Vampires foil Tooth Fairy, Santa to claim box office win

(Reuters) – Teen vampire film “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ continued to take a bite out of the domestic box office, drawing $ 64 million in ticket sales over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend to finish ahead of James Bond film “Skyfall.”

After opening with a massive $ 141.1 million last weekend, the finale of the “Twilight” franchise brought in a holiday swarm of fans to see teen favorites Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, pushing “Breaking Dawn” to $ 227 million in total domestic ticket sales.

“Skyfall,” starring Daniel Craig in the 23rd installment of the James Bond franchise, finished second, collecting $ 51 million in weekend ticket sales in the United States and Canada, according to studio estimates compiled by the box office division of Hollywood.com.

“Lincoln,” Steven Spielberg’s historical film on the last days of President Abraham Lincoln, grabbed third with $ 34.1 million over the Wednesday-through-Sunday period.

Making its debut in fourth place with $ 32.6 million was the animated film “Rise of the Guardians,” featuring the voices of Chris Pine and Alec Baldwin as the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and other childhood favorites who save the world.

“Life of Pi,” based on Yann Martel’s 2001 best-seller about a boy who survives on a raft with a tiger after his ship sinks, collected $ 30.15 million for a strong fifth-place finish.

“Rise of the Guardians,” produced by Dreamworks Animation for roughly $ 145 million, had been projected by distributor Paramount Pictures to gross $ 35 million in its first five days, according to Box Office Mojo.

Based on “The Guardians of Childhood” book series by children’s author William Joyce, the film will be the last Paramount will release for Dreamworks, whose films will be distributed next year by News Corp’s Fox studio.

Anne Globe, Dreamworks’ chief marketing officer, pointed to “the great parent reactions we’ve seen” to the film, and noting it was among the few choices for families through the end of year, said the studio was “hoping for very long legs through the holidays.”

The Ang Li film “Life of Pi,” on the other hand, performed stronger than expected. “We clearly exceeded our pre-release expectations,” said Chris Aronson, president of domestic distribution for 20th Century Fox.

“We’re seeing word of mouth in action, and a remarkably balanced demographic,” including strong ticket sales among those under 25, he said, adding “Many felt it was impossible to film, but Ang Li pulled it off.”

The remake of the 1984 Cold War film “Red Dawn,” finished seventh with $ 22 million in sales, behind animated feature “Wreck It Ralph”‘s $ 23 million take.

“Red Dawn” arrived at movie theaters four years after it was shot by MGM, but was delayed when the studio filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Last year, MGM decided to digitally alter the villains in the movie, inserting North Koreans instead of Chinese, after Hollywood began courting Chinese companies to help finance its films.

Propelled by the vampires, secret agents, presidents and nursery school favorites, Hollywood ticket sales totaled $ 290 million for the holiday weekend, beating the holiday weekend high mark of $ 273 million recorded in 2009. Hollywood studios often release their biggest holiday films on Wednesday to take advantage of school breaks the day before Thanksgiving.

The continued rush of fans to see teen favorites Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner pushed the “Twilight” installment to $ 227 million in total domestic ticket sales, making it the year’s sixth-largest, according to figures compiled by Box Office Mojo.

“Skyfall” with $ 221.7 million is just behind at number seven, while the year’s box office champ remains “Marvel’s The Avengers,” which has taken in $ 623 million to date.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover)

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M.I.T. Lab Hatches Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens

HOW do you take particles in a test tube, or components in a tiny chip, and turn them into a $100 million company?

Dr. Robert Langer, 64, knows how. Since the 1980s, his Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spun out companies whose products treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases, and even thicken hair.

The Langer Lab is on the front lines of turning discoveries made in the lab into a range of drugs and drug delivery systems. Without this kind of technology transfer, the thinking goes, scientific discoveries might well sit on the shelf, stifling innovation.

A chemical engineer by training, Dr. Langer has helped start 25 companies and has 811 patents, issued or pending, to his name. That’s not too far behind Thomas Edison, who had 1,093. More than 250 companies have licensed or sublicensed Langer Lab patents.

Polaris Venture Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, has invested $220 million in 18 Langer Lab-inspired businesses. Combined, these businesses have improved the health of many millions of people, says Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris.

Along the way, Dr. Langer and his lab, including about 60 postdoctoral and graduate students at a time, have found a way to navigate some slippery territory: the intersection of academic research and the commercial market.

Over the last 30 years, many universities — including M.I.T. — have set up licensing offices that oversee the transfer of scientific discoveries to companies. These offices have become a major pathway for universities seeking to put their research to practical use, not to mention add to their revenue streams.

In the sciences in particular, technology transfer has become a key way to bring drugs and other treatments to market. “The model of biomedical innovation relies on research coming out of universities, often funded by public money,” says Josephine Johnston, director of research at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research organization based in Garrison, N.Y.

Just a few of the products that have emerged from the Langer Lab are a small wafer that delivers a dose of chemotherapy used to treat brain cancer; sugar-sequencing tools that can be used to create new drugs like safer and more effective blood thinners; and a miniaturized chip (a form of nanotechnology) that can test for diseases.

The chemotherapy wafer, called the Gliadel, is licensed by Eisai Inc. The company behind the sugar-sequencing tools, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, raised $28.4 million in an initial public offering in 2004. The miniaturized chip is made by T2Biosystems,  which completed a $23 million round of financing in the summer of 2011.

“It’s inconvenient to have to send things to a lab,” so the company is trying to develop more sophisticated methods, says Dr. Ralph Weissleder, a co-founder, with Dr. Langer and others, of T2Biosystems and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

FOR Dr. Langer, starting a company is not the same as it was, say, for Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook. “Bob is not consumed with any one company,” says H. Kent Bowen, an emeritus professor of business administration at Harvard Business School who wrote a case study on the Langer Lab. “His mission is to create the idea.”

Dr. Bowen observes that there are many other academic laboratories, including highly productive ones, but that the Langer Lab’s combination of people, spun-out companies and publications sets it apart. He says Dr. Langer “walks into the great unknown and then makes these discoveries.”

Dr. Langer is well known for his mentoring abilities. He is “notorious for replying to e-mail in two minutes, whether it’s a lowly graduate school student or the president of the United States,” says Paulina Hill, who worked in his lab from 2009 to 2011 and is now a senior associate at Polaris Venture Partners. (According to Dr. Langer, he has corresponded directly with President Obama about stem cell research and federal funds for the sciences.)

Dr. Langer says he looks at his students “as an extended family,” adding that “I really want them to do well.”

And they have, whether in business or in academia, or a combination of the two. One former student, Ram Sasisekharan, helped found Momenta and now runs his own lab at M.I.T. Ganesh Venkataraman Kaundinya is Momenta’s chief scientific officer and senior vice president for research.

Hongming Chen is vice president of research at Kala Pharmaceuticals. Howard Bernstein is chief scientific officer at Seventh Sense Biosystems, a blood-testing company. Still others have taken jobs in the law or in government.

Dr. Langer says he spends about eight hours a week working on companies that come out of his lab. Of the 25 that he helped start, he serves on the boards of 12 and is an informal adviser to 4. All of his entrepreneurial activity, which includes some equity stakes, has made him a millionaire. But he says he is mainly motivated by a desire to improve people’s health.

Operating from the sixth floor of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Langer’s lab has a research budget of more than $10 million for 2012, coming mostly from federal sources.

The research in labs like Dr. Langer’s is eyed closely by pharmaceutical companies. While drug companies employ huge research and development teams, they may not be as freewheeling and nimble, Dr. Langer says. The basis for many long-range discoveries has “come out of academia, including gene therapy, gene sequencing and tissue engineering,” he says.

He has served as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies. Their large size, he says, can end up being an impediment.

“Very often when you are going for real innovation,” he says, “you have to go against prevailing wisdom, and it’s hard to go against prevailing wisdom when there are people who have been there for a long time and you have some vice president who says, ‘No, that doesn’t make sense.’ ”

Pharmaceutical companies are eager to tap into the talent at leading research universities. In 2008, for example, Washington University in St. Louis announced a $25 million pact with Pfizer to collaborate more closely on biomedical research.

But in some situations, the close — critics might say cozy — ties between business and academia have the potential to create conflicts of interest.

There was a controversy earlier this year when it was revealed that the president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center owned stock in Aveo Oncology, which had announced earlier that the university would be leading clinical trials of one of its cancer drugs.  Last month, the University of Texas announced that he would be allowed to keep his ties with three pharmaceutical companies, including Aveo Oncology; his holdings will be placed in a blind trust.

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Rosenthal: Big Ten getting too big for its own good?

There's a lesson the empire builders at Big Ten Conference headquarters in Park Ridge would do well to heed if they can be convinced to stop peering out to the distant horizon:

Growth through acquisition is fraught with peril.

"In the business world you acquire new companies and you have to deal with different corporate cultures, different priorities and so forth," Robert Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates LLC, an investment firm, said in an interview. "Merging them is often very messy and often fails. Here you're merging two teams into an existing conference and it creates risks. … Even college football teams have different cultures, different ways of thinking about how to win and different standards."

There undoubtedly was a logic behind each acquisition as the old Sears sought to expand and diversify its corporate profile. By the time the Chicago-area company's portfolio grew to include Allstate insurance, Coldwell Banker real estate and Dean Witter Reynolds stock brokerage, it was clear the increase in size was in no way matched by an increase in strength.

Rather than an all-powerful Colossus astride many sectors at once, it was reduced to an unfocused blob, bereft of identity, covering plenty of ground but hardly standing tall. Years after shedding its far-flung holdings, Sears has yet to regain its muscle, mojo or market share.

"It's hard to find a better example of a company that lost its mission and focus in the quest for growth," Arnott said.

"(Growth) may be partly a defensive move. It may be ego driven. In the corporate arena, you certainly see that in spades," he said. "When growth is through acquisition, you have to figure out what the real motivation is. Is it synergy, the most overused word in the finance community, or is it ego?"

Adding the University of Maryland and New Jersey's Rutgers University in 2014 will push the Big Ten to 14 schools and far beyond the Midwestern territory for which it's known. But doing so may not achieve what its backers envision.

Rather than spread the conference's brand, it may merely dilute it. The fit may be corrosive, not cohesive.

There is a school of thought that this is but the latest evidence that the Big Ten is not about athletics, academics or even the Midwest. Instead, it is just a television network, the schools content providers and student-athletes talent.

As it is, the overall TV payout is said to give each of the 12 current Big Ten schools about $21 million per year. They point to the Big Ten's lucrative deals with ESPN and its own eponymous cable network, a partnership with News Corp. They note that public schools Rutgers and Maryland are near enough to New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to drive a better bargain with cable carriers.

To Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, a New Jersey native, the addition is more the result of a paradigm shift that has redrawn the college sports map over the past decade. Some conferences splinter. Others seize new turf. The result: Idaho's Boise State football team is poised to join the Big East Conference next year.

"Institutions that get together for academics or athletics have got to be cognizant that they are competing for students, they are competing for student athletes, they are competing for research dollars," Delany told reporters.

"When you see a Southern conference in the Midwest or you see a Southern conference in the Plains states or whether you see other conferences in the Midwest or Northeast, it impacts your recruitment. ... It impacts everything you do," he said. "At a certain point you get to a tipping point. The paradigm has shifted, and you decide on a strategy to basically position yourself for the next decade or half-century."

Big has always meant more than 10 in the Big Ten, an intercollegiate entity formed by seven Midwestern universities that now boasts 12 with the bookends of Penn State and Nebraska added in 1990 and last year, respectively. Last week's announcement of adding schools 13 and 14 was just a reminder that the conference has only had 10 member schools for 70 of its 116 years and won't again for the foreseeable future.

Rutgers President Robert Barchi said his school looked "forward as much to the collaboration and interaction we're going to have as institutions as we do to what I know will be really outstanding competition on our field of play."

But make no mistake, the Big Ten was born out of sports, specifically football. A seven-school 1896 meeting at Chicago's Palmer House had Northwestern among those still stinging from a scathing Harper's Weekly critique of college sports abuses, the Tribune reported at the time.

A prohibition on allowing scholarship and fellowship students to compete was shot down. But "a move towards the coordination of Faculty committees" in terms of standards and enforcement passed and the precursor to the Big Ten was born.

Along the way, the conference has added member schools and come to recognize that the Big Ten's image has much to say about how those institutions are perceived. Scandals already are no stranger to the Big Ten. But whether you play in a stadium or on Wall Street, the bigger one gets, the bigger target one becomes.

"Whoever's biggest draws scrutiny," said Arnott, co-author of a research paper, "The Winners Curse: Too Big to Succeed." "That means politicians, regulators, the general public generally don't root for the biggest. They look to take them down a notch, so it's harder to succeed as the largest. It's also harder to move the dial and move from success to success as you get really big."

Everyone talks about becoming too big to fail, but there's also too big to scale, companies that are unable to capitalize on the efficiencies of their increased size ostensibly because they are so big that they cannot be managed adequately.

"People talk about economies of scale. There are also vast diseconomies of scale, mostly in bureaucracies," Arnott said. "The more people you have involved, the more people you have who feel they have to have their views reflected in whatever's done. So you wind up with innovation by committee."

That's deadly. That's why companies break up, citing the need to get smaller so they can grow.

"If you break up companies into operating entities that are more nimble," Arnott said, "the opportunities to grow are no longer hamstrung by centralized bureaucracies that have to pursue synergies that don't exist."

Size matters in all fields of play. Sometimes smaller is better.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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Nokia imaging chief to quit

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia‘s long-time imaging chief Damian Dinning has decided to leave the loss-making cellphone maker at the end of this month, the company said in a statement.

The strong imaging capabilities of the new Lumia smartphone models are a key sales argument for the former market leader, which has been burning through cash while losing share in both high-end smartphones and cheaper handsets.

Nokia’s Chief Executive Stephen Elop has replaced most of the top management since he joined in late 2010 and Dinnig is the latest of several executives to leave.

Dinning did not want to move to Finland as part of the phonemakers’ effort to concentrate operations and will join Jaguar Land Rover to head innovations in the field of connected cars, he said on Nokia’s imaging fan site PureViewclub.com.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki, editing by William Hardy)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Notre Dame Game Day: Up 16-10 at halftime

LOS ANGELES -- Notre Dame is one win from a national title shot. There really isn't any embellishment left to make, nor any nuance left to explore, nor any argument over who's worthy and who isn't.

That is, flatly and tantalizingly, all there is. The No. 1 Irish, facing their most bitter rival, just one victory away from a chance to win a championship.

"We just have to go out and play our game and not change anything we do," defensive end Kapron Lewis-Moore said. "Obviously what we do has been working."

It worked 11 out of 11 times before Saturday at the Los Angeles Coliseum, and it was working through one quarter against USC. The Irish had a 10-0 lead and just three quarters separating themselves from a shot at a championship in south Florida.

Notre Dame diced up the USC defense on its two drives of the first quarter, though it only managed to hit paydirt on one. The first march was a clinical dissection all the way inside the Trojans' 10-yard line, using four plays of 10-plus yards to get there. But then things sputtered, with an Everett Golson third-down pass sailing out of the end zone. Kyle Brindza came on and his 27-yard field goal made it a 3-0 lead, the Irish firing a first salvo that could have been more.

USC could have had more on its first possession, too, but a 50-yard bomb from redshirt freshman starter Max Wittek couldn't be corralled by Marqise Lee in double coverage. After a Trojans punt, the Irish reestablished offensive dominance on a 12-play, 87-yard, nearly-seven-minute drive that culminated with Theo Riddick's 9-yard touchdown run and a 10-0 leaed with 1:48 left in the first quarter.

That might have tested the mettle of a four-loss Trojans team playing for nothing, but Notre Dame helped USC back into the game. A pass interference penalty on KeiVarae Russell and a face mask penalty on Bennett Jackson helped push the Trojans along until Wittek found Robert Woods for an 11-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the second quarter, cutting the Irish lead to 10-7 and infusing the proceedings with some drama once more.

Again, Notre Dame would have its way with the USC defnse as it tried to expunge that drama on the next series. But, again, it couldn't finish what it started. A drive to the Trojans' 12-yard line stopped there, with Brindza's 29-yard field goal and a 13-7 lead the result.

USC then matched the Irish for red-zone futility as a retort. On a third-and-8 from the Notre Dame 19-yard line, at the end of an otherwise promising drive, Wittek dropped a snap and fell on it for a four-yard loss. A 39-yard field goal was the consolation prize, slicing the Irish lead to 13-10 with 3:50 left in the half.

After actually managing a defensive stop, USC gave the Irish life again. Wittek threw a long interception on the first play after a Notre Dame punt, returning the ball to the Irish with 1:25 left.

Golson moved the offense into position with a 23-yard pass to John Goodman and then a 12-yarder to Robby Toma, and then almost moved it right back out of position with a third-down scramble that nearly resulted in a drive-killing sack. He unfurled an incompletion with one second left, though, and Brindza came on for a 52-yard field goal and a 16-10 halftime edge.

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Vampires, 007 may set record Thanksgiving sales

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The teen vampire movie “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ continued to lure huge audiences, siphoning off $ 12.8 million in Wednesday night showings in what could fuel a record box office haul for the five-day Thanksgiving Day holiday.

The final film in the “Twilight” series, collected $ 141.3 million last weekend for the industry’s eighth largest opening weekend. On Wednesday it combined with the Daniel Craig “James Bond” film “Skyfall” to lead a slate of films that generated $ 44.3 million in total U.S. and Canadian ticket sales for the day, according to unofficial data from Hollywood.com’s box office division.

That’s 20 percent ahead of last year’s take for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and, if the pace holds, would put Hollywood on a path to a $ 278 million holiday weekend, according to Hollywood.com estimates. The 2009 holiday weekend record of $ 273 million included “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” and the football flick, “The Blind Side.”

Hollywood traditionally opens its largest Thanksgiving weekend films on Wednesday, when schools are closed before the Thursday holiday.

“Skyfall,” the 23rd film in the “James Bond” series about the exploits of a British spy, collected $ 7.4 million in Wednesday showings.

Dreamworks Animation’s “Rise of the Guardians,” featuring the voices of Chris Pine and Alec Baldwin in a story about the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and other childhood characters that save the world, opened with $ 4.85 million in Wednesday sales.

“Twilight” and “Skyfall” each easily appear headed to more than $ 200 million in box office sales. “Skyfall,” released by Sony Pictures in association with MGM, has generated more than $ 178 million so far in domestic ticket sales through Wednesday, already making it the 10th biggest selling film of 2012.

“Twilight,” starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, has totaled $ 175.5 million through Wednesday in the U.S. and Canada, according to the Hollywood.com unofficial tally. It was released by Lionsgate Entertainment.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rosenthal: Big Ten getting too big for its own good?

There's a lesson the empire builders at Big Ten Conference headquarters in Park Ridge would do well to heed if they can be convinced to stop peering out to the distant horizon:

Growth through acquisition is fraught with peril.

"In the business world you acquire new companies and you have to deal with different corporate cultures, different priorities and so forth," Robert Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates LLC, an investment firm, said in an interview. "Merging them is often very messy and often fails. Here you're merging two teams into an existing conference and it creates risks. … Even college football teams have different cultures, different ways of thinking about how to win and different standards."

There undoubtedly was a logic behind each acquisition as the old Sears sought to expand and diversify its corporate profile. By the time the Chicago-area company's portfolio grew to include Allstate insurance, Coldwell Banker real estate and Dean Witter Reynolds stock brokerage, it was clear the increase in size was in no way matched by an increase in strength.

Rather than an all-powerful Colossus astride many sectors at once, it was reduced to an unfocused blob, bereft of identity, covering plenty of ground but hardly standing tall. Years after shedding its far-flung holdings, Sears has yet to regain its muscle, mojo or market share.

"It's hard to find a better example of a company that lost its mission and focus in the quest for growth," Arnott said.

"(Growth) may be partly a defensive move. It may be ego driven. In the corporate arena, you certainly see that in spades," he said. "When growth is through acquisition, you have to figure out what the real motivation is. Is it synergy, the most overused word in the finance community, or is it ego?"

Adding the University of Maryland and New Jersey's Rutgers University in 2014 will push the Big Ten to 14 schools and far beyond the Midwestern territory for which it's known. But doing so may not achieve what its backers envision.

Rather than spread the conference's brand, it may merely dilute it. The fit may be corrosive, not cohesive.

There is a school of thought that this is but the latest evidence that the Big Ten is not about athletics, academics or even the Midwest. Instead, it is just a television network, the schools content providers and student-athletes talent.

As it is, the overall TV payout is said to give each of the 12 current Big Ten schools about $21 million per year. They point to the Big Ten's lucrative deals with ESPN and its own eponymous cable network, a partnership with News Corp. They note that public schools Rutgers and Maryland are near enough to New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to drive a better bargain with cable carriers.

To Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, a New Jersey native, the addition is more the result of a paradigm shift that has redrawn the college sports map over the past decade. Some conferences splinter. Others seize new turf. The result: Idaho's Boise State football team is poised to join the Big East Conference next year.

"Institutions that get together for academics or athletics have got to be cognizant that they are competing for students, they are competing for student athletes, they are competing for research dollars," Delany told reporters.

"When you see a Southern conference in the Midwest or you see a Southern conference in the Plains states or whether you see other conferences in the Midwest or Northeast, it impacts your recruitment. ... It impacts everything you do," he said. "At a certain point you get to a tipping point. The paradigm has shifted, and you decide on a strategy to basically position yourself for the next decade or half-century."

Big has always meant more than 10 in the Big Ten, an intercollegiate entity formed by seven Midwestern universities that now boasts 12 with the bookends of Penn State and Nebraska added in 1990 and last year, respectively. Last week's announcement of adding schools 13 and 14 was just a reminder that the conference has only had 10 member schools for 70 of its 116 years and won't again for the foreseeable future.

Rutgers President Robert Barchi said his school looked "forward as much to the collaboration and interaction we're going to have as institutions as we do to what I know will be really outstanding competition on our field of play."

But make no mistake, the Big Ten was born out of sports, specifically football. A seven-school 1896 meeting at Chicago's Palmer House had Northwestern among those still stinging from a scathing Harper's Weekly critique of college sports abuses, the Tribune reported at the time.

A prohibition on allowing scholarship and fellowship students to compete was shot down. But "a move towards the coordination of Faculty committees" in terms of standards and enforcement passed and the precursor to the Big Ten was born.

Along the way, the conference has added member schools and come to recognize that the Big Ten's image has much to say about how those institutions are perceived. Scandals already are no stranger to the Big Ten. But whether you play in a stadium or on Wall Street, the bigger one gets, the bigger target one becomes.

"Whoever's biggest draws scrutiny," said Arnott, co-author of a research paper, "The Winners Curse: Too Big to Succeed." "That means politicians, regulators, the general public generally don't root for the biggest. They look to take them down a notch, so it's harder to succeed as the largest. It's also harder to move the dial and move from success to success as you get really big."

Everyone talks about becoming too big to fail, but there's also too big to scale, companies that are unable to capitalize on the efficiencies of their increased size ostensibly because they are so big that they cannot be managed adequately.

"People talk about economies of scale. There are also vast diseconomies of scale, mostly in bureaucracies," Arnott said. "The more people you have involved, the more people you have who feel they have to have their views reflected in whatever's done. So you wind up with innovation by committee."

That's deadly. That's why companies break up, citing the need to get smaller so they can grow.

"If you break up companies into operating entities that are more nimble," Arnott said, "the opportunities to grow are no longer hamstrung by centralized bureaucracies that have to pursue synergies that don't exist."

Size matters in all fields of play. Sometimes smaller is better.

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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HP says products may have been sold to Syria by others

(Reuters) – Hewlett Packard Co said in a letter made public on Friday that its products could have been delivered to Syria through resellers or distributors, but the world’s largest PC maker affirmed it did not sell directly to the country.

The letter was a response to a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission‘s Office of Global Security Risk that asked whether HP’s products were sold in countries where they would be subject to U.S. sanctions.

“We are aware of November 2011 news reports that your equipment was installed by the Italian company, Area SpA, in Syria as part of a nationwide surveillance and tracking system designed to monitor people in that country,” the SEC wrote in its request.

“Please describe to us the nature, duration, and extent of your past, current, and anticipated contacts with Syria and Iran, whether through subsidiaries, distributors, resellers, vendors, retailers, or other direct or indirect arrangements.”

In a letter dated October 9, HP said it had not authorized the sale of products to Syria.

Instead, HP said the Italian surveillance company had likely obtained its products from an HP partner that was unaware of their ultimate destination.

In another October 9 letter to the agency, HP said it ended its contract with Area SpA in April.

Calls to HP seeking further comment were unanswered as were calls to Area SpA.

HP’s overseas subsidiaries ended sales of printers and related supplies to third-party distributors and resellers with customers in Iran in early 2009, the company wrote.

But because its products are often sold by others through indirect channels without its knowledge or consent “it is always possible that products may be diverted to Iran or Syria after being sold to channel partners, such as distributors and resellers,” HP said.

Reuters has documented how banned computer equipment from U.S. companies has made its way to Iran’s largest telecommunications company through China-based ZTE.

Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc has since cut its ties to ZTE.

HP said in both letters that it would continue to work with ZTE, but it had conducted an internal investigation relating to an alleged sale of its products to MTN Irancell, Iran’s second largest mobile carrier.

The company was also asked about EDS – an IT outsourcing company that HP bought in 2008 – and any activity in Iran, Syria and Sudan.

HP said it had the same policy regarding Sudan as it did on sales to Iran or Syria.

HP is eager to avoid more negative publicity after surprising the market on Tuesday with an $ 8.8 billion write-down on its $ 11.1 billion acquisition of software group Autonomy, accusing the British company of improper accounting to inflate sales.

Autonomy has denied any wrongdoing.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske in New York. Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Andre Grenon)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Cops: Good Samaritans help capture purse-snatcher

Bargain-hungry shoppers who flock downtown to take advantage of Black Friday sales could seem like easy targets for thieves.

But amid the throngs near the Magnificent Mile on Friday, three bystanders helped a crime victim when they chased a parolee accused of snatching a woman’s purse and then trapped him in the back seat of a cab on Michigan Avenue until police arrived.

One of the Good Samaritans, Mike Hochhauser, 31, said he didn’t hesitate to chase Richard D. Mendoza, 31, once he stepped out of his building and allegedly saw Mendoza stomping on a woman while trying to steal her purse.

“Honestly, I just started running after him, thinking, ‘I’m not going to let this guy get away with this. There’s no way I’m going to let that happen to somebody,’” Hochhauser said.

Mendoza probably would have gotten away if not for the efforts of Hochhauser and the other two people who chased him, said Police Officer Patrick Bryant, who helped arrest Mendoza.

“We were just amazed,” Bryant said. “I would definitely not recommend everybody do that, but if more citizens got involved as they did, there would be a lot less crime in the city.”

The victim, a 44-year-old Chicago resident, was walking on East Erie Street near North Wabash Avenue when Mendoza allegedly attacked, kicking and punching her before stealing her purse, police said.

Only two of the people who chased Mendoza saw the attack, but all three said they heard the victim’s screams.

Angela Deleon, who works for a valet parking company nearby, said she heard the woman yell and saw Hochhauser chasing Mendoza. Deleon, 38, joined in the pursuit, calling 911 to give a description of Mendoza before returning to the victim, who was still lying on the ground, conscious but crying. Deleon said she didn’t hesitate to chase Mendoza and call police.

“I’ve got a mom. I’ve got sisters,” she said. “And I would like for somebody else to do the same if that ever happens (to them).”

Meanwhile, Kris Frieden, a tourist from suburban Indianapolis, was riding in his minivan with his wife when he heard a “blood-curdling scream” and saw Mendoza running toward Michigan Avenue, followed by Hochhauser. Frieden, 44, hopped out and ran after them. The three darted across Michigan Avenue, dodging cars that had a green light, he said.

Frieden said he and Hochhauser briefly lost Mendoza when he ducked into an alley, but then saw him a few moments later as he ran back toward Michigan Avenue.

Mendoza hopped in a cab, but Frieden and Hochhauser blocked the rear passenger doors and yelled at the driver to stay put, they said. Police arrived a few moments later and arrested Mendoza.

“It was perfect,” said Hochhauser. “When he got in the cab, it was great because it was almost like a mini jail cell. He gets in there, we close both sides of the doors so he can’t get out.”

Mendoza, of the 1600 block of North Talman Avenue, was charged with strong-arm robbery and battery, police said. He has 14 prior arrests and four convictions, police said — one for armed robbery, one for strong-arm robbery and two for residential burglaries.
Mendoza is on parole and was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet when he was arrested, police said.

The victim was treated and released from Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Frieden, who was spending the weekend in the city with his five children, had a simple for reason for chasing down Mendoza.

“I guess it’s just the golden rule,” he said. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

rhaggerty@tribune.com

csadovi@tribune.com

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Marc Anthony comes to aid of Dominican orphanage

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Singer Marc Anthony is coming to the aid of an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

A foundation run by Anthony with music and sports producer Henry Cardenas plans to build a new residence hall, classrooms and a baseball field for the Children of Christ orphanage in the eastern city of La Romana. Anthony attended the groundbreaking ceremony Friday with his model girlfriend Shannon de Lima.

Children of Christ Foundation Director Sonia Hane said Anthony visited the orphanage previously and decided to help. His Maestro Cares Foundation raised $ 200,000 for the expansion on land donated by a sugar company. The orphanage was founded in 1996 for children who were abused or abandoned or whose parents were unable to care for them.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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