The ritual is the height of the annual pilgrimage, or Hajj. This year's pilgrimage has been incident free. Last years, a fire broke out among pilgrims' tents, killing more than 340 people. Every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must perform the hajj at least once in a lifetime. Some of the pilgrims have waited more than ten years to come to Mecca.
Some operators specialize in trading hazardous materials or endangered species.
Now, environment chiefs from the world's eight top industrialized nations say they'll try to make people more aware of how that damages the environment. The illegal trade in endangered and rare species is estimated at five billion dollars a year, second only to the international drug trade. The Environmental Investigation Agency, an independent watchdog group, estimates that up to six-thousand tons of ozone damaging chloroflourocarbons, or CFC's, are traded illegally worldwide each year. But, developers tell today's New York Post this ship won't sink. A Swiss-U.S. partnership is building a 500 million dollar replica of the doomed liner.