Amazon

is set to shutter its Amazon Appstore on the Android operating system Wednesday, Aug. 20.

The move, announced in February, shutters the mega-corporation's competitor to the Google Play store on Android devices. The company shut down the app store

on Windows in 2024

.

The store will remain open on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices.

"We’ve decided to discontinue the Amazon Appstore on Android to focus our efforts on the Appstore experience on our own devices, as that’s where the overwhelming majority of our customers currently engage with it," Amazon said in a statement to Android news outlet

Android Police at the time

.

The Amazon Coins program will also close Aug. 20, meaning some people may see refunds.

Here's what you need to about the Amazon Appstore closing on Andrioid.

Will I get a refund from Amazon shutting down the Amazon app store on Android?

App store customers with Amazon Coins remaining in their account will be refunded, according to the

FAQ page on the shutdown

. Information about refunds "will be shared at a later date," the page reads.

Will apps from the Amazon app store continue to work?

Apps purchased on the Amazon app store are not guaranteed to continue working after Aug. 20, according to the FAQ page.

What are Amazon Coins?

Amazon Coins were used to make purchases on certain apps and in the Amazon Appstore.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:

Amazon Appstore closes on Androids Aug. 20. See who gets a refund

Oil prices jumped Tuesday to their highest level since late last week after reports that two tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz had been hit by unknown projectiles.

U.S. crude oil rose more than 3% to above $70 per barrel for the first time since July 1. International Brent crude oil also rose 3% to more than $74 per barrel.

Earlier on Tuesday, the U.K.'s Maritime Trade Operations center said it had received two reports of attacks on ships "transiting the Strait of Hormuz." One of them was "struck by an unknown Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle," the agency said, and a second vessel was "struck by an unidentified projectile and is believed to have structural damage."

An attack on a third ship off the coast of Oman Tuesday caused a fire to break out on board, said UKMTO.

A U.S. official confirmed the UKMTO reports, telling NBC News that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had fired missiles at two ships Tuesday and struck a third commercial vessel with at least one drone.

The U.S. military also shot down additional drones that had been fired by Iran, the official said.

Adding to worries for oil traders on Tuesday was a report from Reuters that one of the ships, which it identified as a liquefied natural gas tanker, the Al Rekayyat, was "at risk of exploding due to a fire in its engine room." NBC News has not been able to verify that report.

U.S. Treasury yields rose along with oil prices, with the 20- and 30-year yields breaking above 5%. The 10-year U.S. government bond yield, which more heavily influences consumer borrowing rates than others, rose to its highest level since early June.

Stocks briefly fell on news of the attacks, with the S&P 500 falling as much as nearly 1%. The index later rebounded and was down only 0.3% in early afternoon trading.

The Nasdaq 100 index fell harder, however, dropping as much as 2%. Most of these losses were attributable to heavy selling in chip stocks and tech companies after shares of Samsung plunged 7% overnight.

Chip stocks tumble

One of the world's largest chip and memory manufacturers, Samsung reported better-than-expected earnings early Tuesday. But investors noted that the earnings beat wasn't as large as some had expected, triggering a sell-off in the company's shares.

Samsung "stock crumbled in a wave of profit taking, sending shockwaves through the U.S. market a day after participants appeared to re-embrace volatile chip names," wrote Joe Mazzola, Charles Schwab's head trading & derivatives strategist in a note Tuesday.

Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank pointed out that Samsung's "results were 'only' 6% ahead of estimates."

But Samsung is only the latest major tech company in recent months to see its stock fall sharply despite reporting strong earnings. Investors remain cautious and easily spooked by any signs that the euphoria carrying AI stocks could be slowing down.

Overnight, South Korea's Kospi Index briefly slipped into bear market territory as other major chip stocks which trade on the exchange, such as SK Hynix, also fell sharply. An index enters a bear market if it falls more than 20% from its most recent all-time high.

Adding to the pressure on chip stocks Tuesday was a report from Reuters that China's AI startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip. Over time, this could reduce the company's reliance on chips from American suppliers.

As of 1 p.m. ET, nine of the 10 poorest performing Nasdaq stocks were all either memory or chip stocks. The worst performers were Intel and Sandisk, both of which were down about 9%.

Meanwhile, SpaceX shares slid 5% despite making its debut Tuesday as part of the prestigious Nasdaq 100 Index.

The Nasdaq 100 is a basket of the largest non-financial companies traded on the Nasdaq exchange.

Typically, a stock's entry into a key index like the Nasdaq 100 triggers billions of dollars worth of buying, as funds that follow that particular index update their holdings to include shares of the newest entrant.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said Wednesday that inflation risks have declined in recent weeks but that the central bank still had more work to do to rein in rising prices.

"Inflation risks have come down," Warsh said, noting that "energy prices have come down quite substantially" since the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to end the ongoing war last month.

"They're still a bit above where they were pre-conflict, but they've come down," he said.

Inflation is a sore spot for Americans, who are growing more dissatisfied with the economy, according to polls and consumer surveys. In May, inflation as measured by the consumer price index jumped to 4.2%, its highest level since 2023. The Fed's preferred inflation gauge also showed price growth was hot, driven by the surge in energy prices.

Warsh also weighed in on artificial intelligence's growing impact on the economy and inflation, sounding an optimistic note on longer-term prospects for the technology.

"We're all being hit by a series of shocks in the U.S.," Warsh said. "The AI shock is leading to a boom in capital expenditures. We see that first and foremost in demand, but I'm confident we're going to see it in supply at some point. So we're spending most of our time trying to monitor those developments."

Still, the central bank chief declined to give any hint as to if policymakers will raise interest rates: "I'm not going to give you any prediction as to what we will do." Warsh has said that he plans to break with recent Fed leaders in limiting the amount of communications about the Fed's future plans.

Asked if the Fed will make that decision regardless of what President Donald Trump wants, Warsh said, "We've been an independent central bank for a very long time. We're going to be an independent central bank at this moment, and you're going to see no changes on that." Trump has repeatedly pushed for the Fed to cut its key rate, often attacking Warsh's predecessor, Jerome Powell, over the matter. (Powell, like Warsh, was appointed to the role by Trump.)

Warsh was in Sintra, Portugal, speaking alongside European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem at one of the highest-profile gatherings of central bankers each year.

Lagarde largely agreed with Warsh's view on inflation, saying that upside risks to inflation and downside risks to economic growth prospects "are probably more broadly balanced" now than "a few weeks ago as a result of what we're seeing" with energy prices.

The European Central Bank is one of only two major central banks to have raised rates since the war with Iran started, while the Federal Reserve has kept rates unchanged in its most recent meetings as it monitors the pass-through of inflation from energy to other parts of the economy.

One key area Warsh said the Fed is monitoring: the AI industry.

As major cloud computing companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon rush to build data centers around the globe to power new AI models and systems, the price of computer equipment and memory specifically has been skyrocketing.

Consumer electronics companies such as PlayStation and Xbox have raised prices as a result. But the most notable price hike came Thursday, when Apple hiked prices on many of its laptop and desktop computers along with iPads, the Apple TV device and HomePod speaker.

Apple didn't raise the prices of the iPhone, the Apple Watch and AirPods, but many analysts project those could be next.

Asked about the AI boom and whether it may be inflationary over the longer term, Warsh said it is "one of the central questions that all of us have for our day jobs."

But Warsh predicted that the United States was "likely to be a big winner over the medium term in this."

"Who knew when the internet was born that the internet was going to create a million and a half jobs as Uber drivers? We are in the first or second inning of this revolution," he said.

"This is a big paradigm shift, both for the conduct of our policy and for our economies," Warsh continued. "I think the jobs will be greater, prosperity will be stronger."

Several economists, corporate leaders and analysts warn that AI could significantly reduce jobs. A study from financial operations firm Ramp found that companies that are spending more on AI are also growing their workforces.

Repeating what the Fed said after its most recent interest rate meeting, Warsh said that labor markets are steady and the demand side of the economy is solid: "Again, this is before we see the fruits of AI."

"But we've all looked around and we've seen that prices are too high, and I don't think I'm the only one on this stage that's recommitted to deliver price stability," Warsh said, referring to one of the central bank's two legal mandates.

In Warsh's first meeting as chairman last month, the Fed held interest rates steady as other policymakers projected a likelihood of hiking interest rates before the end of the year — projections the chairman would downplay at a news conference.

The Fed's rate-setting committee is scheduled to meet July 28 and 29.

As AI is adopted across industries, it's also being taken up by scammers. Around 6% of U.S. adults, or about 15 million people, were scammed out of money last year, a new Gallup and Stop Scams Alliance survey finds, and victims reported that 12% of those scams involved AI or deepfakes.

"These guys aren't called organized crime for nothing. They're actually organized, and they're using their organization to start attacking us with scale now to a tune of $68 billion, which is like the annual revenues of Delta Airlines. It's like a Fortune 500 company. It's huge," Stop Scams Alliance founder and CEO Ken Westbrook told NBC News. The Stop Scams Alliance is a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce scams in the U.S.

The survey of 5,173 U.S. adult respondents in January through February, which relied on participants' self-reporting their scam experiences, said that "the use of AI may be difficult to detect by scam victims."

But Westbrook noted that the results align with other signs of the burgeoning issue of AI-fueled scams.

In March, Interpol warned that AI could enhance and fuel fraud. "Enabled by artificial intelligence, low-cost digital tools and increased global criminal collaboration, we are witnessing the industrialization of fraud," Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said.

AI companies, including OpenAI, have periodically also released reports documenting the use of their platforms by scammers. In February, OpenAI released a report documenting attempts to use its technologies to commit fraud and scams around the world, including one instance targeting people who were already victims of scams with faked advertisements for "scam recovery" services.

In total, the Gallup and Stop Scams Alliance survey found that Americans lost $68 billion to scams last year.

The survey helps fill in a picture of the scale of scamming in the U.S., Westbrook said.

The U.S. does not actively regularly collect information from residents about scamming, though the Federal Trade Commission publishes complaint data it receives yearly. Respondents in the Gallup survey reported losing nearly four times as much as the losses that were reported to the FTC.

The survey included respondents who did not formally report the scams to an authority, which partially explains the nearly $52 billion data difference, Westbrook said.

The data reporting gap is "one of the reasons why we're not devoting sufficient resources to this problem. It's just that we haven't measured it properly," Westbrook said.

The governments of the United Kingdom and Australia conduct annual surveys of scam prevalence, but the U.S. has not regularly measured it.

"The government can't even tell you what the percentage of people in the United States being scammed is. That's because they just get victim reports, but they don't know how much is unreported. So that's the gap that we're able to fill in with the Gallup survey," Westbrook said.

The survey also found that 1 in 4 Americans say they've been personally scammed at some point in their adult lives.

The scams brought about severe financial hardship for 21% of respondents and moderate financial hardship for 46%, according to the survey. The report also found higher scam rates among lower-income adults, people of color and people without bachelor's degrees.

Scammers used sophisticated research and impersonation techniques to fool their victims.

A woman told Gallup that scammers contacted her after she posted about her two missing cats online. The scammers portrayed themselves as the sheriff's department and transferred her to somebody who said they worked in the emergency vet clinic and claimed they had her cat and needed around $780 for emergency surgery.

"It sounded like it was 100% legitimate. ... I was waiting and waiting, and my husband ... he called the [City] Police Department, talked to them, and they are the ones who told him, no, your wife was scammed," she said.

Seventy-five percent of respondents reported that being scammed had negative impacts on their mental health and well-being.

"There's a line in the Gallup report that hit me like a hammer when I read it. It says that 'the emotional impact of scams can be more injurious than the financial impact,' and I certainly saw that with my mom," Westbrook said. His mother was scammed in spring 2023, which started when she searched for her sister's obituary online but clicked on a fake page set up by scammers, who eventually robbed her of her life savings.

Fraudulent websites are among the most prevalent scams, 40% of respondents reported in the survey. Phone, text and email were each involved in nearly half of all scams, with 50% of scams involving two or more methods.

In nearly half of all scams, 49% of the victims were also deceived into personally sending money to the scammers. Payment apps like Zelle and PayPal were the most commonly used methods, the survey found.