Move Over Xbox, PS3's Coming Soon LOS ANGELES -- Sony unveiled its PlayStation 3 video game console on Monday and pledged that its high-definition graphics and broadband connectivity would ensure its spot atop the $10 billion a year video-game industry. The electronics and entertainment conglomerate said the new machine, due for launch in the spring of 2006, will feature a graphics chip with 300 million transistors. That is more than the combined processing power of the current-generation Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Game Cube and the PlayStation 2 combined. E3 Console Galleries Having led the worldwide console gaming market for the last decade, Sony is counting on the new machine to dominate in all aspects of networked home entertainment -- games, movies, music and more. "PS3 truly is the system to be placed in the center of living rooms in homes around the world," Ken Kutaragi, the head of Sony's game unit, said at a press event ahead of the start of the E3 annual industry trade show. Kutaragi, known as "the father of the PlayStation," beamed as he stood next to a display of the curved PS3 offered in three colors -- black, silver and white -- and a boomerang-shaped game controller. Sony said the PS3 would have twice the processing speed of the Xbox 360, the console Microsoft is expected to release in November with up to 40 software titles. "Sony's console looked like a next-generation game machine and in comparison to the graphics of the PS3, Microsoft's looked like Xbox 1.5," said Takashi Oya, analyst at Deutsche Bank. FULL STORY Lead in Environment Causing Violent Crime - Study WASHINGTON- Lead left in paint, water, soil and elsewhere may not only be affecting children's intelligence but may cause a significant proportion of violent crime, a U.S. researcher argued Friday. He said the U.S. government needs to do more to lower lead levels in the environment and parents need to think more about where their children may be getting exposed to lead. "When environmental lead finds its way into the developing brain, it disturbs neural mechanisms responsible for regulation of impulse. That can lead to antisocial and criminal behavior," said Dr. Herbert Needleman, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. FULL STORY EDITORS NOTE: Some scientific theory over the years believes that the fall of the Roman Empire was due in part because of lead leaching into their diet from the raw pottery widely used as food vessels.

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