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Sharp Corp's list of liabilities that prompted Taiwan's Foxconn to suspend signing a takeover deal was an unverified study of worst-case scenario risks, rather than liabilities requiring disclosure, a source briefed on the matter said. The list, sent to Foxconn on Wednesday, included previously undisclosed potential liabilities worth around 300 billion yen ($2.6 billion), prompting Foxconn founder and billionaire Terry Gou to hold off signing the estimated $5.8 billion deal, separate sources have said. Reuters was unable to ascertain why the list was sent to Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co .

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By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States has set out limits to its use of data collected in bulk about European citizens after a new information-sharing pact was agreed this month, according to documents seen by Reuters. A clear explanation of what information could be used for — preventing its “indiscriminate” and “arbitrary” use — was a key condition of the new Privacy Shield framework that enables firms to easily transfer personal data to the United States. Under the deal, Washington agreed to create a specific new role within the State Department to deal with complaints and enquiries forwarded by EU data protection agencies.

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Apple Inc on Thursday struck back in court against a U.S. government demand that it unlock an encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, arguing such a move would violate its free speech rights and override the will of Congress. The high-stakes fight between Apple and the government burst into the open last week when the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a court order requiring Apple to write new software and take other measures to disable passcode protection and allow access to shooter Rizwan Farook's iPhone. The clash has driven to the heart of a long-running debate over how much law enforcement and intelligence officials should be able to monitor digital communications.

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By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Facebook Inc prohibited global users from coordinating person-to-person private sales of firearms on its online social network and its Instagram photo-sharing service on Friday, countering concerns that it was increasingly being used to circumvent background checks on gun purchases. U.S. President Barack Obama has urged social media companies to clamp down on gun sales organized on their platforms. It updates Facebook's regulated goods policy, introduced in March 2014, that banned people from selling marijuana, pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs.

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Xerox Corp will split into two companies, one holding its legacy printer operations and the other its business process outsourcing unit, it said on Friday, in a bid to be more nimble after years of trying to integrate the businesses. Activist investor Carl Icahn, who first revealed a stake in Xerox in November, will get three board seats on the outsourcing company. Xerox Chief Executive Officer Ursula Burns said in an interview on Friday that the strategic review had been underway before Icahn publicly revealed he had bought Xerox shares.

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Facebook Inc smashed investors' expectations with a 52-percent jump in quarterly revenue as it sold more ads targeted at a fast-growing number of mobile users, sending its shares sharply higher after hours. The world's biggest online social network bucked the trend of underwhelming tech results from Apple Inc and eBay Inc, in the face of economic uncertainty around the world and a strong U.S. dollar depressing the value of overseas sales. “It's phenomenal at these (currency headwind) levels that they're accelerating to that level of growth,” said Rob Sanderson, an analyst at MKM Partners.

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Apple Inc is expected to report a 1.3 percent increase in iPhone sales in the holiday quarter, its slowest ever and a far cry from the double-digit growth investors have come to expect. Apple sold 75.5 million iPhones in the October-December quarter, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount, 1 million more than what was sold in the year-ago quarter. Shares of Apple, which will announce earnings after markets close on Tuesday, were trading up 0.3 percent at $99.76, after dipping to $98.07 in morning trading.

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By Yasmeen Abutaleb SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Four senior Twitter executives are leaving the media company, which is also adding a new chief marketing officer and two board members, a source said on Sunday, outlining the biggest leadership changes since Jack Dorsey returned as chief executive, calling for “bold rethinking”. Media head Katie Jacobs Stanton, product head Kevin Weil, and the head of the engineering division, Alex Roetter, will all leave the company, the source familiar with the matter said. On Sunday night Jason Toff, who heads Twitter's video streaming service, Vine, tweeted that he was leaving Twitter to join Google to work on virtual reality.

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Japan's Toshiba Corp plans to sell part of its chip business as it aims to recover from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday. The electronics conglomerate has started accepting bids, with early interest shown by the Development Bank of Japan Inc, said the sources, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to talk to the media. The state-owned bank has already invested in Seiko Holdings Corp's semiconductor operations.

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The US Environmental Protection Agency ordered the state of Michigan today to take “immediate action to address serious and ongoing concerns” with the city of Flint’s drinking water system, which has been contaminated for more than 18 months with elevated levels of lead. “EPA has determined that the City of Flint’s and the State of Michigan’s responses to the drinking water crisis in Flint have been inadequate to protect the public health and that these failures continue,” the order reads. The EPA will begin sampling Flint's tap water and publishing analysis results on its website and lead an independent investigation into what could have been done to prevent the crisis.