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Saudi Arabia, Qatar Seek to Boost Cultural Cooperation

The meeting was chaired by Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan and his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani. SPA
The meeting was chaired by Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan and his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani. SPA
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Saudi Arabia, Qatar Seek to Boost Cultural Cooperation

The meeting was chaired by Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan and his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani. SPA
The meeting was chaired by Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan and his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani. SPA

The Culture, Tourism and Entertainment Committee of the Saudi-Qatari Coordination Council held on Monday its first meeting at the Riyadh International Book Fair.

The meeting was chaired by Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan and his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani.

The committee members discussed the committee's achievements, its objectives and initiatives in the cultural, tourism, and entertainment domains, and issued several recommendations aimed at boosting cooperation between the two countries.

The two countries have close ties and strive to boost cooperation and integration, in line with the Saudi Vision 2030 and Qatar's National Vision 2030.
The two ministers also toured the fair, where Qatar is the guest of honor.

Some 2,000 publishing houses from 30 countries are taking part in this year's fair, which brings together local and international writers, publishers, and readers, promoting cultural exchange and knowledge sharing.

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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.”