New storage in Apple iTunes

You will now be able to catch high-definition movies at Apple's iTunes store! Apple on Thursday started offering HD movies for rent or purchase at its money-spinning online iTunes store. The Cupertino based company announced that it will be offering HD movies on the iTunes store, and it will offer the future movies in HD format 30 days after their release.

Apple introduced an HD section on iTunes featuring a dozen of HD movies including "Bangkok Dangerous," "The Spirit," "Transporter 3," and "Punisher: War Zone". The company claimed that it has already started taking preorders for several of last year's hit titles, such as James Bond film "Quantum Of Solace" and the teenage vampire film "Twilight".

According to Apple, the HD movies can be purchased and downloaded through the iTunes Store for $19.99. The rental price for new releases of standard-definition movies is $4.99 and for the older titles is $3.99. The rental price for HD movies $1 more than regular titles; thus the HD movies are available for $20 purchase price and $5 rental price.

In a statement, Apple stated that some of the movies listed on the iTunes store are only available for purchasing, couldn't be rented. The company said that its current collection is limited, but soon more HD titles will be added to the store.

Apple explained that the HD movies, standard-definition movies and TV shows downloaded from iTunes can be played on an Apple Mac, iPhone, some iPod models, Windows PC, or on widescreen digital TV through the Apple TV set-top box.

Adding HD movies to its iTunes store for rent and purchase, Apple is competing with Netflix and Blockbuster, which also offer HD movies online. Currently, more than 10 million songs, more than 40,000 TV episodes, and more than 5,000 movies are available for rent and purchase at the iTunes Store. Apple has already sold more than 250 million TV episodes and more than 33 million feature films through its iTunes store.


Read more: "What's new in Apple's iTunes store? | TopNews United States" - http://topnews.us/content/24477-what-s-new-apple-s-itunes-store#ixzz0AIUgwmR1

Sony Ericsson Sees First-Quarter Loss as Sales Drop

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd., the mobile-phone venture of Sony Corp. and Ericsson AB, said it will report a pretax loss of as much as 390 million euros ($534 million) in the first quarter as handset sales fall.

The loss excludes restructuring charges of 10 million euros to 20 million euros, the London-based company said in a statement today. The company said its gross margin in the quarter will fall from the preceding three months and the year- earlier period.

“Net sales and net income before taxes in the first quarter of 2009 continue to be negatively affected by weak consumer demand as well as de-stocking in the retail and distribution channels,” the company said in the release.

Sony Ericsson is cutting at least 2,000 jobs as demand for its handsets shrinks, joining industry leader Nokia Oyj, which announced 1,700 additional job cuts this week. Sony Ericsson, formerly among the biggest profit contributors for its parents, has racked up three consecutive quarterly losses, and the company said today the global handset market may contract at least 10 percent this year, twice as much as previously estimated.

Ericsson declined as much as 5.1 kronor, or 6.7 percent, to 70.7 kronor, and traded at 70.90 kronor as of 9:35 a.m. in Stockholm. Nokia fell as much as 5.3 percent in Helsinki. Sony didn’t trade as Japanese markets are shut today for a holiday.

Phone Shipments

Sony Ericsson plans to ship about 14 million phones in the first quarter, at an average selling price of 120 euros. In the fourth quarter, the venture shipped 24.2 million phones, at an average price of 121 euros.

In the fourth quarter, the gross margin, or sales minus manufacturing costs, fell by more than half to 15 percent. The company plans to release its full earnings for the first quarter on April 17, it said today.

Chief Executive Officer Dick Komiyama, who turned around Sony’s laptop division in the U.S., said Jan. 16 that the company aims to return to profit in the second half of the year, helped by cost cuts and a focus on more expensive phones.

Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg, who is chairman of Sony Ericsson, said in an interview March 4 that Ericsson is committed to the business and won’t change its stance based on the division’s performance over a single quarter.

For more news: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aHsvLAGAUrNs&refer=uk

Bank of America involved in Merrill Q4 writedowns

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp was involved in accounting for fourth-quarter writedowns at Merrill Lynch & Co before it acquired the brokerage firm, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Bank of America's chief accounting officer, Neil Cotty, was influential in determining writedowns for complex debt instruments and leveraged loans among other assets at Merrill, people familiar with the matter told the newspaper.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch in January and sought government assistance to complete the deal after learning of massive losses at Merrill in December.

Merrill Lynch said in February it lost $15.84 billion in the fourth quarter, about $533 million more than the loss estimated by Bank of America in January.

For more news: http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE52J08I20090320

Back Stiffness

For Elise Miller, a longtime Iyengar Yoga teacher who was diagnosed with scoliosis—abnormal lateral curvature of the spine—as a teen, twisting poses are pure bliss. "I love moving from gentle twists into deeper variations," she says. "I think twists can be the most cleansing of all the poses." She's referring to master teacher B.K.S. Iyengar's "squeeze and soak" theory: The action of twisting the spine squeezes the muscles, spinal disks, and abdominal organs. When you release, blood floods back into those areas, bringing nutrients and improving circulation.

Still, Miller can understand why many people don’t enjoy twisting. The problem, she feels, lies in an overzealous approach. "You see people doing twists, and they just go for it. Then they feel stuck, like they have nowhere else to go—and they don't, because they haven’t allowed an opening to happen." Her remedy for this common problem is twofold: First, she says, you must elongate your spine and create space in it before twisting; otherwise you exert pressure on the disks and leave yourself open to injury. Second, she uses props in her twist sequences to gently prepare the body for deeper poses. Being mindful of your alignment and using props will prevent you from powering through the poses, so you can enjoy a spiraling action up the spine and reap the benefits that twists offer.

The first three poses in this sequence are often taught to people with hip or back stiffness, sacroiliac imbalances, degenerative disks, arthritis, or sciatica. With the exception of Paschimottanasana, do each pose in this sequence for five breaths on each side.

1. Bharadvajasana (Bharadvaja’s Twist), with chair
2. Parivrtta Trikonasana (Revolved Triangle), with chair
3. Marichyasana III (Marichi’s Twist III), with chair

For more information visit here
http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/2543

Bernanke Caps Treasury Yields to Cut Consumer Borrowing Rates

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may have brought an end to the worst quarterly start for Treasuries since 1980 by establishing a ceiling on yields with plans to buy $300 billion in government debt.

Treasuries lost 3.4 percent since December prior to yesterday’s announcement that the Fed would expand asset purchases to drive consumer borrowing rates lower, and were headed for their worst three-month period since the third quarter of 1980, when they fell 5.06 percent, Merrill Lynch & Co. index data show. Yesterday’s rally pared this year’s losses to 1.38 percent.

“The Fed is capping Treasury yields,” said David Glocke, who manages $65 billion of Treasuries at Vanguard Group Inc. in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. “I don’t think we will see rates drift back up above three percent; everyone looks at that as being the ceiling.”

Treasury 10-year note yields fell the most since 1962 yesterday, dropping to 2.52 percent, after the Fed surprised investors by expanding the debt purchase portion of its quantitative easing policy, which already includes agency and mortgage debt, to about $1.75 trillion in securities.

While investors anticipated an increase in mortgage and agency debt purchases, firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and UBS AG forecast that Bernanke would focus on expanding existing programs before buying Treasuries.

“We were a little surprised about the timing,” said Ira Jersey, head of interest-rate strategy at RBC Capital Markets in New York. “They have to get spreads on consumer rates down.”

Mortgage Rates

Central bankers and Treasury haven’t been able to meet Bernanke’s goal of reducing consumer interest rates along with the borrowing costs paid by banks.

The difference between rates on 30-year fixed mortgages and 10-year Treasuries was 2.1 percentage points yesterday, Bloomberg data show. That’s up from an average of 1.75 percentage points in the decade before the subprime mortgage market collapsed.

Investors have also shunned debt backed by consumer loans as unemployment has climbed in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Sales of the bonds plunged 40 percent last year to $106 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, choking off funding to lenders. About $2.3 billion of debt backed by auto loans has been sold this year, compared with more than $9.6 billion in the same period of 2008, according to data from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Yield Ceiling

Ten-year Treasury yields tumbled 47 basis points yesterday to 2.53 percent after the Fed’s announcement. The note’s yield touched 3.02 percent yesterday and has failed to break 3.05 percent three separate times since March 4.

“If rates drifted to that level I’d be a buyer,” Vanguard’s Glocke said.

Investor concern about rising supplies of debt and stock gains had pushed yields up from record lows in the fourth quarter. Goldman Sachs estimates that Treasury sales will almost triple this year to as much as $2.5 trillion as President Barack Obama looks to finance a budget deficit that his administration forecasts may expand to $1.75 trillion.

The Fed said it will increase its purchases of agency debt this year by up to $100 billion to a total of as much as $200 billion and will buy $750 billion in mortgage-backed securities on top of the already-announced $500 billion program, according to the central bank’s policy statement. The Fed also said it will consider expanding the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility to include "other financial assets."

‘Reinforces the Case’

Bernanke first mentioned the option of buying longer-term Treasuries on Dec. 1. Less than three weeks later, 10- and 30- year yields touched record lows. The Fed trimmed the target rate for overnight loans between banks to a range of zero to 0.25 percent at the Dec. 16 meeting to help unfreeze credit markets.

"Our medium-term expectation of lower 10-year Treasury yields has been premised upon quantitative easing," JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists led by Srini Ramaswamy wrote in a note to clients yesterday. "Today's FOMC statement reinforces the case for lower yield levels over a longer term horizon."

The Fed may also buy Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS, used by investors to guard against inflation. The purchases will begin "late next week" and will take place two to three times a week thereafter, according to a statement on the Fed Bank of New York’s Web site.

‘Exit Strategy’

"The big concern in Treasuries is, 'What will the Fed do if we see inflation coming back and what is the strategy for reversing these purchases,' said Mustafa Chowdhury, head of U.S. interest-rates research in New York at Deutsche Bank AG, one of 16 primary dealers that trade government securities with the Fed. “If a clear exit strategy is not spelled out for the market, it will cause a huge reaction."

The consumer price index climbed 0.4 percent after a 0.3 percent rise in January, the Labor Department said yesterday. Excluding food and fuel, the so-called core rate advanced 0.2 percent. The gains pushed the annual core inflation rate up to 1.8 percent, within the range that most Fed officials say is their objective.

"The Fed has employed its shock and awe policy," said Richard Schlanger, a vice president who helps invest $13 billion in fixed-income securities at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston. "This has to have a profound impact on credit spreads going forward."

For more news: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.oPptvhgVK0&refer=home

A.I.G. Seeking Return of Half of Its Bonuses

Two chief executives with much on the line in the furor over Wall Street bonuses President Obama and Edward M. Liddy of the American International Group made concerted efforts on Wednesday to tamp down the populist anger, but faced continued outrage on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

At a highly charged Congressional hearing, Mr. Liddy said he had asked employees making more than $100,000 a year who just shared in a $165 million bonus payout to give half the money back, reflecting the public and political disgust at the idea of rewarding the same people who had helped drive the company and the economy into distress.

"Some have already volunteered to give back 100 percent," said Mr. Liddy, who was installed by the Federal Reserve when it rescued A.I.G. last September and is being paid $1 a year. But he did not provide any details, and resisted releasing the names of those who had received the bonuses, saying some employees had received death threats.

Mr. Obama, at the White House, said his goal was to "channel our anger in a constructive way" and called for legislative authority to take over and close troubled nonbank financial institutions like A.I.G.

Even as he said that "nobody here" had drafted the bonus deals A.I.G. agreed to last year, the president said he took responsibility for cleaning up the mess, deflecting some of the criticism being directed at Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and trying to limit any damage to his ability to get more money from Congress for bank bailouts.

"The buck stops with me," Mr. Obama said. "And my goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again."

But furious Democratic leaders in Congress said they would not wait for A.I.G. to act on good faith, and instead said they would head to the House floor on Thursday with a bill to tax 90 percent of bonuses paid out since Jan. 1 by A.I.G. or any other company that had accepted more than $5 billion in government bailout funds.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, at a hastily called news conference with Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and other leaders, said Congress would do what was necessary to assure that taxpayers did not pay for bonuses.

"This money doesn’t belong to A.I.G.," said Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York. "It belongs to the American taxpayer and we are going to get it back." Senate leaders have proposed legislation that would impose a 35 percent tax on recipients of the A.I.G. bonuses, and a 35 percent tax on the company. House leaders said that they had kept the White House informed of their plans, but that the administration had not been involved in developing the legislation.

Faced with demands for disclosure of the names of the people who received the bonuses, Mr. Liddy said hesitantly at the Congressional hearing, before a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, that he would be willing to supply the names, but only if they were not released publicly. He explained that there had been death threats, and read an example: "All the executives and their families should be executed with piano wire around their necks," it said. "That is our only hope."

The committee’s chairman, Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he was dismayed to hear about the threats, but he was unwilling to guarantee the confidentiality of the names. He warned that if he did not get the information, he would try to have Mr. Liddy subpoenaed. "I think the time has come for the federal government to assert greater ownership rights," Mr. Frank said.

Likewise, the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, signaled that he would make the names public when he received them in response to a subpoena.Another uproar could emerge if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance giants that have been taken over by the government and have received billions in taxpayer money, pay similar retention bonuses to top executives, as they have indicated that they would do in recent regulatory filings.

As Congress sought to tighten its grip on A.I.G. and other companies aided by the taxpayers, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Senate banking committee, sought to explain how legislation aimed at limiting executive compensation at firms receiving bailout help was changed at the last minute to allow certain bonuses that were contained in employment contracts before Feb. 11, 2009.

Mr. Dodd initially said he did not know how that change was made to the compensation limits that were included in the economic recovery bill adopted by Congress last month. But in an interview Wednesday with CNN, he said that the Treasury Department had requested the change and that his staff had helped to write it into the bill, as part of a deal to keep other pay limits in the legislation.

"It was their suggestion," Mr. Dodd told CNN. "We wrote it together at the time." But it is far from clear that the change mattered in the case of A.I.G. The payouts have roused particular fury because they went to employees of A.I.G.'s financial products unit the part of A.I.G. that dealt in the credit derivatives that were its downfall.

A horde of cameras and reporters awaited Mr. Liddy outside the hearing room, subjecting him to the sort of gantlet reserved for major felons and celebrities after an unfortunate night out.But Mr. Liddy, who chatted with protesters as he entered the session for hours of testimony, repeatedly tried to make clear that he was not responsible for getting A.I.G. into this mess.

"Six months ago I came out of retirement to help my country," said Mr. Liddy, a former Allstate executive who no doubt has questioned that decision on more than one occasion."At the government's request I've had the duty and extraordinary challenge of serving as chairman and chief executive officer of American International Group, or A.I.G."

Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee, sought to make the distinction clear as well, saying that Mr. Liddy had responded to a plea to help out and should be spared any abuse."We do not intend to harass you,Mr. Kanjorski said.Yet members of both parties sharply questioned Mr. Liddy.

"This is like the captain and the crew of the ship reserving the lifeboats saying to hell with the passengers," said Representative Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts.To Mr. Liddy, Mr. Lynch’s observation went too far."I take offense, sir,” he responded, reminding lawmakers that he was not in charge when the bonuses were arranged but believed he was legally bound to pay them.

“Well, offense was intended,” Mr. Lynch retorted. “So you take it rightfully, sir.”In response to questions about who in the federal government A.I.G. consulted with on its business decisions, Mr. Liddy said that he normally spoke with the Fed, and believed the Fed then kept the Treasury in the loop. The Fed has appointed three trustees to represent the government’s stake in A.I.G., but when asked their names Mr. Liddy could not recall them.He said it was his impression that Mr. Geithner had not known about the bonuses until two weeks ago.

For more news: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19bailout.html?bl&ex=1237608000&en=ed559a97685bac75&ei=5087%0A

Dollar hit, Asian stocks rally on Fed move

Hongkong (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar nursed big losses on Thursday and Asian government bonds rallied after the Federal Reserve vowed to buy long dated U.S. Treasuries, reviving a practice not used in decades to revive an ailing economy.The Fed surprised investors on Wednesday by announcing it would buy $300 billion worth of these U.S. Treasuries for the first time since the early 1960s as part of a move to inject an additional $1 trillion into the U.S. economy by also purchasing more U.S. mortgage and agency debt.

The move sent Asian stocks a five-week high, as bank shares helped extend a recent rally, and on broader investor optimism that a stronger U.S. economy will help the continent's export-dependent economies.But analysts were also warning of the risks to the Fed's quantitative easing. Gold fell on profit-taking after surging the previous session on concerns about the potential inflationary effects from the Fed's efforts, even if the near-term concern is deflation.

The move to expand the Fed's balance sheet is also sparking doubts about the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, and concerns that it will be followed by similar moves from other central banks, creating a domino effect of weakening currencies.Central banks in Britain and Japan have already announced they would purchase their respective government debt, while the Swiss National Bank last week said outright it would sell francs to weaken its currency.

"With the Fed now effectively undermining the dollar, the worry is that central banks are playing competitive devaluations," said Tony Morriss, senior rates strategist at ANZ. "The Fed won't say it outright, but they would likely welcome a weaker currency."The announcement following a policy meeting that kept U.S. interest rates at nearly zero effectively seeks to print money to revive an economy in a practice known as quantitative easing.

The move to purchase longer-dated U.S. government debt, on top of regular purchases of short-term Treasury bills, is intended to feed into the U.S. economy via a lower array of credit costs for consumers and businesses.The euro climbed as high as $1.3536 against the dollar on trading platform EBS, marking the highest since early January, but later shed its gains and was down 0.2 percent at $1.3444 from late U.S. trading on Wednesday

That followed the euro's 3.9 percent jump against the dollar on Wednesday according to Reuters data, its biggest one-day percentage gain since the launch of the single currency in 1999.The dollar initially dipped against the yen, but later rebounded, rising 0.2 percent to 96.40 yen after dropping nearly 3 percent against the Japanese currency on Wednesday.

"The dollar was taken to the woodshed and beaten like a dog," said David Watt, senior currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets. "And after a short rest, beaten like a dog again. Market sentiment on the Fed's maneuver was crystal clear."In bond markets, U.S. Treasury yields remained sharply lower in Asia on Thursday, after plunging in the previous session by the most since the day after the U.S. stock market crash in 1987.

For more news: http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE52I0M020090319