A major construction company owned by the Chinese government was awarded another contract this week to work on the Trump golf club development in Dubai, further raising questions about potential conflicts of interest between Donald Trump's presidency and his vast real estate empire.

AT&T announced Thursday evening that it has completed the acquisition of Time Warner. The announcement comes two days after a judge ruled that the deal does not violate antitrust laws. "The content and creative talent at Warner Bros., HBO and Turner are first-rate. Combine all that with AT&T's strengths in direct-to-consumer distribution, and we offer customers a differentiated, high-quality, mobile-first entertainment experience," Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T, said in a statement.

For almost 25 years, Shane Smith’s plan was that, by the time the suckers caught on, he’d never be stuck owning the company he co-founded.

The price hasn't changed in nearly 35 years. What kind of sorcery is this?

What's in a name? After a week of social media speculation, IHOP reveals the b in its new IHOb name stands for burgers. But the restaurant chain's president said the change is temporary -- and pancakes aren't going anywhere.

You may still love your Mac, but Apple doesn’t share your passion.

The Facebook CEO can’t be trusted.

A group of East African employees is asking retail giant Amazon to improve working conditions at an eastern Minnesota warehouse. Employees at the Eagan facility made the request at a Monday news conference called by the Awood Center, which defends the rights of East African workers, Minnesota Public Radio reported . The employees allege they have experienced exhaustion, dehydration and injuries while working without air conditioning. Workers said the conditions are particularly difficult for Muslim workers who are celebrating Ramadan and observing a strict fast.

The question at the heart of this gamble is: are people really going to hang out in virtual reality?

Comcast will formalize its all-cash offer to acquire most of Twenty-First Century Fox on Wednesday if U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon approves AT&T's deal for Time Warner on Tuesday, according to people familiar with matter. Comcast, which owns CNBC parent company NBCUniversal, has already publicly acknowledged its plans to compete with Disney on an acquisition of Fox assets, including Fox's movie studio, the Nat Geo and FX networks, regional sports channels, and stakes in Hulu...

What to call the new company? "Bayer," despite the name's longtime association with Nazi slave labor camps, fatal human subjects experiments conducted on prisoners supplied by the Nazis, and complicity in the production of Zyklon B, the lethal poison used in concentration camp gas-chambers.

Apple may be worried that its next iPhones won't be as popular as its last. The company told suppliers to to manufacture 20% fewer components for its upcoming iPhones, according to Nikkei. That could signal it expects waning enthusiasm for its flagship smartphone. Apple's (AAPL) stock price fell as much as nearly 2% in Friday's trading, pulling the Nasdaq lower by 0.6%.

It was “a master class in emotional intelligence”, raved the business magazine Inc, and “a powerful lesson in authentic, heartfelt leadership”. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, had emailed his entire staff following the May 2017 publications of separate investigations by the Guardian and a workplace safety organization showing high injury rates at the company’s northern California electric car factory.

The giant retailer will begin to subsidize tuition for its 1.4 million employees in the United States to study either business or supply chain management. The workers would pay $1 a day.

J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot banner has expanded into the gaming space. Company president and COO Brian Weinstein announced Thursday that the entertainment production company has entered a strategic relationship with Tencent, the Chinese media giant, to form Bad Robot Games. The partnership will exclusively develop games by Abrams and Bad Robot, with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment joining the gaming arm as a minority investor.

"As the master blacksmith said, when the customer asks for “10 more of these” they’re going to be bloody upset when you come back with a newer, creative design and say “But this was more fun to make.” And then you don’t get paid... It’s this same attitude which leads you to abandon your project at the first sign of trouble. The same attitude which causes you to noodle endlessly on features. To delay marketing; to believe that if you build it, they will come. Or, hell, to ever build it or ship it at all.

A week away from the first games of the World Cup and geopolitical tensions are making their way into the event. American sportswear brand Nike said they would not provide cleats to the Iranian National team this year. The decision followed the Trump administration's plan to reimpose sanctions on the Middle Eastern nation, the company said.

Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft has acquired GitHub, and will announce the deal on Monday. Github is an online service that allows developers to host their code in the cloud using the popular Git source management system, invented by Linux founder Linus Torvalds in 2005. In addition to being home to the overwhelming majority of open source projects, it’s also used by developers within companies to privately collaborate on software.

Contrary to Facebook's claims that it cut off developer access to its user data back in 2015, the Wall Street Journal has discovered that the company has allowed certain third party companies to retain the practice. These deals, known as "whitelists," enable other companies to see user's friend lists, including the person's phone number as well as a metric that measures the user's "closeness" to their online contacts. RBC Capital Markets and Nissan Motors are just a few of the third parties named by the WSJ's unnamed FB source.

Ivanka Trump's brand continues to win foreign trademarks in China and the Philippines, adding to questions about conflicts of interest at the White House, The Associated Press has found. On Sunday, China granted the First Daughter's company final approval for its 13th trademark in the last...

Sears Holdings said it plans to close another 72 stores it has deemed unprofitable, as the company continues to struggle with falling sales.

Microsoft has reportedly been in talks to acquire code repository GitHub, according to Business Insider. GitHub received a valuation of $2 billion following the closure of a $250 million funding ro…

When Jason Payne set out to find his girlfriend the perfect engagement ring, he was already facing more pressure than most men looking to take the plunge. His girlfriend had ethical concerns and didn't want to risk sporting a "blood diamond," one mined in a conflict-riddled region of Africa where the sale of the stone helps fuel violence. So instead, Payne proposed with a sapphire ring and felt good about his decision.

In what could be one of the most consequential antitrust decisions in recent memory, a judge has ruled that AT&T and Time Warner can merge, despite a lawsuit from the Justice Department arguing that the deal would be anti-competitive. While the Justice Department could still appeal, the decision clears the way for a new telecom behemoth, combining AT&T’s paid-TV subscribers with Time Warner’s content, which includes HBO, CNN, and Warner Bros.

Costco is a wholesale retail store known for its great bargains. It offers food samples, cheap gas, and sale items to attract customers and make their shopping experiences worthwhile. But strategies like these also encourage customers to stay longer and spend more.

Its body design became the basis for future cameras

Tesla is slashing thousands of jobs, its chief executive, Elon Musk, announced Tuesday, as the electronic car company attempts to hit production targets and reach profitability. Musk called the job cuts, which will affect about 9% of the company’s more than 40,000 employees, “difficult, but necessary” in a tweet that contained the email he had sent to employees announcing the layoffs.

The fossil fuel industry brings in a staggering amount of money to countries all around the world, but that doesn't mean it will last forever.

Spotify has faced a number of accusations regarding violations of copyright in recent years and this week saw one of those looming lawsuits put to bed. On Tuesday, a federal judge approved a $112 million settlement in a class action suit that accused Spotify of failing to adequately pay artists for the use of their music. The Hollywood Reporter first reported the settlement, which marks the conclusion of two separate lawsuits filed by musicians David Lowery of Camper Van Beethoven and Melissa Ferrick that were combined into a class action.

The federal government has blocked the proposed $1.5-billion takeover of Aecon Group Inc. by a Chinese state-owned company for reasons of national security. After markets closed Wednesday, a spokesman for Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains confirmed the government’s decision to prevent CCCC International Holding Ltd. from acquiring the Aecon construction firm. The Trudeau government had been warned by experts to proceed cautiously when weighing any investment bids by Chinese state firms and to be as transparent as possible in reviewing the proposed deal.

The Seattle giant believes selling you groceries is the key to selling you everything else.

Congress is demanding answers from ridesharing companies about sexual violence on their platforms.

Private equity's favorite shell game is to take over profitable businesses, sell off their assets, con banks into loaning them hundreds of millions of dollars, cash out in the form of bonuses and dividends, then let the businesses fail and default on their debts.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake to celebrate the marriage of a same sex couple because of a religious objection. The court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed hostility toward the baker based on his religious beliefs. The ruling is a win for baker Jack Phillips, who cited his beliefs as a Christian, but leaves unsettled broader constitutional questions on religious liberty.

Last week I noted that Facebook use sharply dropped after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to SimilarWeb, but as it turns out, the downward trend started even earlier -- specifically, right around the US Presidential election, in November 2016. (See above.) Since then, total monthly visits to Facebook in the US (both on the web and through the mobile app) have fallen from around 8 billion/month to what it is now, about 5 billion/month -- a loss of some 3 billion visits.