TV News LIES

The U.S. government urged that Bank of America Corp pay $863.6 million in damages after a federal jury found it liable for fraud over defective mortgages sold by its Countrywide unit.

In a filing late Friday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the government also asked for penalties against Rebecca Mairone, a former midlevel executive at the bank's Countrywide unit who the jury also found liable, "commensurate with her ability to pay."

DISH Network Corporation DISH -0.47% today announced that its subsidiary, Blockbuster L.L.C., will end its retail and by mail DVD distribution operations by early-January 2014. The company will close its approximately 300 remaining U.S.-based retail stores, as well as its distribution centers.

"This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment," said Joseph P. Clayton, DISH president and chief executive officer. "Despite our closing of the physical distribution elements of the business, we continue to see value in the Blockbuster brand, and we expect to leverage that brand as we continue to expand our digital offerings."

Last year the median wage hit its lowest level since 1998, revealing that at least half of American workers are being left behind as the economy slowly recovers from the Great Recession.

But at the top, wages soared — the latest indication in a long-running trend of increasing inequality, with income gains going to top earners while the majority of workers see stagnant or falling wages.

Al Jazeera is the first news organization to report these figures from the Social Security Administration (SSA), which were released late in October.

Nearly a decade after the closure of its last US factory, Apple is to create 2,000 manufacturing, engineering and construction jobs at a new plant in Arizona.

The California technology titan is beginning to shift production back to its home market, with the creation of its second US plant in under a year. It is understood the renewable energy powered facility in Mesa, Arizona, will produce laboratory grown sapphire crystals of the kind used in the iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner.

Billionaire investor Steven A. Cohen's days as a hedge fund manager may be finished with an agreement by his SAC Capital Advisors to plead guilty to criminal charges of insider trading and pay a record $1.8 billion in fines and forfeitures.

But Cohen, one of Wall Street's best known traders, has not been personally charged with any crime and will likely continue managing some $9 billion of his own money through a family office once his hedge fund's plea deal is cleared by the courts.

JPMorgan Chase & Co, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, disclosed on Friday that the U.S. Department of Justice and agencies from other jurisdictions are investigating hiring practices in Hong Kong that were already being probed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company also said that it is being questioned about its currency trading by various authorities, which are in the early stages of their investigations.

Other big banks have made similar disclosures recently about probes of possible manipulation of foreign exchange rates.