Randall Stephenson, AT&T Inc. ’s longtime boss, got an unexpected phone call Sunday evening from a hedge-fund manager at Elliott Management Corp., one of Wall Street’s biggest and most aggressive activist investors.

The call was brief and cordial, but behind it was a stinging rebuke of the telecom veteran’s mission to turn the phone company into a media giant and leave a top lieutenant to finish the job. Investor Jesse Cohn told Mr. Stephenson the hedge fund had concerns about AT&T’s strategy and execution, reflecting worries percolating around the company, said people familiar with the matter. Mr. Stephenson alerted his lead director.

VASTERAS, Sweden—Machines are strewn about the floor. Cranes heave building material through the factory hall. In this patch of Swedish forest, preparations are afoot for the battle between Europe and China over control of the technology that powers electric cars.

Peter Carlsson, a tall, blond Swede sporting a stubble, once managed Tesla Inc. ’s supply chain. Then he founded Northvolt AB, which aims to become the prime purveyor of batteries to Europe’s makers of electric and hybrid cars. Pointing at the chaotic site, he insists the first batch of test battery cells will roll off the factory floor in the next 10 weeks.

MoviePass is finally fading out.

The service, which made a splash with a too-good-to-be true subscription service that let customers watch up to a movie a day in theaters for less than $10 a month, said it planned to shut down as of Saturday. MoviePass’s parent, Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc., said Friday it was exploring all options, including a sale of the entire company.

U.S. national-security officials traveled to Silicon Valley last week to forge deeper ties with big tech companies in hopes of better protecting the 2020 election from foreign intervention. It didn’t go entirely as planned.

At the meeting organized by Facebook Inc. at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Shelby Pierson—named over the summer to lead the U.S. intelligence community’s new election-threats group—delivered a blunt message to the assembled executives: You need to share more data with us about your users.

The executives and other U.S. officials in the room were caught off guard by Ms. Pierson’s assertion, according to people in attendance or briefed on the conversation. After a tense moment, another official explained that privacy law limited what social-media platforms could hand over to spy agencies.

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP nixed plans earlier this year to launch a foundation to fund opioid-addiction treatment and research as the company rethought its strategy amid hundreds of lawsuits and a possible bankruptcy filing.

WASHINGTON—State attorneys general are formally launching separate antitrust probes into Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit starting next week, according to people familiar with the matter, putting added pressure on tech giants already under federal scrutiny.

The Google probe is expected to be announced at a news conference outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, with a bipartisan group of about three dozen state attorneys general joining the effort, the people said.

Bets placed via smartphones have rapidly brought New Jersey neck-and-neck with Nevada in the race to be the nation’s biggest sports-betting market.

Limits in other states, though, could hamper the nascent industry’s growth.

Bankruptcies are rising in the U.S. oil patch as Wall Street’s disaffection with shale companies reverberates through the industry.

Twenty-six U.S. oil-and-gas producers including Sanchez Energy Corp. and Halcón Resources Corp. have filed for bankruptcy this year, according to an August report by the law firm Haynes & Boone LLP. That nearly matches the 28 producer bankruptcies in all of 2018, and the number is expected to rise as companies face mounting debt maturities.

Higher tariffs on Chinese imports are adding costs and uncertainty for small businesses and dimming their outlook for the U.S. economy.

Economic confidence among small firms fell in August to the lowest level since November 2012, according to a monthly survey of more than 670 small companies conducted for The Wall Street Journal. The portion...

Amazon.com Inc.’s recent breakup with longtime shipping partner FedEx Corp. shows how far the e-commerce giant has come in creating its own delivery network.

Over the years, Amazon has played down its ambitions. But as consumers flock to its site for everything from toilet paper to TVs, Amazon has quietly blanketed the nation with hundreds of sprawling suburban warehouses and neighborhood package-sorting centers, flooded the streets with tens of thousands of vans and even taken to the airways. The costly effort is enabling...

Truck makers are logging sharply lower orders, adding another stress point for a decelerating U.S. manufacturing sector.

The U.S. trucking industry had one of its strongest years ever in 2018, as high demand for freight encouraged transportation companies to expand their fleets. Now, trade tensions and slower global growth are depressing freight volumes. Freight rates have fallen more than 20% from a record in June 2018, says St. Louis-based research firm Broughton Capital LLC. Trucking companies, in turn, are ordering fewer...

On a soundstage in New Orleans, a door pocked with bullet holes slams in Laurence Fishburne’s face. He plays a cop trying to defuse a violent standoff in the $15 million drama “#FreeRayshawn,” to be viewed in chapters under 10 minutes and only on smartphones.

The shoot is part of a Hollywood wager that the smallest screen may finally be ready for the big time. “#FreeRayshawn” is one of dozens of serialized short-format programs on the way, as the movie and television industry reaches for an audience of time-killers glued...

American workers under 35 report being happier with their paychecks than people over 55 for the first time since at least 2011, according to a new report from the Conference Board, a business-research organization that polls U.S. employees about workplace satisfaction.

Overall, the share of workers satisfied with their paychecks rose to 46.4% in 2018, from 43% in 2017, an increase that mirrors federal data showing that wage growth accelerated in 2018. The biggest leap came from millennials and Generation Z, whose enthusiasm for their compensation shot from 36% in 2017 to nearly 46% a year later.

The PGA Tour is seeking a new media-rights deal with a big increase in fees and a dedicated golf channel, and has drawn interest from suitors including AT&T Inc., Fox Corp. , Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN and Amazon.com Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

The Tour’s current deals with Comcast Corp. ’s NBC and Golf Channel, and CBS Corp. ’s CBS have more than two years left on them, but talks are already under way with those companies and other potential partners about a new pact.

Golf gets small TV audiences compared with professional football and basketball but reaches high-income viewers that appeal to advertisers. The Tour is looking for a significant increase in annual rights fees over the current pact, which is valued at roughly $400 million annually, the people familiar with the matter said. The deals with NBC and CBS were signed in 2013, and the Golf Channel pact dates back to 2007.

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is moving to erase Obama-era rules on methane emissions from the oil-and-gas business, saying the federal government overstepped its authority when it set limits on what scientists say is a significant contributor to climate change.

The sweeping proposal, formally introduced Wednesday, is the administration’s latest attempt to further boost record crude-oil and natural-gas production by easing regulations. But it comes amid growing concerns over how the industry’s methane emissions are affecting...

Everyone in Hollywood knew “Avengers: Endgame” would be a hit at the Chinese box office. No one there had the same hunch about “Capernaum,” a Lebanese drama that—despite being nominated for best foreign-language film in this year’s Oscars—hadn’t cracked $2 million in any market before capturing $54 million in China.

Behind the unlikely performance: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce giant that has succeeded in promoting critically lauded movies to Chinese audiences once used to getting only big-budget offerings from...

Cereal makers, under increasing competitive pressure, are struggling to improve sales of puffed rice, wheat flakes and oat clusters that were once a standard part of Americans’ morning routines.

Fast-food chains are beckoning customers with new breakfast products and bacon-laden promotions. More people say they are eating less sugar and more protein, or forgoing breakfast altogether. Snack bars for on-the-go consumers are ubiquitous.

LOS ANGELES—About three months after Walt Disney Co. acquired Twentieth Century Fox, the two studios hosted a red-carpet premiere in Hollywood for the X-Men movie “Dark Phoenix,” the first major Fox offering since the merger.

Before the event this summer, Disney sent Fox executives and staffers a 13-page memo outlining exactly how the event should go. Men were to shave, and women were to “wear light makeup.” Workers were encouraged to wear a wristwatch since using a phone, either to check the time or to take pictures, was...