, killing at least 27 people and marring the start of the annual gathering of millions of pilgrims.

A BUILDING used as a hostel by pilgrims in Islam’s holiest city collapsed yesterday leaving at least 15 people dead and 39 injured.

Rescuers aided by bright spotlights worked into the night tonight, searching for survivors and clearing rubble from the collapse of an eight-storey building that killed at least 15 people, the latest tragedy to mar the annual gathering of millions of Muslims in Islam’s holiest city.

A five-storey hotel at a gate to the Grand Mosque in Islam’s holiest city Mecca in Saudi Arabia collapsed into a pile of rubble today as millions of Muslims converged on the city for the annual hajj pilgrimage.

Leaders and ministers of more than 50 Muslim countries urged their nations to fight terrorism and called for moderation within Islam, as they opened a summit yesterday in a palace overlooking Islam’s holiest shrine.

A suicide attacker killed at least 15 people and wounded 20 more in a Shiite funeral procession today north of Baghdad, while a car bomb exploded near a market just outside the capital killing 13 people and wounding 21, police said.

A car bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded 21 today when it exploded near a market outside the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Iraqi police have arrested four people in connection with the suicide bombing of two mosques near the Iranian border which killed at least 76 people, one of them a possible third suicide bomber, police said today.

Saudis in the Riyadh region began voting in the country’s first nationwide elections as polls opened today.

TWO car bombs exploded in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi yesterday, killing four Iraqis and prompting clashes between US troops and gunmen.

The bodies of the co-joined twins who died in the operation that separated them returned to Iran today to be buried.

A fire in a building housing Muslim pilgrims in the holy city of Mecca has killed 14 people and injured 43 others, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

Muslim pilgrims in Saudi Arabia symbolically stoned the devil again today, a day after 14 worshippers were trampled to death in the crowds.

FOURTEEN pilgrims were trampled to death yesterday during a ritual in the annual Muslim pilgrimage in which crowds of people throw pebbles at three stone pillars representing the devil’s temptations.