Mecca

MECCA, Saudi Arabia — A dozen glittering skyscrapers tower over Islam’s holiest shrine, the Kaaba, boasting hotel rooms with 24-hour butler service and luxury marble bathrooms. Below, throngs of Muslims perform the annual hajj pilgrimage, many of them impoverished, sleeping in the streets. Saudi authorities have transformed the look of Mecca, Islam’s most sacred city, and are planning even more dramatic change in years to come. But much of the change has catered to high-end pilgrims, and critics say what is supposed to be an austere spiritual ritual bringing Muslims...

Tatte Bakery & Cafe, opened earlier this month, is the newest addition to the Kendall Square food mecca. This is the second and more ambitious location of the Brookline bakery Tatte Fine Cookies & Cakes, owned by Israel-born pastry chef Tzurit Or. The Kendall spot offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and coffee and little baked luxuries all day. Taste some of Or's favorite dishes from her homeland and North Africa, along with European classics,...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Police clashed with suspected Al Qaeda sympathizers in the streets of the sacred city of Mecca yesterday, killing two militants and uncovering a cache of weapons, including Kalashnikov rifles, grenades, and bomb-making materials. The raid was the latest in a string of antimilitant sweeps across Saudi Arabia, where the legitimacy of the regime rests in part on safeguarding Mecca -- the site of Islam's holiest shrine, and where devout Muslims must make at least one pilgrimage.

The southwest Missouri tourist mecca of Branson is turning 100. The Springfield News-Leader (http://sgfnow.co/zaJnJk ) reported that a tornado that hit the community last month won't slow plans to mark the April 1 milestone. That's because the twister didn't touch any of the venues that will be used during the celebration. Planning committee member Bethany Thomas says there are no changes to the schedule. Branson is named after Reuben S. Branson, who opened a general store and post office in 1882.

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - The heaviest rain to hit Islam’s annual hajj pilgrimage in years soaked the faithful and flooded the road to Mecca, snarling traffic as millions of Muslims headed for the holy sites. The downpours add an extra hazard on top of intense concerns about the spread of swine flu. Pilgrims in white robes holding umbrellas, some wearing face masks for fear of the flu, circled the black cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca, the opening rite for the hajj. But the shrine, Islam’s holiest site, and the nearby, rain-soaked streets did not see the usual massive, pushing crowds,...

Tatte Bakery & Cafe, opened earlier this month, is the newest addition to the Kendall Square food mecca. This is the second and more ambitious location of the Brookline bakery Tatte Fine Cookies & Cakes, owned by Israel-born pastry chef Tzurit Or. The Kendall spot offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and coffee and little baked luxuries all day. Taste some of Or's favorite dishes from her homeland and North Africa, along with European classics,...

The southwest Missouri tourist mecca of Branson is turning 100. The Springfield News-Leader (http://sgfnow.co/zaJnJk ) reported that a tornado that hit the community last month won't slow plans to mark the April 1 milestone. That's because the twister didn't touch any of the venues that will be used during the celebration. Planning committee member Bethany Thomas says there are no changes to the schedule. Branson is named after Reuben S. Branson, who opened a general store and post office in 1882.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Prince Abdul-Majid bin Abdul-Aziz, the governor of Islam's holy city of Mecca, died yesterday after a long illness, a Saudi Arabian royal statement said. He was 65. Prince Abdul-Majid, who was the half brother of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, was flown to the United States, where he died after sudden health deterioration, the statement said. The brief statement did not provide any other details about the cause of death or say where the prince died in the United States.

Rosemary Harris and Carla Gugino will star in a production of "The Road to Mecca" on Broadway this winter. The play by Athol Fugard explores the life of an elderly widow who has transformed her home into a shimmering work of art full of sculptures. A pastor and a young teacher battle over whether she should be put in a retirement home. Previews will begin Dec. 16 and opening night will be Jan. 17 at the American Airlines Theatre. It will run until March 4. Fugard's plays include "Master Harold… and the Boys," "The Blood Knot" and "Hello and Goodbye.

MECCA -- With spotlights, cameras, and microphones, rescuers searched for survivors of an eight-story building collapse that killed at least 20 people yesterday, the latest tragedy to mar the annual gathering of millions of Muslims in Islam's holiest city. The Interior Ministry said 59 people were injured, but nobody would say -- or knew -- how many more were trapped in the rubble of Lulu'at al-Khair, which housed shops and restaurants and was rented out as a hostel during pilgrimages.

The developer of the massive Northwest Park in Burlington is taking a bold stand when it comes to signing up restaurants: no large national chains. Nordblom Co. executives said the company wants to create something of a culinary mecca at the 285-acre development off Route 128. The main street would feature restaurants run by local chefs and other original dining options that are typically hard to find in the suburbs. "We want the focus to be on getting the best operators, so we're talking to independent and chef-driven restaurants, as opposed to chains," said...

Rosemary Harris and Carla Gugino will star in a production of "The Road to Mecca" on Broadway this winter. The play by Athol Fugard explores the life of an elderly widow who has transformed her home into a shimmering work of art full of sculptures. A pastor and a young teacher battle over whether she should be put in a retirement home. Previews will begin Dec. 16 and opening night will be Jan. 17 at the American Airlines Theatre. It will run until March 4. Fugard's plays include "Master Harold… and the Boys," "The Blood Knot" and "Hello and...

Brooklyn's old Bushwick neighborhood has quickly become a new world-class arts mecca — with music, dance, sculpture and theater bursting from defunct warehouses and desolate streets where gangs still roam. That hasn't kept artists away from the affordable, industrial spaces — ever more rare in a pricey city. "This was a ghost town, with tumbleweeds blowing down the street five years ago," says Jay Leritz, co-owner of Yummus Hummus, a Middle Eastern-style cafe on a street filled with musician rehearsal and recording spaces.

Perhaps the only ones more excited than the 130,000 fans getting ready for next week's Comic-Con are the Hollywood studios and networks hoping to capture their attention. San Diego's annual pop-culture festival draws passionate (and often costumed) consumers of movies, TV shows, video games, collectibles and comic books. It's a crowd that's quick to tweet or blog about their favorite things, and Hollywood covets that fandom and their Internet reach. Sony will showcase seven upcoming films at the four-day convention.

The Route 128 corridor has long been a magnet for high-tech and biotech companies, but a shopping mecca? Well, not exactly. That is about to change, big-time. Following up on its smashing success with Dedham’s Legacy Place, WS Development is looking for a repeat as it forges ahead with plans for another outdoor lifestyle retail center, in Lynnfield. If successful, WS’s gambit could thrust Route 128 from a retail backwater, at least compared with Route 9, onto the industry’s cutting edge.

Joseph Tulimieri, the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority’s executive director, sits in his office, overlooking a crowning achievement of his 40-plus years with the agency: Kendall Square. Once dubbed “Nowhere Square,’’ Kendall Square has become one of the most sought-after high-tech centers on the planet, a global mecca for life science and information technology, research and commerce. Cities and universities around the world aspire to re-create Kendall Square’s mix of laboratories and office space, scientists and entrepreneurs, students and venture...

To say Americans have a misinformed view of Saudi Arabians is an understatement. As rabid individualists, we can’t fathom the apparently conformist dress. We see millions praying at the holy city of Mecca and blink uncomprehendingly. Many find the culture vaguely unsettling, if not threatening. “After 9/11, many of my friends in America think we’re all extremists,’’ says Hamzah Jamjoom, a Saudi and co-narrator of “Arabia,’’ the latest dazzling IMAX travelogue documentary to hit the big, big screen.

MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia - Muslim pilgrims holding white umbrellas against the blazing sun clambered up a rocky desert hill for prayers yesterday during the annual hajj, a day after torrential rains that killed at least 77 people. Flooding from the unusually heavy downpours hit hardest in the Red Sea coastal city of Jiddah, about 40 miles away from the holy city of Mecca and its surrounding sacred sites where the 3 million Muslims from around the world were performing the rites of the pilgrimage.

Last August, on the first day of Ramadan, the largest clock in the world began ticking for the first time. The Mecca Clock, designed to serve as the authoritative timepiece for the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims and positioned at the top of the world’s largest clock tower, poses not only an architectural challenge to England’s iconic Big Ben, but a political one as well. Defying the global agreement to consider Greenwich, England, the zero-point for measuring time and space — based on when the sun crosses over that meridian — the clock was constructed to run not on Greenwich Mean Time but on Mecca Time, with Mecca as prime...