Ben Bernanke touted innovation and information technology as drivers of economic change in a Saturday commencement speech at Bard College.

While lawmakers support passing high-skilled immigration reform, they have disagreed on how to accomplish it legislatively. 

The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously on Friday to lift 126 requirements on phone companies that it said had become outdated.

The regulatory rollback came on Chairman Julius Genachowski's last day in office.

The FCC scrapped a requirement that phone companies keep paper records in addition to digital copies and a rule for prepaid calling card companies that required 15,000 hours of compliance work annually, the commission said. One rule required certain companies to label and track every piece of central office equipment, no matter how small.

MetroPCS dropped its lawsuit challenging the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality regulations on Friday, leaving Verizon to continue the legal battle against the rules on its own.

T-Mobile, which was not challenging the rules, acquired MetroPCS earlier this month. 

The FCC's rules require wireline broadband providers to treat all Internet traffic equally. Cellphone carriers are prohibited from blocking any apps or services. 

Tom Wheeler, President Obama's pick to head the Federal Communications Commission, has agreed to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars in holdings in AT&T and Verizon to avoid a conflict of interest. 

Wheeler, an investor and former telecommunications industry lobbyist, owns at least $500,000 in each company, according to disclosure forms released by the Office of Government Ethics on Thursday. 

He has also agreed to sell off his holdings in 76 other media and technology companies including Google, Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Inc., CBS, News Corp., The Walt Disney Co., Sprint and Deutsche Telekom. 

Organizing for Action, the nonprofit group launched out of President Obama's 2012 reelection campaign, launched a Web video series promoting immigration reform Thursday with a video clip about a foreign tech entrepreneur in San Francisco.

The new video is the first in a series that OFA plans to run that will push for the public to call for comprehensive immigration reform. The videos will tell the stories of people impacted by the immigration debate.

In its inaugural video, OFA decided to focus on the immigration debate's impact on the tech community. The video features the story of Convo.com Founder Faizan Buzdar and his struggle to move his business to Silicon Valley. 

The bill is a reaction to the Justice Department's seizure two months' worth of phone records of Associated Press journalists.

Laurene Powell Jobs, the wife of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, is stepping out into the public eye to push for immigration reform, The Wall Street Journal writes. Read more...

THE LEDE: Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to put forward a plan to simplify corporate tax laws when he testifies during a Senate hearing next Tuesday, according to The Washington Post. 

Cook, the successor to the late Steve Jobs at the Cupertino-based company, told The Post in an interview that he plans to offer proposals that would encourage American companies to bring their foreign profits back to the United States.

The upcoming Senate hearing will be Cook's debut testifying before Congress. The hearing, held by the Senate Homeland Security subpanel on investigations, will examine the methods used by multinational corporations to shift profits offshore to avoid U.S. tax rates on them.

Many companies have argued that U.S. tax rates are too high relative to other countries' and need to be lowered. Industry has urged Congress to reform the tax code. 

Cook agreed that the tax rates are too high in the U.S. and should be reconsidered. 

“We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that," Cook told the Post. "But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable.”