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SHARJAH / WAM The Sharjah Entrepreneurship Centre (Sheraa) awarded its first Access Sharjah winner, ‘Little Thinking Minds’, a $100,000 equity-free grant. ‘BoBu’, ‘Narrativa’, and ‘almentor.net’ in second position, were presented with a $20,000 equity-free grant, said a press release issued by Sheraa on Monday. Sheraa dedicated the inaugural edition of the programme, which was launched in celebration of Sharjah World ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHaP) announced 294 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the UAE, bringing the total number of cases to 1,799. MoHAP said in a statement that the new cases were detected upon examining people who came in contact with previously infected patients and did not adhere to preventive measures or ...

Dubai / WAM The Ministry of Finance (MoF), has announced the launch of the unified digital platform to settle fees for common federal and local government services, to find an optimal interconnected alternative with the aforementioned systems, and to provide shared government services without manual procedures. The new platform will manage financial settlements and accounting operations, thus aligning data accuracy ...

DUBAI / WAM Emirates NBD and Emirates Islamic have contributed AED4 million to the UAE’s Ministry of Education in support of its online and distance learning initiatives launched across all the schools during the Covid-19 pandemic. The contribution — comprises AED2 million on behalf of Emirates NBD and AED2 million from Emirates Islamic — will help provide laptops to UAE ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The gross domestic product (GDP) of Abu Dhabi at current prices (nominal GDP) grew 4.6 percent to around AED620 billion, during the first nine months of 2019 from around AED592.9 billion in the comparable period of 2018. The growth was led by the momentum recorded across all economic platforms during the reference period, according to combined ...

Bloomberg When government official Kiran Dighavkar heard that a 56-year-old man who’d recently died in the Mumbai suburb of Dharavi had tested positive for Covid-19, he knew his next moves would determine the trajectory of the outbreak in India’s commercial capital. The man, who died on April 1, lived with seven members of his family in a 400 square foot ...

Bloomberg Singapore increased its cash payout to individuals and announced additional steps to save jobs as the city-state prepares to severely curtail activities to contain a spike in coronavirus cases. The third virus-related stimulus package in two months will cost S$5.1 billion ($3.6 billion), taking the nation’s total virus relief to almost S$60 billion, or 12% of gross domestic product, ...

Bloomberg Shares of Biolidics Ltd jumped as the Singapore-based medical device manufacturer said its rapid test kits for Covid-19 were approved for sale in the European Union. The stock rose as much as 12% in early trading after the firm announced on Monday that it received confirmation for CE marking on April 3. CE marking is a notification process to ...

Bloomberg The deadly coronavirus may infect as many as 95,000 people in Indonesia by next month before easing, a minister said, as authorities ordered people to wear face masks to contain the pandemic. The dire forecast is based on a projection by the nation’s intelligence agency, University of Indonesia and Bandung Institute of Technology, finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati told ...

Bloomberg The world over, one mainstream fuel — diesel — has managed to remain a decent profit centre for the oil refining industry at large as the novel coronavirus ravages economies and their wider demand for petroleum products. Diesel has risen in value relative to crude in recent weeks due to a combination of continued industrial usage and purchasing of ...