The global market for tablet computers ended 2015 with a whimper, as the once sizzling market showed further signs of cooling, a market tracker said Monday.

Research firm IDC reported a 13.7 percent year-over-year drop in worldwide tablet sales in the fourth quarter, with 65.9 million units shipped.

A Japanese firm said Monday it would open the world's first fully automated farm with robots handling almost every step of the process, from watering seedlings to harvesting crops.

Kyoto-based Spread said the indoor grow house will start operating by the middle of 2017 and produce 30,000 heads of lettuce a day.

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.