China is clearly still on Apple's mind as the company announces a surprise $1 billion investment in Didi Chuxing, the chief Uber ride-sharing/taxi-hailing rival in the country.

Apple is famous for showing little interest in outside investments, since it usually tends to buy small startups outright. The investment in Didi is Apple's largest since the $3bn acquisition of Beats, and in typical fashion there is litle official elaboration on the hows and the whys.

“Didi exemplifies the innovation taking place in the iOS developer community in China,” Apple CEO Tim Cook states. “We are extremely impressed by the business they’ve built and their excellent leadership team, and we look forward to supporting them as they grow.”

Nokia steps back into the consumer electronics business after the 2013 sale of its mobile business to Microsoft as it acquires French health and wearables company Withings for €170 million in cash.

The deal is described as the start of a "new chapter" for Nokia, since it involves the creation of a digital health business within the company headed by Withings CEO Cédric Hutchings.

"With this acquisition, Nokia is strengthening its position in the Internet of Things in a way that leverages the power of our trusted brand, fits with our company purpose of expanding the human possibilities of the connected world, and puts us at the heart of a very large addressable market where we can make a meaningful difference in peoples' lives," Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri says.

The DGCCRF, the French competition, consumer and fraud agency, launches a court case against Apple, BFM TV reports-- one claiming strict carrier contracts unfairly benefit the iPhone maker.

Specifically, the agency states Apple contracts violate French competition laws in no less than 10 ways. For instance, Apple forces carriers to buy a minimum number of iPhones over 3 years, pay part of customer repair costs, stick with strict order rules, finance any in-store iPhone displays and to contribute to an Apple-run advertising fund. Apple also forbids carriers to make any iPhone contract or payment plans.

An encrypted iPhone stands in the way of the FBI investigation over the 2 December 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting-- one Apple refuses to unlock in the name of protecting user data.

To put a long story short, following the discovery of ISIS involvement in the San Bernardino attack the FBI found an iPhone belonging to one of the attackers. As law enforcement agencies tend to, the FBI wants to go through the data inside the device, but it requires a means to break the iPhone's built-in encryption, specifically by modifying iOS security to allow unlimited unlocking attempts, as well as allowing "brute force" attacks to discover the correct PIN.