This collection be best described as a rich blend of the African prints and exhilarating colours that exude beauty elegance and a free spirit suitable for any happy hour occasion.
The inspiration for EKO is the city of “Lagos”.
The looks are what any urban guy wants to make a fashionable impression at the same time while having a connection with the African culture.
Halting on-site interviews, Google is now conducting job interviews online via Hangouts or Bluejeans to reduce physical interactions in the wake of Covid-19 outbreak.
Google said in a statement: “In light of the coronavirus (Covid-19) and to protect our candidates’ and interviewers’ health and wellbeing, we will be conducting all Google interviews globally virtually via Google Hangout (or BlueJeans for applicable countries) for the foreseeable future,” reported HT.
Not only Google, but Amazon and Facebook have halted on-site job interviews while Twitter and Microsoft have asked their employees to work from home.
According to reports in Geekwire.com, Google asked all employees to work remotely and urged staff not to bring external visitors into the company’s offices in Washington, though they remain open to employees who choose not to work remotely.
Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Google has more than 4,500 employees in Seattle where 27 confirmed cases and nine deaths due to the Covid-19 virus in Washington state were reported Wednesday.
While in India, Paytm shut its Gurgaon offices after one its employees tested positive for the virus. Tech Mahindra, Indian multinational of Mahindra group, imposed restrictions on domestic and international travel and encouraging employees to work from home.
“Restrictions have been imposed on domestic and international travel with immediate effect. We have postponed all internal events which required large gatherings and everyone has been advised to adequately leverage technologies like – Tele Presence and Video Conferencing,” said Harshvendra Soin, Chief People Officer, Tech Mahindra.
According to the latest numbers, there are currently over 97,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with more than 3,300 deaths.
Our journey towards making visa processing more agile and efficient is very much about the ongoing digital transformation that is impacting all industries. This positive development, among other things, cannot be realistically achieved without relying on the collection and processing of data to create knowledge, competencies and capabilities. This collection and processing requires a governance oversight to ensure that it’s not used to the detriment of the individual. To this end we have seen an upsurge in data protection legislation in the last few years.
In fact, properly regulated and controlled data protection practices do not have to jeopardise the digitisation of our industry; on the contrary they enhance it by maintaining trust and credibility with customers, partners, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders. In short, good data protection practices have a positive effect on the bottom line.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation designed to harmonise personal data protection laws across the EU member countries, and it entered into force on May 25, 2018. It addresses issues of transparency around personal data usage by companies and gives more control to the individual over their personal data. This far-reaching regulation marks a new stage in the development of data privacy practices in Europe.
Eighteen months on, I have narrowed on three selected takeaways from GDPR that I deem most relevant to our practices in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Automate: Automation via dedicated privacy software is the key to GDPR compliance in large organisations like VFS Global as it enables an organisation to easily know where personal data is located in complex systems. It also helps to fulfil the requirement to keep a record of processing activities. This enhances data security by knowing where all your important personal data is located, and this ensures a rapid response in the event of a data privacy incident or a data access request.
Properly handle personal data: The GDPR obligations for protecting personal data are directly applicable to services like ours. GDPR requires that companies explain how they handle personal data via their privacy notice using ‘clear and plain language’. It is important to see if a company has posted a privacy notice or policy, which should include a simple explanation of how they collect and use data in compliance with applicable laws. We have to make sure that our 1,400 websites are compliant – taking care of simple things like cookies, the small files placed on the computer from the browser session. In certain countries, we have to seek permission to put those files on an individual’s device. Also, if we are using any analytics, like Google Analytics, we have to make the individual aware that we are doing so, and allow them to not accept it.
Be proactive: Services must analyse how GDPR affects their business processes and take proactive steps in achieving compliance. To this end, VFS Global adopts the concept of privacy by design and default. What that means is wherever we have a business or technical process, we look at the outcomes of that process and make the default one – the one that preserves the privacy of the individual.
With high penalties in place, there is a huge financial risk for companies in case of non-compliance. There are also real risks to reputation or brand image. Therefore, we must take GDPR obligations very seriously, and external validation through standardisation bodies helps organisations ensure that they are on the right track to comply with GDPR.
Equally important is the fact that customers are concerned about where and how their personal data is being captured when using services. Most regulations, including GDPR, are designed to ensure that personal data that can be linked to an individual are not shared without the permission or knowledge of the individual. We also know that most consumer concerns centre around their private information, such as personal pictures and other details.
New regulations like GDPR are a big step towards better-protected data. However, this is still the beginning of the journey.
As a company that handles large volumes of applicant information (for visas and citizen services), one of VFS Global’s biggest focus areas is to have an uncompromising approach to maintaining information security at every level of the process. In fact, VFS Global is one of the few companies globally that was already able to comply with the requirements of GDPR when it came into effect in May 2018.
To enable use to be GDPR-compliant, we have a 13-point data privacy and protection framework that has over 130 measurable metrics that enables us to monitor data protection across the organisation. This level of monitoring naturally requires an investment in skills and technology to implement and manage such a framework.
Barry Cook is privacy and group data protection officer at VFS Global. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper’s policy.
Connecting the Aesthetic Industry and The Experts with You!
Nayri Estepanian, known as Nayritta, is a Lebanese Armenian woman with high ambitions and drive to the future. She loves to explore, be a guide, an intermediate and a connection between the Aesthetic industry and the experts with you.
She had been always searching for ways to help and assist individuals who are looking for tips to take care of their beauty, image and looks.
Her aim is to provide education, motivate and assist in building some individuals’ confidence through introducing different Aesthetic ways and procedures making the content worthwhile for everyone to reach their goal and understand the knowledge behind it before implementing any procedures.
With the instant support and interest from the community, this made Nayri move forward to be more responsible with her journey to explore, educate and provide the right solutions.
Building a credible successful future in this industry is her main Goal!
There is a reason why the UAE is peppered with the ubiquitous chai shop – some are more hole-in-the-wall than others, but what they lack in compatible design they make up for in experience. Steaming cups of tea with a mix of milk and water that has been boiled to perfection and flavoured with caffeine-rich tea leaves. (Sugar is added to taste.) This liquor is a blanket of comfort and a gentle nudge into wakefulness.
This type of tea is often called karak, although there are many variations – with ginger or other additional spices – which can also result in a slightly tweaked name. [Ask for ginger or cinnamon tea, for instance, if you’d like to try a specific blend.]
The drink’s roots are in India, where instead of ‘a splash of milk’ or a squeeze of lime as the decoction was originally drunk by the British who introduced it to the country, the water is boiled along with milk until it thickens into a syrupy concoction.
Today this type of tea is drunk in tiny stalls, pop-up and shops often called chai addas.
As a trading hub, the UAE was destined to offer both versions of the drink, and it has. The colloquially called kadak – which means strong – has also revamped its name; here, we call it karak. And with it, it has re-jigged some of its essential ingredients, fresh milk often for taste and consistency is replaced by its evaporated cousin. “In 7,400 tea shops that sell karak, [the tea is] made with Rainbow [evaporated milk],” says Sumeet Mathur, Managing Director, FrieslandCampina Middle East
So how does the thick evaporated milk come to be? “Evaporating 40 per cent of water content from fresh milk and retaining its good fat and protein,” adds Mathur.
In the end know there are 2 glasses of fresh milk in each 170g tin.
You’ll often be able to spot a chai shop meters away, because it’s generally a-buzz with conversation and the sound of sloshing as ribbons of the stuff are poured from up top. [These also make for good Instagram photos.]
Indian Shanawaz Sayed, who hails from Mumbai and was quickly downing a late lunch in a café nearby, called Tea & Chat, says he loves the variety available in the store. “Basically the tea, the ambience, besides that the service is also good here,” says. This talk of ‘ambience’, or environment, comes up often when talking to tea drinkers – for the comfort and company that comes with the tea is often half the fun.
Dubai: There are four interested parties in the fray to acquire NMC Health with the deadline set to end today for submissions. One or two more potential investors could still throw in their bids in the few hours left, according to informed sources.
Among the four bids, one is from Abu Dhabi investment powerhouse Mubadala, another is from Hussain Sajwani of Damac, and a third from GKI, an Italian healthcare focused firm.
As per London Stock Exchange rules, there’s a 28-day window for official bids to be made after a listed company first announces that a bid was made,” said a senior source at a local bank. “It’s been 28 days since NMC announced that it had received bids from KKR and GKI. KKR has since said it’s no longer interested.
“But there are other parties who definitely are – NMC remains the biggest healthcare operator in the UAE; it has regional aspirations and it is profitable.
“The debts of $2 billion are what is going to be an issue; plus the lack of clarity on the exact holdings of its three principal shareholders, including that of the founder Dr. B. R. Shetty.”
All takeover bids need to be formally submitted to NMC by close of business on March 9. “You never know – a new offer could still be made,” said another source.
Incidentally, NMC Health shares on London Stock Exchange are still in temporary suspension. But outside of the stock exchange, the company’s shares are being actively sought.
In recent days, news came out that a “custody” bank, which was holding NMC shares pledged to it by one of the principal shareholders, had sold some of it.
It is believed that they were sold for 12.5 pounds a share, above the 10 pounds that the shares were quoted on LSE before they were suspended.
Since December, there have been other instances of banks selling off such blocks of shares belonging to Dr. Shetty and former vice-chairman Khaleefa Butti Omair Yousif Ahmed Al Muhairi, and Saeed Mohamed Butti Mohamed Khalfan al-Qebaisi.
It is now believed that the three own less than 10 per cent of shares in NMC from the once lofty holdings of 40 per cent plus.
Dubai: A man has been accused of forcing a 15-year-old girl to carry out sexual activities at a Dubai massage centre and raping her after offering her a soda mixed with alcohol.
The Dubai Court of First Instance heard on Monday that the Bangladeshi girl testified that her aunt brought her to the UAE last year, before forcing her to work in a massage centre. When she refused to “please customers” after a massage session, her aunt kept her in the house promising to send her back to her country.
“I met the defendant who told my aunt that he fell in love with me. I refused to have an affair with him. He took me to a nightclub and offered me a soda. I didn’t know the drink was mixed with alcohol and I start losing my balance. I don’t remember what happened after that but I woke up in the man’s bedroom,” the victim said in records.
She said she later discovered that the 36-year-old Bangladeshi defendant had sex with her. Her aunt told her the defendant would pay for her studies if she had sex with him.
After one month, her aunt was caught by the police for prostitution work after which the victim was left in the care of the defendant.
“The defendant forced me to work at massage centres and was collecting the money himself. He threatened to keep me without food and water if I refused to comly with his orders and once he even beat me with a belt,” the girl claimed.
In August 2019, the defendant took her to a massage centre where she met a countrywoman and showed her signs of violence on her body.
“She felt sorry for what had happened to me and helped me reach a police station by calling a taxi.”
A 28-year-old Emirati policeman said the victim reported the incident at Al Qusais police station.
Dubai Police arrested the defendant at Al Nahda and he admitted to having an illegal affair with the victim and bringing women from Bangaldesh to work in massage centres.
Dubai Public Prosecution has charged the defendant with human trafficking and raping the victim. It has asked the court to award death penalty to the defendant.
The defendant is in police custody and the next trial is on March 19.
Dubai: UAE airlines have released statements regarding the temporary suspension of flights between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
A statement from Etihad said, “Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, has suspended temporarily all flights between Abu Dhabi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in response to a directive from the General Authority for Civil Aviation, Saudi Arabia, to help prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
“The airline operates up to 12 flights per day between Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. It has cancelled a total of seven flights today between Abu Dhabi and the Saudi cities of Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Medina, and is now advising passengers who were booked to travel today.”
The statement added, “Another four flights which were en-route to Saudi Arabia at the time of the directive were permitted to land. When flights arrived in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam, nationals of Saudi Arabi were permitted to disembark but all other passengers remained on the aircraft, which will return to Abu Dhabi. The fourth flight operated to Medina to repatriate Umrah passengers.
“In addition to the flight suspensions to and from the UAE, Saudi Arabia has also banned Saudi nationals and Saudi residents from travelling to countries including the UAE and on passengers travelling from or transiting through Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Italy, Egypt and Korea.
“Etihad Airways is working closely with regulatory authorities in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and is continuing to monitor this situation closely.
“For passengers impacted by the flight cancellations, procedures are in place for fare refunds or for flight changes when services resume. Etihad will continue to provide updates on this situation as information becomes available.”
A statement from Emirates read, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have issued a directive, which takes immediate effect, suspending operations from several countries including the UAE to all airports in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in an effort to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This includes all flights to Damman, Jeddah, Medina and Riyadh on 9, 10, and 11 March. As previously updated, operations to Medina have been cancelled up to and including EK809/810 12th March 2020.
“Affected customers due to the cancellations for tickets issued on/before 09th March can opt to; rebook to alternate date of travel till 30th June, travel voucher for ticketed value, or get a refund.
“Customers should contact their travel agent or Emirates office for further support with their rebookings. Customers across the Emirates network holding tickets for final destination Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not be accepted for boarding at their point of origin until further notice.”
Fly Dubai said, “Following a directive from the Authorities in Saudi Arabia flydubai flights to and from Saudi Arabia have been cancelled until 12 March.
“Passengers who have booked to travel to Saudi Arabia and would like to talk to us about their journey, can telephone our Call Centre on (+971) 600 54 44 45, send an email to letstalk@flydubai.com or send us a private message on Facebook.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our passengers’ travel plans.”
Gulf News awaits response from Air Arabia.
Saudi Arabia early Monday suspended travel to and from nine countries including the UAE due to coronavirus concerns.
Travel is also suspended to and from Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Italy, South Korea and Syria.
The decision is designed to stop the spread of coronavirus in the kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency reports.
On Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced the suspension of schools and higher education institutions as of Monday until further notice, the Saudi Press Agency said.
Not all heroes wear capes, some of them wear nail polish, skirts and stilettos. Today, 8th of March we want to praise the role of 10 amazing arab women that are breaking the rules and changing stereotypes.
As women we don´t get enough recognition for the amazing things we are doing, challenging the world, beating huge obstacles while taking care of the family and loved ones.
Being a woman is hard. There is a long list of ladies changing the world and making history that deserves recognition and applause. We have created a list of 10 we very much admire and follow from DFN. They are all well known in the region, and we think it is about time, we pay a little tribute to these amazons
Speaking of fashion and class is talking about Diala. She has become the voice and bridge between fashion designers and the Arab audience and consumers. Diala has been a strong advocate for realistic beauty and ethics when it comes to social media. She raise her voice every time is necessary. Diala is the perfect example when I say that beauty comes from inside
Being a model is hard enough, but being a model with a skin condition makes it a million times harder. The modeling industry can be really hash; on top of that social media can be a monster hard to deal with. Shadah has proven her strength and the importance of the message she is trying to give to the world.
Being a woman entrepreneur is something relatively new in the world. Not often we hear the “boss lady” speech. Executive women, owner business women, you name it. It is a kind of new world for us. Huda has created not only a brand, but has lead and open a path for the generations behind us. What she did is much more than running a business, she changed the business game.
Representation matters, and is not just a phrase. We all need to be fit in, somewhere, somehow. Ghizlan creating the first online destination for women who want to dress modest in luxury is helping two different groups of women that until now felt there wasnt a place for them to shop and feel they are important.
Pioneers are called crazy until the rest understand the importance of standing up. Oh boy, how much I know about it! Aseel is a woman ahead of her time and she leading the change for many women in Saudi Arabia. There is many ways to do history, she choose to do it from behind the wheels. At DFN you have a fan club!