Local News, Jobs & Business Services Across the Gulf. 

Swift action to tackle COVID-19 by Saudi Arabia. Implements curfew in most highly crowed cities including two holy cities Mecca and Medina. Total death percentage is minimal in comparison to technically strong economies. To come out from pandemic COVID-19 became a challenge for the whole world today. The coronavirus has affected almost 203 countries and territories of the world. Total confirmed cases of the infection in the world are 1,350,523, total death is 74,834, and the total recovered cases is 285,327 as of now. Saudi Arabia has taken swift action to tackle the pandemic COVID-19. And this is the reason for the low death and the high recovery rate in the country. The total number of coronavirus infection cases in Saudi Arabia is 2,605 with 203 new cases on Monday.  If we talk about the death toll of the country, it now stands at 38. The death percentage to the total cases of infection is 1.45%. On the other hand, total recoveries are 551.   The total cases of infection in the US are 368,449  and the death toll is 10,993 which is 3% of total infection cases. The death percentage of Saudi Arabia due to COVID-19 is very less in comparison to most of the strong and technically advanced countries. It shows how Saudi Arabia is leading globally in order to mitigate COVID-19 infection. The country is adopting full preventive measures in order to minimize the impact of the pandemic. Saudi Arabia has implemented a curfew across all major cities. Residents are now only allowed to go out for essential food or medical supplies, with a limit of 2 people per car and only within their neighbourhood between 6am and 3pm (excluding key workers). The Saudi Arabia Health minister Dr. Tawfiq Al Rabiah urged people to limit their movement, avoid crowded places and to adhere to the preventive measures. Also, Saudi Haj minister urged Muslims worldwide to hold on Haj plan until a clear picture of COVID-19 comes. The Saudi Arabia government recently announced a stimulus package of $32 billion to support the economy hit by the coronavirus infection. The package will also support the small and medium firms of the country to stand strong in this hard time. The fight continues.

In order to combat COVID-19 / The Corona Virus Saudi Arabia has taken a key step to limit the transmission of the Virus. It is now imposing a 24 Hour lock across major cities including Riyadh, Damman and Jeddah.  Whilst this means big changes across the country, there is still permission granted for people to go outside between 6 AM and 3 PM but ONLY within their own neighbourhoods for essential food shopping or medical care. Additionally, a maximum of 1 person should be in the car at any one time.  This swift action allows Saudi Arabia to stay at the forefront in combating the spread across the country with one of the lowest death rates globally at 38. For more official information, please visit: https://www.spa.gov.sa/2070988    

By: Rasha Adnan What is the key to your success?  A winning combination is not just talent or experience, but it’s talent coupled with experience which is a crucial tool for success, where mentors can share their skills with younger generation which is an excellent way to ensure job satisfaction and employee happiness. People without a natural talent for innovation cannot innovate, no matter how long they have been on the job… What made Picasso and Dali so damn good? Was it their ability to paint inside the lines! Absolutely No. What made Steve Jobs Bill Gates so successful? Their thirty years of experience when they launched Microsoft and Apple? Absolutely No. I don’t mean that experience is not important, but if standing alone it tends to be overrated. Talent by its nature always accelerates experience.  So, fulfilling a goal in life needs both.  Let's talk facts: Nowadays most companies tend to hire those who have experience rather than the talented because they keep in mind specific considerations such as hitting the ground running with no training.  On the other hand and according to Forbes, here are five reasons to hire someone who lacks industry experience:  Getting a diversity of ideas Falling into mental ruts “Cookie-Cutter Candidates” become entrenched in their go-to methods People apply they learned in other sectors Hiring someone with no experience is a challenge The Pros and Cons of hiring talented or experienced people depend on each company’s needs. So a healthy mix of skills and talent can ensure long-term success.

Inas Adel Inas is an experienced Language Arts Teacher with a demonstrated history of working in middle school, high school and the higher education industry. Teaching is her passion, as she is a strong education professional with a Master’s degree in English Language Arts from the University of Southampton, UK. She has also studied Media, Journalism and Marketing in the Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University. Her hobbies include reading mystery and suspense novels as well as writing articles, poems, novels and short stories.

By: Dalia Ibrahim Being a teacher is not an easy job, not only because the idea of explaining something you already know to someone else who does not can be very challenging, but also because you deal every day with different types of students, having different academic levels, interests and attitudes.  It is through the human interaction between the teacher and students that the teaching and learning process succeeds and through the students' interaction with each other. It is this human bond that completes the chain of teaching and learning in the best of ways. While teaching, you just observe each one sitting in front of you; you simply "scan" their faces, their reactions and their body language. Doing this, you can tell when they are engaged or not, when confused, perplexed or even discouraged because they could not get that equation or the symbolic meaning of that line in the short story everyone gets. You can get it from their look, from the way they throw the pen on the desk or angrily cross their arms. By looking at them, you can feel when they are sad and when happy, when bored and when excited. In fact, sometimes the experience of being in class with them is more related to the human interaction than the academic content you are teaching. Dealing with students every day is what makes this profession unique.  Imagine waking up one day and being destined to leave all this, to stay home and to start teaching your students online. You just feel lost and you believe this will turn teaching into a passionless task, like watching a live concert online: you cannot feel it properly, but you can just imagine how it could have been being there. This is the first feeling you get, before fully understanding what is going on.  In the beginning, I was lost, but later I understood that I had to take action and that I had to work on myself, to develop my E-learning skills and to be able to adapt lessons according to my students' level and technological background. I decided that I had to do my best, to make the distant learning an experience full of engagement, interaction and passion.  This is when I started being a student myself, looking for online courses on how to be an online tutor and design online courses – like the courses offered by Hamdan Bin Mohamed Smart University - courses on supporting equity in a remote learning environment, how to keep students engaged and build strong student/teacher connections or how to empower every student with an inclusive classroom, like the courses offered by Microsoft Educator Center, using Teams, OneNote, PowerPoint, and many other Microsoft programs and features, as well as more professional courses on practical teaching with technology, offered by Coursera.  I started dividing my time among the online classes I gave to my students, the correction and marking of their assignments, the feedback they needed to receive from me and the courses I wanted to take to be able to teach them properly in these new circumstances. I created a schedule and hung it on the wall: a full-time schedule for teaching and learning, for them and for me.

Born in Italy to an Egyptian family, Dalia Ibrahim has a Masters of Arts in Comparative Literature English/Italian. She is currently working as a High School English Teacher in UAE, Abu Dhabi. The nature of her undergraduate and postgraduate studies, as well as her profession, have enabled her to explore and evaluate different topics related to education and teaching. Recent Articles: Memoirs of a Teacher during Distant Learning