At half the price of Sony’s $999 standalone player, home theater fans may be finding the PS3’s video playing bang-for-buck irresistible. According to Sony VP Randy Waynick, “Eighty percent of people who buy a PS3 also buy Blu-ray movies to go with it,” which could help account for Blu-ray’s recent surge against HD DVD.

Even at PlayStation 3 or the upcoming BDP-S300 prices, consumers may still find the cost of high definition movies still too great. The situation is less severe, but similar on the side of HD DVD, where players can be found for $400, or even less if one has an Xbox 360.

Sony has expressed difficulties in turning a profit in a market dominated by $50 DVD players, but continues to promise lower prices on Blu-ray hardware. Stan Glasgow, president of Sony said that by Christmas, prices for Blu-ray players should be down below $500. Exceptionally cheap Blu-ray players are still years away, but Glasgow expressed his believe that one day we may see a $50 Blu-ray player. “Over time, I think it will be just like DVD,” he said.

Light, sweet crude for April delivery rose 30 cents to $60.37 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Crude inventories rose by 3.7 million barrels to 327.6 million barrels in the week ending Feb. 16, the Energy Information Administration said Thursday. But gasoline inventories fell by 3.1 million barrels to 222.1 million barrels, and distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, fell by 5.0 million barrels to 128.3 million barrels. Most of the drop in distillates was due to diminishing heating oil supplies.

Analysts were expecting, on average, a modest rise in crude oil and gasoline inventories and a smaller drop in distillates.

Heating oil futures rose more than 2 cents to $1.7030 a gallon; gasoline futures rose 3 cents to $1.7350 a gallon; and natural gas prices dropped 6 cents to $7.65 per 1,000 cubic feet.

The EIA also reported Thursday that natural gas in storage fell by 223 billion cubic feet to 1.865 trillion cubic feet, around what the market was expecting.

Meanwhile Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, was expected to report that Iran -- OPEC's No. 2 exporter -- is still enriching uranium, which could trigger harsher U.N. sanctions.

On Wednesday, Iran called for talks with the U.S. regarding its uranium enrichment activities, but showed no signs of halting its program.

Light sweet crude rose 2.1 percent on Wednesday to settle above $60 a barrel on the Nymex for the first time this year following increasing tensions over Iran's uranium enrichment program and shutdowns of a pipeline and an oil field.

However, the effects of the two shutdowns should be short-lived. TEPPCO Partners LP said its refined products pipeline, which had a leak in Indiana, should restart in two days, while BP PLC said its Northstar oil field should resume operations next week, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

International law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP and leading Spanish law firm Ramón & Cajal are delighted to announce that they have entered into an independent correspondent relationship to ensure clients have access to top-tier legal services in key geographic business centers. The relationship establishes formalized cooperation, client development and referral arrangements between the two firms.

Ty Fahner, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw’s Chairman for the past eight years, said that this important relationship further extends the firm's global footprint into Continental Europe following the announcement of a similar relationship with Tonucci & Partners (formerly Studio Legale Tonucci) in January 2006.

"This pairing with Ramón & Cajal increases our ability to provide clients with superior service no matter where they need it,” said Paul Maher, Vice-Chairman elect and London Senior Partner, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. “Significant commercial activity over the last few years in Spain, combined with an increase in foreign companies doing business in Spain as well as Spanish companies seeking to invest outside of the country, highlights the strategic importance of Spain."

Ramón & Cajal primarily advises corporate and financial clients and focuses on the provision of high quality legal advice to Spanish and international companies doing business in or from Spain.

Chairman of Ramón & Cajal, Pedro Ramón y Cajal Agüeras, and partner Alberto Alonso Ureba are, together with Francisco Palá Laguna and Francisco J. Bauzá Moré, managing and co-managing partners of the firm, respectively. They maintain day-to-day management of the merged firm while remaining focused on client transactions and relationship development.

"We look forward to working with an international firm which is as well respected globally as Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw,” said Francisco Palá Laguna managing partner at Ramón & Cajal. “We are ideally placed to assist its clients looking to expand their operations in Europe, and in particular, into Spain. The firm has an enviable market reputation, partner expertise and global capabilities. We welcome our new colleagues to Spain and look forward to introducing our people and clients to those who will help take this important two-way relationship forward."

Today, Ramón & Cajal has more than 70 lawyers, of whom 20 are partners. This enables both well staffed transactions for clients and the personal commitment and involvement of partners. It maintains offices in Madrid and serves clients operating across Spain and more widely in Europe and into South America.

The firm has a consolidated client base which includes many of the largest Spanish companies in terms of market capitalization. Over recent years, the firm has provided services to almost half of the companies comprising the Ibex-35 Index. Ramón & Cajal’s clients also include the Spanish Government and related agencies and companies as well as a growing number of foreign corporations.

"We are independent law firms but with complementary practices, so we have begun cross-referring work in a meaningful way particularly into and out of Paris,” said Jean-Philippe Lambert, Partner-in-Charge of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, Paris. “We look forward to developing this relationship with our firm’s 13 other offices around the world to ensure our clients are receiving the best legal opportunities available."

"This announcement follows a year of close collaboration for Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw in Italy with Tonucci & Partners and the opening of the firm’s Hong Kong office,” continued James D. Holzhauer, Chairman elect, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. “With the inclusion of Ramón & Cajal to our extensive European and global network we are ever closer to realizing the goals we outlined when we combined Mayer, Brown and Rowe & Maw in 2002. Spain is an exciting and competitive market. Increasingly its largest companies are becoming global players in the business world. This is a great development for both firms."

The relationship between the two firms is significant in that there is an enormous overlap of the type of work on which both firms advise, including corporate (mergers and acquisitions, commercial advice and corporate governance), finance and banking, capital markets, restructuring and turnaround, competition and regulation, administrative law, real estate, planning, tax and litigation and dispute resolution.

The complementary service offerings will provide a strong platform for the establishment of the ongoing cross-referral of work as well as joint business development and marketing initiatives to help the two firms to work closely together across all areas of legal advice to clients.

It's a good thing audiences like to watch ads during the Super Bowl: every year there are more of them.

According to a new report from TNS Media Intelligence, ad clutter in sports television's biggest annual event has been creeping upwards for the last 11 years.

The 2006 Super Bowl featured 47 minutes and 20 seconds worth of ads, a 30% increase over the 1996 games.

It's not hard to figure out why.

"As rights fees [for the games] have escalated, ad clutter has escalated," says Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research for TNS. "Networks can increase the price, but adding ad time is a more palatable way of making the economics work."

Despite the increased volume of ads and the gradually declining ratings for the event, Super Bowl ad prices have continued to climb. In 1987, a 30-second unit cost an advertiser $600,000. This year the same unit is expected to cost $2.6 million, a slight increase over last year's $2.5 million.

Mr. Swallen credits the price increases to savvy marketing by the networks and the National Football League, and the fact that it's harder than ever for marketers to reach a large audience.

"There's the cachet of the Super Bowl itself," he says of the pricey ads. "And it's still the single largest audience in television by a wide margin."

That's one reason the event's biggest category of advertiser isn't beer or cars, but promotional spots for the host network's own shows. Last year, 22% of all ad time in the Super Bowl was devoted to network promotions.

"Over the long haul, the potential ad revenue windfall you can generate from your regular series programming is much greater than what you can generate from a one-time event," Mr. Swallen explains.

Oil prices rallied more than $1 Wednesday to close above $52 after floundering through a volatile trading session that saw crude briefly bottom at a new 19-month low.

The market searched for direction in the lull between Tuesday's comments by Saudi Arabia's oil minister advocating no further production cuts and Thursday's scheduled release of petroleum inventory data.

A barrel of crude hasn't settled below $50 since May 24, 2005. But prices came close Tuesday, sliding as low as $50.28 in early trading before recouping the losses. The price of crude has plunged 14 percent since the year began due to weeks of unusually warm weather in the Northeast and an influx of short positions in the market, or bets that prices would fall.