Category: General

718,030 pilgrims arrived to Madinah today, who came through the air and sea ports, to perform this year’s Hajj season 2023.

The statistics of Hajj and Visit Committee, which monitors the arrival and departure of pilgrims in Madinah, indicated that the total arrivals for Saturday amounted to 29,090 pilgrims, of whom 25,962 arrived at Prince Mohammad bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Madinah through 105 flights.

The Immigration Center received 65 flights carrying 2,099 pilgrims and the Land pilgrims center received 22 flights carrying 924 pilgrims.

The committee said that the number of pilgrims departing on Saturday on their way to the holy sites in Makkah amounted to 556,953 pilgrims, while the number of pilgrims staying in Madinah until yesterday reached 161,021 pilgrims.

It also added that the occupancy rate of housing in Madinah was 54 percent.

Source: Bahrain News Agency

Microsoft said on Friday that the outages that affected certain services of the company through some of the earlier days of this month were the result of cyberattacks, but said it saw no evidence of any customer data being accessed or compromised.

“Beginning in early June 2023, Microsoft identified surges in traffic against some services that temporarily impacted availability'” the company said in a blog post, Reuters reported.

Microsoft said it opened an investigation and began tracking the DDoS activity by the threat actor it refers to as Storm-1359 after it identified the threat.

DDoS attacks work by directing high volumes of internet traffic towards targeted servers in a relatively unsophisticated bid to knock them offline.

Microsoft’s 365 software suite, including Teams and Outlook, were down for more than two hours for over thousands of users on June 5 and a brief recurrence the following morning. That was the fourth such outage for Microsoft in a year.

Source: Bahrain News Agency

The Ophthalmology department at Hamad Medical Corporation has started a new refractive technique called Femto Smile, to treat patients with mild presbyopia by improving the way of light rays focusing on the retina. This technique is the most advanced, safe and smooth technique for vision correction and requires less recovery time and helps patients to stop using glasses or contact lenses in some cases.

Senior Consultant in Ophthalmology at HMC Dr. Adeya Al Harami stated that visual correction procedures and refractive surgeries have been developed recently, and Femto Smile is one of the recent Lasik techniques to improve vision levels in patients.

“Femto Smile is proven to be an effective technique for treating presbyopia. It enables us to treat severe levels of presbyopia and astigmatism. It also maintains the thickness and cornea nerves and does not cause any pain during and postprocedure. This technique ensures no damage or dryness of the eyes and reduces the possibility of eye infections and helps in quick recovery.” “Femto Smile takes between 1020 minutes and is performed under local anesthesia and is considered one of the safest visual correction procedures. With this new technique, the cornea incision heals and returns to its normal condition without any stitching, which is soothing for patients and allows them to be l sideeffect free and have a remarkable improvement in their vision.”

Source: Qatar News Agency

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has sent a cable of congratulations to President Wavel Ramkalawan of the Republic of Seychelles on his country’s Constitution Day.

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques wished the president of Seychelles continued good health and happiness, and the government and people of the Republic of Seychelles steady progress and prosperity.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister has sent a cable of congratulations to President Wavel Ramkalawan of the Republic of Seychelles on the occasion of his country’s Constitutional Day.

HRH Crown Prince wished continued good health and happiness to the president of Seychelles, and steady progress and prosperity to the government and people of the Republic of Seychelles.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

During this year’s Hajj season, the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque has prepared 185 programs and initiatives for the two mosques.

They include launching the “Serving the pilgrims and visitors is a source of pride for us”, harnessing artificial intelligence, and using electronic applications to serve the pilgrims and communicate with them in their own languages as much as possible, to facilitate their journey and enrich their experience.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

Tuwaiq Academy has opened registration for the Metaverse Academy camps, held in partnership with META, the first of their kind in the Middle East and North Africa. The camps will last for nine months and will be held at the academy’s head office in Riyadh.

Several tracks will be pursued at the camps, designed to introduce the concept of Metaverse and help trainees discover augmented reality and virtual reality technologies and their applications.

The program aims at equipping trainees with the necessary skills to build and develop Metaverse systems.

In partnerships with major international companies, Tuwaiq Academy has launched Apple Developer Academy, AWS Academy and Alibaba Cloud Academy, aiming at building national human resources specialized in emerging technologies, to meet the requirement of the labor market.

Those interested may register for the camps via the link: https://metaverse.tuwaiq.edu.sa.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

Center, has achieved the highest level of maturity in software development, according to the classification announced by the International CMMI Institute (Capability Maturity Model Integration). This accomplishment makes SDAIA the first Arab and GCC government agency to reach this level of maturity.

The CMMI Institute, specializing in the field of software engineering, evaluated the software development life cycle of the National Information Center. SDAIA’s dedicated efforts to enhance software development procedures and services have resulted in reaching the highest level of software maturity globally, namely the 5th level.

This achievement is a testament to the support, care, follow-up, and supervision provided to SDAIA by HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Prime Minister, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of SDAIA. His vision aims to position Saudi Arabia as a global leader in data and artificial intelligence, aligning with the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030 and solidifying its position among developed countries.

Attaining this level of maturity showcases the National Information Center’s commitment to efficient software development practices, flexibility in procedures, creativity, continuous improvement, and adaptability to technological advancements. SDAIA’s accomplishment reflects its dedication to providing high-quality software services and products following international best practices.

The Institute of Software Engineering, established at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the late eighties, initiated the development of the CMMI model. In 2012, the CMMI Institute was formed as an independent, non-profit organization focused on enhancing and refining the model. It was later acquired in 2016 by the global nonprofit organization, ISACA. The institute relies on stringent standards in its assessments, closely monitoring the achievement and application of these standards. Therefore, obtaining the 5th-level classification, which represents the highest capabilities, competence, and maturity in software engineering and development, is a rare accomplishment.

Source: Saudi Press Agency

Minister of Culture, Lubanah Mshaweh, inspected Saturday the restoration works at ancient al-Mina (port) Mosque and Church of Sacred Heart of Jesus (Latin Church) in Lattakia, damaged by the earthquake hit the city on February 6th.

Director of Antiquities and Museums in Lattakia, Ibrahim Kherbek and Endowment Director, Mahmoud Alio, explained the huge damage that affected the mosque and the church, noting to the restoration works carried out so far in the two sites.

Father Fadi Azar, pastor of Latin Church, gave a presentation on the damage caused to the church, in addition to the restoration of the cracked places that have been carried out after the devastating earthquake to secure a safe place for the worshipers.

Source: Syrian Arab News Agency

Russia always responds militarily to Ukrainian strikes, but it seldom presents its retaliation as breaking news, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.

“We hit military targets with high-accuracy long-range and high-yield weapons and succeed in this respect. It’s enough to see arms depots, warehouses and barracks housing personnel, including foreign mercenaries destroyed. There always follows a retaliation. We just avoid presenting it as breaking news very often, but this retaliation is sensitive and the enemy knows this,” Putin said.

Kiev must understand that in case of continued attacks on Russian territory, Moscow will consider creating a “sanitary cordon” in Ukraine, he warned.

“If these attacks on our adjacent territories continue, we will consider creating a ‘sanitary cordon’ on Ukrainian territory. They just have to realize where they are heading for,” he said.

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the largest annual economic and business event in Russia, is running on June 14-17. The theme of this year’s forum is “Sovereign Development as a Basis for a Just World: Joining Forces for Future Generations”. The event is organized by the Roscongress Foundation. TASS is its official media partner.

Source: Syrian Arab News Agency