Corporate and legal

The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday it will announce an antitrust settlement with Intel on Wednesday morning.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz will detail the settlement along with Bureau of Competition Director Richard Feinstein Wednesday at 7 a.m. PDT.

The commission's order will settle charges that "Intel Corporation used anticompetitive tactics that stifled innovation and harmed consumers in the market for computer microprocessors, graphics processing units, and chipsets," according to an FTC statement Tuesday. "The FTC's complaint, filed in December 2009, charged Intel with waging a systematic campaign to shut out rivals' competing microchips by … Read more

Wikipedia has its critics, but now the Federal Bureau of Investigation thinks the online encyclopedia is breaking the law.

In a letter to Wikipedia (PDF) dated July 22 and posted by The New York Times, the FBI demands that its official seal be removed from a Wikipedia article about the FBI because the agency had not approved use of the image.

"The FBI has not authorized use of the FBI seal on Wikipedia," the letter said. "The inclusion of a high quality graphic of the FBI seal on Wikipedia is particularly problematic, because it facilitates both deliberate … Read more

BlackBerry fans have much to be happy about when it comes to the new BlackBerry Torch, but few applauded Research In Motion for choosing AT&T as the exclusive U.S. carrier for the new phone.

Almost immediately during the live blog of the news on CNET's Web site, readers posting comments at the bottom of the story expressed their disapproval.

"Wonderful," said one commenter. "Another good looking, capable phone available only on AT&T's already over taxed network."

"Yet another hardware vendor goes exclusive with AT&T--what the heck?!?!&… Read more

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and CNET editor Bonnie Cha. For those of you who just want the updates, we've included them in regular text here. (All updates from Marguerite Reardon unless noted. Also included are her answers to reader questions.) You can find a brief summary of what was announced in our follow-up article "RIM announces the BlackBerry Torch.&… Read more

With concerns both inside and outside Washington over Comcast's bid to take over NBC Universal, one congressman is proposing a set of conditions that the cable giant should first meet.

Rep. Rick Boucher, who heads the subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, outlined his proposals in letters written on Monday to the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice. Boucher asked the agencies to approve the merger but under the stipulation that customers don't receive any less content than they do today.

Although the congressman is in favor of the deal, he did express concerns that … Read more

A Republican congressman who's a member of the House Intelligence Committee lashed out at Wikileaks this week, saying the Web site's alleged source should be executed for treason.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan told a local radio station on Monday (MP3 audio) that he believes that Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist who is suspected of being a source for the document-sharing Web site, should be charged with treason.

When the WHMI interviewer suggested that treason in war is a capital crime, Rogers replied: "Yes, and I would have absolutely, I would support it 100 percent. He … Read more

For Research In Motion, the new BlackBerry 9800 is more than just its latest device. It's an opportunity to show critics that the BlackBerry can stand up to likes of Apple's iPhone and a flurry of new Google Android devices.

With all the hype surrounding the iPhone and the various Android smartphones that have hit the market recently, it's easy to forget that RIM's BlackBerry is still a dominant force in the land of smartphones, both in the U.S. and worldwide.

In fact, Research In Motion is the No. 2 smartphone vendor worldwide, with an … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--A speedy launch of an iTunes cloud music service hasn't materialized the way many at the large record companies expected.

After Apple acquired Lala.com last December, the thinking among some music insiders was that Lala's streaming-music technology could easily be plugged into iTunes--once Apple obtained the proper music licenses. Lala.com, a music service launched in 2006 and shut down by Apple last May, possessed technology that scanned hard drives for existing music libraries and then enabled users to play back the same songs from Lala's servers via Web-connected devices.

But eight months after the … Read more

Hewlett-Packard announced Monday it has reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department over alleged kickbacks paid by vendors to help secure government contracts.

The agreement resolves the department's three-year investigation into HP's GSA Multiple Award Schedule contract, as well as a civil suit filed in Arkansas in 2007. HP said the settlement would have a negative impact of two cents per share on its fiscal third quarter but did not did not update its guidance for the year or quarter.

The computer maker denied the allegations and said it settled the probe without admitting wrongdoing.

"… Read more