Nokia to get payments in patent deal with RIM






HELSINKI (Reuters) – Struggling Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has settled its patent dispute with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in return for payments, as it tries to exploit its trove of technology patents to boost its finances.


Terms of the agreement were confidential, but Nokia said on Friday it included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM.






Nokia is one of the industry’s top patent holders, having invested 45 billion euros ($ 60 billion) in mobile research and development over the past two decades.


It has been trying to make use of that legacy to ensure its survival, amid a fall in sales as well as cash. The Finnish firm is battling to recover lost ground in the lucrative smartphone market to the likes of Apple and Samsung.


The agreement with RIM settles all existing patent litigation between the two companies, Nokia said, adding similar disputes with HTC Corp and ViewSonic still stood.


“This agreement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market,” said Paul Melin, Nokia’s chief intellectual property officer.


Nokia has earned around 500 million euros a year from patent royalties in key areas of mobile telephony.


Some analysts have said it could earn hundreds of millions more if it can negotiate with more companies successfully.


Analysts estimated its June 2011 settlement with Apple was worth hundreds of millions of euros.


($ 1 = 0.7555 euros)


(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters and Mark Potter)


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Country singer Tate Stevens wins Fox's 'X Factor'


NEW YORK (AP) — Tate Stevens, who was mentored by music exec L.A. Reid on the second season of "The X Factor," has won the Fox singing competition.


The 37-year-old country singer from Belton, Mo., beat runner-up Carly Rose Sonenclar, a 13-year-old schoolgirl from Westchester, N.Y., and teenage girl group Fifth Harmony on the finale that aired live Thursday night.


Stevens wins a $5 million recording contract.


More than 35 million votes were cast by viewers after Wednesday's performance show.


Besides Reid, judges this season included Demi Lovato, Britney Spears and series creator Simon Cowell.


Thursday's show was also the grand finale for Reid. Earlier this month, he said he wouldn't be returning to "The X Factor" next year. No replacement has been announced.


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About New York: One Boy’s Death Moves State to Action to Prevent Others





Prompted by the death of a 12-year-old Queens boy in April, New York health officials are poised to make their state the first in the nation to require that hospitals aggressively look for sepsis in patients so treatment can begin sooner. Under the regulations, which are now being drafted, the hospitals will also have to publicly report the results of their efforts.




The action by New York has elated sepsis researchers and experts, including members of a national panel who this month formally recommended that the federal government adopt standards similar to what the state is planning.


Though little known, sepsis, an abnormal and self-destructive immune response to infection or illness, is a leading cause of death in hospitals. It often progresses to severely low blood pressure, shock and organ failure.


Over the last decade, a global consortium of doctors, researchers, hospitals and advocates has developed guidelines on early identification and treatment of sepsis that it says have led to significant drops in mortality rates. But first hints of the problem, like a high pulse rate and fever, often are hard for clinicians to tell apart from routine miseries that go along with the flu or cold.


“First and foremost, they need to suspect sepsis,” Dr. Mitchell M. Levy, a professor at Brown University School of Medicine and a lead author of a paper on the latest sepsis treatment guidelines to be published simultaneously next month in the United States in a journal, Critical Care Medicine, and in Europe in Intensive Care Medicine.


“It’s the most common killer in intensive care units,” Dr. Levy said. “It kills more people than breast cancer, lung cancer and stroke combined.”


If started early enough, the treatment, which includes antibiotics and fluids, can help people escape from the drastic vortex of sepsis, according to findings by researchers working with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, the global consortium. The tactics led to a reduction of “relative risk mortality by 40 percent,” Dr. Levy said.


Although studies of 30,000 patients show that the guidelines save lives, “the problem is that many hospitals are not adhering to them,” said Dr. Clifford S. Deutschman, director of the sepsis research program at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.


About 300 hospitals participate in the study, and the consortium has a goal of having 10,000. “The case is irrefutable: if you take these sepsis measures, and you build a program to help clinicians and hospitals suspect sepsis and identify it early, that will mean more people will survive,” Dr. Levy said.


At a symposium in October, the New York health commissioner, Dr. Nirav R. Shah, said that he would require state hospitals to adopt best practices for early identification and treatment of sepsis. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo intends to make it a major initiative in 2013, said Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for the governor. “The state is taking unprecedented measures to prevent and effectively treat sepsis in health care facilities across the state and is looking at a wide range of additional measures to better protect patients,” Mr. Vlasto said.


In April, Rory Staunton, a sixth grader from Queens, died of severe septic shock after he became infected, apparently through a cut he suffered while playing basketball. The severity of his illness was not recognized when he was treated in the emergency room at NYU Langone Medical Center. He was sent home with a diagnosis of an ordinary bellyache. Hours later, alarming laboratory results became available that suggested he was critically ill, but neither he nor his family was contacted. For an About New York column in The New York Times, Rory’s parents, Ciaran and Orlaith Staunton, publicly discussed their son’s final days. Their revelations prompted doctors and hospitals across the country to seek new approaches to heading off medical errors.


In addition, Commissioner Shah in New York convened a symposium on sepsis, which included presentations from medical experts and Rory’s parents.


At the end of the meeting, Dr. Shah said that he had listened to all the statistics on the prevalence of the illness, and that one had stuck in his memory: “Twenty-five percent,” he said — the portion of the Staunton family lost to sepsis.


He said he would issue new regulations requiring hospitals to use best practices in identifying and treating sepsis, actions that, he said, he was taking “in honor of Rory Staunton.”


The governor’s spokesman, Mr. Vlasto, said that “the Staunton family’s advocacy has been essential to creating a strong public will for action.”


Dr. Levy said New York’s actions were “bold, pioneering and grounded in good scientific evidence,” adding, “The commissioner has taken the first step even before the federal government.”


Dr. Deutschman said that initiatives like those in New York were needed to overcome resistance among doctors. “You’re talking about a profession that has always prided itself on its autonomy,” he said. “They don’t like to be told that they’re wrong about something.”


The availability of proven therapies should move treatment of sepsis into a new era, experts say, comparing it to how heart attacks were handled not long ago. People arriving in emergency rooms with chest pains were basically put to bed because not much could be done for them, said Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, the president of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Dr. Tracey, a neurosurgeon, has made major discoveries about the relationship between the nervous system and the runaway immune responses of sepsis.


If physicians and nurses were trained to watch for sepsis, as they now routinely do for heart attacks, many of its most dire problems could be headed off before they got out of control, he said. The Stauntons have awakened doctors and nurses to the possibility of danger camouflaged as a stomach bug.


“We are with sepsis where we were with heart attack in the early 1980s,” Dr. Tracey said.


“If you don’t think of it as a possibility, this story can happen again and again. This case could change the world.”


E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com


Twitter: @jimdwyernyt



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Stocks fall sharply after Republicans cancel vote









Stocks opened sharply lower Friday on Wall Street after House Republicans called off a vote on tax rates and left federal budget talks in disarray 10 days before sweeping tax increases and government spending cuts take effect.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 140 points to 13,171 in the opening minutes of trading, a decline of 1 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 15 points to 1,428. The Nasdaq composite index fell 52 to 2,997.

The House bill would have raised taxes on Americans making at least $1 million per year and locked in decade-old tax cuts for Americans making less. Taxes will rise for almost all Americans on Jan. 1 unless Congress acts.

House Speaker John Boehner had presented what he called Plan B while he negotiated with the White House on avoiding the sweeping tax increases and spending cuts, a combination known as the “fiscal cliff.”

But Boehner scrapped a vote on Plan B on Thursday night after it became clear that it did not have enough support in the Republican-led House to secure passage. He called on the White House and the Democratic-led Senate to work something out.

The House will not meet again until after Christmas, if then.

Technology stocks were among the hardest hit Friday in early trading. Tech stocks in the S&P 500 were down 1.5 percent as a group. Apple, the most valuable company in the country, fell $10.04, or 2 percent, to $511.69.

It was not the first time that Wall Street expressed worry about “fiscal cliff” talks.

On the day after the election, when voters returned divided government to power, the Dow dropped 312 points. On Nov. 14, when President Barack Obama insisted on higher tax rates for the wealthy, the Dow dropped 185 points.

Stocks closed sharply lower Friday in Asia after House Republicans canceled their vote. The Nikkei index in Japan fell almost 1 percent, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index dropped 0.7 percent. Stocks were also lower in Europe.

In the bond market, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell 0.06 percentage point to 1.74 percent, an indication that investors were moving money out of stocks and into safer government bonds.

The price of oil fell $2.02, or 2.2 percent, to $88.12 per barrel.

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Fearful 'end of world' calls, emails flood NASA as Dec. 21 nears









If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA.


The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world — which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place Friday, Dec. 21.


The myth might have originated with the Maya calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among hundreds of people around the world who have turned to NASA for answers.





Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesman, said NASA typically receives about 90 calls or emails per week containing questions from people. In recent weeks, he said, that number has skyrocketed — from 200 to 300 people are contacting NASA per day to ask about the end of the world.


"Who's the first agency you would call?" he said. "You're going to call NASA."


The questions range from myth (Will a rogue planet crash into Earth? Is the sun going to explode? Will there be three days of darkness?) to the macabre (Brown said some people have "embraced it so much" they want to hurt themselves). So, he said, NASA decided to do "everything in our power" to set the facts straight.


That effort included interviews with scientists posted online and a Web page that Brown said has drawn more than 4.6 million views.


It also involved a video titled "Why the World Didn't End Yesterday." Though the title of the video implies a Dec. 22 release date, Brown said NASA posted the four-minute clip last week to help spread its message.


The website addresses several scenarios — the possibility of planetary alignments, total blackouts, polar shifts and "a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction" — but comes to the same conclusion.


In short, NASA says, "the world will not end in 2012."


"Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," the website says.


The Griffith Observatory will also be trying to debunk doomsday predictions. It announced plans to stay open late Friday evening — until one minute past midnight — to "demonstrate that claims regarding the Maya calendar, planetary alignments, rogue planets, galactic beams, and other related phenomena have no basis in fact."


A few years ago, NASA suspected that it might have to create such a campaign when the idea of the world ending began "festering," Brown said. The apocalyptic action movie "2012," released in 2009, didn't help, he said.


"We kind of look ahead — we're a look-ahead agency — and we said, 'You know what? People are going to probably want to come to us' " for answers, Brown explained. "We're doing all that we can do to let the world know that as far as NASA and science goes, Dec. 21 will be another day."


As for Saturday, when the questions — not the world — end: "I wish it was tomorrow."


kate.mather@latimes.com





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Study: Solo stars at higher death risk than bands


LONDON (AP) — Rock 'n' roll will never die — but it's a hazardous occupation.


A new study confirms that rock and pop musicians die prematurely more often than the general population, and an early death is twice as likely for solo musicians as for members of bands.


Researchers from Liverpool John Moores University studied 1,489 rock and pop stars who became famous between 1956 and 2009 and found they suffered "higher levels of mortality than demographically matched individuals in the general population."


American stars are more likely to die prematurely than British ones.


Lead researcher Mark Bellis speculates that could be because bands provide peer support at stressful times.


The research was published Thursday in online journal BMJ Open.


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New jobless claims up 17,000 last week, but remain relatively low













Depression unemployment line


Statues depicting unemployed men standing in a unemployment line during the Great Depression at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington on September 20, 2012.
(Karen BleierAFP/GettyImages / December 20, 2012)































































WASHINGTON -- More people filed initial jobless claims last week, the first increase in five weeks, as the labor market appeared to have shaken off the effects of Hurricane Sandy.


There were 361,000 new claims for unemployment benefits in the week that ended Saturday, up from a revised 344,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday.


The level is consistent with moderate job growth and in line with figures in the weeks before Sandy struck.





The less-volatile four-week average was down 13,750 to 367,750.


The difference between last week's figure and the four-week average reflects the lingering effects of the spike in jobless claims caused by Sandy.


Sandy hit hard in New York, New Jersey and other Northeast states at the end of October, triggering layoffs. Initial claims jumped to 451,000 in mid-November, the highest level in more than a year and a half.


Claims had been dropping through the week that ended Dec. 8 as the storm's effects lessened.


New jobless claims were down 11,295 in New York and 11,247 in Pennsylvania for that week, the latest state-level figures available, according to the Labor Department.


California had the biggest increase for that week, 5,952, because of layoffs in the service and manufacturing sectors.


ALSO:


Treasury to sell GM stake over 15 months


UBS to pay $1.5 billion to settle Libor charges


Sandy stifled housing starts in November, though permits were up


Follow Jim Puzzanghera on Twitter and Google+.






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Jury awards $6.9 million to boy molested by L.A. Unified teacher









A jury has awarded $6.9 million to a 14-year-old boy who was molested by a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher when he was a fifth-grade student.


The judgment, among the largest ever awarded in a district molestation case, comes at a time when L.A. Unified faces close to 200 pending molestation and lewd conduct claims arising from another teacher's alleged conduct at Miramonte Elementary School.


Tuesday's jury award stems from acts committed by Forrest Stobbe, a veteran teacher at Queen Anne Place Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area. In September 2011, Stobbe pleaded no contest to two counts of a lewd act on a child and to continuous sexual abuse of a child younger than 14. He is currently serving a 16-year sentence in prison.








The case turned on how much responsibility the school system bore, and whether district employees should have recognized warning signs that Stobbe posed a threat to the boy. Attorneys for the school system insisted that district staff acted in a professional and appropriate manner and could not have known what Stobbe was doing.


Stobbe molested the boy beginning in October 2008, when the 10-year-old was his student, and continued to abuse him through the following July, when he was arrested.


Early in the school year, Stobbe befriended the boy, earning his trust, then began to molest him in his classroom in episodes that became more brazen and invasive. He also gave the boy numerous gifts.


Stobbe also ingratiated himself with the victim's family, buying the boy season passes to amusement parks, where he would take the boy, then molest him before dropping him off at home.


The family appreciated the teacher's interest so much that the boy's father asked his son if Stobbe should become his godfather. It was then that the boy told his father of the abuse, the father testified.


The evidence against Stobbe included a jar of petroleum jelly in his school desk that tested positive for the boy's DNA. The boy told police that Stobbe used the jelly as a lubricant for sex acts.


The plaintiffs argued that there were abundant warning signs that should have alerted Stobbe's supervisors.


More than two years before his arrest, Stobbe was observed alone with a girl in his car. He allegedly told the principal that he had parental permission to give the student a ride, but that was never verified. He also had private lunches with students in his classroom, which was against school rules.


In another incident, an angry student pushed Stobbe down a flight of stairs, injuring the teacher. The student later declined to talk to police, who consider him another possible victim.


In November 2008, a girl in Stobbe's class complained that the teacher was making her feel uncomfortable. Stobbe, she said, was stroking her hair, putting it into a ponytail and had once touched her buttocks.


Principal Mary Ann Hall testified that she called the police department, which advised her to handle the matter on her own — a claim the Los Angeles Police Department disputes. If police had been alerted to allegations of such contact, the department would have launched an investigation, said Det. Moses Castillo, who supervised the investigation after Stobbe's arrest.


Hall, who has since retired, testified that she properly notified her supervisors. Attorneys for the family asserted that Hall either failed to do so, or that her supervisors failed to act on the information.


In the end, the panel of six men and six women found that L.A. Unified was 30% responsible for total damages, which they calculated at $23 million. The other 70% of the liability was assigned to Forrest Stobbe, but attorneys said they had no plans to collect from the imprisoned former educator.


Responding to the verdict, a district spokesman emphasized the district's commitment to the safety of children.


"We take our duty to protect our students seriously and are continually looking for ways that we can strengthen our screening and reporting processes to ensure that no child is ever hurt in this way," general counsel David Holmquist said. "Although we can't change what happened in this case, we remain committed to doing everything in our power to promote healing and improve trust with those impacted."


Issues in the Stobbe case — alleged lack of oversight, missed warning signs — could come into play with the Miramonte cases.


There, parents questioned teacher Mark Berndt's propensity for taking pictures of students, an issue that administrators did not pursue. Photos later emerged of blindfolded students allegedly being spoon-fed Berndt's semen, among other alleged wrongdoings.


Berndt has pleaded not guilty to 23 counts of lewd conduct.


Damage claims — the precursor to a lawsuit — have been filed by 126 students and 63 parents. There are also six lawsuits on behalf of 37 students and one involving 11 parents.


"Some of the same issues in the Miramonte case are highlighted here," said attorney Don Beck of the San Diego firm Estey & Bomberger, which represented the family of the victim in the Stobbe case. "The same lack of monitoring teachers, the same lack of supervision that allowed these events to happen."


howard.blume@latimes.com





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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donating $500 million in stock to Silicon Valley charity






SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday he is donating nearly $ 500 million in stock to a Silicon Valley charity with the aim of funding health and education issues.


Zuckerberg donated 18 million Facebook shares, valued at $ 498.8 million based on their Tuesday closing price. The beneficiary is the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a non-profit that works with donors to allocate their gifts.






This is Zuckerberg’s largest donation to date. He pledged $ 100 million in Facebook stock to Newark, New Jersey, public schools in 2010, before his company went public earlier this year. Later in 2010, he joined Giving Pledge, an effort led by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Warren Buffett to get the country’s richest people to donate most of their wealth. His wife, Priscilla Chan, joined with him.


In a Facebook post Tuesday, Zuckerberg, 28, said he’s “proud of the work” done by the foundation that his Newark donation launched, called Startup: Education, which has helped open charter schools, high schools and others.


With the latest contribution, he added, “we will look for areas in education and health to focus on next.” He did not give further details on what plans there may be for funds.


“Mark’s generous gift will change lives and inspire others in Silicon Valley and around the globe to give back and make the world a better place,” said Emmett D. Carson, CEO of the foundation.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Cassadee Pope wins Season 3 of 'The Voice'


NEW YORK (AP) — Cassadee Pope, who was country singer Blake Shelton's protege on the third season of NBC's "The Voice," has won the show's competition.


The 23-year-old singer is stepping out into a solo career after performing with a band called Hey Monday. Her victory over Scottish native Terry McDermott and long-bearded Nicholas David was announced at the end of a two-hour show Tuesday.


"The Voice" has grown into a hit for NBC and was the key factor in the network's surprising success this fall.


The show's status was affirmed by the stream of hitmakers who performed on the finale. They included Rihanna, Bruno Mars, the Killers, Smokey Robinson and Peter Frampton.


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