By Karen Freifeld and Aruna Viswanatha
(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is investigating JPMorgan Chase & Co
JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns in a 2008 fire sale encouraged by the government, and has pushed back against various government suits that have sought to hold JPMorgan accountable for the failed investment bank’s alleged mortgage-related misconduct.
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Want to know just who’s developing for the PlayStation 4? Sony just gave is a very good peek: it’s promising worldwide support for the console, and quickly flashed just which companies that entails. The cursory look shows us many familiar heavyweights, such as 2K, Activision, Capcom, EA, Konami and Ubisoft. We’ve also spotted Rockstar, Square Enix and other names that most would have hoped for with the new PlayStation. Suffice it to say that Sony hasn’t had any problems attracting the support it needs for a decent early lineup, although we don’t know how many of these developers will have something ready for launch day.
Update: A few exist that aren’t (directly) mentioned in the graphic above: Blizzard is porting Diablo III to the PS4, and Bungie will put its future MMO-like shooter, Destiny, on the game machine.
Check out our liveblog of Sony’s event to get the latest news as it happens!
Lou Myers, the actor most known for playing Mr. Vernon Gaines on the NBC sitcom “A Different World,” is dead. TMZ reports that the actor died on Feb. 19 at Charleston Medical Center in West Virginia after undergoing a heart-related emergency and falling into a coma. He had previously been hospitalized in December for pneumonia. According to TMZ, Myers was 77 years-old.
“A Different World” ran from 1988 to 1993 and was conceived as a spinoff from the hugely successful “The Cosby Show,” in which the characters attended a historically black university. Myers starred on the show alongside Lisa Bonet and Jada Pinkett. In his later years, Myers would also make memorable appearances in numerous other television shows and films such as “The Wedding Planner,” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” “Tin Cup” and “All About the Andersons.”
Myers is survived by his mother and a son.
Jodi Arias ended years of speculation about her defense Wednesday when she testified about the slaying of her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.
In her dramatic testimony, Arias was not as forthcoming with the details as some would have liked. The 32-year-old photographer said she remembers “almost nothing” about June 4, 2008, the day she killed Alexander in his Mesa, Ariz., apartment.
Testifying in a generally calm tone with moments of emotion and tears, Arias said under direct examination by her defense attorney that an argument about Alexander’s camera sparked a fight that resulted in his death. She said that Alexander became enraged and body slammed her to the floor because she had dropped his camera while taking pictures of him the shower.
* Speaks to eight TV anchors from across America
* Pentagon to describe plans for layoffs
* Obama will also talk about infrastructure spending plan
By Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama turned to local television stations across the United States on Wednesday to increase public pressure on congressional Republicans to avert $85 billion in budget cuts set to begin in nine days.
Obama scheduled interviews with television stations in eight media markets, most of which have a strong military presence, on a day when the Pentagon described its plans for laying off some 800,000 civilian employees for 22 days to save money.
“These automatic spending cuts were designed to be avoided. The idea was that Democrats and Republicans would come together with a sensible deficit-reduction program,” Obama said in an interview with Boston ABC affiliate WCVB.
The interviews are part of an administration strategy to lay blame for the job losses on Republicans, who control the House of Representatives.
Unless Obama and Republicans reach a deal, about $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts will kick in at the beginning of March and continue through Sept. 30 as part of a decade-long $1.2 trillion budget savings plan agreed by policymakers in 2011.
Not even the operations of the White House will be spared, an administration official said. “We anticipate significant disruption to our operations and mission, which could include furloughs,” said the official, who did not provide further details.
Obama has said he wants Congress to end tax loopholes enjoyed mainly by the wealthy to buy lawmakers enough time to pass a budget, but Republicans are insisting on deeper spending cuts to reduce the $16 trillion national debt.
Obama also talked to local TV news anchors in Baltimore, Oklahoma City, San Francisco, Honolulu, San Antonio, Charleston, South Carolina, and Wichita, Kansas.
Congress is not in session this week and is not expected to reach a deal by the March 1 deadline. Instead, lawmakers will work on a deal to fund government agencies later in the month.
The battle over “sequestration” – the name for the automatic spending cuts – is the latest in a series of fights between Obama and Republicans over the nation’s deficit.
Obama also has tried to lay the groundwork for a broader economic strategy and argued the government should invest in infrastructure and manufacturing to help address a stubbornly high unemployment rate.
Obama was also slated to talk to the news anchors about a $50 billion spending plan he discussed in his State of the Union address last week that the White House is calling “Fix It First.”
Most of that money would go to roads, bridges and airports where officials have postponed maintenance projects, the White House said. But any new spending will face an uphill battle in Congress.
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More on Barack Obama
The PlayStation 3’s microphone-looking motion controller, PlayStation Move, works on the PlayStation 4. LittleBigPlanet dev studio Media Molecule had its head, Alex Evans, on-stage at Sony’s big PlayStation 4 event to introduce what his company’s been creating for Sony’s next-gen game system. That meant two gentlemen acting as puppeteers, employing the aforementioned Move controller, to create a … well, a kind of crazy scene in a game. Two puppets, two men with Move controllers, and an ’80s metal concert recreation. We’re not sure what to make of it, but hey, it confirms that Move works on PS4. Hot dog! Oh, and as for an actual game title? We didn’t hear one, but it looks like we’ll hear about something from MM about PS4 software in the future.
In the US, the climate is changing on climate change.
Though President Barack Obama lavished attention on climate change in both his inaugural address and State of the Union speech, he still has little chance of getting Congress to pass a law limiting carbon emissions. But he could achieve the same goal using regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he is now in a better position to withstand–and even welcome–the confrontation with the energy industry this would entail, thanks to both economic and political shifts.
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More on Climate Change
This is what it’s all about, right? Live on-stage at the PS4’s launch event, we saw some Killzone Shadow Fall game footage shared directly to Facebook… which we then proceeded to grab the extract code for and added after the break. It may involve explosions.
Developing..
A rehab center for dogs in Los Angeles, Calif. offers massage and laser therapy, acupuncture, weight loss help and more to troubled pets. The services sound like something out of “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” but the canines walking through the doors at Two Hands Four Paws are not pampered little pooches; instead, they’re dogs with serious injuries and health issues.
One-eighth of the business’ clientele are wheelchair-bound at some point in their therapy, explained founder Leslie McMahon to KTLA in the video above. For those dogs, water treadmills, swim sessions and massage therapy can strengthen injured limbs and loosen tight muscles. Other clientele include aging pets suffering from arthritis, torn ligaments or sore joints.
In a phone interview with The Huffington Post, McMahon revealed the two most common injuries she sees at the clinic: disc diseases, which are congenital, and torn anterior cruciate ligaments in knees.
Sucker Punch Productions has made an appearance at Sony’s PlayStation 4 event here in New York City, and they announced the next installment in the InFamous series, and they call it InFamous: Second Son. The company showed off a trailer for the game during the event to give gamers a slight glimpse into what to expect.
In the two-minute video that they’re showing off, there’s apparently a person who can disappear attacking people with a chain, and then shows up somewhere else killing more people. It’s very dark-magic-esque, and if you’re familiar with the InFamous series, we’re sure that you’ll be inclined to check it out when it eventually releases.
However, just as with all the other games unveiled today, Seconds Sons doesn’t yet have a release date, but hopefully we should see it before the holiday season arrives sometime in the fall. Sony hasn’t said when they’ll be releasing the PS4 console itself, but rumors are pointing to a release sometime later this year.
Sony announced the PlayStation 4 earlier during the event, and while they have yet to bring the console itself on stage, they did show off the new DualShock 4 controller, which integrates a touchpad, headphone jack, and a share button, while still keeping most of the same shape as past DualShock controllers.
Sucker Punch announces InFamous: Second Son for PS4 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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