Word: medinae
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...Medina...
TIME.com: What do we know so far about the hijacking of a Russian airliner from Istanbul to Medina in Saudi Arabia...
...special task force established to deal with the hijacking. However Putin has remained off camera, and his precise whereabouts are unknown to the journalists who are covering him on vacation in Siberia. His Kremlin handlers are left to assure the public that even in the Muslim holy city of Medina, their elite antiterrorist squad will have access to the plane. But that claim sounds less than probable. Landing in Medina was a very smart move...
...pilgrimage more accessible to Muslims. Fahd came to power when Saudi Arabia was flush with oil revenues, and he allocated many millions of dollars to upgrading the Holy sites in Saudi Arabia to make them more accessible to pilgrims. Using oil revenues, the capacity of the great mosque at Medina was expanded almost tenfold, while the capacity of the mosque at Mecca was doubled - it can now hold about 2 million pilgrims, compared with a capacity of 1 million before...
...example, each day VIPs were given different credit card-like swipe cards to gain access the festival and the various restricted tents. I think the almost paranoid amount of security has something to do with the fact that right before the last Rock in Rio, in 1991, Roberto Medina, the festival's founder and guiding spirit, was kidnapped. But that's just a guess. In any case, there's so much security and so many restrictions, at most times the publicity folks seem outmanned, overwhelmed and out of the loop...