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Saudi Literature Commission Honors Sponsors, Winners of Riyadh International Book Fair Awards

LPTC honored the winners of the Riyadh International Book Fair 2024 awards at King Saud University. SPA
LPTC honored the winners of the Riyadh International Book Fair 2024 awards at King Saud University. SPA
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Saudi Literature Commission Honors Sponsors, Winners of Riyadh International Book Fair Awards

LPTC honored the winners of the Riyadh International Book Fair 2024 awards at King Saud University. SPA
LPTC honored the winners of the Riyadh International Book Fair 2024 awards at King Saud University. SPA

The Literature, Publishing, and Translation Commission (LPTC) has honored the winners of the Riyadh International Book Fair 2024 awards at King Saud University.
Saturday’s ceremony began with a speech by General Manager of LPTC Dr. AbdulLatif Al-Wasil, during which he emphasized the importance of the fair and its partners in promoting culture and supporting the publishing industry in the Kingdom.

Al-Wasil praised all the participating publishing houses at the Riyadh International Book Fair for their contributions to the publishing industry in the Kingdom through this significant cultural event.
Following this, CEO of LPTC Dr. Mohammed Hasan Al-Awan honored the sponsors of the Riyadh International Book Fair 2024, the winners of this year’s fair awards, and representatives from the "Cultural Channel," the fair's sponsor. He also honored CASHIN, the technical sponsor of the fair, which played a key role in providing innovative technical solutions that facilitated payment and purchasing experiences, contributing to the fair's success.
Al-Awan recognized the winners of the fair's awards for this year. The "Excellence in Publishing" award for children's literature was awarded to Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press for its contributions to future generations, specifically for its efforts in providing content that enriches children's minds and encourages them to read and learn.
The "Excellence in Publishing" award for digital platforms was presented to Dar Jabal Amman Publishers for its role in leveraging digital platforms to disseminate knowledge and reach a wider audience in innovative ways.
The "Excellence in Publishing" award for translation went to Aser Al-Kotob for its role in building bridges of communication between languages and peoples and transferring thought and knowledge from one culture to another.
The "Excellence in Publishing" award, which supports and encourages local creativity and is given for outstanding Saudi content that reflects the country's rich culture and heritage, was awarded to Tatheer Publishing and Distribution.

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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.”