World datelines

Kenya: Freed hostages

NAIROBI — Two foreign journalists freed after 15 months in captivity in Somalia have been receiving medical care in neighboring Kenya, Canada's ambassador said.

Canadian Amanda Lindhout and Australian Nigel Brennan flew out of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in a chartered plane early Thursday. Later in the day, Lindhout and Brennan arrived in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and were taken to a hospital.

"They are receiving the best possible care they can," Ross Hynes, Canada's ambassador to Kenya, told The Associated Press. He declined to give more details. Brennan is reported to have said he was pistol-whipped and locked in chains for months during the time he was held hostage.

Lindhout and Brennan were released on Wednesday.

Brazil: Amazon cost

MANAUS — Brazil's president said Thursday that "gringos" should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation, insisting rich Western nations have caused much more past environmental destruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in the world's largest tropical rain forest.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the comments just before an Amazon summit in which delegates signed a declaration calling for financial help from the industrial world to halt the deforestation that causes global warming.

Canada: Climate

TORONTO — Canada's prime minister is reversing his position and will attend a United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen next month, Stephen Harper's spokesman said Thursday.

Dimitri Soudas announced Harper decided to attend one day after U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced their attendance at the U.N. talks. Soudas said Harper's decision was based on the fact that now "a critical mass of world leaders will be attending."

Haiti: Party banned

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti's electoral council has banned the influential party of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from next year's legislative elections.

The Fanmi Lavalas party, which remains a major party with support from the capital's urban poor, is among 17 groups barred from February's elections because they submitted improper documents. The list includes the Lespwa movement that formed around President Rene Preval when he ran for president in 2004.

Saudi Arabia: Hajj

MOUNT ARAFAT — Muslim pilgrims holding white umbrellas against the blazing sun clambered up a rocky desert hill for prayers Thursday during the annual hajj, a day after torrential rains that killed at least 77 people.

Flooding from the unusually heavy downpours hit hardest in the Red Sea coastal city of Jiddah, about 40 miles away from the holy city of Mecca and its surrounding sacred sites where the 3 million Muslims from around the world were performing the rites of the pilgrimage.

Most of the deaths occurred in the shantytowns around Jiddah and along the main highway to Mecca. It did not immediately appear that any pilgrims were among the dead.