Avie Schneider

Updated at 1:18 p.m. ET

In 2018, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a WhatsApp message to the world's richest man. That message was behind a high-profile hack of Jeff Bezos' phone, according to a report commissioned by the Amazon CEO and reviewed by United Nations human rights experts.

Updated at 6:07 p.m. ET

Ending an era at the Internet's biggest search company, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are leaving their leadership roles and CEO Sundar Pichai will become chief executive of both Google and its parent company, Alphabet.

Page is stepping down as CEO of Alphabet, while Brin is resigning as its president. They will remain board members of Alphabet, a company that oversees not just Google but also research into artificial intelligence and self-driving cars.

Updated at 6:04 p.m. ET

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that his social media platform will stop running political ads, citing online ads' "significant risks to politics." Facebook has been criticized for allowing deceptive political ads.

"We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," Dorsey tweeted late Wednesday afternoon.

He explained his reasons in a long thread of tweets.

Updated at 4:20 p.m. ET

Twenty-three U.S. senators are calling on the nation's top consumer protection agency to investigate a loan servicer for its role in a troubled student loan forgiveness program. The program is designed to help public service workers like teachers and police officers.

The loan servicer, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, better known as FedLoan and PHEAA, is one of the entities that handles the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is quitting as CEO amid problems with the workspace sharing company's efforts to go public. The company's valuation, once estimated at $47 billion, reportedly has dropped to less than $20 billion and its initial public offering has been delayed.

A federal appeals court Friday reinstated a lawsuit against Fox News and two other defendants over its coverage of the death of Seth Rich, a 27-year-old Democratic Party aide who was murdered in July 2016.

Updated at 4:13 p.m. ET

T. Boone Pickens, the legendary energy executive who became America's best-known oil tycoon, died Wednesday at age 91. The longtime Dallas resident, who suffered a series of strokes and head injuries in a 2017 fall, died of natural causes, said his spokesman, Jay Rosser.

Apple is entering the video-streaming race, taking on Netflix, Amazon, Disney and others with a monthly subscription of $4.99. The company also announced three new iPhones, even as their sales have been slowing.

Updated at 11:29 a.m. ET

Google and its YouTube subsidiary will pay $170 million to settle allegations that YouTube collected personal information from children without their parents' consent, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday.

Updated at 11:35 a.m. ET

Signaling the possibility of more interest-rate cuts, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank will "act as appropriate" to sustain the economic expansion as the trade war with China takes a toll on global growth and the U.S. economy.

Updated at 5:18 p.m. ET

President Trump on Friday announced higher tariffs on goods from China, hours after Beijing said it will slap tariffs on $75 billion of autos and other U.S. goods. Earlier in the day, he "ordered" U.S. companies to stop doing business with China though it was unclear whether he had the power to do that.

Updated at 9:31 a.m. ET

The economy is slowing down, but it keeps creating jobs at a healthy pace. Employers added 164,000 jobs last month, as the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7%, the Labor Department said Friday. The jobless rate remains at a nearly 50-year low.

Analysts had expected about 165,000 jobs to be added in July and the unemployment rate to be 3.6%.

No deal yet.

The brief trade talks in Shanghai this week between top U.S. and Chinese officials were "constructive," the White House said Wednesday, adding that negotiations are expected to pick up again in Washington, D.C., in early September.

"The two sides discussed topics such as forced technology transfer, intellectual property rights, services, non-tariff barriers, and agriculture," the White House said in a short statement. It said China pledged to buy more U.S. farm goods.

Updated at 10:59 a.m. ET

U.S. economic growth fell to a 2.1% annual rate in the second quarter — down from a 3.1% pace in the first three months of 2019, the Commerce Department said. But growth came in slightly stronger than many analysts had expected.

Updated at 12:16 p.m. ET

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will have to personally answer to federal regulators under an agreement to settle a privacy case with the Federal Trade Commission that includes a $5 billion penalty for the giant social media company, the agency announced Wednesday. Separately, Facebook will pay $100 million to settle a case with the Securities and Exchange Commission for making misleading disclosures about the risk that users' data would be misused, the SEC said.

Updated at 11:25 a.m. ET

Equifax will pay up to $700 million in fines and monetary relief to consumers over a 2017 data breach at the credit reporting bureau that affected nearly 150 million people.

Updated at 1:25 p.m. ET

Given Facebook's track record of broken promises over privacy, U.S. senators said Tuesday that the social media giant can't be trusted when it comes to plans to launch a digital currency.

"Facebook is dangerous," Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. "Like a toddler who's gotten his hands on a book of matches, Facebook has burned down the house over and over, and called every arson a learning experience."

FedEx has been caught in the crossfire in the conflict between the Trump administration and China's Huawei Technologies. Now, the giant shipper is suing the U.S. Commerce Department to block the agency from enforcing export regulations against FedEx.

"FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency," the company said in a statement announcing the lawsuit on Monday.

Updated at 11:34 a.m. ET

The Trump administration will delay tariffs on cars and auto parts imports for six months while it negotiates trade deals with Japan and the European Union, the White House announced Friday.

Updated at 1:24 p.m. ET

Stephen Moore, a Trump campaign adviser and conservative pundit, has withdrawn his name from consideration to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, President Trump said Thursday.

"Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process," Trump said in a tweet.

Updated at 4:28 p.m. ET

Uncertainty.

That's what Boeing says is in store for the company and its investors as it tries to get approval for its 737 Max to return to the air.

Boeing said Wednesday its profits fell 13% in the first quarter and that the grounding of its 737 Max aircraft following two deadly crashes will cost the company at least $1 billion.

With its folding 7.3-inch screen, Samsung's Galaxy Fold was touted as the biggest Galaxy phone yet. Priced at nearly $2,000, the folding smartphone was due to go on sale this Friday. But Samsung announced on Monday that it's delaying the release after reviewers found problems with the phone's screen.

Apple announced on Monday a new video-streaming service, Apple TV+, to compete with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and others. It also unveiled a new credit card, tied to Apple Pay, and Apple News+, a subscription news service.

The iPhone has traditionally been Apple's biggest moneymaker, but those sales have been slowing, so the company is looking to make services a bigger part of its business.

Updated at 5:17 p.m. ET

The Boeing 737 Max is the fastest-selling plane in the company's history. And now it's under immense global scrutiny after the plane has been involved in two deadly crashes soon after takeoff in less than five months.

Updated at 10:35 a.m. ET

The U.S. economy added only 20,000 jobs — far fewer than expected — last month, the Labor Department said Friday. But the unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent from January's 4 percent, and earnings growth picked up.

The increase in jobs was below the 180,000 projected by private analysts and the smallest gain since September 2017. February's increase was dramatically smaller than January's revised gain of 311,000 and December's revised 227,000.

Updated at 1:05 p.m. ET

Amazon, the giant online retailer, is closing all 87 of its U.S. pop-up kiosks, which let customers try and buy gadgets such as smart speakers and tablets in malls, Kohl's department stores and Whole Foods groceries.

Updated at 6:02 p.m. ET

Gap Inc. plans to separate into two publicly traded companies, spinning off Old Navy into a separate firm as it closes about 230 Gap stores over the next two years.

As Old Navy becomes its own company, the other company, which has not been named yet, will consist of the Gap brand, Athleta, Banana Republic, Intermix and Hill City, Gap Inc. said.

Microsoft workers are calling on the giant tech company to cancel its nearly $480 million U.S. Army contract, saying the deal has "crossed the line" into weapons development by Microsoft for the first time. They say the use of the company's HoloLens augmented reality technology under the contract "is designed to help people kill."

Updated at 2:28 p.m. ET

The Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands are worth a lot less — as much as $15.4 billion less than they had been.

Big name brands have been under pressure to cut costs as consumer tastes have been changing. Many are turning to cheaper store brands or are doing their shopping online.