A lot of people these days think Facebook Inc. has become an incorrigible, toxic “regime of one-sided, highly profitable surveillance” under the near-absolute control of a “sovereign and singular ruler,” as University of North Carolina information scholar Zeynep Tufekci summed up in Wired a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure the harshest Facebook critics are right. I agree, though, ...

ABU DHABI / Reuters Abu Dhabi-based developer Aldar Properties plans more acquisitions as it sees opportunities in a slowing property market, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Late last year, Aldar bought an office tower in the emirate for AED658 million ($179 million). “We are seeing ample opportunities of new acquisitions in these market conditions in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere,” ...

DUBAI / WAM Emirates NBD announced that it has launched its own private cloud platform. It is the first bank in the region to implement a private cloud platform that leverages similar technologies to cloud-native companies, marking a major milestone in the Emirates NBD Group’s ongoing AED1 billion IT transformation. Through its new private cloud technology, the bank’s IT platforms ...