Technology

BLOOMBERG Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc was hit by a record €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) European Union (EU) privacy fine and given a deadline to stop shipping users’ data to the US after regulators said it failed to protect personal information from the American security services. The social network giant’s continued data transfers to the US didn’t address “the risks ...

BLOOMBERG  India is unveiling a 170 billion rupee ($2 billion) financial incentive plan to draw makers of laptops, tablets and other hardware to the South Asian nation as companies look to diversify supply chains beyond China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is capitalising on the early success of Apple Inc’s local assembly operations — which have helped the US company produce ...

BLOOMBERG  Vans haven’t always been objects of desire. When Fiat launched its Multipla model in the late 1990s, supporters of the soccer team Juventus — many of whom worked for the Italian carmaker — were subjected to stadium banners calling them as unpleasant-looking as the van they built. While Mercedes-Benz’s passenger car division likes to trumpet its popularity among royalty ...

BLOOMBERG Microsoft Corp’s Azure cloud business has been targeted by the European Union’s antitrust arm, amid concerns the US software firm is leveraging its market power to squeeze out rivals. As part of an informal probe, regulators are quizzing competitors and customers about how Microsoft may be abusing its access to business-sensitive information belonging to cloud firms it has commercial ...

BLOOMBERG  Electric bicycles are poised for a breakout year in Europe’s biggest economy. Battery-powered two-wheelers will outsell traditional bikes in Germany for the first time in 2023, according to projections from the country’s industry group. They’re already dominant in the mountain bike category, where nine in ten bicycles are powered by a motor. While the e-bike boom hasn’t meaningfully pushed ...

BLOOMBERG  For months, Google has been under pressure to reinvent its core search business and respond to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) programmes that can generate content. Google started introducing more to the public — slowly. At its annual developer conference, Google unveiled a version of its search engine that uses large language models, AI tools that are trained ...

ABU DHABI / WAM UAE President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the Emir of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on Thursday spoke by telephone to discuss bilateral relations between the two countries and ways to strengthen them further. The two leaders reviewed current areas of UAE-Qatar cooperation and explored opportunities for further collaboration. Their ...

BLOOMBERG One of TikTok’s senior-most officials in charge of ensuring user safety is leaving the company amid increasing pressure for the US government to ban the popular video-sharing app. Eric Han, who has led TikTok’s US trust and safety operations for years, will depart this month. Han had been promoted to lead trust and safety at the company’s newly walled-off ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Under the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, has inaugurated the expansion of Al Falah housing project, providing 899 new homes to citizens at a ...

BERLIN / WAM In a speech at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin on Tuesday, Dr Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and COP28 President-Designate, presented his broad ambitions for COP28, which covered a call for transformative action and strong outcomes across the mitigation work programme, the global goal on adaptation and doubling adaptation finance, ...