Business Highlights

Growth in the quarter ending in December ticked up to 6.8 percent over 2015, supported by government spending and a real estate boom, a gain from the previous quarter's 6.7 percent, government data showed Friday.

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump has reportedly picked a fierce critic of the Obama-era "net neutrality" rules to be chief regulator of the nation's airwaves and internet connections.

Pai is one of the two Republican commissioners on a 5-member panel that regulates the country's communications infrastructure, including TV, phone and internet service.

Another crop of encouraging company earnings news also helped lift the market, but investors were mostly focused on events in Washington as Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.

HONOLULU (AP) — A Hawaii lawmaker plans to introduce legislation that could force Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg into mediation before he is allowed to buy real estate on Kauai island.

With the agreement, the company resolved twin probes over more than $60 million paid to an unnamed agent retained in 2006 to acquire a Chinese basketball team, plus other business dealings that include a Beijing real estate deal to promote casinos on the Cotai Strip of Macao.

The complaint filed Friday in a San Diego federal court depicts Qualcomm as a monopolist abusing its power in a key segment of the mobile chip market to extort royalties for iPhone innovations that have nothing to do with Qualcomm's technology.

Apple says it has been cooperating with government regulators who have been investigating Qualcomm's business practices, prompting Qualcomm to retaliate by withholding about $1 billion in scheduled payments.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court says lending companies operated by Native American tribes are subject to investigation by a government regulator.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Friday rejected a claim