The King Saud University has been recognized as a global leader in the field of Ramadan fasting and health research, according to a statement from the university.
The study, published in the Journal of Religion and Health, provides a comprehensive investigation of the world literature in this field.
He highlighted the significant contributions and influence of the university. This discovery is helping to perceive the implications and benefits of fasting in Ramadan for physical health.
Professor Ahmed Bahammam, a leading figure in lung diseases and sleep at the Faculty of Medicine and University Medical City, has been known as the most prolific researcher in this field in the world.
His extensive paintings have contributed greatly to the global intersection between devout practices, such as the Ramadan fast.
This recognition underscores King Saud University’s commitment to pioneering research that bridges religious practices and health, offering valuable insights to millions who observe Ramadan worldwide.
A team of Saudi researchers from the King Abdullah Children’s Specialist Hospital (KACSH) and the King Abdullah International Medical Research Centre (KAIMRC) discovered Alfadhel syndrome, a new genetic disorder named after Professor Majid Alfadhel, head of the study team.
Heavy rains lashed parts of eastern Australia on Monday, causing flash flooding, flooding roads and causing even more suffering to some citizens rocked by the intense storms that hit the region over the Christmas holidays.
Parts of northeastern New South Wales and southeastern Queensland were hit by wild weather overnight, with several cities receiving about a month’s worth of rain over 24 hours into Monday morning.
Even heavier rainfall is forecast Tuesday morning, with totals expected to exceed 250 mm (9. 8 inches), more than the January average.
“This scenario remains damaging and dynamic,” Miriam Bradbury, a forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology, said in a video message on social media platform X. “This locally intense rainfall will most likely occur with thunderstorms today and could potentially lead to life-threatening flash flooding.
Queensland’s popular Gold Coast tourist domain is among the hardest hit, with photographs circulating on social media showing cars stuck on flooded roads and underwater lowlands.
“If you don’t have to pass out today, stay home,” Gold Coast City Mayor Tom Tate said at a news conference.
Thousands of residents in Queensland are still without power after thunderstorms on Dec. 25 and 26 uprooted trees and knocked down power lines. Authorities said the latest storms could delay reconnection efforts.
A family of four, trapped after rapidly rising rivers submerged their caravan park in northern New South Wales, were successfully rescued.
Sydney and Auckland were the first cities in the world to ring in 2024, with more than a million revelers applauding the stunning fireworks that lit up the skies over Sydney Harbour and Sydney’s tallest structure. New Zealand, the Sky Tower.
In Auckland, the gentle rain that had fallen throughout the day had dissipated as expected until midnight in the city of 1. 7 million people before the countdown began on an illuminated virtual screen near the most sensitive point of the 328-meter (1,076-foot) communication tower.
London’s Big Ben on Sunday celebrates the centenary of its New Year’s Eve bongs, which are broadcast around the world.
Ever since New Year’s Eve 1923, when BBC engineer A. G. Dryland climbed onto a roof in front of the British Parliament to record strikes and livestream an annual tradition.
The incomparable sound of the “nation’s clock” has occupied a special place in national life.
The bongs are heard twice a day (at 6pm and three times on Sundays) on BBC radio, as well as at the start of the late-night News at Ten programme on the advertising channel ITV.
Their importance is such that even in the recently completed five-year recovery programme, which was largely muted, vital exceptions were made.
In addition to New Year’s Eve, Big Ben also continued to celebrate Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday, when the country remembers its war dead.
Big Ben rang to mark Britain’s exit from the European Union in 2021 and Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral in 2022.
After a week of testing, normal service finally resumed last November.
While the rest of London is on New Year’s Eve, watch mechanic Andrew Strangeway will be atop the 315-foot (96-meter) Elizabeth Tower.
The tower houses the clock and its five bells, the largest of which is nicknamed Big Ben.
Along with the other two members of the in-house timing team, the 37-year-old will be performing last-minute stopwatch checks that will be “fractions of a moment away from being correct. “
Although the chances of fate changing on the big night are minimal, Strangeway said the watch suffered a crisis in the 1970s when it stopped due to steel fatigue.
“I think the chances of anything going seriously wrong are small. Our main worry on things like New Year is — is it going to go off and is it going to be on time,” he said.
Completed in 1859, the design is known as the Clock Tower before being renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to honour the Queen’s expired Diamond Jubilee.
In the years leading up to the renewal, Parliament timed the time on the Great Clock with that on the telephone clock.
It is now calibrated using GPS at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory.
But the method of adjusting the clock’s timing mechanism is still outdated: old coins are added or removed using weights attached to two giant coil springs, to gain or lose a second.
“It’s a fantastic job,” Strangeway told AFP, adding that even when he was travelling in London he looked for Big Ben and thought “yes, it still works”.
He said he was very excited to be “right next to the bells. . . at this time when everyone is waiting for the start of the new year. “
As the glowing river of lava from a volcano that erupted last week in Iceland receded, not everyone is happy.
Hazel Lane, a 49-year-old dental practice manager in London, had booked a ticket to Reykjavik as soon as she saw footage of the eruption on television, hoping to witness spectacular lava flows beneath molten red skies.
Lane had already been to Iceland last month, but it was too soon. Although the government had already evacuated about 4,000 citizens from the nearby city of Grindavik, it took weeks before the volcano, located about 40 km southwest of Reykjavik, erupted in December. 18.
“I had a crazy notion of going to Reykjavik for the day to fly over the volcanic eruption,” Lane said. She arrived with her son and his girlfriend on Dec. 22 to find that lava flows had already diminished.
“We are disappointed that the volcanic activity has stopped, but we will still have a day in Reykjavik. “
Lane may not have to wait long before the next eruption. Iceland, which is roughly the length of the U. S. state of Kentucky and has a population of less than 400,000, has more than 30 active volcanoes.
That makes the north European island a prime destination for volcano tourism – a niche segment that attracts thousands of thrill seekers every year to sites from Mexico and Guatemala, to Sicily, Indonesia and New Zealand.
Declining activity at the volcano near Grindavik has eased fears of a repeat of the chaos caused by ash from the first eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano on the island in 2010.
But for local excursion corporations planning to bring hikers to the site, it’s a missed opportunity. Recent eruptions, such as the 2021 Fagradalsfjall volcano in southwest Iceland, have attracted thousands of visitors.
Troll Expeditions, which offers tours of Iceland’s ice caves, glaciers and geothermal pools, as well as a variety of volcano tours, said tourist bookings to Iceland had plummeted before the Grindavik eruption due to the earthquakes that preceded it. But the eruption itself temporarily revived interest. .
“People are very excited to see the volcano. Unfortunately, the eruption has stopped for the time being,” the company said in an email, noting that this is the fourth eruption in the region in the past three years.
“The other eruptions have been great for tourism, as they have been so-called ‘tourist eruptions’ where you can get quite close to the crater and witness the lava flow.”
Former Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grímsson is already encouraging visitors to prepare for January.
“The predictions are that in two weeks, the eruption could start again!Book your flight now to witness the creation of Earth!” he said in a Dec. 23 post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Managing risks
For avid “lava hunters,” there’s nothing better than an arduous climb to the most sensitive volcano, a walk around a crater, and the smell of sulfur in the air.
Often eruptions can be predicted well in advance, leaving plenty of time for evacuations and warnings.
When Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, erupted last year for the first time since 1984, thousands of awe-struck bystanders flocked to see its bright lava flows. Hawaii’s emergency management company had said in the past that there were no signs that lava would threaten the due popupast areas.
But in some cases the tourists paid with their lives.
Earlier this month, Indonesia’s Marapi volcano erupted, killing 22 people — climbers who perished near the crater. Marapi is one of the most active volcanoes on the island of Sumatra and erupted in January and February this year.
Indonesia, which straddles the so-called “Ring of Fire” around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, is home to more than 100 active volcanoes.
New Zealand’s White Island, also known by the Maori name Whakaari, has been closed since a crisis in 2019 when a volcanic eruption killed 22 people, most of them tourists. It welcomed visitors, though eruptions were not uncommon.
Despite these incidents, visiting volcanoes remains popular, and through good management, the risk of injury can be minimized, said Tom Pfeiffer, a geologist and volcanologist who runs VolcanoDiscovery, a company in Germany.
They organize tours to volcanoes around the world in small groups, taking on around 150 people per year to places including Java, Sulawesi, Sicily, and also Iceland. He said interest in visiting volcanoes fluctuated a little, depending on how much media attention they were getting, but was generally pretty steady.
“I am confident that the average number of injuries caused by volcanic tourists is much lower than the average number of similar injuries in mountain sports,” Pfeiffer said in an email. “This also remains true despite the fortunately very rare cases of primary errors such as the recent one at Marapi. “
Pfeiffer said many of the injuries that occurred were due to a lack of preparation or information, or excessive risk-taking. Relying on local recommendations from authorities, volcano observatories, and guides with extensive experience can mitigate the replacement, if anything. It’s going wrong.
“When in doubt, we take a chance,” he added.
Iceland has witnessed diverse eruptions in recent years, from ones where lava flows from fissures – like the one last week – to explosive ones of ice-covered volcanoes that spew ash plumes, where fire meets the ice. Many of them have been major tourist draws, with the risks well-flagged by local authorities.
The domain around Grindavik remains closed for the time being, and Iceland’s Metrological Office said on Dec. 27 that magma continues to accumulate beneath Svartsengi on the Reykjanes Peninsula and there is a threat of a new eruption.
Arnar Mar Olafsson, director general of the Icelandic Tourist Board, said some travellers did not have a good reputation in the closure zone around the eruption and had to be turned away as they made their way towards the volcano.
“People really need to reach out, reach out and see, but they don’t realize how harmful it is,” he said.
Severe typhoons slammed into parts of eastern Australia on Saturday, bringing heavy rain, giant hail and strong winds, days after the typhoon hit the region over the Christmas holidays.
A wild weather formula is expected to stretch more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Port Macquarie in New South Wales to Rockhampton in Queensland, with southeast Queensland expected to be hit hardest by the storm.
“We are now entering a new active era of thunderstorms,” David Grant, a forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology, said at a news conference. “There are a number of isolated and very damaging storms. “
Some areas received about 110 mm (4. 3 inches) of rain, or about a month in total, in two hours on Saturday morning, while hailstones of up to 6 cm (2. 4 inches) were also detected. The bad weather is expected to continue into the New Year.
Two people were taken to hospital after lightning strikes, one while inside a car and the other on an excavator.
The storms continue with severe weather on Dec. 25 and 26 that killed another 10 people and knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes across the east, and after Cyclone Jasper earlier this month caused widespread flooding and damage.
The Australian summer, from December to February, is influenced by the El Niño phenomenon, which can lead to excessive weather conditions ranging from bushfires to cyclones and prolonged droughts.
About 28,000 homes are still affected and the latest storms will hamper reconnection efforts, Queensland Premier Steven Miles told reporters.
As Queensland experienced its second primary typhoon in a week, an intense heatwave swept across northern and western Australia. Temperatures in Marble Bar, a remote former mining town in the northwest of Western Australia state, are expected to reach 120°F (49 degrees Celsius) on Saturday.
But mild weather is forecast for Sunday in the southeast, as well as Sydney, as Australia’s largest city prepares for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Tens of thousands of people are expected to flock to the harbour venues to watch the famous fireworks that ring out in the New Year.
Australia is bracing for an intense heatwave across its north and west during the New Year’s holiday weekend with temperatures forecast to touch more than 45 degrees Celsius (113°F), while severe thunderstorms were expected to hit the country’s east.
The heatwave follows a wild weather phenomenon that hit the east of the country over the Christmas holidays, killing another 10 people and straining tens of thousands, and after Cyclone Jasper earlier this month caused widespread flooding and damage.
The Australian summer, from December to February, is under the influence of the El Niño phenomenon, which affects above-average temperatures in hours of sunlight and can lead to excessive weather events ranging from bushfires to tropical cyclones and prolonged droughts.
Extreme heatwaves are forecast across giant swaths of the Western Australian state, and temperatures at Marble Bar, a remote former mining station in the northwestern city, are expected to reach 49 degrees Celsius (120. 2 degrees Fahrenhehe) on Saturday, the Bureau of Meteorology said. its latest update.
The towns of Longsucceed in inland Queensland and Julia Creek in the north-east are expected to reach 47°C this weekend, while nighttime temperatures in many parts of the Northern Territory may remain low for several days.
The intense heatwave has also prompted the government to increase the threat of wildfires, with several spaces under a blanket fire ban.
But in the east, storms are expected to expand from Friday in Queensland and northern New South Wales, and will continue into the new year.
“Severe thunderstorms are possible … although activity will not be as widespread compared to previous days. Isolated gusty thunderstorms are also possible over western South Australia,” said Sarah Scully, forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology.
Some storms in the east may be severe Friday afternoon, with the possibility of giant hail, wind gusts of more than 90 kph (56 mph) and heavy rain.
The storms were expected to ease by New Year’s Eve and not impact Sydney’s iconic fireworks display as the Bureau of Meteorology predicted cloudy conditions on Sunday with a very slight chance of rain.
On Friday, Chinese lawmakers engaged in a heated online debate over whether fireworks should be used to celebrate the Lunar New Year in February, saying a blanket ban on fireworks in the country credited with inventing them would be difficult to implement.
In a blunt response, lawmakers said air pollutant prevention legislation and smokestack protection regulations have led to “differences in understanding” of the smokestack ban, which has never been absolute.
In 2017, official data showed that 444 cities had banned fireworks. Since then, some cities have eased restrictions, allowing fireworks at certain times of the year and in designated locations.
This month, however, many counties issued notices banning fireworks, reigniting the debate over the ban.
“They give us fireworks,” wrote one user on Weibo, a Chinese microblog.
According to folklore, the first fireworks were invented 2,000 years ago to hunt down the “nian,” a beast that fed on humans and livestock on the eve of the Lunar New Year or Spring Festival.
Since then, fireworks have been used to celebrate other occasions: Last January, three years after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, some other people defied the bans (and the government) and set off firecrackers.
But some Chinese said the firework bans were necessary to protect the environment.
“This should be regulated because of pollutants and (fire) protection risks,” said one Weibo user.
However, in an online poll conducted this week through Beijing’s official youth daily, more than 80 percent of respondents expressed support for fireworks for the Spring Festival, the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar.
Some also said the ban was ironic after the United Nations last week considered the Spring Festival a public holiday, a move welcomed by Chinese officials.
“The Spring Festival belongs to the world, but China’s has almost disappeared,” wrote one Weibo user.
In the southern province of Hunan, a major fireworks production hub, exports totaled 4. 11 billion yuan ($579 million) between January and November, state media reported, surpassing domestic sales.
The National Centre for Vegetation Cover Development and Combating Desertification (NCVC) organized a workshop to present the implementation plan for the rehabilitation of floodplains and grasslands in collaboration with the actual reserves.
The CNVC has signed several agreements with the development authorities of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Royal Reserve, King Abdulaziz Royal Reserve, Imam Turki Bin Abdullah Royal Reserve, Imam Abdulaziz Bin Mohammed Royal Reserve and King Khalid Royal Reserve to rehabilitate more than 1,000 floodplains and Meadows across the Kingdom.
The workshop discussed several important facets of the initiative’s objectives,
and the criteria for comparing the techniques used in the rehabilitation process, the strategies for maximizing the evaluation of the effects of the implementation of rehabilitation, the main spaces of cooperation and partnership between the CNVC and the Royal ReservesArray aimed at progression and networking partnership.
The Director General of the National Center, Dr. Khalid Bin Abdullah Al-Abdul-Qadir, explained that the implementation of the first phase involves the rehabilitation of one hundred floodplains and grasslands by planting 12 million trees and shrubs and distributing seeds. , as well as the use of rainwater harvesting techniques.
The rehabilitation target domain exceeds 225,000 hectares of degraded land within a single domain with a total domain exceeding 1. 9 million hectares of floodplains and grasslands, contributing to improving environmental sustainability, quality of life and achieving the Kingdom and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. Green initiative to plant 10 billion trees.
This is a contribution to the implementation of a floodplain and grassland rehabilitation initiative launched by the Minister of Environment, Water and Culture last October, to rehabilitate 1,000 floodplains and grasslands across the Kingdom.