KAPSARC, KSGAAL Launch 3rd Edition of KAPSARC Arabic Award

KAPSARC, KSGAAL Launch 3rd Edition of KAPSARC Arabic Award
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KAPSARC, KSGAAL Launch 3rd Edition of KAPSARC Arabic Award

KAPSARC, KSGAAL Launch 3rd Edition of KAPSARC Arabic Award

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), in partnership with the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language (KSGAAL), announced on Sunday that submissions for this year's 3rd edition of the KAPSARC Arabic Award will be open until October 31.

The award aims to enrich Arabic content in energy, economics, and the environment. For the first time, it will target graduate students at Saudi universities and Saudi authors and translators residing in the Kingdom. It will also include professionals from the Saudi energy sector, continuing the focus from previous editions.

This year's award theme is environmental, social, and governance sustainability standards in the energy sector, a crucial topic both locally and globally. This theme aligns with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 goals and aims to support and bolster scientific writing in Arabic. The top winners in each category will receive cash prizes totaling SAR320,000.

President of KAPSARC Eng. Fahad Alajlan emphasized that the award supports Saudi Arabia's efforts to value and elevate the Arabic language, boosting its presence in various scientific and intellectual fields. It also aims to cement KAPSARC's role as a beacon of innovation and knowledge dissemination in energy, economics, and environmental studies.

KSGAAL Secretary-General Dr. Abdullah Al-Washmi stressed that the academy is pleased to recognize and promote the diverse efforts of Saudis in serving and elevating the Arabic language. This collaboration targets researchers, creators, and enthusiasts to acknowledge their achievements and encourage further innovation and usage of the language.

KAPSARC is a leading research and consulting center in energy economics and sustainability. It is dedicated to advancing the energy sector in Saudi Arabia and guiding global policies through evidence-based research and specialized consulting services.

KSGAAL was established to boost the role of the Arabic language regionally and globally, showcasing its value within the broader Arabic and Islamic cultural context and contributing to the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.



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.”