1. The Security Council Wednesday eased its three-year-old ban on flights from Libya to permit Egyptian airliners to carry Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. 2. The Saudi government never supplied airplanes to carry the pilgrims, as Afghan officials in the Ministry of Hajj Affairs had hoped. 3. A bus carrying pilgrims to a holy city crashed into a roadside shop in southern Sri Lanka early Monday, killing at least six people, police said. 4. A jeep carrying pilgrims from a Himalayan Hindu shrine plunged into a gorge, killing seven women and a man, an Indian news agency reported Saturday. 5. A van carrying Hindu pilgrims on their way to a temple collided with a truck Monday in eastern India, killing nine of them and injuring five. 6. Among the trains blocked by the snafu was one carrying pilgrims, many of them ailing, returning from the French shrine at Lourdes. 7. An overcrowded motor launch carrying Hindu pilgrims capsized Sunday in an eastern Indian state and at least five passengers were drowned, United News of India news agency reported. 8. An overcrowded motor launch carrying Hindu pilgrims capsized Sunday in an eastern Indian state and at least five passengers drowned, United News of India news agency reported. 9. But Saudi Arabia has also ignored the sanctions by routinely allowing Libyan planes carrying Muslim pilgrims to land. 10. Ethnic Karen insurgents sprayed gunfire at two cars carrying pilgrims to a Buddhist temple in eastern Burma, wounding four people, the military government reported Tuesday. |