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Saudi Arabia lifts Covid-19 restrictions, no social distancing and quarantine for vaccinated travellers visiting Mecca, Medina
Saudi Arabia, which is home to Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, will no longer need vaccinated visitors to show a negative PCR or rapid test before their arrival in the kingdom or to quarantine.
Saudi Arabia is the latest country to lift Covid-19 restrictions, including quarantine for vaccinated arrivals and social distancing in public spaces. A ministry source said to the Saudi Press Agency about the decision of suspending social distancing in public spots, including mosques to facilitate the arrival of Muslim pilgrims in the country.
Saudi Arabia, which is home to Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, will no longer need vaccinated visitors to show a negative PCR or rapid test before their arrival in the kingdom or to quarantine. According to the decision, masks will only be allowed in closed places.
The Covid-19 outbreak has wreaked havoc on Muslim pilgrimages, which are generally a major source of revenue for the country, bringing in USD 12 billion per year.
For Saudi leaders, hosting the pilgrimages is a matter of prestige, as the custodianship of Islam’s holiest shrines is their most important source of political legitimacy.
The hajj was drastically reduced for a second year in 2021 due to a coronavirus outbreak, with only 60,000 fully vaccinated nationals and residents of Saudi Arabia taking part.
The Covid-19 cases in Saudi Arabia have dropped by 47.30 percent in just one week. The country reported 283 new cases on Saturday, taking the total number of infections to 7,47,119, since the start of the pandemic.
In other news, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Saturday urged the governments of several countries including India, China and Nigeria to appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the ongoing war in Ukraine and demanded a fresh round of sanctions on Russia.
India News
Asian Games 2023: Indian Men’s Hockey team thrash Uzbekistan 16-0 in opener
The Indian team completely trashed their opponent Uzbekistan. Mandeep Singh snatched the limelight with a hat-trick while Lalit Upadhyay and Varun Kumar scored 4 goals each in the Asian Games.
In the Asian Games 2023, the Indian Men’s Hockey team won the match against Uzbekistan with 16-0 in their opener on Sunday.
The Indian team completely trashed their opponent Uzbekistan. Mandeep Singh snatched the limelight with a hat-trick while Lalit Upadhyay and Varun Kumar scored 4 goals each in the Asian Games.
India News
Vande Bharat: PM Modi to inaugurate 9 new trains in 11 states today
Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of the railways, will also attend the inaugural ceremony. The 11 states will have faster connectivity thanks to these trains.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will today, nine Vande Bharat trains that connect tourist and religious sites in 11 states. There will be elections in three of the following states: Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Gujarat.
The trains will be signalled off by the prime minister via video conference. Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of the railways, will also attend the inaugural ceremony. The 11 states will have faster connectivity thanks to these trains.
These trains are a step towards achieving the prime minister’s aim of enhancing connectivity throughout the nation and offering top-notch amenities to rail passengers, according to a statement from the government.
The Vande Bharat trains will be the fastest train along the routes of their operation, it continued, and will help save the passengers significant time.
Compared to the fastest train as of now on the routes, Vande Bharat trains will cut travel time between destinations by three hours in the Rourkela-Bhubaneswar-Puri and Kasaragod-Thiruvananthapuram routes; more than two and a half hours for Hyderabad-Bengaluru; more than two hours for Tirunelveli-Madurai-Chennai; about one hour for Ranchi-Howrah, Patna-Howrah and Jamnagar-Ahmedabad; about half an hour for between Udaipur and Jaipur.
The important religious towns of Puri and Madurai would be connected by the trains Rourkela-Bhubaneswar-Puri and Tirunelveli-Madurai-Chennai.
The Renigunta route will be used by the Vijayawada-Chennai Vande Bharat train, which would offer connectivity to Tirupati.
As the festival season approaches, it is anticipated that the new trains will offer a comfortable travel experience.
Before this fiscal year concludes the following year, Indian Railways also intends to introduce a sleeper version of the Vande Bharat and Vande Metro. According to railway authorities, the non-air conditioned push-pull variant of the semi-high speed train series, which will be introduced in October 2024, would feature 22 coaches and a locomotive.
India News
Video: PM Modi, CM Yogi attend cultural event at Rudraksh International Cooperation and Convention Centre in Varanasi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attended a cultural event at Rudraksh International Cooperation and Convention Centre in Varanasi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday evening attended a cultural event at Rudraksh International Cooperation and Convention Centre in Varanasi.
After laying the foundation stone of the International Cricket Stadium in Varanasi’s Ganjari, PM Modi and CM Yogi attended the cultural event where the artists were performing to celebrate the evening.
At the occasion of the International Cricket Stadium, the cricket fraternities were also witnessed including big names like Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Madan Lal, Gundappa Viswanath, and Gopal Sharma.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP CM Yogi Adityanath also interacted with school students after inaugurating the 16 Atal Awasiya Vidyalaya in Varanasi.
To provide the best quality education, 16 Atal Awasiya Vidyalaya, which is basically built for the children of labourers, construction workers and those orphaned due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was also inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi today. The project has been developed at the cost of Rs 1,100 crore with an aim to make quality education accessible for these children and support their holistic development.
Every school under this scheme has been constructed in an area of 10-15 acres with a classroom, recreational area, sports grounds, mess, a mini auditorium, hotel complex, and residential flats for the staff members. Such facilities will help children get quality education.
Addressing the event in Varanasi, PM Modi said that the portal of ‘Kashi Sansad Khel Pratiyogita’ was also launched. This is the beginning of new legacies in Kashi, he added.
PM Modi further added by saying even today, people from across the world come to Kashi to learn Sanskrit. Keeping that in mind, we inaugurated ‘Atal Awasiya Vidyalayas’ today, built at a cost of about Rs 1,100 crore, the Prime Minister said.
He also interacted with the people who helped in making the G20 Summit successful. PM Modi was listening to the concerns of people who served to achieve the successful completion of the G20 Summit.
