Anne Kristoff / For the News-Miner Jan 20, 2013 Jan 20, 2013 Updated Oct 22, 2021 FAIRBANKS — Looking at Jodi Blakely, you’d never guess that she was a sharpshooter and an expert hostage negotiator.

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Billboards line the Umm Al Qura highway leading to the Grand Mosque in Mecca, displaying manicured public spaces, glass-fronted stores and sleek towers. It’s part of a $26 ...

MECCA, Saudi Arabia - As a child, Osama al-Bar would walk from his home past Islam's holiest site, the Kaaba, to the market of spice and fabric merchants where his father owned a store. At that time, ...

MECCA, Saudi Arabia — More than 2 million Muslims began the annual hajj pilgrimage at first light Sunday in Saudi Arabia, circling the cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca that Islam's faithful face five times ...

Security forces in Mecca are cracking down on people trying to make a pilgrimage without a permit, as the Islamic holy city prepares to host hundreds of thousands of Muslim worshippers. Ahead of the ...

In “Open Mecca, Crown Prince Mohammed” (Houses of Worship, Aug. 5), Daniel Pipes mentions only “three cases of non-Muslims surreptitiously” entering Mecca. There was a fourth case, but it was with the ...

MECCA, Saudi Arabia — For Zainab Abdu, the holiest sites in Islam were the backdrop for her weekends growing up. Raised in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, Abdu remembers roller skating with friends near the ...