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King Salman Academy for Arabic Signs MoU with Al-Farabi Kazakh National University

The MoU aims to enhance cooperation in promoting the Arabic language. SPA
The MoU aims to enhance cooperation in promoting the Arabic language. SPA
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King Salman Academy for Arabic Signs MoU with Al-Farabi Kazakh National University

The MoU aims to enhance cooperation in promoting the Arabic language. SPA
The MoU aims to enhance cooperation in promoting the Arabic language. SPA

The King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language (KSGAAL) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Tuesday in Almaty with Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (KAZNU).
The MoU aims to enhance cooperation in promoting the Arabic language, teaching it in various fields, preserving its integrity, supporting its use in line with the objectives of the Human Capability Development Program -- one of the initiatives for achieving the Saudi Vision 2030 -- and fulfilling KSGAAL’s strategic goals.
The signing of this agreement follows the Saudi cabinet’s July 23 approval to authorize Minister of Culture and KSGAAL chairman of the board of trustees Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan Al Saud, or his deputy, to negotiate with the Kazakh side on a MoU regarding the promotion of the Arabic language between KSGAAL and KAZNU, and to sign it.
The signing took place during the KSGAAL delegation’s trip to Kazakhstan, which included visits to several universities, centers, and institutions to assess the status of the Arabic language and explore avenues for collaboration in teaching and promoting it.
KSGAAL serves as a global reference for the Arabic language and its advancement, leveraging its institutional expertise in teaching Arabic to non-native speakers.
The MoU covers several areas of collaboration, including implementing the Arabic Language Proficiency Test (ALPT) for non-native speakers, developing educational materials and modern curricula related to the Arabic language, and conducting specialized studies and research in the field of Arabic language teaching and learning.
The MoU also includes areas such as the computational linguistics of the Arabic language, the development of digital dictionaries, and the creation of Arabic-Kazakh linguistic corpora. Additionally, it involves sharing language services and consultations in areas of mutual interest.

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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.”