Day: July 4, 2021

Manamah, The Arab Mixed Martial Arts Federation (AMMAF), during the founding meeting that was held in Manamah, has announced that the Kingdom of Bahrain was elected as president, while the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE as two vice-presidents and Lebanon assumed the post of the secretariat general and finance of the federation.

The founding meeting witnessed the election by acclamation of President of the Bahraini Mixed Martial Arts Federation Mohammad Ali Qambar as the first president of AMMAF, while members voted for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the UAE as the two vice-presidents and Lebanon win the post of the secretariat general and finance of the federation.

The members also approved the statute and official logo of the federation, prior to concluding the meeting with an open dialogue on the aspirations and endeavors of AMMAF to enhance the level of the mixed martial arts sport in the Middle East.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

Riyadh, The Heritage Commission has launched the first phase of the Archaeological Excavation Project in Qassim Region, as part of its efforts to protect and preserve heritage and cultural sites around the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from any potential threats.

This comes in line with the directives of Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, Minister of Culture and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Heritage Commission, to resume archaeological surveys and excavations in various regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

“Dariyah” was a renowned town in the pre-Islamic era and gained more fame and significance after the rise of Islam, for being a center for the largest sanctuaries in Arabia since the era of the second Caliph Umar ibn Al Khattab.

The sanctuary was known as “Hima Dariyah”, later becoming one of the biggest stations in the Basra Hajj route and among the most important pilgrim caravan stations. Dariyah was remarkably mentioned in various geographical, historical and literary publications.

Through this project, which will include several other archaeological sites, the commission seeks to determine the historical sequence of the site and obtain physical evidence from which to identify monuments and artifacts, the level of civilizational prosperity experienced by the region and its relation to other sites.

These efforts aim to highlight the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s civilizational role in human civilization in general and in Islamic eras in particular.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

Riyadh, The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announced the work on structuring key business principles for large-scale data center development in multiple regions across the Kingdom. Key investors committed to the buildout of a series of neutral data centers across the Kingdom, as the first batch among many expected to carry out this plan.

In line with the acceleration of digital transformation and adoption of new technologies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Ministry has set an ambitious plan to establish a strong and advanced digital infrastructure. This includes the development of hyper-scale data centers that accommodate the high demand for cloud services and enable Saudi Arabia to become a computing powerhouse and the digital hub for the region.

The plan anticipates the acceleration for data centers development within the Kingdom to surpass the 1,300-Megawatt mark before the year 2030, with expected investments of over $18 billion in data center and renewable energy serving the region.

The Ministry has been working closely with the private sector including local and international investors on structuring business principles for data center development in Saudi Arabia. Gulf Data Hub, Al Moammar Information Systems (MIS), and Saudi FAS Holding Company have worked with the Ministry on developing plans to build large-scale data centers that can drive the ambitious goals.

Bassam Al Bassam, Deputy Minister for Telecom and Digital Infrastructure at MCIT said: “We are enabling local champions to play a bigger role in the coming phase of Saudi Vision 2030, to increase the growth of hyper-scale co-location capacity data centers needed to attract other digital investments, such as cloud service providers, gaming publishers, video streaming service operators and content delivery network (CDN) operators to localize their services inside the Kingdom.”

The CEO of Gulf Data Hub, Tarek Al Ashram said: “The region is witnessing a rapid demand for video streaming and cloud services. Driving this is the consumer demand for electronic and online entertainment, as well as the exponential digital transformation across the public and private sectors. It is only natural that cloud service providers and publishers localize and host their operations in the region, and we wish to lend our extensive knowledge in the sector to help build the data centers of tomorrow.”

Commenting on the business principles, the Chairman of MIS, Khalid Al-Moammar said: “My late brother and I started this business by offering time-share computing slots on a high-powered workstation he built. Some people would call this the cloud, we called it the future. It has been four decades since we did that, and today our investment into hyper-scale capable data centers will allow us to continue playing an active role in facilitating the economic transformation of our beloved nation.”

The Chairman of Saudi FAS Holdings, Fawaz Abdulaziz Al-Hokair, noted: “We have been diversifying our activities over the past decade. Developing hyper-scale co-location data centers complements our real estate and entertainment holdings, given the rapid growth of e-sports, electronic gaming and video streaming we are witnessing today.”

The government of Saudi Arabia has made great efforts to stimulate the development of the country’s digital infrastructure and enhance its role in connecting the globe. The government had also launched a nationwide initiative to connect 3.5 million households by FTTH, covered 70% of the rural households in remote areas with wireless broadband networks, covered more than 74 cities with 5G technology and launched the first neutral Internet Exchange Point in Saudi Arabia (SAIX). The Kingdom is home to three of the largest telecom operators in the region and the biggest ICT and emerging technology market with a value exceeding $35 billion as of 2020.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

Damascus, Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Damascus, Jose Gregorio Biomorgi Muzattiz, said that the wide popular participation in the presidential election in Syria showed the Syrians’ loyalty to their patriotic leader, President Bashar al-Assad, as a representative of their ambitions and aspirations.

In a special interview with SANA on the occasion of his country’s national day, Biomorji said that Venezuela followed with big interest the progress of the electoral process in Syria, which was an opportunity for the people to decide their future, adding that their choice came to affirm that no one in the world can break the will of the Syrians or their insistence on freedom and independence and the preservation of their country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

He added that Syria has obtained a militarily victory against a global war waged against it for 11 years, and has shown that a small country can defeat the US, stressing that Venezuela, while facing one of the worst forms of economic and political pressures, has proven to the world that the United States and its pressures can be confronted.

Biomorji affirmed his country’s continued support for Syria in various political, international, diplomatic and commercial domains, pointing out that Venezuela had recently taken steps to resume trade relations that were hampered by the Coronavirus pandemic, and relations began to return to serve the interests of the peoples of the two countries.

Source: Syria Arab News Agency

Cairo, Minister of Religious Endowments, Mohammad AbdelSattar al-Sayyed, visited the Syrian pavilion at Cairo International Book Fair and met the owners of publishing houses and Syrian exhibitors, referring to the high quality of the Syrian book and its contents of literary and scientific message circulated across the world.

In a statement to SANA correspondent in Cairo, al-Sayyed said that the Syrian book has an extraordinary enlightenment message as ” it faces the violence, extremism and terrorism by presenting the right image of the tolerant religion, along with countering the destructive thoughts adopted by terrorist organizations defeated by proofs and evidence.”

Source: Syria Arab News Agency

Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin and Russian President’s Special Envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, discussed on Sunday with UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen the solution to the crisis in Syria.

“The talks focused on the situation in Syria, with emphasis on the importance of boosting the political process led and implemented by the Syrians themselves with the help of the UN,” Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The two sides stressed the necessity of providing humanitarian aid to Syria in accordance with the rules of international humanitarian law, the resolutions of the Security Council and the UN General Assembly.

Source: Syria Arab News Agency