Indian women entrepreneurs to visit UAE to study AI governance, medical innovation

Special

People visit Expo 2020 in the Gulf emirate of Dubai on March 25, 2022. (AFP)

Short Url

https://arab.news/jybm9

Updated 01 November 2024

Sanjay Kumar

October 31, 2024 16:21

Indian women entrepreneurs to visit UAE to study AI governance, medical innovation

Delegation will attend panel discussions, networking opportunities with UAE industry leaders in Dubai
India, UAE have witnessed significant rise in bilateral exchanges since signing free trade pact in 2022

Updated 01 November 2024

Sanjay Kumar

October 31, 2024 16:21

NEW DELHI: Dozens of women entrepreneurs from the Indian Women Network of the Confederation of Indian Industry will depart to the UAE next week to study AI governance in education and medical innovation.

IWN was launched in 2013 by India’s largest and oldest industrial body, the CII, to create the largest network for professional women and promote their participation, growth and leadership in the workplace. Today, it has established chapters in almost two dozen Indian states.

For its first international trip, IWN will lead a 35-member delegation comprising women entrepreneurs from various sectors of Indian industries for a two-day visit to the UAE’s commercial capital, Dubai, starting Nov. 4.

“Dubai was chosen as the destination because of its progressive strides in areas such as AI governance in education, medical innovation, R&D and women’s empowerment,” Megha Chopra, chairperson of CII’s IWN chapter in New Delhi, told Arab News on Thursday.

“The delegation will explore how Dubai has successfully implemented forward-thinking strategies in these sectors, drawing valuable insights to inspire similar growth and innovation in India.”

The trip, which also includes panel discussions and networking opportunities, aims to “foster knowledge-sharing, networking and leadership development” as well as making connections with UAE-based industry pioneers, she added.

For Chopra, executive director at software company RateGain Travel Technologies, the learning retreat is an important extension of the India-UAE economic partnership.

“This trip also highlights the significance of women’s roles in enhancing bilateral ties and contributing to economic progress, with IWN creating a platform where Indian women entrepreneurs can not only draw inspiration, but also forge connections that could lead to tangible business partnerships and investments,” she said.

India and the UAE have significantly advanced bilateral exchanges since they signed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in 2022.

The UAE is the largest Middle Eastern investor in India, with investments amounting to about $3 billion in the financial year 2023-24, according to Indian government data.

The two countries also expect to increase the total value of bilateral trade in non-petroleum products to more than $100 billion and trade in services to $15 billion by 2030.

“By connecting 35 women entrepreneurs from diverse Indian industries with eminent leaders and disruptors in Dubai, the delegation fosters knowledge exchange and cultivates potential avenues for cross-border collaborations,” Chopra said.

“In essence, the IWN delegation strengthens the India-UAE economic bond, championing women’s leadership as a key driver of continued growth and collaboration between the two nations.”

Topics: India United Arab Emirates (UAE) Dubai Megha Chopra

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list

Updated 06 December 2024

Kanyakumari Damordaran

December 06, 2024 18:43

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list

Malaysia’s breakfast traditions recognized on Intangible Cultural Heritage list
This is the first time Malaysia has received UN recognition related to gastronomy

Updated 06 December 2024

Kanyakumari Damordaran

December 06, 2024 18:43

KUALA LUMPUR: For many Malaysians, breakfast has always been the highlight of the day — and now, it is also a source of pride after gaining a place on UNESCO’s cultural heritage list.

The UN body voted on Thursday to include Malaysia’s breakfast culture, “a living heritage related to the traditional dietary practices,” on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The recognition was immediately welcomed by the Ministry of Culture as a “historic milestone” as it was Malaysia’s first UNESCO entry related to food and gastronomy. It also drew delighted responses from all those from whom breakfast is an integral part of family and social life.

Heng Wei Boon, a 47-year-old engineer, still remembers the food his mother used to prepare when he was growing up in Penang. The usual menu was half-boiled eggs with toast, porridge, or noodle soup. All three dishes until now remain his breakfast favorites until now.

“It did not matter if it was a school day. If it is, breakfast is at 6.30 a.m. If not, it’s around 7:45 or 8 a.m,” he said.

“It is a meal to start the day and here in Malaysia, we take it very seriously.”

From home kitchens to kopitiams — traditional coffee houses — to roadside stalls and office cafeterias, the first meal of the day is like a ritual in all of Malaysia’s multi-ethnic communities.

“I grew up in a kampung (village) neighborhood, in the city, and back then, sometimes, some of the moms took turns making breakfast for the kids ... It was such a fun time, and it is a memory so many of us cherish and still talk about,” Nur Natasha Siraj, a 35-year old pharmacist in the Klang Valley told Arab News.

“Now, as a working adult, taking that time for breakfast — to sit and share a meal to start my day — is an important part of my routine, as it is for many Malaysians. The boomers in my hospital would never not go for breakfast and even give us a scolding for missing breakfast. Not so much because they care about our health, but because it is our time to check in with one another and bond before the rush of the day begins.”

A screengrab from a 2023 clip by Malaysia's Department of National Heritage shows a food vendor serving nasi lemak. (UNESCO)

Her favorite breakfast item was nasi lemak — fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk and with pandan leaves, accompanied by sambal chili sauce and various garnishes like fresh cucumber slices, fried anchovies, roasted peanuts, and boiled or fried eggs.

Traditionally served in banana leaves, it is one of the most popular staples.

Mahalakshmi Sundarasekaran, a Kuala Lumpur vendor who sells nasi lemak and idli — savory Indian rice cakes — runs out of her menu items within two hours from opening her stall in the morning.

“People are always in a good mood when having breakfast. I enjoy seeing that. I am glad Malaysia got recognized for this,” she said.

“We, Malaysians, love our food, give it to us three times a day, five times a day, we will eat. But there’s something about breakfast. A good breakfast to start your day ... This recognition is so appropriate.”

Other iconic breakfast items include roti canai — a flaky, crispy South Indian flatbread served with lentil or meat curry — and mi soto, a soup dish that combines broth spiced with turmeric, ginger and lemongrass, and thick yellow noodles.

Sulaiman Ramly, who owns a mi soto stall in Kota Bharu in the northern state of Kelantan, told Arab News that breakfast was a “reset time” for Malaysians.

“It is when they set their bearings for the day. For someone like me who sells breakfast for a living, I know that a good meal to start your day sets the tone for the whole day,” he said.

“In Malaysia, there is no shortage of good food and especially not of good breakfast.”

Topics: Malaysia UNESCO

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza

Updated 06 December 2024

Natalia Laskowska

December 06, 2024 18:37

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza

Indonesians were the only surgeons left at Kamal Adwan Hospital
Heavy casualties reported as Israeli forces stormed the hospital

Updated 06 December 2024

Natalia Laskowska

December 06, 2024 18:37

DUBAI: Indonesian medics volunteering at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza said they were forced by Israeli troops to leave the area on Friday, days after arriving with emergency assistance.

Like the rest of Gaza’s north, the Kamal Adwan Hospital has been cut from any supplies since early October, enduring multiple Israeli strikes and a siege and running out of fuel, among other essentials.

Five volunteers from the Indonesian nongovernmental organization Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, or MER-C, arrived in the facility on Dec. 1 and were the first emergency medical team to reach it in 60 days.

They were forced to leave on Friday morning following two warnings, Dr. Faradina Sulistiyani, a surgeon from the MER-C, said in a video clip upon arrival in Gaza City.

“We walked from Kamal Adwan until Salah Al-Din Street,” she said. “They are bombing the hospital now.”

Most of the hospital’s doctors have been detained by Israeli soldiers in raids since late October.

The Indonesian team, comprising Sulistiyani, another surgeon, an obstetrician, and two nurses, were the only ones able to perform surgeries in the past days, the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said in a statement after their departure.

“No surgeons are left,” he said, as he reported scores of casualties from Friday’s attacks.

“Medical supplies are running out, and there are hundreds of victims.”

From the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Indonesian team walked to the nearby Indonesia Hospital — a facility that was funded and opened by MER-C in 2016. Heavily damaged by Israeli strikes last year, the hospital partly reopened in June. It has been targeted again since October.

Video footage shared by MER-C shows the Indonesian medics sheltering in the facility, amid strikes hitting the building.

“We have evacuated from the Kamal Adwan Hospital, now at Indonesia Hospital. God willing, we’ll walk to Salah Al-Din,” one of the volunteers said in the clip. “Dr. Hussam and other local medical staff remained in Kamal Adwan.”

When they reached Salah Al-Din Road, the main highway of the Gaza Strip, they were picked up by a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance.

“There were still people walking some 300 meters behind us,” Kamal Putra Pratama, a nurse from the team, said in a video from the car. “Hopefully the people who were in Kamal Adwan, the sick people, can be evacuated.”

One of the last functioning health centers in north Gaza, the Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit multiple times since the start of Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave in October last year.

The hospital’s intensive care unit director Ahmad Al-Kahlut was killed in an air strike late last month.

The Israeli military has killed at least 44,600 people and injured more than 105,000. The real death toll is believed to be much higher, with estimates published by medical journal The Lancet indicating that, as of July, it could be more than 186,000.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Indonesia Palestine Gaza Hamas

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say

Updated 06 December 2024

Reuters

December 06, 2024 18:09

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say

Two member states blocked the passage over a disagreement about extending the time given to European companies disinvesting from Russia, diplomats said
EU members will come back to the package later

Updated 06 December 2024

Reuters

December 06, 2024 18:09

BRUSSELS: Representatives of European Union countries failed on Friday to approve a 15th package of sanctions on Russia, which included an extension for the Czech Republic to import Russian oil-based products coming mainly through Slovakia, diplomats said.
Two member states blocked the passage over a disagreement about extending the time given to European companies disinvesting from Russia, diplomats said. EU members will come back to the package later.
The package also includes sanctions on tankers carrying Russian oil.
Within the package was a debate on extending an EU exemption allowing the Czechs to continue importing diesel and other products derived from Russian oil and made in a Slovak refinery.
While the Czechs have said they were not looking for an extension allowing the import of Russian oil-based fuels, Slovakia has sought to keep the arrangement, which expired on Thursday, in place.
Slovak refiner Slovnaft, owned by Hungary’s MOL , is a significant exporter of diesel made from Russian oil to the Czech Republic. Czech officials have said an extension for six months could be accepted.
The 27-nation EU banned most oil imports from Russia after the country’s full-scale
invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary gained exemptions to sanctions because of a lack of other supply.
However, the Czech Republic has been upgrading a pipeline from Italy to Germany to transport more oil that way and wean itself completely off Russian crude by the second half of 2025.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict European Union sanctions

EU and South America countries conclude Mercosur trade deal

Argentina's President Javier Milei, Uruguay's President Luis Lacalle Pou, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Br

Updated 17 min 17 sec ago

AFP

December 06, 2024 14:13

EU and South America countries conclude Mercosur trade deal

Agreement will create a sprawling free-trade zone of more than 700 million people
France, which opposes the deal, says the agreement would bring unfair competition for agriculture

Updated 17 min 17 sec ago

AFP

December 06, 2024 14:13

MONTEVIDEO: The EU and four South American countries have concluded a huge, but controversial trade deal that is opposed by France and many European farmers, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday.
“This is a win-win agreement,” von der Leyen said in Uruguay, where she was attending a summit of the Mercosur bloc involved in the deal, which also includes Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.
The agreement would create a sprawling free-trade zone of more than 700 million people.
She called the agreement — nearly a quarter of a century in the making — “a truly historic milestone” that builds trade bridges at a time when “strong winds are blowing in the opposite direction, toward isolation and fragmentation.”
But the European farmers’ group COPA-COGECA immediately reiterated its opposition to the agreement and called for a “flash” protest in Brussels on Monday.
EU countries and the European Parliament “must now firmly challenge the terms of this agreement,” the umbrella organization said.
While negotiations have concluded, the EU-Mercosur deal still needs to be greenlit by at least 15 of the European Union’s 27 member nations representing 65 percent of the EU population, as well as the European Parliament.
France, which has been rocked by successive protests by farmers saying the agreement would bring unfair competition, has tried to forge a blocking minority of EU countries.
Poland has rallied to France’s side, and Italian government sources say Rome believes “the conditions are not met” to back the deal. The Netherlands and Austria have also expressed reservations.
France’s minister for trade, Sophie Primas, said that von der Leyen’s announcement “regards only her.”
“Today is not the end of the story.... This only commits the commission, not the (EU) member states,” she said in a statement to AFP.
But Germany, desperate to open more trade opportunities amid gloom for its manufacturing sector, had strongly come out in favor of the EU-Mercosur deal, as had Spain.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reacted to the announcement from von der Leyen — a former German defense minister — by saying on X that “an important hurdle” had been overcome.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hailed a “historic agreement with Mercosur to establish an unprecedented economic bridge between Europe and Latin America.”
The broad outlines of a deal were agreed back in 2019 but it was never ratified amid concerns over the impact of Brazilian farming on climate change, among other factors.
Von der Leyen nodded to that preoccupation, saying: “The EU-Mercosur agreement reflects our steadfast commitment to the Paris Agreement (on fighting climate change) and to the fight against deforestation.”
She said efforts being made by the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to protect the Amazon “are welcome, and they are necessary — but preserving the Amazon is a shared responsibility of all humanity.”
She also singled out European farmers, telling them: “We have heard you, listened to your concerns, and we are acting on them. This agreement includes robust safeguards to protect your livelihoods.”
The deal, once ratified, would allow the EU to export cars, machinery and pharmaceutical products more easily to South America.
In return, Brazil and its neighbors would be able to sell meat, sugar, rice, honey, soybeans and other products to Europe with fewer restrictions.
The treaty aims to eliminate most import taxes between the EU and Mercosur to create a vast free-trade area of more than 700 million consumers.
Sources familiar with the negotiations told AFP the deal would include changes to “several chapters,” including government contracts, services, intellectual property and the environment.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday had repeated a warning to von der Leyen that the agreement was “unacceptable in its current state.”

Topics: MERCOSUR EU Trade deal

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh

Updated 06 December 2024

Arab News

December 06, 2024 16:54

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh

Foreign Office warns against ‘all but essential travel’ to South Asian country amid political turmoil
Large public gatherings, religious sites, political rallies cited as areas of concern

Updated 06 December 2024

Arab News

December 06, 2024 16:54

LONDON: The UK has warned travelers to Bangladesh that “terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks” in the South Asian country.

In an update to its official travel guidance, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office cautioned against “all but essential travel” to Bangladesh, highlighting large public gatherings, religious sites and political rallies as areas of concern.

“Some groups have targeted people who they consider to have views and lifestyles contrary to Islam,” the FCDO said.

The warnings come as Bangladesh continues to experience violence and political turmoil following the collapse of the government of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Aug. 5 amid nationwide protests.

The country has subsequently seen attacks, including with improvised explosive devices, against minority groups and the police.

The FCDO warned that authorities may use security threats to justify imposing extreme restrictions on movement without warning.

Topics: Bangladesh UK UK foreign office

Indian women entrepreneurs to visit UAE to study AI governance, medical innovation

Indian women entrepreneurs to visit UAE to study AI governance, medical innovation

Indian women lead way closing gender gap in aviation industry

Indian women set sights on new military roles as court opens top ranks to female soldiers

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list

Chedi Hegra Hotel opens at UNESCO site

‘Simsimiyya’: Saudi, Egyptian musical instrument joins UNESCO’s intangible heritage list

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza

First Indonesians leave Gaza after difficulties to ensure safe passage

North Gaza hospital director says Israeli strikes hit facility

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say

Germany wants trade with Kazakhstan, won’t circumvent Russia sanctions, Scholz says

US expands Russia sanctions, targets chips sent via China

EU and South America countries conclude Mercosur trade deal

EU and South America countries conclude Mercosur trade deal

Breeders fear EU-Mercosur pact will affect Belgium business

Offside Macron gets the whistle from French farmers

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh

Bangladesh court bans publication of speeches by ousted Prime Minister Hasina

Bangladesh’s Yunus urges unity to counter ‘Indian aggression’

Latest updates

Saudi foreign minister arrives in Bahrain for Manama Dialogue 2024

JAX District hosts dialogue sessions on contemporary arts

Saudi Arabia poised to expand manufacturing ecosystem with inaugural CPHI Middle East

GCC secretary-general holds high-level talks at Manama Dialogue

Leclerc handed 10-place penalty for Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Recommended

How Saudi Arabia is leveraging artificial intelligence to tackle land degradation

How Saudi Arabia and France aligned national visions for prosperity at Riyadh investment forum

What to expect from French President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Saudi Arabia

Search form

Print Edition

Search form

Search form

You are here

Indian women entrepreneurs to visit UAE to study AI governance, medical innovation

Indian women entrepreneurs to visit UAE to study AI governance, medical innovation

Related

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list

Related

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza

Related

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say

Related

EU and South America countries conclude Mercosur trade deal

Related

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh

Related

Latest updates

Recommended

Search form

Print Edition