DUBAI: From smart police helmets to research labs, the coronavirus has given Dubai an opportunity to test its technological and scientific clout as it shapes its approach to the pandemic.
A key part of the glitzy Gulf emirate’s fight is its COVID-19 Command and Control Center, set up to coordinate the efforts of Dubai’s doctors, epidemiologists and other professionals.
It is hosted within the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) in Dubai’s Healthcare City, also home to state-of-the-art hospitals, labs and research centers.
“For several years, Dubai has endeavored to put in place solid digital infrastructure, and this has contributed to the fight against the coronavirus,” said Amer Sharif, who heads the multidisciplinary center.
It was established at the start of the health crisis by Dubai Crown Prince and social media star Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum.
In one room, young mask-wearing men and women sit at carefully separated desks crunching data on laptops and coordinating with workers on the ground.
The initiative includes a scientific team whose role is “to stay abreast of the latest advances in research and scientific evidence, both in the country and elsewhere in the world,” team head Alawi Alsheikh-Ali said.
The United Arab Emirates has carried out more than 1.6 million coronavirus tests, and has officially declared over 28,700 infections, including 244 deaths.
This high-tech approach, Sharif said, including “the complete digitization of the health system,” has prevented a greater spread of the virus and made the lockdown easier.
Tom Loney, associate professor of public health and epidemiology at MBRU, said the coronavirus was an opportunity for Dubai to put its capabilities to the test.
“It’s the ability to react, to make quick decisions based on data and science” that sets Dubai apart, said Loney, who is also an adviser to authorities in the city-state.
According to him decisions were made by order of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, whose portrait is featured on the MBRU building.
Dubai is one of seven emirates in the UAE, a key Gulf state with big technological and scientific ambitions.
The emirate lacks the oil wealth of its neighbors, but has the most diversified economy in the Gulf, building a reputation as a financial, commercial and tourism hub.
The UAE sent an astronaut into space last year, and in July is set to launch the first Arab probe toward Mars, a project sponsored by the emir of Dubai.
Many tech options were already at Dubai’s fingertips when the pandemic struck, and the emirate was quick at putting its technology to a variety of uses during the virus crisis.
Police wear smart helmets that take the temperature of passers-by while laboratories make protective masks using 3D printers.
When a night-time curfew begins, Dubai residents — 90 percent of whom are expats — receive a reminder message on their mobile phone in Arabic, English or other languages.
The UAE has regularly announced research advances into the COVID-19 illness, developing several apps to help manage the pandemic.
One of them, Alhosn, which the government has encouraged residents to download, helps track people who are infected with the virus or who may have come in close contact with confirmed cases.
But the use of technology to fight the pandemic has raised concern across the world over government surveillance and privacy risks.
Tech experts and the media have highlighted this issue in the UAE, where some foreign websites and applications are already blocked.
But Sharif pushed back against skepticism.
“Dubai and the Emirates respect privacy, whether it is a question of patient records or smart applications,” he said.
The emirate was creating its “own model” of responding to the health crisis, Sharif added, though authorities were also looking at countries such as South Korea, seen as a positive policy response to the crisis.
“We must follow the developments ... but also add to them,” he said.
Coronavirus pandemic gives Dubai chance to put tech to the test
https://arab.news/zfd4f
Coronavirus pandemic gives Dubai chance to put tech to the test
- The UAE has carried out more than 1.6 million coronavirus tests
- Many tech options were already at Dubai’s fingertips when the pandemic struck
Syrian fact-finding committee for sectarian killings says no one above the law
DAMASCUS: A Syrian fact-finding committee investigating sectarian killings during clashes between the army and loyalists of Bashar Assad said on Tuesday that no one was above the law and it would seek the arrest and prosecution of any perpetrators.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by witnesses and a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population are members of the ousted president’s Alawite sect.
“No one is above the law, the committee will relay all the results to the entity that launched it, the presidency, and the judiciary,” the committee’s spokesperson Yasser Farhan said in a televised press conference.
The committee was preparing lists of witnesses to interview and potential perpetrators, and would refer any suspects with sufficient evidence against them to the judiciary, Farhan added.
The UN human rights office said entire families including women and children were killed in the coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Assad loyalists.
Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa told Reuters in an interview on Monday that he could not yet say whether forces from Syria’s defense ministry — which has incorporated former rebel factions under one structure — were involved in the sectarian killings.
Asked whether the committee would seek international help to document violations, Farhan said it was “open” to cooperation but would prefer using its own national mechanisms.
The violence began to spiral on Thursday, when the authorities said their forces in the coastal region came under attack from fighters aligned with the ousted Assad regime.
The Sunni Islamist-led government poured reinforcements into the area to crush what it described as a deadly, well-planned and premeditated assault by remnants of the Assad government.
But Sharaa acknowledged to Reuters that some armed groups had entered without prior coordination with the defense ministry.
Syria Kurd forces chief says agreement with Sharaa ‘real opportunity’ to build new Syria
DAMASCUS: The head of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Tuesday that an accord reached with the new leaders in Damascus is a “real opportunity to build a new Syria.” “We are committed to building a better future that guarantees the rights of all Syrians and fulfills their aspirations for peace and dignity,” Mazloum Abdi said in a posting on X.
The Syrian presidency announced on Monday an agreement with the SDF to integrate the institutions of the autonomous Kurdish administration in the northeast into the national government.
Israeli fire kills 4 Palestinians in Gaza Strip, 3 in the occupied West Bank
Israeli fire has killed four people and wounded 14 in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, Palestinian officials said, even as a fragile ceasefire with Hamas has largely held.
Israeli strikes have killed dozens of Palestinians who the army says had approached its troops or entered unauthorized areas in violation of the January truce.
Israel last week suspended supplies of goods and electricity to the territory of more than 2 million Palestinians as it tries to pressure the militant group to accept an extension of the first phase of their ceasefire. That phase ended March 1. Israel wants Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.
Hamas instead wants to start negotiations on the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase, which would see the release of remaining hostages from Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a lasting peace. Hamas is believed to have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 35 others.
Israel-Gaza war behind record high US anti-Muslim incidents, advocacy group says
- Muslim advocacy group says it recorded over 8,600 incidents in 2024
- Rights advocates have noted rising Islamophobia, antisemitism since start of Israel-Gaza war
WASHINGTON: Discrimination and attacks against American Muslims and Arabs rose by 7.4 percent in 2024 due to heightened Islamophobia caused by US ally Israel’s war in Gaza and the resulting college campus protests, a Muslim advocacy group said on Tuesday.
The Council on American Islamic Relations said it recorded the highest number of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints — 8,658 — in 2024 since it began publishing data in 1996.
Most complaints were in the categories of employment discrimination (15.4 percent), immigration and asylum (14.8 percent), education discrimination (9.8 percent) and hate crimes (7.5 percent), according to the CAIR report.
Rights advocates have highlighted an increase in Islamophobia, anti-Arab bias and antisemitism since the start of Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.
The CAIR report also details police and university crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on college campuses.
Demonstrators have for months demanded an end to US support for Israel. At the height of college campus demonstrations in the summer of 2024, classes were canceled, some university administrators resigned, and student protesters were suspended and arrested.
Human rights and free speech advocates condemned the crackdown on protests which were called disruptive by university administrators. Notable incidents include violent arrests by police of protesters at Columbia University and a mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“For the second year in a row, the US-backed Gaza genocide drove a wave of Islamophobia in the United States,” CAIR said. Israel denies genocide and war crimes accusations.
Last month, an Illinois jury found a man guilty of hate crime in an October 2023 fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy.
Other alarming US incidents since late 2023 include the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian American girl in Texas, the stabbing of a Palestinian American man in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York and a Florida shooting of two Israeli visitors whom a suspect mistook to be Palestinians.
In recent days, the US government has faced criticism from rights advocates over the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student who has played a prominent role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.
Hundreds of thousands return home in Sudan
- Displaced families have headed back in droves, even to burned homes
PORT SUDAN: Nearly 400,000 Sudanese have returned to their homes over the past two and a half months after being displaced by the ongoing conflict, the United Nations migration agency said on Monday.
Between December and March, “approximately 396,738 individuals” returned to areas retaken from paramilitary forces by the army, which has advanced through central Sudan in recent months, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal conflict between army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Nearly all the returnees moved back to their homes in the central Sudanese states of Sennar, which the army largely recaptured in December, and Al-Jazira after it was retaken the following month.
Thousands more have returned to the capital Khartoum, where the army regained large areas last month and appeared on the verge of expelling the RSF.
Displaced families have headed back in droves, even to looted and burned homes, after more than a year of displacement.
Across the country, 11.5 million people are internally displaced, many of them facing mass starvation in what the UN calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
A further 3.5 million people have fled across borders since the war broke out.
Parts of the country have already descended into famine, with another 8 million people on the brink of mass starvation.
On Monday, the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said only 6.3 percent of the funding necessary to provide lifesaving aid had been received.
Nationwide, nearly 25 million people are suffering dire food insecurity.
The conflict divided the country into two parts, with the army controlling the country’s north and east while the RSF holds nearly all Darfur and parts of the south.
A medical source said RSF shelling on Sunday on a strategic city in Sudan’s south killed nine civilians and injured 21 others.
El-Obeid, the state capital of North Kordofan, came under attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, said the source at the city’s main hospital and several witnesses.
