A modern metropolis rising from Israel's Negev desert stands on the frontline of a global war against hacking and cyber crime, fulfilling an ambition of the country's founding father.

David Ben Gurion famously said he wanted to make the Negev bloom.

Under new owner Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post is no longer just a newspaper. It's reinventing itself as a "media and technology company" that hopes to blaze a trail for newsrooms struggling to transition to a digital era.

The transformation may not be apparent on the surface, but the Internet billionaire has ripped up and revamped the technology underpinnings at the Post since buying the storied daily in 2013, while investing in the newsroom with more journalists, video offerings and tools for digital storytelling.

Facebook on Friday set out to block people from using the leading social network and its Instagram photo-sharing service for private gun sales.

Although Facebook doesn't participate in outright gun sales, it has been a forum for negotiations, and it intends to put an end to that.

As the digital advertising market booms and demand for smartphones wanes, Alphabet Inc. could soon dethrone Apple as the world's most valuable company.

If it happens, Alphabet will move to the head of the class just five months after Google reorganized itself under the holding company.

Italy is demanding Google pay over 200 million euros ($218 million) in back taxes following an inquiry into its tax arrangements by the financial police, a judicial source said Thursday.

The technology giant is accused of failing to declare 100 million euros in income and pay 200 million euros in royalty taxes, the source said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron defended the tax deal struck with U.S. Internet giant Google as he came under fire in parliament on Wednesday.

Google is to pay £130 million ($185.4 million, 172 million euros) in back taxes to Britain following a government inquiry into its tax arrangements, a company spokeswoman said Friday.

Mumbai's police force was late to Twitter, but it has made up for lost time since joining last month with a series of pun-filled tweets.

The term "Mumbai Police" was trending on the social media site in India on Wednesday after the commissioner's official account posted its latest warning, to mark anti-drugs awareness week.

Facebook-owned smartphone messaging service WhatsApp temporarily crashed in an array of countries from the U.S. to India, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of users.

Reports of people having trouble with WhatsApp in countries including Japan, India, Malaysia, Colombia and the United States hit the Internet about 0200 GMT Tuesday.

In its 7th edition, ArabNet Beirut is set to further its growth of the regional digital ecosystem by bringing the latest innovations to Beirut, on March 1-2-3, 2016, in strategic partnership with DMS (Choueiri Group) and Beirut Digital District.

A key player in the digital space, ArabNet is bringing opportunities needed for the Levantine/regional creative youth to move forward, via 4 key-competitions and more.

After a year in which free-flowing capital fueled unprecedented growth in so-called tech "unicorns," the sector is bracing for a slowdown which could thin the herd.

Unicorns -- a term coined for the usually rare billion-dollar, privately funded startups -- have been proliferating in the United States, China and elsewhere as venture capital investors bet on the next Google or Facebook.