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Saudi Arabia Participates in UNESCO's 42nd General Conference in Paris

Minister of Culture and Chairman of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan is leading Saudi Arabia's delegation to the 42nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris between November 7 and 22. (SPA)
Minister of Culture and Chairman of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan is leading Saudi Arabia's delegation to the 42nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris between November 7 and 22. (SPA)
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Saudi Arabia Participates in UNESCO's 42nd General Conference in Paris

Minister of Culture and Chairman of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan is leading Saudi Arabia's delegation to the 42nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris between November 7 and 22. (SPA)
Minister of Culture and Chairman of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan is leading Saudi Arabia's delegation to the 42nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris between November 7 and 22. (SPA)

Minister of Culture and Chairman of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan is leading Saudi Arabia's delegation to the 42nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO, held in Paris between November 7 and 22.

The delegation includes representatives of the ministries of culture and education, the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority, and other national authorities.

Delivering the Kingdom’s speech at the conference, Prince Badr reviewed the achievements the Kingdom, in cooperation with UNESCO, accomplished in the past two years in the field of education, science and culture.

Minister of Education and Vice-Chairman of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science Yousef Al-Benyan will deliver a speech at the ministerial session concerned with revising UNESCO's 1974 Draft Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Cooperation and Peace and Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom.

The Saudi delegation is participating in several meetings and committees tackling culture, education, science, communication and information, programs and external relations, as well as several other topics, including UNESCO budget for 2024 and 2025, and the Human Resources Strategy for UNESCO in the period 2023-2027.

Various other Saudi entities are taking part in the events associated with the current session of the conference to showcase the Kingdom's achievements in line with Saudi Vision 2030. Among them is the Royal Commission for AlUla, which has a pavilion highlighting its partnership with UNESCO in conserving heritage, education, building capacity, environment and creative arts.

The Ministry of Culture is participating in the Partners' Forum, organized by UNESCO on the sidelines of the General Conference, to feature the six projects it launched in collaboration with UNESCO through the Saudi Cultural Development Fund.

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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”