CAIRO

Sunnis protest official visit by Iran’s Ahmadinejad

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Cairo on Tuesday, the first by an Iranian leader in more than three decades, highlights efforts by Egypt’s Islamist leader to thaw long frigid ties between the two regional heavyweights.

Although the official welcome was warm, there was unscripted discord from Sunni protesters angry over Iran’s support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as decades of sectarian animosity between Shiite-led Iran and the region’s Sunni majority.

At one point, Ahmadinejad was forced to flee a mosque in downtown Cairo after a Syrian protester took off his shoes and threw them at him.

MEXICO CITY

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Accidental cause blamed for explosion at oil company

A gas buildup ignited by an electrical spark or other heat source caused the blast that killed 37 people and wounded dozens of others last week at the state oil company’s headquarters, Mexico’s attorney general said.

But Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said investigators were still looking for the source of the gas, and revising records of building inspections to determine why Petroleos Mexicanos had not discovered the gas accumulation.

Murillo said that an investigation by Mexican, Spanish, U.S. and British experts into the petroleum giant’s worst disaster in more than a decade found no evidence of explosives in the Thursday blast.

 


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