EU unveils plan for fast troop movement 

across Europe

BRUSSELS: The European Union announced a plan on Wednesday to enable military personnel and equipment to be moved more quickly across Europe, which Nato sees as vital in the event of a conflict with Russia to overcome border delays and bridges too weak for tanks. Russia’s Zapad war games on Nato’s eastern flank late last year raised alarm in Brussels and Washington that large-scale drills could accidentally trigger a conflict in eastern Europe but leave Nato unable to speedily mass troops there. Conflicting regulations across 28 EU countries, bridges and tunnels too narrow or weak for heavy equipment and few special allowances for transfers of US troops all make it difficult for Nato, commanders say.
“By facilitating military mobility within the EU, we can be more effective in preventing crises, more efficient in deploying our missions, and quicker in reacting when challenges arise,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said of the so-called Action Plan on Military Mobility. The plan will now go to EU governments and the European Parliament for discussion. Following a pilot programme last year to identify weak spots along North Sea-Baltic routes, where Russia regularly conducts military drills and has built up its air defences in Kaliningrad, the European Commission will next year outline the best routes across Europe for military transport. The Commission, which oversees the EU’s common budget, will also look at areas to upgrade infrastructure and estimate costs, how to streamline customs procedures for munitions and dangerous goods, and seek better cooperation between EU agencies.
Easier diplomatic clearance is also needed. The plan is a test both for the European Union’s renewed efforts to coordinate on military matters and to work better with Nato, which has its own standards for military-strength bridges, roads, tunnels and airfields. If the EU were to design its own system, that would create unnecessary duplication and likely anger the United States. While Washington no longer has Cold War-levels of personnel stationed in Europe, it has begun returning tanks, troops and helicopters to Germany, Poland and the Baltics as part of the West’s deterrent following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Before retiring last year, the top US commander in Europe, Ben Hodges, called for a military zone of free movement similar to the EU’s passport-free travel “Schengen” zone.
Sourced : https://www.dawn.com/news/1398193/eu-unveils-plan-for-fast-troop-movement-across-europe

Facebook to give users more control over personal information

Facebook to give users more control over personal information 

Washington: Facebook Inc is giving users more control over their privacy by making data management easier and redesigning the settings menu, the company said on Wednesday, in the wake of a scandal over a breach that exposed the personal information of millions and was allegedly used by a political consultancy. The company also said it would propose in the coming weeks updates to the social media website’s terms of service and data policy to better spell out what information it collects and how it uses it.
The company has faced a global outcry after a whistle-blower said that data from millions of users was improperly harvested by consultancy Cambridge Analytica to target US and British voters in close-run elections. Facebook shares are down nearly 18 per cent since March 16, when it first acknowledged that user data had been improperly channelled to Cambridge Analytica, eating away nearly $100 billion of the company’s market value.
“We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find, and that we must do more to keep people informed,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, and Ashlie Beringer, its deputy general counsel, said in a statement. In addition to redesigning its settings menu on mobile devices, Facebook said it is creating a new privacy shortcut menu where users would be able to better secure their accounts and control personal information. It would also allow users to review and delete data they have shared, including posts and search queries.
Users would be able to download the data shared with Facebook, including uploaded photos, contacts added to their account, and posts on timelines.

Sources: http://gulfnews.com/news/americas/usa/facebook-to-give-users-more-control-over-personal-information-1.2195983

UAE’s first nuclear power plant now completed

UAE’s first nuclear power plant now completed Abu Dhabi: The UAE’s first nuclear power plant at Barakah has been finally completed, after nine years in the making.
His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in were welcomed at Monday’s reception ceremony, who accompanied by a number of dignitaries and officials. Shaikh Mohammad took to Twitter and expressed his gratitude to President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the partnership with South Korea for carrying out the giant project.
“My dear friend Moon Jae-in, President of Korea, and I today viewed completion of 1st power plant in Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant project. All thanks are due to President, our Korean friends & to joint efforts that have resulted in1st stage of this giant project being completed,” said Shaikh Mohammad. Sourcs : http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/government/uae-s-first-nuclear-power-plant-now-completed-1.2194623

Trump approves new limits on transgender troops in military

WASHINGTON: Transgender troops who are in the US military may remain in the ranks, the White House said late Friday, but the Pentagon could require them to serve according to their gender at birth. The policy directive that President Donald Trump signed flatly stated that “transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service.” But it also largely gives the Pentagon the ability to make exceptions where it sees fit.
The policy adopts recommendations that Trump received last month from Defence Secretary Jim Mattis. It comes after court rulings froze the president’s initial ban on transgender troops — issued in July — as potentially unconstitutional. “In my professional judgement, these policies will place the Department of Defencse in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win America’s wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world,” Mattis wrote in a summary of his recommendations to the president. The policy announcement outraged advocates for transgender troops, and the advocates vowed to fight the limits in court. “There is no evidence to support a policy that bars from military service patriotic Americans who are medically fit and able to deploy,” said Aaron Belkin, the director of the Palm Center, which focuses on sexuality and the military. “Our troops and our nation deserve better.” In a series of Twitter posts in July, Trump announced that “the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US. Military.” He said he decided to issue the ban after consulting generals and military experts, although Mattis was given only a day’s notice. In August, Trump directed the Pentagon reverse an Obama administration policy that had allowed transgender people — or those diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or had discomfort with their biological gender — to serve in the military.
In October, a judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily blocked Trump’s ban and said the reasoning behind it was most likely unconstitutional because it represented a “disapproval of transgender people generally.” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had ruled that the military’s current policy should remain in place. Trump’s new order allows the defence secretary and the homeland security secretary to “exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals.” In a memo to the president, dated February 22, Mattis cited “substantial risks” about military personnel who seek to change or who question their gender identity. He said that allowing some of them to serve would amount to an exemption of certain mental, physical and sex-based standards and “could undermine readiness, disrupt unit cohesion, and impose an unreasonable burden on the military that is not conducive to military effectiveness and lethality.” Mattis’ assertion contradicts a 2016 study by the RAND Corp., which found that allowing transgender people to serve in the military would “have minimal impact on readiness and health care costs” for the Pentagon. The study estimated that health care costs would rise $2.4 million to $8.4 million a year, representing an infinitesimal 0.04 to 0.13 per cent increase in spending. It concluded that there were 2,000 to 11,000 active-duty troops who were transgender. Citing research into other countries that allow transgender people to serve, the study projected “little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness” in the United States. Mattis, in his recommendation to Trump, complained that the RAND study “heavily caveated data to support its conclusions, glossed over the impacts of health care costs, readiness and unit cohesion, and erroneously relied on the selective experiences of foreign militaries with different operational requirements than our own.” “In short,” Mattis concluded, “this policy issue has proven more complex than the prior administration or RAND assumed.” In her ruling last October, Kollar-Kotelly rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it needed more time to prepare to process transgender recruits for military service. “The court is not persuaded that defendants will be irreparably injured by allowing the accession of transgender individuals into the military beginning on Jan. 1, 2018,” she wrote. On Friday, Pentagon officials said they would continue to comply with federal law. A Defense Department spokesman said the Pentagon would “continue to assess and retain transgender service members.” The new policy must first be published in the Federal Register, which generally requires new rules to be reviewed and subject to a public comment period before they are enacted. Trump announced the ban in July to resolve a quietly brewing fight on Capitol Hill over whether taxpayer money should pay for gender transition and hormone therapy for transgender service members.
But rather than addressing that narrow issue, Trump opted to upend the entire policy on transgender service members. His decision was announced with such haste that the White House could not answer basic questions about how it would be carried out, including what would happen to transgender people on active duty. Now, eight months later, what will happen to transgender people on active duty is still unclear. “What the White House has released tonight is transphobia masquerading as policy,” Joshua Block, a senior staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT and HIV Project, said in a statement. The new policy, according to the ACLU memo, “effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve into choosing between their humanity and their country, and makes it clear that transgender service members are not welcome.”
Sources : http://gulfnews.com/news/americas/usa/trump-approves-new-limits-on-transgender-troops-in-military-1.2193571

Zuckerberg admits Facebook made mistakes

Zuckerberg admits Facebook made mistakes LONDON: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg broke four days of silence on Wednesday and admitted that mistakes were made in safeguarding user data. His statement came amid a privacy scandal involving a Trump-connected data-mining firm. Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page on Wednesday that Facebook has a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data. “If we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” he wrote. Zuckerberg and Facebook’s No 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, have been quiet since news broke on Friday that Cambridge Analytica may have used data improperly obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections.
Zuckerberg said the company has already taken the most important steps to prevent such a situation from happening again in previous years. For example, it reduced the access outside apps had to user data back in 2014, though some of the measures didn’t take effect until a year later, allowing Cambridge to access the data in the intervening months. Read: How Facebook data helped Trump find his voters Earlier on Wednesday, an academic who developed the app used by Cambridge Analytica to harvest data said that he had no idea his work would be used in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and that he’s being scapegoated in the fallout from the affair. Alexandr Kogan, a psychology researcher at Cambridge University, told the BBC that both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have tried to place the blame on him for violating the social media platform’s terms of service, even though Cambridge Analytica ensured him that everything he did was legal.
“My view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica,” he said. “Honestly, we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately, we thought we were doing something that was really normal.” Authorities in Britain and the United States are investigating the alleged improper use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based political research firm. Facebook shares have dropped some 9 percent, lopping more than $50 billion off the company’s market value, since the revelations were first published. The head of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, was suspended Tuesday after Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast hidden camera footage of him suggesting the company could use young women to catch opposition politicians in compromising positions. Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2018
Sources : https://www.dawn.com/news/1396848/

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Skilled workers can take up maximum two part-time jobs

Skilled workers can take up maximum two part-time jobs: Under new system employers must bear the employee s end-of-service and other benefits proportionately


Abu Dhabi: Skilled employees such as experts, consultants, university professors and doctors can take a maximum of two part-time jobs with two employers under the new system introduced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, a senior official told Gulf News on Monday.
Dr Omar Abdul Rahman Al Nuaimi, assistant undersecretary for International Relations at the ministry, added the total hours a skilled worker can put in with the two employers must not exceed eight a day and 48 a week. “The employee must also enjoy at least one day weekly rest,” he said.







The new system is implemented alongside the existing system which allows employers and workers to establish normal business relationship under fixed-term or indefinite contracts.
The new system will enhance the flexibility of the labour market and reduce dependence on labour being sourced from abroad.
- Dr Omar Abdul, Rahman Al Nuaimi


A decision signed by Nasser Bin Thani Al Hameli, Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation, companies can recruit skilled workers — holder of a university degree or higher and those who have completed their diploma in any field — from inside the country or overseas under part-time contracts, which allow these workers to take more than one part-time job without approval of the original or other employers.
The resolution states that an existing regular contract may not be converted into part-time contract or vice versa until after the end of the initial contract, so that each party may freely contract with the model it accepts.
Al Hameli said the new system will enhance the flexibility of the labour market and meet the needs of the employers from the existing labour market and thus reduce dependence on labour being sourced from outside the country.
He added the system contributes to attracting and retaining the skills and expertise to enhance the productivity of the labour market in the country.
The part-time contract is subject to the same rules and penalties applicable to the regular employment contracts, either fixed-term or non-fixed-term, out of keenness to protect the rights of the parties to the employment relationship, according to Al Hameli.
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• Professionals in UAE welcome multiple contracts
The two employers shall bear the employee’s annual leave, the end of service benefits and any other financial obligations in proportion to the number of actual working hours and the amount of the wage paid to the worker.
The decision obliges each employer to provide the worker with the requirements and working environment stipulated in the ministry’s regulations.
According to the decision, the employer may not require the worker to work more than the hours agreed upon without the written consent of the worker. The employer may not prevent the worker from working in a similar facility to his company under the non-competition clause or for disclosure of the secrets of the work, unless a court ruling has been issued to this effect.






Full list of skill categories
Skill 1
Skill 2
Skill 3
Skill 4
Skill 5


Eligible categories
Skilled workers who are eligible to enter into the new part-time contract are skill level I or holders of a university degree or higher and skill level II or those who have completed their two- or three-year diplomas after secondary school in any field.
Skill level I includes — but not limited to — board chairmen, chief executive officers, general managers, professors, marketing managers, sales managers, hotel managers, chemists, physicists, geologists, actuarial statisticians, information technology consultants, system analysts, computer programmers, computer networking, architects, urban planning engineers, interior design engineers, civil engineers, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, ship captains, doctors, veterinarians, pharmacists, teachers, judges, legal researchers, journalists, interpreters, librarians, archivists and musicians.
Skill level II includes — but not limited to — technicians, surveyors, technical controllers, air controllers, sea controllers, nurses, masseurs, orthopaedic physiotherapists, occupation rehabilitation technicians, nannies, dental assistants, pharmacist assistants, acupuncture technicians and real estate agents.
Sources : http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/government/skilled-workers-can-take-up-maximum-two-part-time-jobs-1.2191547