HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.


LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.






Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.


HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.


“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.


“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.


Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”


Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.


LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.


HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.


The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.


HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.


WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.


(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Kate Middleton 'Careful In Heels' at Weekend Wedding









03/02/2013 at 08:00 PM EST







The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge


Splash News Online


The Duchess of Cambridge arrived at a wedding in a different kind of carriage Saturday – a bus.

She and brother-in-law Prince Harry were spotted with a group of friends as they hopped off the coach for nuptials in the Swiss mountains.

They were there for the wedding of close friend and polo player Mark Tomlinson, who married Olympic equestrian Laura Bechtolsheimer in the town of Arosa.

Dressed in a pale coat accentuated with brown fur trim, a familiar James Lock hat and a Max Mara dress she's wore previously underneath, an expectant Kate was seen walking "gingerly up the steps to the church," an onlooker tells PEOPLE. "She was being very careful in her heels."

Her husband William – in traditional tailcoat – had previously arrived due to his role as an usher at the ceremony.

As guests arrived, police cordoned off an area so locals could catch a glimpse. "There was a big crowd there, and the police closed the street," the onlooker adds.

The couple are among 250 guests, including the royals' close friends James Meade and fiancée Laura Marsham, Guy Pelly and Olivia Hunt.

The Princes often spend summer afternoons playing polo with groom Tomlinson, who attended Marlborough College with Kate. The bride was part of the London 2012 Olympics team that also included William and Harry's cousin Zara Phillips.

The family made a weekend of the trip – while William and Harry hit the slopes on Friday, Kate, who's due in July, was spotted strolling with a sled in her hands rather than ski poles.

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On Eve of Vote, Fragile Valley in Kenya Faces New Divisions





KIAMBAA, Kenya — After another long day, Joseph Kairuri Mwangi walked back to his farmhouse shack, the late afternoon sun slanting behind him, his strides slow, his shoes muddy with rich, freshly turned earth.




It has been five years since his right hand was nearly cut off, but it still hurts.


“Right here,” he said, gingerly touching the scars. “I still feel pain right here.”


This whole area is a land of scars. On the shanties made from burned-up sheet metal, salvaged from homes set afire by mobs. On people’s limbs and faces. And in their hearts.


Five years ago, the Rift Valley of Kenya, a spectacularly verdant landscape of rolling hills, emerald green tea plantations and quilted farmland, suddenly exploded. A disputed election set off ethnic clashes that killed more than 1,000 people nationwide — more than 30 were burned alive in a church here in Kiambaa — and thousands are still living in shacks and tents, driven off their land with nowhere to go.


This was the seething center of Kenya’s upheaval, and now that the country is about to hold another major election on Monday, the first since the tumult of 2007 and 2008, the Rift Valley is still polarized, though some of the prejudices and poisonous feelings have shifted along with changes in political alliances.


“Those Luos,” said David Wanjohi Chege, a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group, speaking derisively about another one of Kenya’s major ethnic groups. “Those Luos won’t stop at nothing.”


Most people agree that preparations for this election are a vast improvement from the last time around. The creaky manual voting systems that promptly broke down have been replaced with state of the art digital technology, and nonprofit groups have devised social media tools to detect and parry hate speech. PeaceTXT, for example, is a text messaging service that sends out blasts of pro-peace messages to specific areas when trouble is brewing.


Donor nations have been holding Kenya’s hand much tighter this time around, advising election officials and contributing more than $100 million in election preparation. Investors big and small have shown their confidence that the vote will be all right, with Kenyan stocks edging up in the past week.


“I don’t think this time will be as bad,” said Bidan Thuku Mwangi, who runs a small bridal shop in the Rift Valley town of Londiani. On the floor are seven charred sewing machines, destroyed in the mayhem of 2008, but next to them is a sheaf of papers — an application for a new loan. “I’m waiting till after the election,” he said with a cautious smile. “Just in case.”


According to Human Rights Watch, Rift Valley politicians have been holding secretive night meetings, and more guns may have seeped in. Machete sales are sharply rising, other human rights observers in Kenya said recently, though it is not clear how much of this is fact and how much is fiction.


Some people are beginning to move out of ethnically mixed areas, frightened that there could be postelection reprisals, along ethnic lines, like what happened in 2008.


“All this is the mischief of politicians,” said Dominico Owiti, who lives in a new trouble spot, Sondu, a bushy borderland between the Luos and the Kalenjins. The two ethnic groups were allies during the last election, but because of opportunistic political alliances struck between Kenya’s leading politicians, they now find themselves on opposite sides of a very combustible political divide.


Similarly, two groups that fought so bitterly here the last time, the Kalenjins and the Kikuyus, are now political allies because their leaders have teamed up to run for president and deputy president on the same ticket.


“I don’t like it,” said Mary Macharia, a Kikuyu woman whose daughter was killed in the church fire in 2008, which was set by a Kalenjin mob. “But who am I to refuse?”


Kenya is considered one of the most modern countries in Africa, but ethnically charged politics is an Achilles’ heel. Colonial policies typecast certain ethnic groups — the Masai were the guards, the Kikuyus the farmhands, the Luos the teachers — and ethnicity has continued to serve as a stubbornly important basis of identity.


During elections, politicians use ethnic differences to stir up voters, and already 200 people have been killed in the Tana River Delta area of Kenya in clashes that both sides say have been inflamed by electoral politics.


In neighboring Tanzania, also a mosaic of dozens of ethnic groups, the government has instituted specific policies — like pushing the use of a common language, Swahili, and outlawing ethnically based political parties — to build a common Tanzanian identity. But here in Kenya, many people still speak their “mother tongue,” and interethnic marriage remains relatively rare.


“Everything has always been tribe-based,” said Christine Ololo Atieno, a Luo, who sells secondhand shoes in Kisumu, a big city in western Kenya.


Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from San Francisco.



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HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.


LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.






Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.


HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.


“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.


“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.


Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”


Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.


LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.


HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.


The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.


HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.


WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.


(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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David Bowie Makes Triumphant Comeback with New Album: PEOPLE's Critic















03/01/2013 at 08:40 PM EST



Ten years after his last album, David Bowie is back – and so is his swagger.

Forget the moody musings of "Where Are We Now?" – the reflective comeback single that he dropped, seemingly out of nowhere, on his birthday last month (Jan. 8). The Next Day – which, though not released until March 12, began streaming in its entirety on iTunes on Friday – represents much more of an emphatic, energetic return from the 66-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

"We'll never be rid of these stars/ But I hope they live forever," sings Bowie, sounding like the immortal rock god he is over the glittering guitar-pop bounce of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)."

It's one of many driving, guitar-charged tracks on The Next Day: You can just imagine Ziggy Stardust getting his groove on to the bouncy beat of "Dancing Out in Space," while "(You Will) Set the World on Fire" is a rocking, fist-pumping anthem for today's young Americans.

Elsewhere, "Dirty Boys" is a sleazy grinder that, with its saxed-up funkiness, harks back to his soulful periods like 1975's Young Americans. In another nod to Bowie's past, The Next Day was produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy albums from 1977 to 1979.

On one of the standouts, the melodic, midtempo "I'd Rather Be High," the album takes a political turn with Bowie's anti-war message: "I'd rather be dead or out of my head/ Then training these guns on those men in the sand."

It's moments like these that make The Next Day a triumphant comeback from a much-missed icon.

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident


LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.


In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.


"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."


The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.


On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.


In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.


Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.


In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.


The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.


Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.


For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."


David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.


Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.


Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.


"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.


WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.


Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.


"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.


Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.


"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.


In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."


Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.


Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.


Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.


"I'm enraged," he said.


___


Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.


__


Online:


WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb


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Wall Street advances as data outweighs budget cuts

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks advanced modestly on Friday, leaving the S&P 500 with slight gains in a volatile week as strong economic data overshadowed growth concerns in China and Europe and let investors discount the impact of expected government spending cuts.


Stocks opened sharply lower for the session as Asian factories slowed and European output fell, but most of the losses evaporated after a report showed manufacturing activity expanded last month at its fastest clip in 20 months.


Consumer sentiment also rose in February as Americans turned more optimistic about the job market.


With $85 billion in government budget cuts set to begin, President Barack Obama blamed Republicans for failure to reach a compromise to avert the cuts, known as sequester. But the stock market appeared to have already priced in the failure by legislators to reach an agreement.


"We were able to dig out of that hole, but not make any great strides on it either," said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois. "We will probably be in a holding pattern pending some big development on a broader budget deal."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 35.17 points, or 0.25 percent, to 14,089.66 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> added 3.52 points, or 0.23 percent, to 1,518.20. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 9.55 points, or 0.30 percent, to 3,169.74.


For the week, the Dow rose 0.6 percent, the S&P 500 edged up 0.2 percent and the Nasdaq gained 0.3 percent.


The slight gains for equities came during a volatile week that saw markets decline on Monday after uncertain Italian elections, only to rebound in the next two sessions as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended the central bank's stimulus measures.


The low interest rates due to the Federal Reserve's accommodative monetary policy have helped equities continue to attract investors. The Dow is less than 1 percent away from its all-time intraday high of 14,198.10. Declines have been shallow and short-lived, with investors jumping in to buy on dips.


Intuitive Surgical jumped 8.5 percent to $553.40 after Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Jeremy Feffer upgraded the stock, saying the stock's slide of more than 11 percent on Thursday was a gross overreaction to a news report.


Groupon Inc surged 12.6 percent to $5.10 a day after the online coupon company fired its chief executive officer in the wake of weak quarterly results.


Gap Inc rose 2.9 percent to $33.87 after the clothing retailer reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations and boosting its dividend by 20 percent, while Salesforce.com Inc posted sales that beat forecasts, driving its stock up 7.6 percent to $182.


Chesapeake Energy Corp fell 2.4 percent to $19.67 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission escalated its investigation into the company and its Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon for a controversial perk that granted him a share in each of the natural gas producer's wells.


Volume was modest with about 6.72 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq, slightly above the daily average of 6.5 billion.


Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of about 17 to 13, while on the Nasdaq, seven stocks rose for about every five stocks that fell.


(Editing by Jan Paschal)



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World Briefing | Africa: South Africa: 8 Officers Charged in Dragging Case



Eight South African police officers were charged with murder on Friday in connection with the death of a taxi driver dragged by a police vehicle, an episode that was captured on videotape. South Africa’s police chief, Gen. Riah Phiyega, said that she shared “the extreme shock and outrage” over the video evidence of abuse of the man, Mido Macia, left, by police officers and that his rights had been “violated in the most extreme form.” The restraining and dragging of Mr. Macia, who was said to have parked in the wrong spot, was videotaped by members of a horrified crowd of onlookers who beseeched the police officers to stop their abuse and questioned their motives in dragging him away with their police car. Mr. Macia was found dead in prison a few hours later, having sustained head and upper abdomen injuries, including internal bleeding.


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HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.


LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.






Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.


HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.


“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.


“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.


Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”


Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.


LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.


HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.


The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.


HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.


WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.


(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Josh Duhamel Has 'Full Conversations' with His Unborn Child

Josh Duhamel Talks to Unborn Child
FameFlynet


Daddy-to-be Josh Duhamel is so excited about welcoming his first child that he’s begun to bond with wife Fergie‘s belly.


“I’ve had full conversations with the baby already,” Duhamel jokes to PEOPLE at Tuesday’s Nickelodeon upfront presentation in New York. “I’m trying my best to communicate from beyond the womb. Whether it can hear me, I don’t know, but I’m talking to it a lot.”


In addition to enjoying his chats with Fergie’s baby bump, the Safe Haven star, 40, admits he loves the Black Eyed Peas singer’s pregnancy glow.


“She looks so beautiful,” he says. “I look at her now as not only as my beautiful wife, but also as the woman carrying our child. That takes our relationship to a whole new level.”

As for dealing with the sleepless nights, diaper duty and constant feedings, the actor claims he’s up for the challenge.


“I actually look forward to that stuff that people warn you about,” he says. “I don’t mind waking up and dealing with the middle of the night stuff. I wake up early anyway. So I’m definitely ready for it. More so than I’ve ever been.”


There is one task Duhamel really wants to be ready for: ”I hope to be a great dad.”


“I have a lot more life experience than I had at 24. I feel like I’m a little more patient and more wise than I was before,” he explains. “It’s easier said than done, but I’m just looking to raise a good person.”


He adds, “When we saw the ultrasound, that thing was moving around a lot. So I think we are going to have our hands full.”


In the meantime, Duhamel will be busy preparing to host Nickelodeon’s 26th annual Kids’ Choice Awards, airing March 23 at 8 p.m..


“It’s truly bonkers what this show is going to be,” he says. “I’m trying to do things as a host that people would never expect me to do. So if people didn’t take me seriously before, they definitely won’t take me seriously now.”


– Paul Chi


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