Berlusconi court date raises Italy gov't tensions

ROME — Tensions in Italy's uneasy ruling coalition increased Wednesday as the government's allies denounced an accelerated date for a high court decision that could see former Premier Silvio Berlusconi banned for years from public office.

Although Berlusconi isn't in the government himself, steady support from his center-right People of Freedom party is necessary to keep Premier Enrico Letta's 10-week-old government alive, since Letta's center-left Democratic Party doesn't have enough support in Parliament to control both houses.

But Berlusconi's allies hobbled Parliament's work following the Court of Cassation's decision to schedule an appeal in the media mogul's tax fraud trial for July 30, months earlier than expected. The high court said it moved up the date to prevent the statute of limitations from expiring on one of the charges on Aug. 1.

As if those tensions weren't enough for Letta's fragile government as it tries to revive growth and create jobs, Standard & Poors's Rating Service on Tuesday downgraded Italy's credit rating and warned of further reductions if Italy's economic prospects stay bleak.

Last week, relations had already become tense among Italy's unusual ruling alliance of rivals after the International Monetary Fund urged Italy to bring back a property tax that Letta reluctantly agreed to suspend to placate Berlusconi and his populist following.

The increased IMF pressure, the ratings drop and the high court development all "converge on a single aim — the collapse of the Letta government and the destabilization of Italy," said Alessandro Pagano, a lawmaker from Berlusconi's party.

He called the speeded up court timetable a kind of "judicial vice being tightened around" the conservative leader.

Berlusconi's lawyers had expected the high court to rule no sooner than the fall in his appeal of his tax fraud conviction involving his Mediaset empire, which saw him sentenced to four years in prison and barred from holding public office for five years.

Berlusconi was convicted in a scheme that involved inflating the price his Mediaset media empire paid for TV rights to U.S. movies and pocketing the difference. Berlusconi has said he did nothing wrong and has accused Milan magistrates of pursuing politically motivated cases against him.

Even if the top criminal court upholds the sentence, there is little risk that the 76-year-old Berlusconi, because of his age, would ever serve time behind bars.

Nevertheless, the debate over the high court decision was already having its effect on the work of the government and Parliament Wednesday: Coalition leaders scrapped a planned meeting to discuss the unpopular property tax and a meeting of chamber whips was suspended at the request of Berlusconi's allies so they could huddle to discuss the Cassation decision.

To protest the derailment of work over Berlusconi's plight, senators from the legislature's third-largest bloc, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, took off their jackets — mandatory dress code for men in the upper chamber — further heating up the political climate.

"If that's how Parliament is, if it does nothing, then we'll work out of Parliament," 5-Star leader Beppe Grillo said. "Autumn is around the corner, and with it possible economic collapse."

Letta has said he doesn't believe the court's accelerated calendar will affect his government. But even the leader of a center-right party that used to be a loyal ally of Berlusconi was irked by the behavior of Berlusconi's lawmakers.

"It's not possible that Parliament shuts down for one party's problems, with so much to do," said Roberto Maroni, head of the Northern League. Letta's government appears to be "on the true brink of a crisis."

A close Berlusconi ally, Maurizio Lupi, tried to tamp down worries about the government's survival, saying the accelerated court decision "puts at risk not the coalition, but democracy in this country."

"We will continue to do our work and move forward," said Lupi, who serves in the government as infrastructure minister.

The July 30 high court hearing leaves Berlusconi's defense team less time to prepare arguments. His lawyers only lodged the appeal on June 19. Usually it takes months to schedule such a hearing in Italy's notoriously slow justice system.

Berlusconi has faced dozens of legal cases in his two decades in politics, but has most of the time has either been acquitted or seen the charges dismissed when statutes of limitations expired.

Last month, Berlusconi was convicted, sentenced to seven years and banned from politics for life for paying an underage prostitute for sex during infamous "bunga bunga" parties and pressuring public officials to cover it up. He denies wrongdoing and is appealing that verdict as well, a process that could take a couple of years.

In Italy, sentences are considered final after two levels of appeals are exhausted.

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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Icahn to seek court appraisal of $24.4B Dell deal

NEW YORK — Billionaire investor Carl Icahn says he will ask a Delaware judge to assess whether a proposed $24.4 billion acquisition of Dell represents a fair price for the struggling personal computer maker. It is Icahn's latest attempt to wrangle a higher offer from buyout group that includes company CEO Michael Dell.

Icahn, Dell Inc.'s second largest shareholder, outlined the rationale for his legal maneuver Wednesday in an open letter. The missive urged the rest of Dell's shareholders to exercise their right for a court appraisal to determine whether the Round Rock, Texas, company is worth more than the $13.65 per share that Michael Dell's group has agreed to pay.

The push for an appraisal comes just two days after Icahn suffered a setback when three shareholder advisory firms recommended accepting the current offer.

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United Dreamliner London-Houston flight canceled

HOUSTON — A United Airlines Boeing 787 flight from London to Houston has been canceled because of apparent trouble with an indicator device.

United spokeswoman Mary Clark says Flight 125 on Tuesday from Heathrow Airport to George Bush Intercontinental Airport was canceled due to problems with a message indicator. Further details weren't immediately released. United Airlines is a unit of United Continental Holdings Inc.

United officials say the 211 passengers on the jet, which Boeing calls the Dreamliner, were being put on other flights Wednesday.

A United Boeing 787 bound from London to Houston on June 20 — also listed as Flight 125 — diverted to Newark, N.J., because of a low engine oil indicator.

Boeing Co.'s Dreamliner faces more scrutiny than normal because it was grounded for three months earlier this year amid concerns about overheating lithium-ion batteries.

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Lights out on Rhode Island's tallest building

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The exterior of Rhode Island's tallest building will no longer be illuminated at night beginning this week, a decision made to save money as it sits vacant with questions unanswered about how it will be used in the future, a spokesman for the building's owner said Wednesday.

The exterior of the 26-story Art Deco-style skyscraper, known to some as the Superman building for its similarity to the Daily Planet headquarters in the old TV show, was not illuminated by floodlights for the first time Tuesday night, said Bill Fischer, a spokesman for the building owner, Massachusetts-based High Rock Development. He said they would be turned off "for the foreseeable future."

The decision means the most distinctive feature on the downtown Providence skyline will now be dark at night, apart from the blue beacon that sits on top of the building. That will continue to be turned on every night as a "gesture of goodwill," Fischer said. He added that without a tenant or viable plan to use the building, it costs too much to keep the other lights on. He said it costs $26,000 to $30,000 annually to light the exterior.

"We have to protect the integrity of the building, and we have to protect the investment. It's just not prudent to light it," Fischer said Wednesday.

The 380,000-square-foot building lost its only tenant, Bank of America Corp., in April. High Rock pushed for $39 million in state tax credits to help it convert the building into apartments, which it called the "highest and best use" of the building. That idea was rejected by lawmakers.

The company has also proposed moving some state offices there, but Fischer says that would still require extensive renovations to the building, which has been used as a bank since it first opened in 1928.

Fischer said High Rock is not interested in selling.

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Koch plans $200,000 media ad campaign in Wichita

WICHITA, Kan. — Wealthy businessman Charles Koch has launched a $200,000 ad campaign in Wichita focused on political and economic issues.

The chairman of Wichita-based Koch Industries told The Wichita Eagle (http://bit.ly/1diCz8V ) that the four-week media campaign begins Wednesday and will laud economic freedom and warn about government overreach. It is funded by his Charles Koch Foundation.

If people like it, he might take the campaign to other cities, Koch said.

The campaign promotes the idea that countries with economic freedom have the most wealth. Koch told the Eagle that he believes his ideas will help disadvantaged people, saying government regulations, including the minimum wage, tend to hold everyone back.

"What we're saying is, we need to analyze all these additional policies, these subsidies, this cronyism, this avalanche of regulations, all these things that are creating a culture of dependency," Koch told the newspaper in a phone interview.

He acknowledged the move will likely draw fire from people who criticized his campaign spending last year.

"The people who are more interested in power and their own interest rather than the general interest are threatened by these ideas," Koch said.

Chapman Rackaway, a former GOP consultant political consultant and a political science professor at Fort Hays State University, says the campaign signals a new strategy.

"For a long time now, the Koch brothers preferred to act very quietly, and you had to be really in the game to know who they were funding, who they were allied with, what their motivations were," Rackaway said. "... But the thing about politics is, it forces people into the public eye. In their case, they were turned into a kind of shadowy bogey man."

Larry Jacobs, a politics professor at the University of Minnesota, said many of Koch's ideas about government regulations are contentious and probably won't go anywhere.

"But I understand his frustration," Jacobs said. "It's really quite striking, you get a sense of a guy who feels mystified as to why he's become demonized to some extent, as someone selfish, out for himself. There is a kind of caricature of the Koch brothers — obviously the Democrats and liberals do a lot of fundraising based on demonizing him."

In an unrelated matter, Koch also said his company might bid on buying the Tribune Co. newspapers, which includes the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers."

"It's not on the front burner, but it's possible," Koch said.

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Information from: The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, http://www.kansas.com

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Senate fails to keep student loan rates low

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Wednesday failed to restore lower interest rates on student loans, again coming up short and perhaps signaling that undergraduates might really face rates twice as high as the ones they enjoyed last year.

The White House-backed proposal from Democratic leaders would have left interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans at 3.4 percent for another year while lawmakers took up a comprehensive overhaul. The one-year stopgap measure failed to overcome a procedural hurdle as Republicans — and a handful of Democrats — urged colleagues to consider a plan now that would link interest rates to the financial markets and reduce Congress' role in setting students' borrowing rates.

Democrats failed to muster the 60 votes needed to advance the measure. The vote was 51-49, with no Republicans voting to move forward.

Without serious negotiations between the parties — and within a fractured Democratic caucus — students would face higher costs to repay their loans after graduation.

"Today our nation's students once again wait in vain for relief," said Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M. "They expected more of us and I share their disappointment."

"Today, we failed. And our nation's students pay the cost of that failure," he added after the vote.

The failure to win a one-year approval — combined with little interest in such a deal in the Republican-led House — meant students would be borrowing money for fall courses at a rate leaders in both parties called unacceptable.

Immediately, lawmakers faulted the other party for the results.

"Today's vote is just another example of how out of touch Republicans in Congress are with the struggles of everyday American families," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Rep. John Kline, the Republican chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, similarly blamed Democrats.

"Right now, millions of students trying to prepare for college and apply for financial aid are facing higher interest rates — all because a cadre of Senate Democrats is completely unwilling to compromise," Kline said.

The rate increase does not affect many students right away; loan documents are generally signed just before students return to campus, and few students returned to school over the July Fourth holiday. Existing loans were not affected, either.

However, absent congressional action in the coming weeks, the increase could spell an extra $2,600 for an average student returning to campus this fall, according to Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

During last year's presidential campaign, lawmakers from both parties voted to keep interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans at 3.4 percent. Yet this year, without a presidential election looming, the issue seemed to fizzle and the July 1 deadline passed without action.

The White House and most Democratic senators favored keeping the rates at 3.4 percent for now and including a broad overhaul of federal student loans in the Higher Education Act rewrite lawmakers expect to take up this fall.

"It's not just what rate. It's how do we keep college costs in check?" said Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who pushed for the extension measures. "It will allow us to work through a very complicated set of issues."

The Republican-led House has already passed legislation that links interest rates to financial markets. Republicans in the House were opposed to a one-year extension, meaning Wednesday's Senate vote might not have meant much relief for students even if it had passed.

Efforts to find a compromise went nowhere as well. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia worked with the top Republican on the education panel, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, to write a bipartisan bill that closely follows the GOP bill. That bill incorporated an idea that originally was included in President Barack Obama's budget to link interest rates to the financial markets before he distanced himself from it amid criticism from fellow Democrats.

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Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott

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Fed members: More job gains needed to taper bonds

WASHINGTON — Many Federal Reserve members agreed last month that the job market's improvement would have to be sustained before the Fed would reduce its bond purchases, according to minutes of their June meeting. Several felt confident that a pullback in bond purchases could occur soon.

The minutes released Wednesday echo remarks Chairman Ben Bernanke made at a news conference after the meeting. Bernanke said the Fed would likely slow its bond purchases later this year and end them around mid-2014 if the economy continued to strengthen. The bond purchases have helped keep long-term interest rates low to spur spending.

The minutes suggest that a slowdown in the Fed's bond buying in September "is not quite a done deal," said Michael Hanson, U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "For a taper in September, we may still need to see some more improvement in the economy."

Since the purchases began in September, the economy has added an average 204,000 jobs a month, up from 174,000 jobs in the previous nine months. Still, unemployment remains a high 7.6 percent.

The minutes pointed to divisions within the Fed over both when to slow the purchases and when to end them altogether. About half the "participants" favored ending the bond purchases late this year — several months earlier than Bernanke has indicated. Participants include both voting and non-voting members of the Fed's policy committee.

At the same time, "many other" participants thought the purchases should extend into 2014.

Fed members struggled with how best to convey the Fed's thinking about its timetable for bond purchases, the minutes showed. Some wanted to explain it in the post-meeting statement. Others felt the statement might be misinterpreted. In the end, most participants thought Bernanke should lay out the Fed's thinking in his news conference — and stress that any pullback in bond purchases would depend on the economic outlook.

Bernanke stressed at the news conference last month that if the economy weakens, the Fed wouldn't hesitate to step up its bond purchases again. Still, stocks and bonds plunged after his remarks, and interest rates surged.

Several Fed members helped steady stock markets in the days that followed by noting that any pullback in bond buying would hinge on the economy's health, not a target date. Stocks have since regained most of their losses, in part because of encouraging data about the job market and corporate earnings.

Each month since late last year, the Fed has been buying $85 billion in Treasury and mortgage bonds. The bond purchases have kept long-term rates near record lows. Ultra-low rates encouraged more Americans to buy homes and cars, fueled economic growth and cheered the stock market.

Investors worried that once the Fed starts scaling back its bond buying, home loans would start to cost more, corporations would pay more to borrow and bond investors would be squeezed.

But steady job gains have raised the likelihood that the Fed will announce after its September meeting that it's reducing its bond purchases.

Still, economist growth has been subpar. The economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.8 percent in the January-March quarter. Economists think growth stayed below a 2 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter. If so, it would mark a third straight quarter of weak growth.

Most think growth will pick up in the second half of the year but stay around 2 percent for the year.

The Fed's forecasts are rosier: It predicts growth of 2.3 percent to 2.6 percent this year and more than 3 percent in 2014. It also expects unemployment to fall as low as 7.2 percent by the end of this year and as low as 6.5 percent by the end of 2014.

Many analysts think the Fed could begin slowing its bond purchases from $85 billion a month to around $65 billion in September and gradually shrink them before ending them by next summer. That would likely happen, though, only if the job market and the economy continued to strengthen. Bernanke has said the bond-buying would end when the unemployment rate would be around 7 percent. It's now 7.6 percent.

Even after it scales back its bond purchases, the Fed will still be providing considerable support to the economy. That's because it plans to keep its investment holdings — now at a record $3.4 trillion — constant to avoid causing long-term rates to rise too quickly. The end of the bond program would mean only that the Fed's balance sheet would no longer be growing.

The Fed has also said it plans to keep short-term rates at record lows at least until unemployment slides to 6.5 percent. And Bernanke has emphasized that 6.5 percent unemployment is a threshold, not a trigger: The Fed might decide to keep its benchmark short-term rate near zero even after unemployment falls that low.

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Rail chief blames employee in Quebec train crash

LAC-MEGANTIC, Quebec — The head of a railway company whose train crashed into a Quebec town, killing at least 15 people, blamed the accident on an employee who he said had failed to properly set the brakes.

Edward Burkhardt, president and CEO of the railway's parent company, Rail World Inc., made his comments Wednesday during his first visit to the town where some 60 people remain missing following Saturday's fiery crash. He arrived with a police escort and was heckled by angry residents,

He said a train engineer has been suspended without pay.

"I think he did something wrong ...We think he applied some hand brakes but the question is did he apply enough of them," Burkhardt explained. "He said he applied 11 hand brakes we think that's not true. Initially we believed him but now we don't."

Burkhardt said that he had stayed in Chicago to deal with the crisis in his office, where he was better able to communicate with insurers and officials in different places during what he described as 20-hour work days.

The railway boss promised an energetic response to the humanitarian crisis.

At a press conference, shortly before Burkhardt was due to arrive in Lac-Megantic, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois faulted the company's response in the wake of the disaster.

"We have realized there are serious gaps from the railway company from not having been there and not communicating with the public," Marois said.

She also announced a $60-million fund to help victims in Lac-Megantic and to rebuild the town.

Quebec police inspector Michel Forget said they were pursuing a wide-ranging criminal investigation but had ruled out terrorism as a cause.

Forget said an array of other possibilities remain under investigation, including criminal negligence. Other officials have raised the possibility that the train was tampered with before the crash early Saturday.

"This is an enormous task ahead of us," Forget said. "We're not at the stage of arrests."

The heart of the town's central business district is being treated as a crime scene and remained cordoned off by police tape — not only the 30 buildings razed by the fire but also many adjacent blocks.

On downtown's main street — Rue de Laval — police positioned a truck near the perimeter of the no-go zone, which prevented news crews from getting direct photo and video views of the search operations being conducted by some 200 officers.

Police officials left no doubt that the hunt for the missing people was taxing — they said two officers were withdrawn from the sector because of worries about their physical condition.

The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train broke loose early Saturday and hurtled downhill through the darkness nearly seven miles (11 kilometers) before jumping the tracks at 63 mph (101 kph) in Lac-Megantic, in eastern Quebec near the Maine border, investigators said. All but one of the 73 cars were carrying oil. At least five exploded.

Rail dispatchers had no chance to warn anyone during the runaway train's 18-minute journey because they didn't know it was happening themselves, Transportation Safety Board officials said. Such warning systems are in place on busier lines but not on secondary lines, said TSB manager Ed Belkaloul.

At the center of the destruction is the Musi-Cafe, a popular bar that was filled at the time of the explosion, which also forced about 2,000 of the town's 6,000 residents from their homes. By Tuesday, only about 800 were still barred from returning to their houses, though residents were cautioned to boil tap water before drinking it.

Efforts continued to stop waves of crude oil spilled in the disaster from reaching the St. Lawrence River, the backbone of the province's water supply.

Investigators searching for a cause of the accident were looking closely at the fire that happened on the train less than an hour before it got loose while parked in the nearby town of Nantes.

The train's engine was shut down — standard operating procedure dictated by the train's owners, Nantes Fire Chief Patrick Lambert said. Burkhardt had earlier suggested that shutting off the locomotive to put out the fire might have disabled the brakes.

The accident has thrown a spotlight on MMA's safety record. Over the past decade, the company has consistently recorded a much higher accident rate than the national average in the U.S., according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration.

Last year, for instance, the railroad had 36.1 accidents per million miles traveled by its trains. The national average for 2012 was 14.6.

Before the Lac-Megantic accident, the company had 34 derailments since 2003, according to the federal agency. Over that period, the company was involved in five accidents that had reportable damage of more than $100,000.

The severity of those incidents, however, is difficult to determine from the federal agency's 10-year data overviews on railroad safety. But before the weekend accident, incidents involving the company's trains had resulted in just one death. That 2006 accident involved a vehicle that struck a moving train at a highway crossing.

Burkhardt said the figures were misleading.

"This is the only significant mainline derailment this company has had in the last 10 years. We've had, like most railroads, a number of smallish incidents, usually involving accidents in yard trackage and industry trackage," he told the CBC.

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Associated Press writers Sean Farrell in Lac-Megantic, Charmaine Noronha in Toronto and Jason Keyser in Chicago contributed to this story

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NY judge: Apple conspired to raise e-book prices

NEW YORK — Apple Inc. broke antitrust laws and conspired with publishers to raise electronic book prices significantly in spring 2010, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, citing "compelling evidence" from the words of the late Steve Jobs.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said Apple knew that no publisher could risk acting alone to try to eliminate Amazon.com's $9.99 price for the most popular e-books so it "created a mechanism and environment that enabled them to act together in a matter of weeks to eliminate all retail price competition for their e-books."

"Apple seized the moment and brilliantly played its hand," Cote said. She wrote that Apple's deals with publishers caused some e-book prices to rise 50 percent or more virtually overnight.

The Manhattan jurist, who did not determine damages, said the evidence was "overwhelming that Apple knew of the unlawful aims of the conspiracy and joined the conspiracy with the specific intent to help it succeed."

Her decision was not surprising, since she had urged Apple to settle before trial and said the company had only a slim chance of winning. Government officials and industry experts have said e-book prices have declined and stabilized since rising after Apple entered the market.

Cote identified five trial witnesses as "noteworthy for their lack of credibility," including Eddy Cue, a top Apple executive described as Jobs' right-hand man.

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said the Cupertino, Calif.-based company will appeal.

"Apple did not conspire to fix e-book pricing and we will continue to fight against these false accusations," he said. "We've done nothing wrong."

Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer called the ruling "a victory for millions of consumers who choose to read books electronically."

He said the judge agreed with the Justice Department and 33 state attorneys general that executives at the highest levels of Apple orchestrated a conspiracy with five major publishers.

"Through today's court decision and previous settlements with five major publishers, consumers are again benefiting from retail price competition and paying less for their e-books," he said.

The publishers that had settled were Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Holtzbrinck Publishers, doing business as Macmillan, and The Penguin Publishing Co. Ltd., doing business as Penguin Group.

In her ruling, Cote said the conspiracy harmed consumers in numerous ways.

She said some had to pay more for e-books, others bought a cheaper e-book rather than the one they preferred to purchase and others deferred a purchase altogether rather than pay the higher price.

Although she acknowledged that many of Apple's practices in its dealing with publishers would individually be legally, Cote said they collectively furthered the goal of raising e-book prices across the board.

"Apple is confronted with the fact that the conspiracy succeeded. It not only succeeded, it did so in record-setting time and at the precise moment that Apple entered the e-book market," she said.

Apple attorney Orin Snyder had told Cote previously that she would set a "dangerous precedent" if she concluded that Apple manipulated e-book prices as it entered the market in 2010. He did not immediately respond to a message for comment Wednesday.

Neumayr said Apple's introduction of the iBookstore "gave customers more choice, injecting much needed innovation and competition into the market, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry."

Amazon declined to comment Wednesday.

The government claimed Apple and the publishers agreed to a pricing policy that forced millions of consumers to pay several dollars more for most online books. In her ruling, Cote said "compelling evidence of Apple's participation in the conspiracy came from the words uttered by Steve Jobs, Apple's founder, CEO and visionary."

She quoted Jobs, who died in 2011, as saying he understood publishers' concerns that Amazon's $9.99 price for new releases was eroding the perceived value of their products and that Apple was willing to try pricing e-books at $12.99 and $14.99. She noted that Jobs bought an e-book for $14.99 at the launch of Apple's e-book store and told a reporter that day that Amazon's $9.99 price for the same book would be irrelevant because soon all prices will "be the same."

"Apple has struggled mightily to reinterpret Jobs's statements in a way that will eliminate their bite," Cote wrote in the 160-page opinion. "Its efforts have proven fruitless."

Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies who has followed Apple for more than three decades, said the expected appeal meant the case would not be resolved anytime soon.

He said Apple's position was strong because Amazon's low e-book prices were hurting publishers and authors at the time, whereas they are "a bit more consistent now."

Cote said a damages trial would follow, though none was immediately scheduled. In her ruling, she found the government had proven Apple engaged in an illegal price-fixing conspiracy by joining with publishers to eliminate retail price competition and to raise e-book prices.

The state attorneys general are seeking unspecified damages. The federal government is seeking an order that Apple be banned for two years from agreements that let publishers rather than retailers set prices and that the company be prohibited from future antitrust law violations. The Justice Department also is asking Apple to establish an antitrust compliance program and antitrust training for executives and to put in place an independent monitoring trustee.

The trial had featured testimony from executives for Apple, publishers and Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. Witnesses from the publishing industry conceded that they were disappointed that Amazon was selling e-books so inexpensively when Apple came along in late 2009 with plans for its e-book store.

"Through their conspiracy they forced Amazon (and other resellers) to relinquish retail pricing authority and then they raised retail e-book prices," Cote wrote. "Those higher prices were not the result of regular market forces but of a scheme in which Apple was a full participant."

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AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed.

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'Big Brother' heats up summer week

NEW YORK — Racially insensitive language hurt some cast members' reputations in the CBS game "Big Brother," but it may not have been bad for television ratings.

Contestants on this season's "Big Brother" have been caught on the game's 24-hour-a-day Internet feed making boorish remarks. Some were shown Sunday on one of the program's television broadcasts.

In a slow week, Sunday's show had the biggest audience that "Big Brother" has seen this season. But it's unclear how much of the audience — if any — was drawn by the controversy over the remarks.

One of the contestants twice made insulting remarks about blacks. Another insulted blacks, gays and Asians.

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