Tensions Escalate in Gaza Conflict

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Samsung goes after HTC deal to undercut Apple-filing

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When Apple Inc and HTC Corp last week ended their worldwide legal battles with a 10-year patent licensing agreement, they declined to answer a critical question: whether all of Apple‘s patents were covered by the deal.

It’s an enormously important issue for the broader smartphone patent wars. If all the Apple patents are included -including the “user experience” patents that the company has previously insisted it would not license – it could undermine the iPhone makers efforts to permanently ban the sale of products that copy its technology.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which could face such a sales ban following a crushing jury verdict against it in August, now plans to ask a U.S. judge to force Apple to turn over a copy of the HTC agreement, according to a court filing on Friday.

Representatives for Apple and Samsung could not immediately be reached for comment.

Judges are reluctant to block the sale of products if the dispute can be resolved via a licensing agreement. To secure an injunction against Samsung, Apple must show the copying of its technology caused irreparable harm and that money, by itself, is an inadequate remedy.

Ron Laurie, managing director of Inflexion Point Strategy and a veteran IP lawyer, said he found it very unlikely that HTC would agree to a settlement that did not include all the patents.

If the deal did in fact include everything, Laurie and other legal experts said that would represent a very clear signal that Apple under CEO Tim Cook was taking a much different approach to patent issues than his predecessor, Steve Jobs.

Apple first sued HTC in March 2010, and has been litigating for more than two years against handset manufacturers who use Google’s Android operating system.

Apple co-founder Jobs promised to go “thermonuclear” on Android, and that threat has manifested in Apple’s repeated bids for court-imposed bans on the sale of its rivals’ phones.

Cook, on the other hand, has said he prefers to settle rather than litigate, if the terms are reasonable. But prior to this month, Apple showed little willingness to license its patents to an Android maker.

HOLY PATENTS

In August, a Northern California jury handed Apple a $ 1.05 billion verdict, finding that Samsung’s phones violated a series of Apple’s software and design patents.

Apple quickly asked U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to impose a permanent sales ban on those Samsung phones, and a hearing is scheduled for next month in San Jose, California.

In a surprise announcement on Saturday, however, Apple and HTC announced a license agreement covering “current and future patents” at both companies. Specific terms are unknown, though analysts have speculated that HTC will pay Apple somewhere between $ 5 and $ 10 per phone.

During the Samsung trial, Apple IP chief Boris Teksler said the company is generally willing to license many of its patents – except for those that cover what he called Apple’s “unique user experience” like touchscreen functionality and design.

However, Teksler acknowledged that Apple has, on a few occasions, licensed those holy patents – most notably to Microsoft, which signed an anti-cloning agreement as part of the deal.

In opposing Apple’s injunction request last month, Samsung said Apple’s willingness to license at all shows money should be sufficient compensation, court documents show.

Apple has already licensed at least one of the prized patents in the Samsung case to both Nokia and IBM. That fact was confidential until late last year, when the court mistakenly released a ruling with details that should have been hidden from public view.

In a court filing last week, Apple argued that its Nokia, IBM and Microsoft deals shouldn’t stand in the way of an injunction. Microsoft’s license only covers Apple patents filed before 2002, and IBM signed several years before the iPhone launched, according to Apple.

“IBM’s agreement is a cross license with a party that does not market smartphones,” Apple wrote.

Apple’s seeming shift away from Jobs-style war, and toward licensing, may also reflect a realization that injunctions have become harder to obtain for a variety of reasons.

Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara Law in Silicon Valley, said an appellate ruling last month that tossed Apple’s pretrial injunction against the Samsung Nexus phone raised the legal standard for everyone.

“The ability of technology companies to get injunctions on big products based on small inventions, unless the inventions drive consumer’s demand, has been whittled away significantly,” Chien said.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

(Reporting By Dan Levine and Poornima Gupta; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Justin Bieber & Selena Gomez Reunite in L.A.

By Jessica Herndon

11/16/2012 at 04:00 PM EST

Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber in April 2012

Noel Vasquez/Getty

Oh, young love.

Less than a week after PEOPLE confirmed that Justin Bieber, 18, and Selena Gomez, 20, called it quits, the pair reunited in Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, Bieber met Gomez at LAX airport where a source says he picked her up and drove her home.

According to TMZ, which has photos of the pair separately entering the Four Seasons hotel the following morning, Bieber stayed the night at Gomez's house.

Meanwhile, a source close to Gomez tells PEOPLE "of course" Bieber is trying to win his ex back.

Of the initial split, the insider says Gomez "was heartbroken. It wasn't easy." But, the pal says the former Disney star – who was all smiles at the Glamour Women of the Year event in New York earlier this week – is "being a trouper."

A rep for Bieber would not comment on his personal life.

• With reporting by PERNILLA CEDENHEIM

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Irvine plans review of Great Park funds

Irvine leaders are planning a detailed review of the $200 million spent on what has been billed as the country's next great urban park, one that is supposed to rival New York's Central Park with a majestic man-made canyon, rivers, forests and botanical gardens.

Despite the spending, only a sliver of the park has been built, and most of the Marine base land remains fenced off. Park funds are expected to be exhausted next year.

With a new majority taking over the council next month, city leaders indicated that they want to take a closer look at the decade-long effort to build the municipal park.

PHOTOS: A not so 'Great Park'

"The three of us have been severe critics of the profligate spending at the park and because of that we want to know where every dime has gone and what we've received for it," said Jeff Lalloway, an incumbent council member. "I think that's a fair question."

Lalloway and his allies have been especially critical of the amount of money spent on planning, public relations and events at the Orange County Great Park rather than construction.

"I want to build the park," Lalloway said. "I'm not certain that the current council majority has been ever interested in doing that."

A Times analysis last month showed that less than a fifth of the money spent on the park was actually used for construction. Only about 200 of the promised 1,347 acres have been developed, and half of that has been leased for commercial farming. The runways of the former Marine base have yet to be pulled up, and some of the barracks remain.

The Times also found that nearly half the money contractors were paid was awarded without competitive bids and that a public relations firm was paid a $1.2-million annual retainer.

"My No. 1 suggestion is that the council authorize a forensic audit in the next year and look at where the dollars have gone," said Christina Shea, an incoming council member who previously served on the panel.

There have long been bitter feelings between the two Irvine council factions, and they have leaped to the forefront again.

Much of the new majority's anger is directed at Larry Agran, one of the park's strongest advocates and one of the city's most veteran political figures, who has long headed the liberal faction that has usually controlled city affairs.

"It's not Larry's private project, but the city's," Shea said. "We need to get it back on track. Is it worth $240 million? I don't think so."

Agran, who remains on the council after losing the race for mayor, declined to talk to The Times, other than insisting that there had been only one or two no-bid contracts.

Beth Krom, an Agran ally on the council, opposes an audit. "I would put it in the witch-hunt category," she said. "I'm not sure what they're looking for, what they're going to find. It's more about headlines than going forward."

She also criticized the new majority's attacks on the amount of money spent on planning. "In my world, you plan first and execute afterward," she said. "What we need now is not slash and burn. What we need is creativity. You can find money. You can't find vision."

Great Park was the object of one of Orange County's great political battles. County supervisors wanted an international airport on the decommissioned Marine base, but county voters decided in 2002 that they preferred a showcase park.

City leaders made a deal with a developer to build homes and businesses around the site that would provide taxes to pay for construction and operation of the park.

But the city now faces questions of how it is going to pay for the remaining park construction.

Developer FivePoint Communities Inc. put its plans on hold when the housing market crashed.

Then last spring, as part of its solution to California's budget deficit, the state grabbed the $1.4 billion in redevelopment funds that were earmarked for the park over the next 45 years.

FivePoint can build 4,894 homes. Early this year, the company offered to trade the rights to develop about 1 million square feet of commercial property for an additional 5,800 homes in a complicated deal that would bring the city about $200 million.

Lalloway, who has been half of Irvine's two-person negotiating committee, said they have not talked to FivePoint since May or June. "I personally have no idea where the deal is because in my opinion it's not moved since that time," he said.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

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Palestinian Rockets Kill Three Israelis and Trigger Air Sirens in Tel Aviv

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — Israel and Hamas widened their deadly conflict over Gaza on Thursday, as militants fired dozens of rockets — including one that killed three civilians in an apartment block in this small southern Israeli town — and two longer-range rockets aimed at Tel Aviv, causing no harm but triggering the first air raid warning there set off by incoming fire from Gaza. The death toll in Gaza from Israeli airstrikes rose to at least 16, including four children and a pregnant teenager.

The three Israeli deaths were the first since Israel’s military launched ferocious aerial assaults on Wednesday to stop the chronic rocket fire from Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave controlled by Hamas, the militant Palestinian group.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a cryptic statement that one of the two longer-range rockets aimed at Tel Aviv landed but did not hit the ground — meaning that it must have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea — and that the other appeared to have landed far outside the city. Exact locations were not specified.

But the Tel Aviv air raid warnings — which residents of Israel’s largest metropolis had not heard except for drills or malfunctions since Saddam Hussein’s Scuds threatened them in the first Persian Gulf War, more than two decades ago — were an unnerving reminder of their vulnerability to an attack from Gaza, less than 40 miles away. They also underscored Israel’s stated reason for seeking to destroy the missile-launching sites in Gaza.

Ehud Barak, the minister of defense, said the targeting of Tel Aviv and the scope of the Palestinian rocket fire “represents an escalation, and there will be a price for that escalation that the other side will have to pay.”

Mr. Barak also dropped a further hint that planning for a ground invasion of Gaza had begun, saying he had instructed the army to broaden its draft of reservists to “be prepared for any kind of development if and when it will be required.” Israeli officials said 30,000 reservists could be called, and heavy machinery and tanks rumbled south along Israeli roads leading to Gaza on Thursday in preparation for a possible invasion.

Hamas claimed to have hit one of the Israeli aircraft that have been conducting raids for the past two days on suspected missile storage sites and other targets. Israeli officials denied the claim.

Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said its aerial assaults had hit more than 200 sites in Gaza by late Thursday, and “we’ll continue tonight and tomorrow.” He also said militants in Gaza had fired about 300 rockets into southern Israel and at least 100 more had been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system.

The Israeli aerial assault on Gaza that began on Wednesday was the most intense military operation by Israel in Gaza since an invasion four years ago and raised the risks of a new Middle East war.

The regional perils of the situation sharpened as President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt warned that his country stood by the Palestinians against what he termed Israeli aggression, echoing similar condemnation on Wednesday.

“The Egyptian people, the Egyptian leadership, the Egyptian government and all of Egypt is standing with all its resources to stop this assault, to prevent the killing and the bloodshed of Palestinians,” Mr. Morsi said in nationally televised remarks before a crisis meeting of senior ministers. He also instructed his prime minister to lead a delegation to Gaza on Friday and said he had contacted President Obama to discuss strategies to “stop these acts and doings and the bloodshed and aggression.”

In language that reflected the upheaval in the political dynamics of the Middle East since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year, Mr. Morsi said, “Israelis must realize that we don’t accept this aggression, and it could only lead to instability in the region and has a major negative impact on stability and security in the region.”

The thrust of Mr. Morsi’s words seemed confined to diplomatic maneuvers, including calls to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon; the head of the Arab League; and President Obama.

Isabel Kershner reported from Kiryat Malachi, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Rina Castelnuovo from Kiryat Malachi, Israel, Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo, Gabby Sobelman from Jerusalem and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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Jon Bon Jovi's Daughter: Drug Charges Dropped

By Mike Fleeman

11/15/2012 at 04:40 PM EST

Jon Bon Jovi and daughter Stephanie

Dave M. Benett/Getty

Jon Bon Jovi's daughter, Stephanie Rose Bongiovi, no longer faces drug charges because of New York's law applying to overdose cases in which there was a call for help, authorities said Friday.

Bongiovi, 19, and Ian S. Grant, 21, both students at Hamilton College in Upstate New York, were arrested this week on drug possession charges after officers found heroin, marijuana and drug paraphernalia in her dorm room, according to police.

On Friday, the misdemeanor charges against both were dropped because of a 2011 amendment to the New York penal code exempting people from possession charges if they had sought help for somebody experiencing a "drug or alcohol overdose or other life-threatening medical emergency."

The so-called "Good Samaritan" section of the law applies to the Bongiovi case because Grant had called for help for the rocker's daughter as she suffered a possible overdose, authorities said.

"By law, they have immunity. I can’t prosecute them even if I wanted to,” said Oneida County District Attorney Scott D. McNamara, according to the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y."To proceed would be highly inappropriate and highly unethical, and would jeopardize my opportunity to practice in the future."

Bongiovi, one of the singer's four children with wife Dorothea Hurley, was hospitalized early Wednesday. Her condition was unknown. Reps for Bon Jovi have not commented.

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Diabetes rates rocket in Oklahoma, South

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's diabetes problem is getting worse, and the biggest jump over 15 years was in Oklahoma, according to a new federal report issued Thursday.

The diabetes rate in Oklahoma more than tripled, and Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama also saw dramatic increases since 1995, the study showed.

The South's growing weight problem is the main explanation, said Linda Geiss, lead author of the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

"The rise in diabetes has really gone hand in hand with the rise in obesity," she said.

Bolstering the numbers is the fact that more people with diabetes are living longer because better treatments are available.

The disease exploded in the United States in the last 50 years, with the vast majority from obesity-related Type 2 diabetes. In 1958, fewer than 1 in 100 Americans had been diagnosed with diabetes. In 2010, it was about 1 in 14.

Most of the increase has happened since 1990.

Diabetes is a disease in which the body has trouble processing sugar; it's the nation's seventh leading cause of death. Complications include poor circulation, heart and kidney problems and nerve damage.

The new study is the CDC's first in more than a decade to look at how the nationwide boom has played out in different states.

It's based on telephone surveys of at least 1,000 adults in each state in 1995 and 2010. Participants were asked if a doctor had ever told them they have diabetes.

Not surprisingly, Mississippi — the state with the largest proportion of residents who are obese — has the highest diabetes rate. Nearly 12 percent of Mississippians say they have diabetes, compared to the national average of 7 percent.

But the most dramatic increases in diabetes occurred largely elsewhere in the South and in the Southwest, where rates tripled or more than doubled. Oklahoma's rate rose to about 10 percent, Kentucky went to more than 9 percent, Georgia to 10 percent and Alabama surpassed 11 percent.

An official with Oklahoma State Department of Health said the solution is healthier eating, more exercise and no smoking.

"And that's it in a nutshell," said Rita Reeves, diabetes prevention coordinator.

Several Northern states saw rates more than double, too, including Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Maine.

The study was published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

___

Associated Press writer Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://tinyurl.com/cdcdiabetesreport

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Justin Bieber freeway chase charged unconstitutional, judge says

A Los Angeles Superior court judge threw out charges related to a first-of-its-kind anti-paparazzi law Wednesday in the case of a freelance photographer who was charged in connection with a freeway chase involving pop star Justin Bieber. 

Judge Thomas Rubinson ruled that while Los Angeles city prosecutors could proceed with two traffic-related charges against Paul Raef, the two counts related to the state law did not pass Constitutional muster.

Passed in  2010, the law punishes paparazzi driving dangerously to obtain images they will sell. But Rubinson said the law violated First Amendment protections by overreaching and potentially affecting such people as wedding photographers or photographers speeding to a location where a celebrity was present.

Attorney David S. Kestenbaum, one of the lawyers representing Raef, said Wednesday he was pleased by the judge's decision, which showed his client was simply doing his job.

"The judge said that when you are talking about people doing their job and yet running the risk of additional criminal punishment, it has a chilling effect from anyone from newsgathers to wedding photographers and even real estate agents," Kestenbaum said. "It just a lesson in constitutional law.

The ruling comes less than six months after Bieber was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol on the 101 Freeway in the San Fernando Valley and cited for driving his Fisker sports car at high speed. The pop star said then he was being chased by a freelance paparazzo later identified as Raef.

Los Angeles city prosecutors filed charges against the 30-year-old photographer for allegedly chasing Bieber and then speeding off when police tried to pull over both Bieber and Raef.

The charges included four misdemeanors: reckless driving, failing to obey a peace officer, and two counts of following another vehicle too closely and reckless driving, with the intent to capture pictures for commercial gain.

With the dismissal of the latter charges, Raef still faces the potential of six months in county jail.

Bieber was involved in another traffic incident Tuesday. He was pulled over in a white Ferarri
around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the 600 block of Hayward Avenue in West Hollywood and was
cited for making an unsafe left turn and having an expired registration, Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

ALSO:

Increased Rose Bowl security planned for USC-UCLA game

MTV: Santa Monica Airport crowd got too large to continue concert

No charges expected in probes of 'Modern Family' actress, mother

--Andrew Blankstein

Photo: Justin Bieber performing Friday in New Jersey. Credit: Mike Coppola / Getty Images

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Israelis Launch Major Assault on Gaza, Killing Hamas Commander

GAZA — Israel on Wednesday launched one of the most ferocious assaults on Gaza since its invasion four years ago, hitting at least 20 targets in aerial attacks that killed the top military commander of Hamas, drew strong condemnation from Egypt and escalated the risks of a new war in the Middle East.

The Israelis coupled the intensity of the airstrikes with the threat of another ground invasion and warnings to all Hamas leaders in Gaza to stay out of sight or risk the same fate as the Hamas military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, who was killed in a pinpoint airstrike as he was traveling by car down a Gaza street. “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a Twitter message.

The ferocity of the airstrikes, which Israel called Operation “Pillar of Defense” in response to repeated rocket attacks by Gaza-based Palestinian militants, provoked rage in Gaza, where Hamas said the airstrikes amounted to war and promised a harsh response. Civil-defense authorities in Israel raised alert levels and told residents to take precautions for rocket retaliation from Gaza.

Health officials in Gaza quoted by news agencies said the Israeli attacks had killed at least nine people and wounded at least 40.

The abrupt escalation in hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the militant organization regarded by Israel as a terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction, came amid rising tensions between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors. Israel has faced growing lawlessness on its border with the Sinai, including cross-border attacks. It recently fired twice into Syria, which is caught in a civil war, after munitions fell in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and it has absorbed rocket fire from Gaza, which has damaged homes and frightened the population.

Israeli officials had promised a robust response to the rocket fire, but for the moment, at least, opted against a ground invasion and instead chose airstrikes and targeted killings.

The Israeli attacks especially threatened to further complicate Israel’s fragile relations with Egypt, where the Islamist-led government of President Mohamed Morsi, reversing a policy of ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak, had established closer ties with Hamas and had been acting as a mediator to restore calm between Israel and Gaza-based militant groups.

In the first crisis in Israeli-Egyptian relations since Mr. Morsi came to power, he called the Israeli actions “wanton aggression on the Gaza Strip.” He ordered Egypt’s ambassador to Israel to return home, summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest, and called for emergency meetings of both the United Nations Security Council and the Arab League over the Gaza attacks. Egyptian state media said Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr had “warned Israel against the consequences of escalation and the negative reflections it may have on the security and stability of the region.”

Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, which was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a statement saying: “The wanton aggression against Gaza proves that Israel has yet to realize that Egypt has changed and that the Egyptian people who revolted against oppression will not accept assaulting Gaza.”

A spokesman for Hamas, Fawzi Barhoum, said the Israelis had “committed a dangerous crime and broke all redlines,” and that “the Israeli occupation will regret and pay a high price.”

Military officials in Israel, which announced responsibility for the death of Mr. Jabari, later said in a statement that their forces had carried out additional airstrikes in Gaza targeting what they described as “a significant number of long-range rocket sites” owned by Hamas that had stored rockets capable of reaching 25 miles into Israel. The statement said the airstrikes had dealt a “significant blow to the terror organization’s underground rocket-launching capabilities.”

Yisrael Katz, a minister from Israel’s governing Likud Party, issued a statement saying that the operation had sent a message to the Hamas political leaders in Gaza “that the head of the snake must be smashed. Israel will continue to kill and target anyone who is involved in the rocket attacks.”Hamas and medical officials in Gaza said both Mr. Jabari and a companion were killed by the airstrike on his car in Gaza City. Israeli news media said the companion was Mr. Jabari’s son, but there was no immediate confirmation.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that Mr. Jabari had been targeted because he “served in the upper echelon of the Hamas command and was directly responsible for executing terror attacks against the state of Israel in the past number of years,” including the 2006 abduction and five-year incarceration of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, on the Israel-Gaza border.

The statement said the purpose of the attack was to “severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership as well as its terrorist infrastructure.”

Fares Akram reported from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York, and Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.

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