Mecca’s US$7,000 makeshift room

Saudi authorities ban VIP camps in Mina, the world’s largest tent city, because they ‘defy the spirit of Haj’:

It is a plain, two-by-two-metre room in a port cabin dug into the sand and fitted with two beds and a small cabinet – with a price tag of US$3,500 for each person a night. The room is in the barren Mecca neighbourhood of Mina, an area central to the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

Full Story

Welcoming the Pope and shunning Dalai Lama

When the United States established diplomatic relations with the Holy See back in January 1984, a televangelist asked rather sarcastically: when will Mecca send its own ambassador to Washington DC? “It’s an odd fact of history,” ruminates Time magazine, “that the world’s youngest empire, the US, established diplomatic relations with the oldest, the Holy See,

Full Story

Nepal’s Constitution-making crisis

Nobody knows what would be more galling for the BJP: Nepal's refusal to remain a Hindu state and instead turn secular, or Prime Minister Narendra Modi's inability to influence the Himalayan kingdom in spite of his two high-profile visits, stirring speeches, liberal economics and earthquake diplomacy.

Full Story