Abu Dhabi sets up Dh550m fund to help out local exporters

Abu Dhabi: The Abu Dhabi Exports Office is setting up a Dh550 million fund to support the export sector, by helping out cash-strapped overseas buyers of UAE merchandise and the national companies that sell them.

“This is not only a difficult time for UAE exporters, but it’s also a challenging time for their overseas buyers,” said Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, Director-General of Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and Chairman of Adex. “Both are dealing with liquidity and cashflow issues, delayed supplier payments and limited access to financing.

“Adex provides a solution to these challenges that enables both the exporter and foreign importer to quickly and easily fund mutually beneficial transactions.”

How can this fund be tapped?

When a qualified overseas buyer certifies the successful completion of an Adex-funded transaction, Adex will then make a direct payment to the UAE exporter. The allocated funds will only be used for export transactions that are approved and qualify under the programme.

“We need all companies in the UAE to know how to access the full range of Adex financial products and services available to advance their business development efforts,” Al Suwaidi said. Adex is also working to establish partnerships with departments of economic development and chambers of commerce across all emirates to raise awareness on the new programme.

jessicakateherbert

JkH is a passionate Health & Wellbeing Coach for many one on one executive clientele and their teams @jkh_corpsquad.

Specialising in training clientele for results in performance specifically complimenting their favourite sports from lifting to cycling to distance running to iron man events and skiing. She also specialises in training brides and grooms for their big day @jkh_wedshred_squad

She enjoys blogging sustainable health and wellbeing tips that are approachable for all lifestyles almost anywhere in the world.

She’s passionate about building like minded, Health & Wellbeing communities and aligning these concepts with raising funds and awareness for Charity.

Petra Smeltzer Starke

Petra was born in a small town in the Czech Republic called Kromeriz. Czechoslovakia at the time was communist. Under communism, the government tested all children to decide what schools they should attend based on their athletic and academic abilities. Petra has an athletic gene, as her father was a pro volleyball player and her uncle a pro soccer player. Following in their footsteps, Petra also excelled athletically with a focus on tennis and volleyball. One would think she would be tracked exclusively for an athletic program but she was chosen for a school for gifted children in math and science and she became a chess champion at a very young age.

 


Petra studied international business, trade and diplomacy at the Prague School of Economics while supporting herself as a model. Modeling success notwithstanding, Petra finished both undergraduate and graduate degrees at the top of her class and moved to the United States to attend law school at Georgetown University. Petra was first in her class in law school & practiced law at the international law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, LLP representing many political nominees and appointees during the Bush Administration. She was subsequently recruited for the Obama Presidential Transition and later the Obama White House where she served as General Counsel to the White House Council of Economic Advisors and Senior Advisor to the President.
While working as a lawyer, Petra continued to exercise religiously competing in marathons, triathlons and other running competitions. One day while injured, Petra tried hot Bikram Yoga and her life has forever changed. Not only did she notice a physical transformation, she also observed improved focus, concentration and other psychological benefits. At some point, Petra crossed paths with the founder of Bikram Yoga, Bikram Choudhury, who recruited her to become the President and CEO of Bikram Yoga brand and leave Barack Obama and his White House.
Petra, as an avid practitioner of the hot yoga formerly known as Bikram Yoga, knew and enjoyed all of the extraordinary benefits derived from the twenty six postures and two breathing exercises. However, the well-documented failures of Bikram Yoga’s namesake founder created chaos in the community. Out of the chaos Petra built SweatNGlow, a global hot yoga brand, that is modernizing hot yoga world through innovation and positive value system while honoring the twenty six and two as its core practice.
Petra was born in a small town in the Czech Republic called Kromeriz. Czechoslovakia at the time was communist. Under communism, the government tested all children to decide what schools they should attend based on their athletic and academic abilities. Petra has an athletic gene, as her father was a pro volleyball player and her uncle a pro soccer player. Following in their footsteps, Petra also excelled athletically with a focus on tennis and volleyball. One would think she would be tracked exclusively for an athletic program but she was chosen for a school for gifted children in math and science and she became a chess champion at a very young age.

While working as a lawyer, Petra continued to exercise religiously competing in marathons, triathlons and other running competitions. One day while injured, Petra tried hot Bikram Yoga and her life has forever changed. Not only did she notice a physical transformation, she also observed improved focus, concentration and other psychological benefits. At some point, Petra crossed paths with the founder of Bikram Yoga, Bikram Choudhury, who recruited her to become the President and CEO of Bikram Yoga brand and leave Barack Obama and his White House.

Petra, as an avid practitioner of the hot yoga formerly known as Bikram Yoga, knew and enjoyed all of the extraordinary benefits derived from the twenty six postures and two breathing exercises. However, the well-documented failures of Bikram Yoga’s namesake founder created chaos in the community. Out of the chaos Petra built SweatNGlow, a global hot yoga brand, that is modernizing hot yoga world through innovation and positive value system while honoring the twenty six and two as its core practice.

Dino Spencer

5th St. Gym Goes Bananas
It’s been about 60 Years since the 5th St. Gym Opened. 40 years since Ali trained there and about 8 years since Angelo Dundee passed away. 17 world champions had been trained at the 5th St. Gym and by Angelo. Since taken over by Dino Spencer and Tom Tsatas, and re-opened in 2010, a decade later the gym has its 20th World World Champion and 1st real full Champion in 25 years. Over the weekend Jeison Rosario shockingly stopped opponent Julian Williams in spectacular fashion for the 154lb WBA, IBF, IBO belts. It was a clear upset and shock. “It’s always a team effort” claims 5th St. Gym co-owner, head coach & trainer as well as top conditioning coach Dino Spencer. Spencer isn’t well known in the main stream but he is no stranger to Boxing. He is mostly known as a celebrity trainer and former martial artist but has probably worked more corners in boxing and worked with more champions than anyone in the sport. David Haye, Bernard Hopkins, Paulie Malinaggi, Chris Algeri, Luis Ortiz, Fres Oquendo, James DeGale and Kid Chocolate are just a few of the pros, challengers and champions with whom he has worked. He is currently head trainer to several ranked and undefeated fighters, Danielle Scardina, Mateo Papa, Charley Hoy and Christian Thun. The gym has serious sparring and attracts the best fighters around the world.

Learning his craft under Freddie Roach and Angelo Dundee, “Stallion” as he’s known to his closest friends (for his love of Rocky and his Italian heritage) got his start in combat fighting at age 5. He began training in Shaolin Kung-Fu and by age 13 he was teaching new students as a Black-Belt. He eventually was trained by Arlene Limas, the 1st woman to win a gold medal in TaeKwon-Do at the 1988 Olympics in Korea. A former pro football player walked into the gym one day which led Spencer to pivot into boxing when he realized the boxer had some talent. He called his best friend and fellow trainee Tom Tsatas in to help and off they were. Seventeen years since that day They resurrected Fres Oquendo’s career and got him a title shot at age 41 and 46, and along the way trained a UFC heavyweight Champion, Andre Arlovski, opened up the most famous boxing gym in the world with Angelo Dundee, became best friends with their mentor Muhammad Ali, and have trained fighters, champions, celebrities and regular folks ever since. It’s not by accident that their gyms 1st true world Champion would come the day after Ali’s and Tsatas’ birthday, and in Philadelphia. “It’s very telling” says Spencer that such a coincidence would happen. Tom and Muhammad always celebrated their birthdays and for some reason Toms would never take center stage” jokes Spencer. “And here it happened, right here in Rocky’s home town is just icing on the cake and very appropriate.” Spencer continues that it’s always a team.”Coach Luis is also responsible in what the gym has accomplished. He is quiet, low key but his passion and commitment to the sport, the fighters and the gym is unparalleled. A true boxing purist” says Spencer.

Spencer’s partner Tom Tsatas sums it up “It’s taken us nearly a decade of hard work, perseverance and dedication to get here. In my opinion, and with absolutely no disrespect to any other trainers or gyms, I believe that 5th St. Gym, Dino, Chiro and all of our team here is the best anywhere. We cannot be inside the ring with the fighter, it’s his will, heart and soul that is in those ropes. But we are the ones who make sure he has the correct tools once he steps between them. Just in case you were wondering all of us here at 5th St. Gym are going bananas.”

Menna El Fakahany

Early Western travelers, traveling to India, Persia, Turkey, or China, would frequently remark on the absence of change in fashion in those countries. The Japanese shōgun’s secretary bragged (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years.[6] However, there is considerable evidence in Ming China of rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing.[7] Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change, as occurred in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate, followed by a long period without significant changes. In 8th-century Moorish Spain, the musician Ziryab introduced to Córdoba[8][unreliable source][9] sophisticated clothing-styles based on seasonal and daily fashions from his native Baghdad, modified by his inspiration. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the Middle East following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East.[10]

Additionally, there is a long history of fashion in West Africa.[11] The Cloth was used as a form of currency in trade with the Portuguese and Dutch as early as the 16th Century.[11] Locally produced cloth and cheaper European imports were assembled into new styles to accommodate the growing elite class of West Africans and resident gold and slave traders.[11] There was an Exceptionally strong tradition of cloth-weaving in Oyo and the areas inhabited by the Igbo people.[11]

The beginning in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated. Historians, including James Laver and Fernand Braudel, date the start of Western fashion in clothing to the middle of the 14th century,[12][13] though they tend to rely heavily on contemporary imagery[14] and illuminated manuscripts were not common before the fourteenth century.[15] The most dramatic early change in fashion was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks,[16] sometimes accompanied with stuffing in the chest to make it look bigger. This created the distinctive Western outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.

The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women’s and men’s fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became equally complex. Art historians are, therefore ,able to use fashion with confidence and precision to date images, often to within five years, particularly in the case of images from the 15th century. Initially, changes in fashion led to a fragmentation across the upper classes of Europe of what had previously been a very similar style of dressing and the subsequent development of distinctive national styles. These national styles remained very different until a counter-movement in the 17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, mostly originating from Ancien Régime France.[17] Though the rich usually led fashion, the increasing affluence of early modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and even peasants following trends at a distance, but still uncomfortably close for the elites – a factor that Fernand Braudel regards as one of the main motors of changing fashio

adelya_jewellery

“My love for accessories, started as a little girl when my mother would take me on shopping trips,” says AdelyaBakhtiyarova. Like every young girl, the Dubai-based jewellery designer spent endless hours playing dress-up in her mother’s closet. “She always had an eye for unique and rare pieces that she bought while travelling to different countries, especially from antique shops in post-Soviet countries,” she explains.

This set the background for Adelya’sfirst collection which she created in 2010. The collection was created for a close circle of friends who influenced Adelya to create her own brand. After the success of the collection she later launched her eponymous brand after gaining a gemstone diploma from the International Gemstone Institute (IGI). Her work is heavily inspired by places where she has lived and visited. “Growing up in places such as Samarkand and Dubai helped me appreciate the rich culture and evolution of architecture and architectural sculpture,” she says. “From there, I decided to create jewellery with similar exotic, beautiful design elements as a way of bringing sculptural appreciation to a smaller, more accessible scale.” International meetings with clients and craftsmen in Paris, Moscow and Hong Kong further fuelled her imagination and drive to create unique and inspired jewellery.

Today Adelya Jewellery is stocked internationally from Dubai to leading boutiques in Moscow, Almaty, Kuwait and Paris. Although Adelya’s collections are distinctively different in design the idea behind every collection is to allow customers to mix and match between collections. This has rapidly made Adelya Jewellery a favourite among fashionistas and jewellery connoisseurs for personal buys or as gifts with individuality and a strong sense of meaning. The Elements collection is the latest collection that draws on sustainability and recycling. The collection key focus is on pressed stones a new technique that originates from Japan where left over pieces from stone cutting are recompressed to form a new stone. This technique minimizes waste and is aimed at reducing stone mining thus making jewellery industry more sustainable. It was important for Adelya Jewellery to start a sustainable line as Adelya believes that is the future for the jewellery industry. The brands must have collections are Love Letters and Felix collections. The Felix line, for example, draws on the ancient belief in numerical relationships for its designs. The eye-catching rings in 18-karat gold and diamonds are perfect for stacking together in different combinations of personalised numbers to bring good luck. Meanwhile the Love Letters collection features rings in diamonds and 18-karat white or rose gold that can spell out a number of special messages.

Adelya’s overriding design philosophy clearly lies in creating jewels that carry symbolism and meaning for the wearer. To this end she also re-imagines vintage pieces into new styles, such as creating clients inherited antique brooches into rings.

Each piece is as standout as it is wearable, and the brand is already looking towards its 2020 collections which will include more pressed stones and ancient Chinese symbolism.

Dubai, hit by lockdown and oil price crash, could be headed for another debt crisis

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Dubai, the glittering commercial hub of the Gulf, is facing the risk of a debt crisis reminiscent of the 2009 crash that wiped out thousands of jobs and nearly half the value of the emirate’s stock market, economists are warning.

Only this time, declining business growth over recent years is being compounded by the double whammy of crushed oil prices and global lockdowns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, cases of which have surpassed 8,200 in the United Arab Emirates.

“Dubai is the most vulnerable of the economies in the Middle East and North Africa to the economic damage from such (lockdown) measures,” U.K.-based consultancy firm Capital Economics wrote in a report this week. “We think that Dubai’s economy could contract by at least 5-6% this year if these measures last into the summer.”

Lockdown measures in the emirate, which is home to the world’s tallest building and largest mall, have seen all but essential businesses close. This “will cause Dubai’s economy to contract sharply, exacerbating overcapacity in key sectors and making it more difficult for the Emirate’s government-related entities (GREs) to service their large debts,” the firm wrote.

Amazon pilots using video calls to verify third-party sellers

Washington DC: : E-commerce company Amazon is testing using video calls to verify third-party sellers in an attempt to minimise the amount of fraudulent accounts and listings on its platform, the company announced.

According to The Verge, earlier this year, the live verification initiative initially was used in-person meetings, pivoted to video conferencing as the coronavirus pandemic made social distancing measures necessary.

An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement, “As we practise social distancing, we are testing a process that allows us to validate prospective sellers’ identification via video conferencing. This pilot allows us to connect one-on-one with prospective sellers while making it even more difficult for fraudsters to hide.”

Currently being trialled in countries including the US, UK, China, and Japan, the new live verification process involves an Amazon associate checking that a seller matches their ID and the documents they’ve provided as part of their application. It does not involve using any facial recognition technology to verify their identity, Amazon confirmed to GeekWire.

The call also provides an opportunity for the associate to answer questions about the application process. So far, that over 1,000 prospective sellers have gone through the pilot program, says Amazon.

Apple, Google allay privacy fears around contact tracing app

San Francisco: Amid the growing debate over privacy and security around contact tracing technology, Apple and Google have announced new updates to allay such fears, saying the Bluetooth-driven exposure notification system to enable iOS and Android phones trace the spread of coronavirus is completely safe.

Cybersecurity researchers have questioned the contact tracing technology, saying tracing apps that allow attackers to access a user’s Bluetooth also allows them to fully read all Bluetooth communications.

Privacy concerns
Apple and Google representatives said that they are encrypting metadata associated with Bluetooth.

“By encrypting this data, we make it more difficult for someone to try and use it to identify a person (for example, by associating the transmit power with a particular model of phone),” the companies said in the updated document.

On April 10, Google and Apple announced a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of COVID-19 through contact tracing, with user privacy and security core to the design.

The tech giants said that the ‘Exposure Notification Bluetooth Specification’ does not use location for proximity detection. It strictly uses Bluetooth beaconing to detect proximity.

“A user’s Rolling Proximity Identifier changes on average every 15 minutes, and needs the ‘Temporary Exposure Key’ to be correlated to a contact. This reduces the risk of privacy loss from broadcasting them,” the document read.

Proximity identifiers obtained from other devices are processed exclusively on device and users decide whether to contribute to exposure notification.

“If diagnosed with COVID-19, users must provide their consent to share Diagnosis Keys with the server. Users have transparency into their participation in exposure notification,” the update added.

Technical changes
Among the technical changes proposed by Apple and Google to the system is that it can now share the strength and duration of a Bluetooth signal so that the apps can make a better judgment of who someone has been in contact with.

To provide even stronger privacy protections, Apple and Google made a slew of changes.

“We are updating the API so that keys will now be randomly generated rather than derived from a temporary tracing key”.

“When the app asks for exposure time, the time is recorded in five minute intervals, and we cap the maximum exposure time reported at 30 minutes,” the companies added.

Contact tracing is a technique used by public health authorities to measure and slow the spread of infectious diseases.

It requires gathering information from infected individuals about the people they’ve previously been in contact with. These people can then be notified by public health authorities to take appropriate safety measures, such as undertaking self-quarantine and getting tested.

This is how Apple-Google exposure notification works in the first phase.

Once enabled, users’ devices will regularly send out a beacon via Bluetooth that includes a privacy-preserving identifier — basically, a string of random numbers that aren’t tied to a user’s identity and change every 10-20 minutes for additional protection.

Other phones will be listening for these beacons and broadcasting theirs as well. When each phone receives another beacon, it will record and securely store that beacon on the device.

“At least once per day, the system will download a list of beacons that have been verified as belonging to people confirmed as positive for COVID-19 from the relevant public health authority,’ said the document.

Each device will check the list of beacons it has recorded against the list downloaded from the server. If there is a match between the beacons stored on the device and the positive diagnosis list, the user may be notified and advised on steps to take next.

In the second phase, available in the coming months, this capability will be introduced at the operating system level to help ensure broad adoption.

Both Apple and Google emphasized that this system does not collect location data from the device, and does not share the identities of other users to each other, Google or Apple.

Companies bet on AI cameras to track social distancing, limit liability

Oakland, California: Stores and workplaces eager to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus are equipping existing security cameras with artificial intelligence software that can track compliance with health guidelines including social distancing and mask-wearing.

Several companies told Reuters the software will be crucial to staying open as concerns about COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, persist around the world. It will allow them to show not only workers and customers, but also insurers and regulators, that they are monitoring and enforcing safe practices.

The question becomes whether the tech remains after the public health problem goes away, and that is the real privacy fear.
– Al Gidari, a privacy expert at Stanford Law School
“The last thing we want is for the governor to shut all our projects down because no one is behaving,” said Jen Suerth, vice president at Chicago-based Pepper Construction, which introduced software from SmartVid.io this month to detect workers grouping at an Oracle Corp project in Deerfield, Illinois.

Samarth Diamond plans to deploy AI from Glimpse Analytics as soon as its polishing factory re-opens in Gujarat, India, while two Michigan shopping centers owned by RPT Realty will have distancing tracking from RE Insight in two weeks.

Buyers expect the technology will work because they already have used similar tools to profile shoppers entering stores and find helmet scofflaws on construction sites.

But some technology consultants that advise retailers and office landlords have cautioned clients against introducing new technology at a chaotic time and investing in tools that may be needed only for a period of months. Privacy activists concerned about increasingly detailed tracking of people also are urging businesses to limit use of the AI to the pandemic.

“The question becomes whether the tech remains after the public health problem goes away, and that is the real privacy fear,” said Al Gidari, a privacy expert at Stanford Law School.

“Video in the store today to ensure social distancing remains to identify shoplifters tomorrow.”

COMPUTER VISION

Reuters spoke with 16 video analytics companies, many of them startups with a few million dollars in annual revenue, that have added offerings because of the coronavirus. Their systems can be set to produce daily reports, which site managers can use to correct recurring problems and document compliance.

Most work on a branch of AI technology known as computer or machine vision in which algorithms are trained on image libraries to identify objects with confidence of 80% or higher.

Several customers said the technology, which can cost $1,000 or more annually to analyze data from a handful of off-the-shelf video cameras, is cheaper than dedicating staff to standing guard. It also can be safer, as some guards enforcing distancing have clashed with people protesting safety measures, they said.

Pepper Construction’s Suerth said its SmartVid system has not flagged crowding issues yet because staffing has been limited. But Suerth said that as more crews arrive, the company will look at trends to issue reminders at “tool box talks.” “It’s another set of eyes on the site,” Suerth said, adding that software is less prone to mistakes than people and the “accuracy we’re seeing is really high.” Samarth Diamond manager Parth Patel said he could adjust procedures when the software identifies spots where his 4,000 workers are clumping together in busy areas. People tagged as not having masks quickly would be offered one by a team reviewing camera feeds, Patel said.

“It will surely be helpful for the safety of employees and their comfort level, and it will be helpful to show it to authorities that we are adhering” to regulations, Patel said.

Patel said he has confidence in the algorithms after his family successfully used computer vision last year at supermarkets it owns to count female shoppers and decide where to stock a new line of dresses.

RPT Realty, which Chief Executive Brian Harper said had used camera software to count visitors over the past few months at two of the 49 open-air shopping centers it owns in the United States, is moving to assess tenants’ compliance with reduced occupancy regulations across five malls.

It also plans to help consumers decide when to shop by using technology from startup WaitTimes to analyze lines of people waiting to enter stores, a phenomenon that has become common during the pandemic as part of social distancing efforts.

Signage will inform shoppers of the anonymous counting, according to Harper.

“You can never have too much data at your hands,” Harper said.

But calculating whether people are six feet (1.8 meters) apart and detecting objects such as face masks are all novel uses now being tested and launched on accelerated schedules.

Some startups even promise to spot sneezing and coughing, claims that drew skepticism from some experts.

“Most solutions will be in uncharted territory, without a proven track record, and likely susceptible to false-positives and bugs,” said Vinay Goel, a former Google Maps product leader who is now chief digital products officer at the tech unit of real estate services giant Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

Beside costs, businesses are concerned AI will trigger too many reports of non-problems, like a family walking close together in an aisle, retail consultants said.

Indyme, a technology vendor that works with BevMo!, Office Depot and other U.S. retailers, said that its clients have preferred rudimentary boxes that can count people at entrances and automatically announce, “For your safety, please maintain a social distance of six feet, thank you.”