The story goes that Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was so mortified by an obituary mistakenly run about him by a French newspaper that he tried to make amends to society by endowing five international prizes for excellence, including one for peace. What was it about the obit that hit Nobel so hard? Le marchand de la mort est mort, the paper had written. The merchant of death is dead. It was a reference to Nobel's many achievements with agents that bring death and shatter communities – dynamite, of course, but also his other inventions, jelly-like gelignite and the chemical explosive ballistite, forerunner of the smokeless explosive cordite. Nobel was appalled he had apparently left no legacy, other than one that allowed human beings to destroy one another. That premature obituary forced him to remake the memory he would leave on earth when he did eventually die.
Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg should be due his own Nobel moment any time now. His college invention is under siege as a deathly digital worldwide pox, a force that viciously divides people from each other and is used to hijack regular political rhythms and norms. Mr Zuckerberg's company has been described as the social media giant that "ate the world", almost as if it were the 21st century's version of the mythical venomous Norse serpent Jormungand that grew so large it could surround the earth and grasp its own tail. Lawmakers in the US and Europe are asking stern questions; regulators are pondering ways to curb Facebook; many users are disillusioned and the company's share price has fallen.
The trigger for current disaffection is Facebook's acquiescence in the secret harvesting of 50 million users' personal information by data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. But it could easily have been a quite different issue. From 2006, when Facebook became available to anyone in the world aged at least 13, it has grown – like that Norse serpent – massively and irrepressibly, to two billion users. Although it was originally deployed by users for meaningful connections – families at opposite ends of the world, long-separated friends contacting one another across the arches of lost years, like-minded enthusiasts of niche passions – the conversation became chaotic and unmanageable.
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Read more:
The dark underbelly of social media
Facebook users are demanding answers
Social media needs to rethink its approach
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Many users said they felt worse after time spent on Facebook because their friends and family seemed overly keen to show off unattainably wonderful lives and pictures of delicious meals while political chatter was vigorous and polarised. Meanwhile, Facebook’s ecosystem provoked unexpected animosity, sometimes even active contempt, for people who seemed to believe love was only true if professed in a public post, even as they assiduously documented their every plated meal, haircut or passing thought. This is because “friends” get entry into a user’s life and head.
The last was always going to be a problem, not just for Facebook but for any platform that was totally unfiltered. A global conversation is always a tricky idea but it becomes particularly difficult when the host assumes a studied non-participatory, non-regulatory stance. Stray thoughts bereft of reflection or information and instantly relayed to people anywhere in the world were always likely to create dissonance – even more so when the conversations deal with politics, public policy, war and peace, Brexit, Catalonia, the Kurds, Palestinians, Kenya’s election, Russia, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and several thousand other hot topics of the day. Stray thoughts are particularly mood-altering when they come from fake accounts designed to sow discord.
What is clear is that Facebook decided some years ago, cannily and quite deliberately, to change users’ newsfeeds to incorporate their likely interests rather than the usual friends and family, baby and holiday photos. The rationale was spot-on. Friends and family are unlikely to be able to produce interesting posts 100 times a day, but newsy, argumentative alternatives, no matter where or why they appeared, could be reliably engaging and hook users more securely to the network.
Before the Cambridge Analytica revelations, Mr Zuckerberg had already declared Facebook was on a back-to-basics mission, switching users' newsfeed to prioritise friends and family again because it "has always been about personal connections". Now he has issued multiple mea culpas about the data breach but seems bewildered by the scale of his creation's potential to cause harm. "If you had asked me," Mr Zuckerberg told the New York Times last week, "when I got started with Facebook, if one of the central things I'd need to work on now is preventing governments from interfering in each other's elections, there's no way I thought that's what I'd be doing, if we had talked in 2004 in my dorm room".
Fair enough. But what about that Nobel moment, the point at which an inventor realises he's created something powerful, uncontrollable and destructive?
Mr Zuckerberg could endow a prize for those who seek to genuinely connect disparate peoples. Or he could ignore politics – and economics – and skew Facebook’s business model solely to promote good. We all know goodness when we see it. As philosopher Henry David Thoreau said, it is the only investment that never fails.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The design
The protective shell is covered in solar panels to make use of light and produce energy. This will drastically reduce energy loss.
More than 80 per cent of the energy consumed by the French pavilion will be produced by the sun.
The architecture will control light sources to provide a highly insulated and airtight building.
The forecourt is protected from the sun and the plants will refresh the inner spaces.
A micro water treatment plant will recycle used water to supply the irrigation for the plants and to flush the toilets. This will reduce the pavilion’s need for fresh water by 30 per cent.
Energy-saving equipment will be used for all lighting and projections.
Beyond its use for the expo, the pavilion will be easy to dismantle and reuse the material.
Some elements of the metal frame can be prefabricated in a factory.
From architects to sound technicians and construction companies, a group of experts from 10 companies have created the pavilion.
Work will begin in May; the first stone will be laid in Dubai in the second quarter of 2019.
Construction of the pavilion will take 17 months from May 2019 to September 2020.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Qyubic
Started: October 2023
Founder: Namrata Raina
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Current number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Initial investment: Undisclosed
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
WISH
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirectors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Chris%20Buck%2C%20Fawn%20Veerasunthorn%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Ariana%20DeBose%2C%20Chris%20Pine%2C%20Alan%20Tudyk%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
The five pillars of Islam
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Juliet, Naked
Dir: Jesse Peretz
Starring: Chris O'Dowd, Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke
Two stars
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
more from Janine di Giovanni
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
The Energy Research Centre
Founded 50 years ago as a nuclear research institute, scientists at the centre believed nuclear would be the “solution for everything”.
Although they still do, they discovered in 1955 that the Netherlands had a lot of natural gas. “We still had the idea that, by 2000, it would all be nuclear,” said Harm Jeeninga, director of business and programme development at the centre.
"In the 1990s, we found out about global warming so we focused on energy savings and tackling the greenhouse gas effect.”
The energy centre’s research focuses on biomass, energy efficiency, the environment, wind and solar, as well as energy engineering and socio-economic research.
The stats
Ship name: MSC Bellissima
Ship class: Meraviglia Class
Delivery date: February 27, 2019
Gross tonnage: 171,598 GT
Passenger capacity: 5,686
Crew members: 1,536
Number of cabins: 2,217
Length: 315.3 metres
Maximum speed: 22.7 knots (42kph)
THE%20SPECS
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What is an FTO Designation?
FTO designations impose immigration restrictions on members of the organisation simply by virtue of their membership and triggers a criminal prohibition on knowingly providing material support or resources to the designated organisation as well as asset freezes.
It is a crime for a person in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide “material support or resources” to or receive military-type training from or on behalf of a designated FTO.
Representatives and members of a designated FTO, if they are aliens, are inadmissible to and, in certain circumstances removable from, the United States.
Except as authorised by the Secretary of the Treasury, any US financial institution that becomes aware that it has possession of or control over funds in which an FTO or its agent has an interest must retain possession of or control over the funds and report the funds to the Treasury Department.
Source: US Department of State
'Panga'
Directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Starring Kangana Ranaut, Richa Chadha, Jassie Gill, Yagya Bhasin, Neena Gupta
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs: 2018 Mercedes-Benz E 300 Cabriolet
Price, base / as tested: Dh275,250 / Dh328,465
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder
Power: 245hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 370Nm @ 1,300rpm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel consumption, combined: 7.0L / 100km
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
