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By Julia Harte and Julia Edwards WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday that a court order forcing Apple Inc to give the FBI data from an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters would be “potentially precedential” in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from technology companies. The remarks are a slight change to Comey's statement last week that forcing Apple to unlock the phone was “unlikely to be a trailblazer” for setting a precedent for other cases. The issue of precedent is central in the public fight between Apple and the U.S. government over the shooter's iPhone, which Apple has cast as a pivotal case that could lead to loss of privacy for all its customers and should be decided by Congress rather than a court.

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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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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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(Reuters) – Apple Inc said it will soon start charging for iTunes Radio, its music-streaming service that competes with Pandora Media Inc. ITunes Radio, which was announced in 2013, will no longer be free from the end of January, Apple said in statement. The ad-supported service, available only in the United States and Australia, will be folded into Apple Music, which costs $9.99 a month. Beats 1, the global 24/7 radio station, will now be the free music option for listeners.

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The stock briefly traded as low as $99.87, its lowest level since Aug. 24, a day when the entire stock market suffered a brief 'flash crash.' Apple shares traded as low as $92 that day. Apple stock closed down nearly 2 percent at $100.70 on Nasdaq on Wednesday, amid a broadly lower stock market. The stock's decline comes as a growing number of analysts are trimming their estimates for iPhone sales – the bedrock of Apple's business – with some predicting sales this year will decline on an annual basis for the first time since the phone was introduced.

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Far from science fiction, the ability to seemingly control things with your hands is no longer the fantasy that stories like Star Wars once imagined, thanks to a research team in Taiwan that has created technology akin to using The Force. The Taiwanese technology researchers at PVD+ have written an algorithm for the Apple Watch that renders it a remote controller that can pilot drones and manipulate lights using hand gestures. PVD+, founded in 2013 and led by Mark Ven, a civil engineering PHD student at the National Chung Hsing University along with a professor there, Yang Ming-der, and three other group members, calls the software Dong coding.

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By Dan Levine SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc defeated a U.S. class action lawsuit brought by Apple retail workers over bag search practices at the company's California brick and mortar outlets, according to a court ruling on Saturday. The decision, from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, came in a case where employees sued to be reimbursed for the time taken by Apple to search their bags to ensure they did not steal any merchandise. At least two Apple retail store workers complained directly to Chief Executive Tim Cook that the technology company's policy of checking retail employees' bags as a security precaution was embarrassing and demeaning, according to court filings made public earlier in the case.

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Apple's loyal army of software developers is joining the tech giant in its bid to conquer the living room with a new version of Apple TV, creating apps for the big screen that they hope will attract users and unlock a rich source of revenue. A long-awaited update to Apple TV, which launched in 2007, will start shipping in 80 countries on Friday. An App Store is the centerpiece of the new device, and hundreds of apps will be ready at launch, including gaming, shopping and photography.

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Apple Inc's mobile wallet Apple Pay is winning over more U.S. households a year after its launch, but growth has slowed, research released on Monday showed. Fourteen percent of U.S. households with credit cards had signed up for the payment option by the end of September, up from 11 percent in February, Phoenix Marketing International said at a payments conference in Las Vegas. “A very rapid initial threshold was achieved by Apple Pay and it is still growing but the growth rate has slowed down,” said Greg Weed, director of card performance research at Phoenix.