For post Brexit UK, building strong, global trading relations has a renewed importance. So the timing of a visit by a group of highly enterprising businesswomen from Sharjah, UAE, seemed a perfect symbol of that energized dynamic.
The trade delegation was led by Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al-Qasimi, wife of the ruler of Sharjah, chairperson of NAMA Women Advancement Establishment and honorary chairperson of the Sharjah Business Women Council (SBWC).
During the week-long visit the delegation met with leading British companies including Asprey, Smythson, Fortnum & Mason, Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant and Pret-A-Manger, as well as participated in exchanges with business organizations and universities.
One of the key events which attracted over 200 British businesswomen from a wide range of sectors was a seminar held by the Arab International Women’s Forum (AIWF) in partnership with global partner SBWC.
Held in the opulent surrounding of the Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall under the theme of ‘Partnership for Innovation in Entrepreneurship’ it presented a great opportunity for networking and exchanging of experience and ideas. In attendance were Aalya Al-Mazroui, wife of the United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Noura Al-Noman, Chairperson of the Executive Office of Sheikha Jawaher Al-Qasimi, and Dr. Afnan Al-Shuaiby, secretary general and CEO of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce.
In her press statement Sheikha Jawaher invited British businesswomen and entrepreneurs to visit Sharjah and learn more about the Emirate’s pioneering experience and efforts advancing women in the economic sector. She said: “Sharjah offers ideal investment and business opportunities and its business market is characterized by having large and stimulating investment facilities. We emphasize that British businesswomen have a great opportunity to forge strategic partnerships with Sharjah businesswomen and to launch joint development projects which are beneficial for both of them.”
In her opening address, Haifa Fahoum Al-Kaylani, founder and chairperson, Arab International Women’s Forum, said: “We are proud to collaborate with Sharjah Business Women Council on this seminar to exchange knowledge and ideas on how best to support women as business leaders, mentors, and importantly, role models, for the next generation.”
Ameera Abdelrahim BinKaram, vice-chairperson NAMA Women Advancement Establishment and Chairperson, Sharjah Business Women Council, in her address, noted that of the 593 British businesses licensed to operate in Sharjah, currently just five are owned by British women. “This is something SBWC aims to improve after this trade mission,” she said.
Two panels, chaired by Rania Rizk, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, PepsiCo, featured UAE businesswomen who shared their experience of building their companies.
Sheikha Hind Majid Al-Qasimi, founder of ‘Designed by Hind’, explained how with the encouragement of Sheikha Jawaher she developed the confidence to develop her porcelain business. “I didn’t believe in my designs when I first started. My first encouragement came from Her Highness,” she said.
Noor Saab, a Lebanese designer based in London, whose beautiful scarves inspired by Arabic calligraphy and arabesque, saw her being commissioned by Cartier to design and produce a collection for the 10th Anniversary of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, said: “There is huge potential for innovation across cultures; creating more dialogue across cultures is something which I think we are badly in need of. These are the things that will open up the world as opposed to closing it down.”
Alia Abdulla Al-Mazrouei, co-founder ‘Just Falafel’, said her experience of working in the public sector gave her valuable understanding of structures and procedures which proved very useful when it came to setting up her own business.
Sara Al-Madani, who has a wide range of business interests, said she was about to open a restaurant in Dubai to be named ‘Shepherds Bush’ which takes its inspiration from London. “All the Arabs go there! I wanted to bring a piece of London to Dubai because I know how much the UAE loves London,” she said.
She paid tribute to Sheikha Jawaher, who, she revealed, inspired her to start her first business venture in Sharjah. “Thanks to Her Highness my dream came true. Her Highness doesn’t just tell you what to do — she shows you what to do,” she said.
She added that in her view, Sharjah with its excellent facilities and logistics, has the potential to be the start-up hub of the Middle East.
Dr. Amal Ibrahim Al-Ali, assistant professor at Sharjah University and Founder and CEO, Cardiff Management Consultants, led the visiting delegation to participate in a special workshop held at Cardiff University’s Center for Innovation. Dr. Al-Ali studied at Cardiff University and is a former Sharjah Government Director of communications.
Heba Khairallah Al-Emara, UK head of relations, EMEA Orangefield Group, London, said investing personal effort into each project and taking ownership of the work would always result in a much higher level of quality and production.
Dr. Zanubia Daud Shams, co-chairperson, Zulekha Healthcare Group, said having self-belief was critical for success. She quoted a comment made by Hillary Clinton: “Before you get there you have to get going.”
Some of the visiting businesswomen from Sharjah were interviewed about their own entrepreneurial journeys.
Naeema Al-Amiri runs a heritage village in Sharjah that showcases the craftsmanship of artisans across a wide range of specialisms. She started out with a small stall twenty years ago and now has an enterprise employing 35 full time staff and up to 150 part time staff whose work is featured in major exhibitions in the UAE.
She recalled how a meeting with Sheikha Jawaher proved inspirational and set her on the path to success. “I remember telling Her Highness that it was my dream to set up a business and she responded: “Why are you dreaming? We are here to help support women to turn their dreams into reality.”
Al-Amiri said that she was considering some ideas for business collaborations in the UK.
Mariam Al-Mazro, fashion designer, Mimi Fashion Design, explained that she was with the family business for ten years which gave her good management experience. Today she specializes in customized evening wear and is looking into collaborating on projects related to fashion.
She commented on her own personal challenge in establishing her business: “For me the biggest challenge was getting over my shyness. Building my business has made my personality stronger and stronger.”
Aisha Alali, Dolce Confectionary Co., said she was looking to expand her business.
“I am looking to establish collaborations with UK businesswomen. My production is in Sharjah and we specialize in high-end chocolate,” she said.
The founder of FarahIcons spoke about her business specializing in wedding gifts which she started just a few months ago.
Ameera BinKaram emphasized the importance of face to face meetings to forge business connections.
“Entrepreneurs globally have similar challenges; we think it is very important for our members to look at what are some of the international entrepreneurs’ challenges and see how both can exchange best practices and see if they can collaborate. SBWC focuses on members understanding the power of networking; how to lobby people they meet and how to follow up and stay in contact when they go back to the UAE.
“On a government level the British Embassy in the UAE has been extremely supportive of SBWC. They have opened up a lot of doors for the Council and its members to meet with their counterparts in the UK. The embassy, and especially the Trade Mission department, offered advice on the corporates we should be engaging with. On a government level a lot has been done but there is always room for more to be done.”
Speaking of the collaboration with Asprey she said: “We worked on this for approximately nine months. Our beautiful traditional embroidery is on a limited collection of handbags. We have a collection with Asprey for London, another for New York, and an upcoming one for Moscow.”
Asked to give an insight into her own motivation in her work, she commented:
“My motivation comes from HH Sheikha Jawaher; her unwavering support is what keeps us going. She is very practical: she is mother, a professional, a strong advocate for women, and a very savvy businesswoman. She knows what it takes to get woman into the public and private sector.”
Haifa Al-Kaylani observed that there is a great bond between the UAE and the UK: “In conversations with women from the UAE about how they feel about the UK, and London in particular, everyone was saying: ‘There is no place like London.’
They travel all over Europe and they never feel more at home than when they are in London. There is a huge affinity between the Arab world and the UK.”
Sharjah businesswomen bring their spirit of enterprise to the UK
Sharjah businesswomen bring their spirit of enterprise to the UK
A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane
- Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey
KYIV, Ukraine: A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane has been reunited with her family days after they were separated while fleeing to safety.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family decided to leave the frontline town of Ocheretyne, in the eastern Donetsk region, last week after Russian troops entered it and fighting intensified.
Russians have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
“I woke up surrounded by shooting all around — so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview posted by the National Police of Donetsk region.
In the chaos of the departure, Lomikovska became separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger family members took to back routes, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.
With a cane in one hand and steadying herself using a splintered piece of wood in the other, the pensioner walked all day without food and water to reach Ukrainian lines.
Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey.
“Once I lost balance and fell into weeds. I fell asleep … a little, and continued walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself: “I need to keep walking, bit by bit,’” Lomikovska said.
Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was saved when Ukrainian soldiers spotted her walking along the road in the evening. They handed her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front line, who then took her to a shelter for evacuees and contacted her relatives.
“I survived that war,’ she said referring to World War II. “I had to go through this war too, and in the end, I am left with nothing.
“That war wasn’t like this one. I saw that war. Not a single house burned down. But now – everything is on fire,” she said to her rescuer.
In the latest twist to the story, the chief executive of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on his Telegram channel Tuesday that the bank would purchase a house for the pensioner.
“Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house and she will surely live in it until the moment when this abomination disappears from our land,” Oleh Horokhovskyi said.
Amazon Purr-rime: Cat accidentally shipped to online retailer
- Galena was found safe by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center after vanishing from her home in Utah
LOS ANGELES: A curious cat that sneaked into an open box was shipped across the United States to an Amazon warehouse after its unknowing owners sealed it inside.
Carrie Clark’s pet, Galena, vanished from her Utah home on April 10, sparking a furious search that involved plastering “missing” posters around the neighborhood.
But a week later, a vet hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Los Angeles got in touch to say the cat had been discovered in a box — alongside several pairs of boots — by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center.
“I ran to tell my husband that Galena was found and we broke down upon realizing that she must have jumped into an oversized box that we shipped out the previous Wednesday,” Clark told KSL TV in Salt Lake City.
“The box was a ‘try before you buy,’ and filled with steel-toed work boots.”
Clark and her husband jetted to Los Angeles, where they discovered Amazon employee Brandy Hunter had rescued Galena — a little hungry and thirsty after six days in a cardboard box, but otherwise unharmed.
“I could tell she belonged to someone by the way she was behaving,” said Hunter, according to Amazon.
“I took her home that night and went to the vet the next day to have her checked for a microchip, and the rest is history.”
What did people eat before agriculture? New study offers insight
- Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate
WASHINGTON: The advent of agriculture roughly 11,500 years ago in the Middle East was a milestone for humankind — a revolution in diet and lifestyle that moved beyond the way hunter-gatherers had existed since Homo sapiens arose more than 300,000 years ago in Africa.
While the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from the period preceding this turning point has made the diet of pre-agricultural people a bit of a mystery, new research is now providing insight into this question. Scientists reconstructed the dietary practices of one such culture from North Africa, surprisingly documenting a heavily plant-based diet.
The researchers examined chemical signatures in bones and teeth from the remains of seven people, as well as various isolated teeth, from about 15,000 years ago found in a cave outside the village of Taforalt in northeastern Morocco. The people were part of what is called the Iberomaurusian culture.
Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate. Found at the site were remains from different edible wild plants including sweet acorns, pine nuts, pistachio, oats and legumes called pulses. The main prey, based on bones discovered at the cave, was a species called Barbary sheep.
“The prevailing notion has been that hunter-gatherers’ diets were primarily composed of animal proteins. However, the evidence from Taforalt demonstrates that plants constituted a big part of the hunter-gatherers’ menu,” said Zineb Moubtahij, a doctoral student in archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“It is important as it suggests that possibly several populations in the world already started to include substantial amount of plants in their diet” in the period before agriculture was developed, added archeogeochemist and study co-author Klervia Jaouen of the French research agency CNRS.
The Iberomaurusians were hunter-gatherers who inhabited parts of Morocco and Libya from around 25,000 to 11,000 years ago. Evidence indicates the cave served as a living space and burial site.
These people used the cave for significant portions of each year, suggesting a lifestyle more sedentary than simply roaming the landscape searching for resources, the researchers said. They exploited wild plants that ripened at different seasons of the year, while their dental cavities illustrated a reliance on starchy botanical species.
Edible plants may have been stored by the hunter-gatherers year-round to guard against seasonal shortages of prey and ensure a regular food supply, the researchers said.
These people ate only wild plants, the researchers found. The Iberomaurusians never developed agriculture, which came relatively late to North Africa.
“Interestingly, our findings showed minimal evidence of seafood or freshwater food consumption among these ancient groups. Additionally, it seems that these humans may have introduced wild plants into the diets of their infants at an earlier stage than previously believed,” Moubtahij said.
“Specifically, we focused on the transition from breastfeeding to solid foods in infants. Breast milk has a unique isotopic signature, distinct from the isotopic composition of solid foods typically consumed by adults.”
Two infants were among the seven people whose remains were studied. By comparing the chemical composition of an infant’s tooth, formed during the breastfeeding period, with the composition of bone tissue, which reflects the diet shortly before death, the researchers discerned changes in the baby’s diet over time. The evidence indicated the introduction of solid foods at around the age of 12 months, with babies weaned earlier than expected for a pre-agricultural society.
North Africa is a key region for studying Homo sapiens evolution and dispersal out of Africa.
“Understanding why some hunter-gatherer groups transitioned to agriculture while others did not can provide valuable insights into the drivers of agricultural innovation and the factors that influenced human societies’ decisions to adopt new subsistence strategies,” Moubtahij said.
Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize
- The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli
ABU DHABI: Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, jailed 20 years ago in Israel, won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction on Sunday for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”
The award of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The prize was accepted on Khandaqji’s behalf by Rana Idriss, owner of Dar Al-Adab, the book’s Lebanon-based publisher.
Khandaqji was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 1983, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.
He was convicted and jailed on charges relating to a deadly bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education from inside jail via the Internet.
The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli.
Khandaqji’s book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition.
Nabil Suleiman, who chaired the jury, said the novel “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism.”
Since being jailed Khandaqji has written poetry collections including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem.”
He has also written three earlier novels.
Mexican doctor claims victory in $28 Cartier earrings battle
MEXICO CITY: A Mexican man has claimed a victory over French luxury brand Cartier, saying an error allowed him to buy two pairs of earrings for $28 that were supposed to cost nearly $28,000.
After a four-month struggle, doctor Rogelio Villarreal said he had finally received the jewelry, which he accused the company of refusing to deliver after his online purchase in December.
According to Villarreal, he came across the low-priced earrings while browsing Instagram.
“I swear I broke out in a cold sweat,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Cartier declined to recognize the purchase and offered Villarreal a refund, as well as a bottle of champagne and a passport holder as compensation, according to a company letter shared by the doctor.
But Villarreal refused and decided to take the case to Mexico’s consumer protection agency, which ruled in favor of the doctor.
Cartier accepted the decision, Villarreal announced.
“War is over. Cartier is complying,” he wrote.
