Washington - Congress will hold two hearings next week to discuss the proposed $2.5 billion merger of concert promotion giant Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the world's largest ticketing provider. [more..]

Sacramento, Calif. - The U.S. Court of Appeals on Friday rejected the state of California's appeal of a ruling that overturned a law that would have restricted the sales of violent video games to minors. [more..]

New York - Several major cable TV providers, including Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are currently in negotiations with big-name content providers like Viacom, Time Warner and NBC Universal on providing their programming online to cable TV subscribers, The Wall Street Journal reported. [more..]

New York - After receiving approval for the move from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this month, Time Warner said yesterday that it will go ahead with the spin off of its Time Warner Cable unit. [more..]

Raleigh, N.C. - Online social network Facebook has removed the profiles of more than 5,500 convicted sex offenders from its website since last May, according to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

New York - CBS has asserted that it is "well within its rights" to stream content from the Hulu joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal on its own TV.com website, responding to Hulu's assertion that contractual rights led to the removal of Hulu content from TV.com. [more..]

Foster City, Calif. - Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) on Friday officially announced the expansion of its PlayStation business into Latin America, making its computer entertainment systems and services formally available to the region. [more..]

Los Angeles - U2's forthcoming album "No Line on the Horizon" has shown up on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks a week before its official release, despite the lack of any review copies being distributed, TorrentFreak reported. [more..]

In the past few weeks, I've personally noticed a significant uptick in emails from LinkedIn, both in the form of new connections and requests for recommendations. As the labor market tightens, people appear to be boosting their resumes and their network, blogs Heather Hopkins. [more..]

Palo Alto, Calif. - Facebook this week introduced its first in-house application for Facebook Connect, Comments Box, which allows any website to add comments that will be linked back to users' Facebook accounts. [more..]

Beijing - China Central Television (CCTV), the country's state-owned broadcaster, plans to set up an online TV channel "under the directions of the central leaders of the Chinese government," Variety reported. [more..]

New York - The Orchard, a digital distributor of independent music and video, said on Friday that "Krazy," the single from Pitbull feat. Lil Jon distributed by the company, has been certified Gold by Nielsen SoundScan with sales of over 500,000 units. [more..]