NAIROBI, Kenya (AP):
FROM NORTHERN Portugal to the heart of Africa crowds gathered yesterday on rooftops, hilltops and in city squares for a rare chance to see a spectacular kind of solar eclipse.
In Nairobi, people prayed when the moon masked the sun like a black plate, leaving a bright rim, and in Madrid, people cheered at Spain's first sight of an annular eclipse in more than two centuries.
"It may be a sign of the end of the world or some other great disaster. This is what we believe," said 82-year-old Tigray tribesman Tebared Tsegahun in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
"I don't know what you members of the new generation say about it," he said, but "We will keep praying to survive the danger that will come after it."
Most of Ethiopia's 70 million people were not aware the spectacle was coming. An FM radio station announced it a couple of hours before the event - not long enough for the news to spread.
The eclipse travelled along a narrow band across almost half the planet. After a three-and-a-half-hour stretch traversing northern Portugal and Spain, it moved south across mostly deserted parts of Africa, encompassing Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
