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By Paul Carsten BEIJING (Reuters) – Apple Inc will boost its investment in China, one of its most important but increasingly difficult markets, and build its first Asia-Pacific research and development center in the country, Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Tuesday. Demand for Apple's phones has plummeted in China, and the government maintains a wary attitude towards foreign technology. Apple's new research and development center will be built by the end of the year, Cook told Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, one of China's most senior officials, according to the official Chinese state broadcaster.

By Rory Carroll SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Electric vehicle charging companies are calling for independent oversight of the $2 billion Volkswagen AG is required to invest in clean car infrastructure, saying VW should not have the power to shape the nascent electric car charging space. The German automaker agreed to invest the money, which includes $1.2 billion nationally and $800 million in California, as part of its penalties for equipping hundreds of thousands of its diesel vehicles sold in the United States with software designed to cheat tailpipe emissions tests. While charging station companies called the money a potential “game changer,” they worry that if it is misspent, it could hurt competition.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ride-hailing service Uber [UBER.UL] has decided to invest $500 million into an ambitious global mapping project to wean itself off dependence on Google Maps and pave the way for driverless cars, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The San Francisco-based company is ramping up spending in new technologies such as mapping and driverless cars following new investments into the company earlier this year. A representative for Uber could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Catherine Ngai; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

By Mark Hosenball, Joseph Menn and John Walcott WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A computer network used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organizations, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The latest attack, which was disclosed to Reuters on Friday, follows two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, and the party’s fundraising committee for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. A Clinton campaign spokesman said in a statement late on Friday that an analytics data program maintained by the DNC and used by the campaign and a number of other entities “was accessed as part of the DNC hack.” “Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside cyber security experts.

(Reuters) – Two youths unaware of their surroundings when they were playing Pokemon GO on their cell phones made an illegal border crossing this week from Canada into the United States in a remote part of Montana, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said. The two, who were not identified, were found by U.S. Border Patrol agents on Thursday, with their attention affixed to their phones as they were trying to hunt down cartoon characters on a journey that took them over the border. “Both juveniles were so captivated by their Pokemon GO games that they lost track of where they were,” said Michael Rappold, a spokesman for the agency.

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp reported higher quarterly adjusted revenue, driven mainly by growth in the company's cloud business. The company's shares jumped 3.5 percent to $54.91 in extended trading on Tuesday. Revenue in the cloud business, which includes the Azure cloud platform as well as products related to server software, rose 7 percent to $6.7 billion. Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, the software behemoth has focused on the building the company's expertise in cloud-based services amid slowing PC sales. …

TOKYO/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The phenomenal success of Pokemon GO and the surge in Nintendo Co's market value by $17 billion in just over a week has been seized upon by one of its most vocal investors to press for a change of strategy at the company. Until Pokemon GO, a mobile game, was launched just over a week ago, Nintendo had taken every opportunity to say its main focus was still gaming consoles, and games for smartphones were just a means to lure more people to them. Encouraged by the success of mobile games like “Candy Crush”, he has campaigned for years for the Japanese console maker to develop and sell games for platforms run by Apple and Google .

By Tom Bergin and Nathan Layne LONDON/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Shortly after 7 p.m. on January 12, 2015, a message from a secure computer terminal at Banco del Austro (BDA) in Ecuador instructed San Francisco-based Wells Fargo to transfer money to bank accounts in Hong Kong. Over 10 days, Wells approved a total of at least 12 transfers of BDA funds requested over the secure SWIFT system. The SWIFT network – which allows banks to process billions of dollars in transfers each day – is considered the backbone of international banking.

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google has no plans to expand its partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV to create a self-driving car, the program chief at the Alphabet Inc unit said on Thursday, affirming that the technology company was still in talks with other potential partners. Earlier this month, Google and Fiat Chrysler agreed to work together to build a fleet of 100 self-driving minivans in the most advanced collaboration to date between Silicon Valley and a traditional carmaker. Google said it was not sharing proprietary self-driving vehicle technology with Fiat Chrysler, and that the vehicles would not be offered for sale.

By Dan Levine SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Oracle Corp and Google faced off on Tuesday in a $9 billion intellectual property retrial, with Oracle accusing Google of stealing programming to become the world’s leading smartphone player and Google saying it acted legally as a true innovator. Oracle claims Google's Android smartphone operating system violated its copyright on parts of the Java programming language, while Alphabet Inc's Google says it should be able to use Java without paying a fee under the fair-use provision of copyright law.