National business briefs for April 27

Bernanke will begin news conferences today

When Ben Bernanke makes history today as the first Federal Reserve chief to begin a series of regular news conferences, his tasks will be simple. That doesn't mean they'll be easy:

Make no unintended news. Defuse critics of Fed policymaking. Say nothing that might spook investors.

"If he succeeds, he will not make any impact whatsoever" on bonds, stocks or the dollar, says Timothy Duy, an economist at the University of Oregon who writes a blog on the Fed.

The historic news conference, the first of three this year, is part of a long-standing Bernanke campaign to make the central bank more transparent and publicly accessible.

After giving an opening statement, Bernanke is scheduled to take reporters' questions for 45 minutes. He'll do so less than two hours after the Fed issues a statement outlining its latest policies on interest rates and the economy.

The Fed is expected to say that its benchmark rate will remain near zero and that its $600 billion Treasury bond-buying program will end in June as planned.

PlayStation users' data possibly compromised

Sony Corp. said Tuesday that the credit-card data of PlayStation users may have been stolen in an intrusion that caused it to shut down its PlayStation Network for the past week.

The network, which connects players in live game play worldwide, was shut down by the company last Wednesday after it said account information for certain players was compromised early last week.

An unauthorized person obtained players' names, addresses, birth dates, email addresses, passwords, log-in names and online handles, Sony said. Although it has no evidence credit-card information was taken, the company said, "we cannot rule out the possibility."

Purchase history and credit-card billing address information may also have been stolen, Sony said.

The company said it expects to restore some services within a week.

Elsewhere

•Details are still being worked out, but Chrysler Group LLC on Thursday will make an announcement about a refinancing package that will repay its government loans, according to a person briefed on the matter.

•Facebook said it will begin a deals program in five U.S. cities, following on the popularity of Groupon and other services that offer deep discounts — for example: $50 worth of food at a local eatery for $25. It hopes to exploit its existing networks of friends and family when it begins testing offers in San Diego, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas and Austin, Texas.

•A wave of foreclosures is forcing down home prices in most major U.S. cities. But economists and real estate agents point to what they call a key first step for any housing recovery: a decline in the glut of homes for sale in markets hit hardest by foreclosures.

•Aflac is betting a sales manager from Minnesota has the voice to drive the name "Aflac" into the recesses of your brain and keep it there. Daniel McKeague, 36, a father of three from Hugo, Minn., beat out 12,500 other contestants to replace actor Gilbert Gottfried and become the new voice of the reinsurance company's duck mascot. Gottfried voiced Aflac's duck for U.S. audiences for 11 years but was ousted in March after making insensitive jokes on Twitter about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which produces about 75 percent of Aflac's revenue.

•Dish Network Corp. says it has completed its acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Blockbuster Inc.

•High radiation levels recorded at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in northeast Ohio have prompted a special inspection by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC says workers immediately evacuated the plant on April 22 when radiation levels rose while the plant was in the process of shutting down for a refueling outage. The nuclear reactor is owned by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp.

•Gwyneth Paltrow is the new model for luxury handbag maker Coach, which she calls "the quintessential New York brand." But the new ads will appear exclusively overseas in select European and Asian markets, where the company has labeled key places for expansion. The first images will launch in the fall to coincide with Coach's 70th-anniversary campaign.

From wire reports