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With more than 20,000 students, the Islamic University of Madinah has become a meeting place for the world’s diverse cultures.
The Islamic University of Madinah has entered the Guinness World Records for the second time for having more than 170 nationalities in its student body.
Talal Omar, the MENA director of the records reference book, handed the framed certificate bearing the new world record to the president of the university, Prince Dr. Mamdouh bin Saud bin Thunayan Al-Saud, in Madinah this week.
Opened by royal decree in 1961, the university first broke the record in 2016, but has overcome its own standard with another expansion in nationalities.
With more than 20,000 students studying in nine faculties, the Islamic university has become a meeting place for the world’s diverse cultures.
The Saudi government offers students from around the world full scholarships that cover the entire cost of education, accommodation and transportation.
Notable alumni include Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, the grand mufti of Lebanon; Sheikh Khaled Hafiz, former advisor to the Muslim minority in New Zealand; Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick, Canadian scholar and historian; Prince Saud bin Abdul Rahman bin Nasser, deputy governor of the Northern Borders region; Sheikh Mishary Al-Afasy, famous Qur’an reciter who is a specialist in the 10 readings; and Dr. Mohamed Jallow, a Senegalese Islamic preacher and author.
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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Prince Dr. Mamdouh bin Saud bin Thunayan Al-Saud (right), president of the Islamic University of Madinah, receiving the award from Talal Omar, MENA director of Guinness World Records. (Supplied)
Olympian Athlete Nazareth Woldu registered new record finishing the race in 21 minutes and 28 seconds at the Seoul International Marathon (Daegu) that was held today, 03 April in Seoul, South Korea.
Athlete Nazareth improves the record that was held by herself with 7 minutes.
Moreover, Olympian Athlete Nazareth has improved the 10 km national record that was held by Athlete Simret Sultan since 2006.
Athlete Nazareth has also improved her national marathon record for the fourth time including at the Beirut Marathon 2018, Gold-Coast Marathon 2019, Australia, Milano Marathon 2021 and at this year’s Seoul Marathon 2022.
According to her coach, Livingston Abraha, Athlete Nazareth is preparing to take part at the International Athletics competition that will be held this year in the United States.
The Mereb Setit Athletics Training Center has produced many Olympian Athletes including Nazareth Woldu and Rahel Daniel.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Information, Eritrea.
Women referees will officiate matches at the men’s World Cup for the first time in Qatar this year, the sport’s governing body FIFA announced on Thursday.
Three women referees and three women assistant referees will be part of the global showpiece event in Qatar, which will be held from Nov. 21 to Dec. 18.
Referees Stephanie Frappart from France, Salima Mukansanga from Rwanda and Japan’s Yoshimi Yamashita, as well as assistant referees Neuza Back from Brazil, Karen Diaz Medina from Mexico and American Kathryn Nesbitt have all been called up.
A total of 36 referees, 69 assistant referees and 24 video match officials have been chosen by FIFA for the tournament.
“This concludes a long process that began several years ago with the deployment of female referees at FIFA men’s junior and senior tournaments,” said Pierluigi Collina, FIFA Referees Committee chairman.
“They deserve to be at the FIFA World Cup because they constantly perform at a really high level, and that’s the important factor for us.
“As always, the criteria we have used is ‘quality first’ and the selected match officials represent the highest level of refereeing worldwide.”
Frappart became the first female official to be involved in European Championship matches after UEFA included her in the list of referees for the tournament last year.
Cairo witnessed the seventh edition of the Cairo International Biennale of the Arabic Calligraphy Art under the auspices of Minister of Culture Ines Abdel-Dayem at the premises of Cairo Opera House.
Under the slogan ‘Pioneers and Renovators in 100 years (1922/2022)’, the biennale included a three-day seminar that ran from 6 to 9 June at El-Hanager Cinema that highlighted the most prominent figures of Arabic Calligraphy in Egypt and the Arab world as well as an art exhibition showcasing artistic gems of this Art from 125 countries represented by 15 artists at the Art Palace in the Cairo Opera House Complex that is running from 7 to 20 June.
Furthermore, the event established a new tradition of honouring artists and researchers for their achievements, and a side competition was held in the name of renowned Egyptian calligrapher Khedr El-Portsaidy — the founder of the Arabic Calligraphy Museum as well as the one who accredits and certifies Arabic calligraphers in Egypt.
In the opening session, Mohamed El-Baghdady — the general commissioner of the biennale — noted that this year marks the centenary jubilee of the establishment of Egypt’s first calligraphy school during the reign of king Fouad in 1922.
The session also included the presentation of a research paper written by Nahla Imam — country representative of Egypt at the 2003 Convention of Safeguarding the Intangible Heritage of UNESCO — who shared her experience in adding Arabic calligraphy knowledge, skills, and practice on UNESCO’s representative list of intangible cultural heritage in December 2021.
Mohamed Hassan Abu El-Khair — the first to innovate the ‘mashq’
The second day of sessions showcased the pioneers and renovators of such enchanting art.
The first paper was presented by researcher and calligrapher Mohamed El-Shafaai on passing down the practice of such art in Egypt, taking the family of Mohamed and Abdel-Aziz Abu El-Khair as an example, as the two are renowned Egyptian calligraphers that this year’s round was dedicated to.
He started off by revealing that the concept of passing down this form of art dates back to the pre-Islamic era, explaining that the initial idea behind Arabic calligraphy was transcription, and then the artistic element came later.
“During the pre-Islamic era, except for a small circle, very little knew how to write Arabic, and according to Abdalla Ibn Abbas, the first person to begin writing in Arabic in the tribe of Qureish was Harb Ibn Umaya — one of the masters of the tribe and the father of Sufian Ibn Harb.
The other key person in calligraphy art was El-Wazir Ibn Noqla, who was famous during the Abbasid Caliphate and inherited the art from his father El-Ali Ibn Hassan, explained El-Shafaai.
Mohamed Hassan Abu El-Khair was born in Cairo in 1921, he studied in Al-Azhar and then joined The School of Improving Calligraphy when he was only 17, where he was the top of his class and was taught by calligraphy masters such as Sheikh Fakhr El-Din, Sheikh Ali Badawi, and Mohamed Hosni El-Baba — the father of iconic Egyptian actress Soad Hosni to name but a few.
He excelled in El-Sulus and Reqaa calligraphy and soon became a professor of the art of calligraphy at Oum El-Qoura University in Mecca for 20 years.
“He was the first to innovate in the mashq (an educational manual technique) of the solos of Arabic calligraphy that are taught to fourth graders, where he started teaching students to write whole sentences from the beginning instead of focusing on letters with no context,” El-Shafaai added.
Abdel-Qader Al-Shihabi — the calligrapher of the Palestinian government
The second paper focused on Abdel-Qader Al-Shihabi — a Palestinian calligrapher — that was written by Farag Hussieny. Al-Shihabi is a renowned Palestinian calligrapher whose fame reached its peak during the first half of the 20th century and was known as the ‘calligrapher of the Palestinian government.’
“Born and raised in Jerusalem, Abdel-Qader Al-Shihabi comes from a long line of calligraphers that started off this art between the 12th and 14th year of the Hijri calendar, however, Al-Shihabi learned calligraphy in Istanbul at the hand of Mohamed Ezzat, the biggest artist. He was known for his suluth calligraphy, which decorates the walls of Al-Aqsa Mosque to date. He also spent all his life teaching calligraphy in Jerusalem and encouraging young artists to follow his passion,” explained Hussieny.
Abdalla Al Zohdi: the calligrapher of Al-Haramein Al-Sharifine
The third paper covered the ‘calligrapher of Al-Haramein Al-Sharifine(The Two Holy Mosques) Abdalla Al-Zohdi and was written by Sami Saleh Abdel-Malak.
“Born in Nablus, Abdalla Al-Zohdi was born around 1251. His family moved to Istanbul, where he studied and excelled in calligraphy at a very early age. His artistic fame made him the official calligrapher of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, where his calligraphy adorns the walls and ceilings of the mosque till now,” the paper explained,
“During the reign of khedive Ismail, he was commissioned to write the calligraphy of the Keswa of the Kaaba and Mahmal. His implacable calligraphy was quite visible and stood out in the design of the keswa from that day onwards. He was known by his highly complex and geometric Sulus calligraphy.”
Al Salam Veterinary Hospital’s main business will be breeding a new generation of humped superstars.
A version of this article was first published in September 2020
Saudi Arabia is already known as a destination for camel beauty pageants. Now, it wants to be known for camel healthcare, too.
The country opened the world’s largest camel hospital in July 2020 and photographs show what daily life is like inside.
At 70,000 square metres, Al Salam Veterinary Hospital is about the size of Buckingham Palace and a little smaller than the island of Alcatraz.
The centre cost more than Dh134 million but camel racing and pageantry are sports for princes and sheikhs in which a single camel can fetch Dh10 million at the height of pageantry season.
The hospital lies in the interior Qassim region between Madinah and Riyadh, at the site of one of the world’s largest camel markets, and will serve camel owners in Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia.
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The nearest comparable clinics are about 1,000 kilometres away in other Gulf states. Travelling hundreds of kilometres and crossing borders is part of the racing and pageantry lifestyle but the coronavirus pandemic has made this impossible, even as local competitions continue.
Al Salam Veterinary Hospital can treat 144 camels, has stables for 400 racing camels and will employ up to 300 staff ready to meet a camel’s every need, from surgery to accommodation and blood testing.
Camels can be treated for infectious disease, injuries and chronic illness at the hospital, but its main business will be fertilisation.
The hospital has already conducted more than 500 embryo transfers, resulting in 350 successful pregnancies.
Vets plan to transfer 2,500 embryos next season, an ambitious amount by camel-breeding standards.
Embryo transfer has led to some of the biggest names in the world of camel racing.
A camel pregnancy lasts two years, which previously meant female racers could produce a few offspring only after retiring from the racetrack.
The advancement of camel surrogacy has meant prized female racers can now pass winning genes on to dozens of calves in one year.
This has transformed the world of racing and made some she-camels as renowned as studs.
Al Samha, from Abu Dhabi, is one such cow known for her prolific progeny.
The best-known breeding centres, such as the Advanced Scientific Group in Abu Dhabi, attract pedigree champs from around the Gulf.
Scientific advances continue to be made in camel fertilisation and breeding programmes.
The camel’s adaptation to the desert has led to a unique set of challenges in artificial insemination .
The animal is so good at conserving water that it produces only 3ml to 8ml of gel-like semen, a fraction compared with that of similarly sized animals such as horses. It freezes poorly.
It was only in 2018 that the first calves were born to females fertilised by frozen semen at Dubai Camel Breeding Centre.
Similar scientific breakthroughs at the Saudi hospital could change the very shape and size of future camels.
The UAE won the Grand Prix of the Canton of Aargau, Switzerland, yesterday June 10th.
The Emirati squad had strength in numbers in the final with Diego Ulissi and Matteo Trentin covering moves before Marc Hirschi infiltrated the winning break which slipped away at 7km to go.
The 23-year old hit out early from the four man group to open up the sprint at 250m to go to hold off Max Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Andreas Kron (Lotto-Soudal) who finished on the podium.
“It was really very difficult”, said Marc Hirsch. “The final was very eventful, because a rider from AG2R Citroën has long been in the lead. In the last climb, it went very quickly behind him, but I was able to accompany in force. Then I was able to close the gap with three guys who had escaped. It was very hard”. In the end, it was a group of 7 which formed 6 terminals from the line, and the winner of the Fleche Wallonne 2020 maneuvered well to finish in the sprint.
In raising the trophy he becomes the first home winner of the race since 2013.
This result marks Hirschi’s second win of the season after storming to victory at the Per Sempre Alfredo classic in April.
Youssra Zekrani took home a silver medal after reaching the final stage of Africa’s Fencing Championship in Casablanca.
Zekrani reached the final stages of the continental tournament, before losing to Egyptian contestant Noura Mhamad, earning her the silver medal.
In the game against the Egyptian, Zekrani lost by nine points to 15.
Zekrani, who ranked as the 91st best player in the world, faced and eliminated Algeria’s Chaymae Nihar Kamar and Egypt’s Yara Charkaoui in the quarterfinals.
While facing Algeria’s Kamar, the Moroccan athlete won by an impressive margin of 15 to 10. She equally scored a no less impressive score against Egypt’s Charkaoui, winning with nine to 15.
This is not the first time Zekrani makes national headlines for winning a tournament. The Moroccan athlete brought home a bronze medal at the 2016 African Championships. She competed at the Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil.
More than two years later, Zekrani claimed another bronze medal at the African Games in 2019.
This year’s fencing tournament in Casablanca saw the participation of several other Moroccan female contestants, including Manal Kermaoui and Ilham Belefkih.
The Casablanca tournament took place on June 15-19, under the patronage of Morocco’s King Mohammed VI. It saw the participation of athletes from across the continent, with 233 registered participants.
If you never realized that Alia Shawkat has Arab heritage, there’s a reason for that: The Iraqi-American actress — who has been stealing pretty much every scene she has appeared in since 1999, when she was 10 years old — rose to fame at a time when Hollywood was much less receptive to non-white identities.
Now, though, the 33-year-old star is entering the next phase of her career, one in which her heritage will be front and center.
“It’s interesting, because when I started acting, I always had to say I was half-whatever the role was. I would say I was half-Spanish, or half-French, just trying to blend in. I was always seen as ‘too ethnic’ when I was young,” Shawkat tells Arab News. “Now my ethnicity is a strength, because the conversation is shifting. It’s funny to watch actors actually talk about where they’re coming from, or playing roles that they’re actually connected to, when I grew up having to basically hide it.”
Not that it ever slowed Shawkat down. While she is perhaps still best-known for playing Maeby Fünke on the acclaimed cult comedy “Arrested Development,” which also reinvigorated or launched the careers of Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Michael Cera and Tony Hale, she has been an inimitable presence across dozens of acclaimed independent films, before becoming the star and a key creative voice in the series “Search Party” (2016-2022), a pitch-black comedy and noir crime drama hybrid that defines Shawkat’s unique spirit better than anything has thus far.
She didn’t have to search too hard to find inspiration for the show. “My father is Middle Eastern, and he owns a club in Palm Springs. So that’s the show,” she deadpanned to the New Yorker last fall.
While “Desert People” will tackle that by putting Arab characters at its center, Shawkat took “The Old Man” in part because of the way that it, too, dives into righting some of the wrongs that were committed in the post-9/11 landscape.
The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 LLC (Q22) – the operational arm of FIFA and the Host Country for the delivery of the tournament – has achieved ISO 20121 certification, the international standard that sets requirements for developing and implementing an effective management system to deliver a sustainable event.
The certification was granted after an extensive audit process that was initiated during the FIFA Arab Cup Qatar 2021 – which was held exactly a year before the first FIFA World Cup in the Middle East and Arab world.
Nasser Al Khater, CEO, Q22, said: “Sustainability has been at the heart of Qatar 2022 from the start, and the independent recognition of the delivery of best practices reflects our enduring commitment to it.
José Retana, Sustainability Senior Manager, Q22, said: “We are proud to become the first FIFA World Cup in history to obtain the ISO 20121 certification. This demonstrates that according to the evaluation by a third-party accredited entity, world-class management practices are being implemented to deliver an inclusive, green and legacy-oriented event.”
SGS carried out the extensive audit process. It is a world-leading testing, inspection and certification company that has a wealth of experience in certifying mega-sport event organisers against ISO 20121 requirements, including the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the French Open tennis tournament.
Sustainability management mechanisms assessed during the FIFA Arab Cup™ audit included:
Accessibility infrastructure and services for disabled fans, including seating, mobility assistance and innovative features such as audio descriptive commentary
Waste minimisation and recycling, including staff training, segregation and awareness-raising activities carried out with the support of sustainability volunteers
Sustainable procurement of items required for the delivery of the tournament, including uniforms made from recycled plastics and the use of compostable food packaging
Social and environmental audits to ensure supplier compliance with the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ Sustainable Sourcing Code
Incident reporting and resolution during tournament time, including governance arrangements and gathering of lessons learned
Chris Meakin, General Manager of SGS Qatar, said: “The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 has effectively applied and demonstrated best practices under the framework of the Event Sustainability Management System (ISO 20121) to manage the event successfully. They have met the set benchmarks for global sustainability development and to control the event’s social, economic and environmental impact.”
For the third year in a row, the Public Works Authority (Ashghal), represented by the Roads Projects Department (RPD), won nine international safety awards from the British Safety Council (BSC) for the Local Areas Infrastructure Programme projects during 2021.
The awards include the Roads and Infrastructure Project in Umm Slal (Package 1), Roads and Infrastructure in South of Al Meshaf (Package 3), Roads and Infrastructure in Al Ebb and Leabaib (Package 2), Roads and Infrastructure in Umm Ebairiya Village, South Umm Al Amad, and North Bu Fesseela (Package 1), Roads and Infrastructure in North and East Al-Kheesa (Package 2), Roads and Infrastructure in Al Kharaitiyat and Izghawa (Package 3), and Roads and Infrastructure in Al Wajba East (Packages 1 & 3) in addition to the Roads and Infrastructure Project in South Al-Meshaf (Package 7) and Roads and Infrastructure Project in North of Ain Khaled received International Safety Award.
It is noteworthy that in 2021, RPD conducted 1440 focused worker welfare inspections, obtained licenses from the Ministry of Public Health for 14 worker clinics and managed to get around 26977 workers medically screened for chronic diseases. This keen attention to implement top operational Health and Safety standards led RPD to achieve an Accident Frequency Rate (AFR) of 0.10 for the 88.7 million-man hours worked in 2021. This reflects both the magnitude of work handled by the department and its commitment to health and safety and workers’ welfare on its project sites.
Eng. Saoud Al Tamimi, RPD Manager, said: “Winning nine international health and safety awards for the third year successively, after winning 4 awards in 2020, and 3 in 2019, which were presented to the new and existing subdivisions projects, reflects Ashghal’s commitment to maintain health and safety in its construction projects, and the leading position which the Authority plays in the Qatari construction industry in terms of spreading awareness and best Health and Safety practices.”
Eng. Al Tamimi also pointed out that “having Ashghal’s projects continuously winning safety awards from international institutions is an acknowledgment of the high level of safety in the Public Works Authority’s projects and a proof of its keenness to safeguard the workers’ health and lives, as safety is an important pillar of Ashghal’s project implementation strategy, and a culture that Ashghal strives to spread and uphold.”
Now in their 64th year, the International Safety Awards recognize and celebrate organizations from around the world which have demonstrated to the satisfaction of the scheme’s independent judges their commitment to preventing workplace injuries and work-related ill health during the previous calendar year.
Mike Robinson, Chief Executive of the British Safety Council, congratulated Ashghal on their success in winning the awards, saying, “The British Safety Council applauds all winning projects on their achievement. The award is in recognition of their commitment and hard work to keep their employees and workplaces free of injury and ill health. The vision of British Safety Council is that no-one should be injured or made ill through their work – anywhere in the world. Achieving this requires more than complying with legislation; it means people committed not only to health and safety but also more and more to workplace wellbeing and impelling others to follow suit.”
source/content: thepeninsulaqatar.com (edited)
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Eng. Saoud Al Tamimi, Roads Projects Department Manager at Ashghal.
