Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
In this centuries-old English pancake race, ‘you just have to go flat out’
OLNEY, England | Women in matching checkered aprons, headscarves and a rainbow of running shoes limbered up Tuesday as they prepared for the centuries-old pancake race in this English country town.
They rolled their shoulders in unison, raised up on their toes and did squats before stepping to the starting line — frying pans in hand.
At the word “Go” they sprinted through the streets, trying not to drop their pancakes as they roughly traced the path taken by a harried housewife in 1445, who legend has it heard the church bells signaling the Shrove Tuesday service and raced off with her skillet.
“It’s a horrible distance,” said Kaisa Larkas, 44, a mother of four who legged it past Eloise Kramer to capture the Olney title with a time of 63.37 seconds. “You just have to go flat out and then hope that you’re not gonna fall over. … But it’s good fun.”
The tradition has been repeated over the centuries — not only in Olney but across England and even in the United States, where the Kansas town of Liberal copied the idea and has been trying to outrun their friendly British rivals for 75 years.
This year the U.S. leg won, with Pamela Bolivar, a 19-year-old college student and nursing assistant, crossing the line in a time of 63.03 seconds. It was one of the closest races ever.
The race is held the day before the start of Lent, the Christian period of repentance and sacrifice before Easter. Celebrated as Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday in other parts of the world, the name Shrove Tuesday derives from the English word meaning to seek forgiveness or be granted absolution.
If a secret recipe behind winning the race exists, it probably would call for a pinch of skill, a dash of athleticism and an extra scoop of whimsy. The competition falls somewhere between the Great British Bake Off and zany local pursuits such as the rough-and-tumble cheese wheel chase down Cooper’s Hill.
Runners must flip the pancake at the start and finish.
The 415-yard (380-meter) sprint itself may be a form of penance ahead of Lent.
Two Kansas sisters who competed in Liberal since they were children traveled to Olney this year to see where it all began.
“We’ve been talking about it for a long time,” said Amy Thompson, who painted her nails with British and American flags and, of course, pancakes. “We like those festival odd things and we decided to quit talking about it. It’s the 75th anniversary and … this would be the perfect time to come.”
Olney in Buckinghamshire, is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of London. Liberal is in southwest Kansas, just north of the Oklahoma state line and about 200 miles (320 kilometers) west of Wichita.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opens stone-built Hindu temple in UAE ahead of India’s elections
ABU MUREIKHA, United Arab Emirates | Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Middle East’s first traditional stone-built Hindu temple on Wednesday, internationalizing both his reelection campaign and his effort to push secular India into a Hindu state.
The trip to the BAPS Hindu Mandir just north of the city of Abu Dhabi capped Modi’s whistlestop tour of the United Arab Emirates during which the Indian leader embraced the UAE’s president, describing him as a brother and also spoke before a global leaders at a Dubai summit.
Modi is widely expected to win a third term as prime minister in the upcoming elections in India, the world’s largest democracy. But Modi’s policies and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party have raised concerns over India’s future, particularly for members of its Muslim minority as they have come under attack in recent years by Hindu nationalist groups.
That has made warming Indian relations with the Muslim-led Gulf Arab states crucial not only for India’s energy security and for millions of its expatriate workers in the region, but also its international standing.
“Every part of the time that God has given me and the body that God has given me are all for Mother India,” Modi told the crowd gathered at the temple, drawing rapturous cheers in what at times resembled a campaign stop.
Even Hindu priest Brahmaviharidas Swami, who helped build the temple, made a point to repeatedly praise Modi’s work, calling him “the most beloved prime minister perhaps that India has ever had.”
The temple in Abu Mureikha was built by the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha or BAPS, a worldwide religious and civic organization within the Swaminarayan sect. Modi has close ties to the organization.
Modi walked past the temple’s seven spires, a nod to the autocratic UAE’s seven sheikhdoms. He looked inside the temple, where earlier Wednesday a priest had consecrated the statues of deities, each worshipped by different Hindu denominations across India.
Modi waved to thousands gathered for the event, described as a Festival of Harmony. Children greeted Modi, others cheered as he toured the temple with priests.
“Today, the United Arab Emirates has written a golden chapter in human history,” Modi told the crowd. “A beautiful and divine temple is being inaugurated here. Many years of hard work have been involved behind this moment.”
Back in India, Modi in January opened a Hindu temple built on the ruins of a historic mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya.
That temple is dedicated to Hinduism’s Lord Ram and had been wanted by Hindus who describe it as restoring a religion suppressed by centuries of Mughal and British colonial rule. But the 1992 demolition of the mosque at the site trigged riots across India that killed 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.
Earlier Wednesday, Modi spoke before the World Governments Summit in Dubai, hosted by the city-state’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Much of the speech could be seen as a stump speech on the global stage, describing his years in power as pushing for “minimum government, maximum governance.”
“Over the years, the trust of the people of the country on the government of India has become stronger,” Modi said. “People have full faith in both the intentions and commitments of our government.”
“It is as a friend to the world that India is moving forward,” he said.
Modi’s personal touch on the trip, including embracing Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, seems aimed at further cementing ties with the UAE, an oil-rich country that supplies India’s energy needs while also serving as a home for some 3.5 million of his countrymen abroad. Modi at one point urged people to give Sheikh Mohammed a standing ovation at the event.
The relationship also underscores the Emirates’ realpolitik foreign policy. Modi received the Emirates’ top civilian honor in 2019 even as he stripped statehood from the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.
Notre Dame cathedral’s spire revealed in Paris as reconstruction continues after fire
PARIS | Scaffolding that shrouded the top of Notre Dame cathedral following a devastating fire in April 2019 is being removed, marking a milestone in its reconstruction.
As the shell at the summit has been taken down in recent days, it has revealed the cathedral’s new spire for the first time, adorned with a golden rooster and cross, offering a glimpse of the building’s expected appearance upon completion.
A resident near the cathedral, Frederico Benani, who witnessed the 2019 blaze, felt emotional Tuesday at seeing the spire once more.
“I can open the window in the morning. I see Notre Dame. I see the spire — it’s for me, beautiful and it’s much better (than) before,” Benani said. “It gives us hope.”
There has been anticipation among Paris residents as Notre Dame is on track to reopen Dec. 8. The cathedral will not be open to the public during the Paris Olympics in July and August, when the city will host millions for the Summer Games.
Much of the cathedral remains surrounded by scaffolding, which could take weeks if not months to remove. The spire alone, cathedral officials said, was protected by some 70,000 pieces of scaffolding, totaling a dizzying 600 tons.
In a symbol of resilience and renewal, a new golden rooster, reimagined as a phoenix with flaming feathers, was installed atop the spire in December, marking the cathedral’s rise from the ashes.
Other restoration efforts include the implementation of an anti-fire misting system beneath the cathedral’s roof and the recreation of the original cross.
After rough start, pope and Argentina’s Milei meet amid speculation
Francis might finally go home
ROME | Despite their rocky start, Argentina’s President Javier Milei and Pope Francis appeared to have hit it off as they held their first meeting Monday amid speculation that the Argentine pontiff might finally go home for a visit later this year.
The Vatican said the two men met for an hour and 10 minutes, an unusually long audience by Francis’ standards, especially given no translation was required. Vatican video showed a smiling Francis briefly grasping Milei’s arm for support as they walked to his desk at the start of their meeting.
Milei, who once called the pope an “imbecile,” gave Francis some of his favorite Argentine dulce de leche alfajor cookies and lemon biscuits. Francis presented him with the documents of his papacy and a medallion.
“One of the things that I’ve come to understand, among other things, is that the pope is the Argentine who is the most important person in the country,” Milei said in an interview broadcast Monday by Italy’s Retequattro.
A warm tone was already set the previous day, when Milei embraced Francis with a bear hug at the end of a Mass to declare Argentina’s first female saint. A beaming pope quipped, “You cut your hair!”
Milei’s office posted photos of the embrace on X and wrote: “May God bless Argentines and may the forces of heaven accompany us.”
It wasn’t always so. Milei, a self-proclaimed libertarian and anarcho-capitalist who is promising a wave of austerity measures to revive Argentina’s economy, described Francis as an “imbecile” during the election campaign that brought him to office. He called Francis “the representative of malignance on Earth.”
Francis, who has also lamented Argentina’s prolonged economic crisis, appeared to have forgiven him and brushed off the criticism as mere campaign rhetoric.
Milei said as much in his interview with Retequattro. Describing himself as a Catholic who also practices Jewish rituals, he said he now understood that Francis was the leader of the world’s Catholics and represents an important institution in a largely Catholic country like Argentina.
“As a result, I had to reconsider some positions, and starting from that moment, we began to build a positive relationship,” Milei was quoted as saying, according to excerpts of the interview.
As recently as last month the 87-year-old pontiff repeated his hope to visit Argentina later this year for the first time since his 2013 election. His decadelong absence from his homeland, despite having visited neighboring countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Chile during his pontificate, has befuddled Argentines and others alike.
Milei invited Francis to visit, and the country’s bishops have similarly pressed for him to finally come home.
“Regarding the pope, he is invited, he is Argentinian and he will come for sure but I don’t know when,” Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino told reporters when asked by reporters at the Italian foreign ministry.
The Vatican made no mention of a possible visit in a statement released after the Francis-Milei meeting. The statement, which focused only on Milei’s subsequent encounter with the Vatican secretary of state, said those talks covered the government’s “program to counter the economic crisis” as well as unspecified international conflicts.
Later Monday, Milei met with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and President Sergio Mattarella. Meloni wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that they discussed boosting economic ties in the energy, infrastructure and agroalimentary industries.
Milei had reason to be pleased going into the audience. Overnight, Israeli forces freed two hostages with Argentine citizenship who had been kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7. Milei arrived in Rome last Friday after a visit to Israel where he spent time with the Argentine community.
In a message on X, his office thanked Israeli forces for the rescue.
—From AP reports
