Japanese Court Blocks Sales Of The DS's R4 Cart

Last year, Nintendo (and 53 other companies) took action against the makers of the R4 cart, a device which allows, amongst other things, the pirating of games on a DS. Today, they won big. The Tokyo District Court has found against the Chinese makers of the R4 - officially known as the "R4 Revolution for DS" - and granted an injunction against sales of the device, prompting Nintendo, Square Enix & Capcom to issue statements proclaiming that they're a "violation under Japan's laws". Most outlets have already halted sales of the R4 following pressure from the lawsuit (and the publishers, such as Nintendo & Capcom, backing it), but this ruling now makes it official: you can't legally sell the thing in Japan. The statement concludes with the 54 companies saying they'll continue to pursue other manufacturers of similar devices. It'll be interesting to see what effect this ruling has on the status of the R4 in other markets.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5161340/japanese-court-blocks-sales-of-the-dss-r4-cart

Google’s Gmail service crashes across world

Google?s Gmail service has suffered a worldwide crash preventing millions of users from accessing their mail. The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India. It appears that only web-based Gmail access is affected, and users can continue to send and receive messages using other devices, such as mobile phones and third-party mail clients. Google could not confirm what had caused the outage. “A number of users are having difficulty accessing Gmail,” said the company in a statement. “We are working to resolve the problem. We know how important Gmail is to users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologise for the inconvenience. “We are posting status updates about the problem at mail.google.com/support.” Bloggers and Twitter users were quick to flag up issues with the service. Google’s web-based email system is usually fairly robust, and suffers little downtime, so many internet users were left baffled by the problems and at a loss as to what to do. Many Twitter messages offered workarounds to the problem, such as using mobile email applications, while other Gmail users said they would simply down tools and make a cup of tea and wait for the issue to be resolved.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/google/4797727/Googles-Gmail-service-crashes-across-world.html

AmEx paying card holders to close their accounts

American Express Co, battered by mounting credit card losses, is offering $300 to a limited number of U.S. card holders who pay off their balances and close their accounts, the company said on Monday. "We sent the offer out to a select number of card members," said Molly Faust, a company spokeswoman. "We are looking at different ways that we can manage credit risk based on the costumers overall credit profile." The company did not say how many card holders would receive the offer and did not disclose the total of their card balances. Card holders have until the end of February to accept the offer and must close their accounts in March or April. Each card holder will receive a $300 pre-paid American Express card. American Express, often seen as catering to relatively wealthy customers and companies, has been expanding its credit card business in recent years by reaching out to a wider range of clients. But that strategy has backfired. The company's earnings tumbled in the fourth quarter as credit losses jumped and debt-burdened consumers slashed spending. In addition, American Express reported last week that credit card delinquencies rose in January more than analysts expected, as U.S. unemployment increased and the global economy deteriorated.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUKTRE51M6N920090223