Massive PC, Console Game Discounts Ring in Holiday Season

Black Friday, the day right after Thanksgiving, is normally the day associated with electronics sales. And while the proponents of “Cyber Monday” and “Small Business Saturday” have tried to get in on the action, it’s still common knowledge that Thanksgiving weekend is the best time to upgrade your PC or console game arsenal. Right?

Not according to online game retailers. Discounts of up to 80 percent off a game’s retail price are taking place across the web, especially in online stores which offer games in the form of digital downloads (which cost nothing to make extra copies of). Here’s a look at just a few of the sales going on right now, for Windows and Linux PCs, Macs, game consoles, and mobile devices.

Steam (Windows, Linux, Mac)

The annual Steam Holiday Sale is under way, and it’s not just blowing hot air. Complete collections of every Steam game from publishers including Valve are on sale for around the price of one retail title, and individual games can be bought from each bundle for only a few dollars. Each day new sales are available, and most of them are massive, percentage-wise. They’re tied to a personal Steam account (which will always be linked to the original name they were created with), but can be bought as gifts for others.

Also check out: Amazon.com’s PC download sales, many of which are fulfilled through Steam and are discounted about as much. Amazon’s lineup also includes many casual games, of the “$ 10 store discount rack” variety.

Humble Indie Bundle 7 (Windows, Linux, Mac)

The Humble Bundle crew has been offering cross-platform, name-your-own-price bundles of indie games for several years now, and their seventh numbered offering is timed right for the holiday season. Bundles are giftable, the games can be played on Steam, and you can choose how much of your purchase price goes to game developers and how much goes to select charities.

PlayStation Network (PS3, PSP, Vita)

Console gamers aren’t being left out. The PSN Holiday Essentials sale is putting “more than 40 titles” on sale over the next three weeks, with a new selection available every week and even lower prices available to PlayStation Plus members.

Also check out: The Xbox Live Countdown to 2013 sale, with a “Daily Deal” every day until the end of the year.

Other sales

Game publishers SEGA and Square-Enix are discounting many of their most popular titles. SEGA’s holiday sale includes PSN, Xbox Live, Android and iOS titles, with most of its mobile games selling for $ 0.99. Meanwhile, the Square-Enix Winter of Mobile sale page lists huge discounts on iPhone and iPad games, while Android Police blogger Jeremiah Rice has put together a list of which Square-Enix Android games are on sale.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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This bus' next stop: doing good

Maybe you want to help others. Maybe you long to lend a hand. But you're not sure where and you're not sure how and you don't know who to call.

You could ask around. Or you could book a seat on the Do Good Bus.

You will pay $25. You will get a box lunch. You will put yourself in the hands of a stranger.

CITY BEAT: Life in the Southland

When the bus takes off, you will not know where you are going — only that when you get there, you will be put to work.

You find yourself on this weekday afternoon one of an eclectic group, gathered a little shyly on an East Hollywood curb.

There's a Yelp marketer, a grad student, an actor, a novelist, a Manhattan Beach mother with her son and daughter, who just got home from prep school and college.

You see a school bus pull up. You step on board. It feels nostalgic, like day camp or a field trip.

Rebecca Pontius welcomes you, wearing jeans and sneakers and a black fleece vest. She looks like the kind of person who would plunge her hands deep into dirt, who wouldn't be afraid of the worms, who could lead you boldly.

The bus takes off, and Pontius stands toward the front, sure-footed. She founded the Do Good Bus, she tells you, to 1) build awareness, 2) build community, 3) encourage continued engagement.

Oh, she says, and to 3a) have fun. Hence the element of mystery, the faux holly branches that decorate some of the rows of seats, the white felt reindeer antlers she's wearing on her head.

She smiles a wide, toothy smile that makes you automatically reciprocate.

So you go along when she asks you to play get-to-know-you games. Even though you're embarrassed, you don't object when she assigns you one of the 12 days of Christmas to sing and act out when it's your turn.

Everyone's singing and laughing as the bus fits-and-starts down the freeway.

Maids-a-milking, geese-a-laying, bus-a-exiting somewhere in South Los Angeles.

It stops outside a boxy blue building — the Challengers Boys and Girls Club — where, finally, Pontius tells you you'll be helping children in foster care build the bicycles that will be their Christmas gifts.

She did it last year, she says. It was great. And she's brought along some powder that turns into fake snow, which the kids will like.

You step inside a large gym, where nothing proceeds quite as expected.

It's the holiday season, so way too many volunteers have shown up. The singer Ne-Yo is coming to lead a toy giveaway. There's a whole roomful of presents the children can choose from, including pre-assembled bikes — which means no bikes will need to be built.

You stand and you sit and you wait. Then the kids come. You try to help where you can — making sure they get in the right lines, handing out raffle tickets.

You see their joy at getting gifts, which is nice. You're in a place you might not ordinarily be, which is interesting. And as the children head out, you offer them snow. You put the powder in their cupped hands. You add water. The white stuff grows and begins to look real. It's even cold.

It makes them go wide-eyed. It makes them laugh. And you feel such moments of simple happiness are something.

It's chilly as you wait to get back on the bus. You get in a group hug with your fellow bus riders, who seem like old friends.

On the trip back in the dark, Pontius plays Christmas music. She serves you eggnog in Mason jars.

And she says she's sorry your help wasn't more needed today.

She promises the January ride will be more hands-on.

Come or don't, she tells you. But whatever you do, find a way to do something.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.

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Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."

Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

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The Neediest Cases: The Daughter of a Sick Woman Falls Prey to a Craigslist Scam

Sitting side by side on their living room sofa, Patricia Morales and her daughter, Katherine, could be any mother-daughter duo. Both have dark hair, dark eyes and welcoming, infectious smiles.

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Patricia Morales, 62, at home in the Bronx. Her treatment for ailments like rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis C led to depression.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$3,375,394

Recorded Wednesday:

182,251

*Total:

$3,557,645

Last year to date:

$3,320,812

*Includes $709,856 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

The Youngest Donors

If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.

But the ties that bind them go beyond their genes, beyond the bodies they were born with.

“It’s called a neck ring. It’s a silver curved barbell, one inch,” Katherine, 20, said as she swept aside her shoulder-length black hair to show the piercing in the back of her neck, a show of solidarity with her mother. She had it done when she was 16. “I wanted to know what it felt like for my mom.”

Her mother then turned around and outlined with her finger two lengthy scars that run down her back.

“I’ve had a lot of physical problems,” Ms. Morales, 62, said. Shaking her head at her daughter’s piercing, she added, “I’ve had rods put in my upper and lower spine, but I could never do that.”

The rods were surgically planted to treat herniated discs, the result of having a cruel combination of osteoporosis, hepatitis C, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis. Ms. Morales contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion she received in 1972 after the birth of her only son, she said.

“I didn’t even know about it until 10 years ago,” she said. “My liver blood count was a little high.”

Since the diagnosis, Ms. Morales, a former schoolteacher, has ridden the arduous highs and lows common to patients with hepatitis C. Her treatments for the disease, which debilitates the liver over time, have included pills and injections that can cause depression. Ms. Morales, a single parent, found an unforgiving salve in alcohol.

“I was depressed; I was totally drunk,” she said. “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

Then, about a year ago, she reached a turning point when visiting her hepatitis C specialist.

“I was 210 pounds,” she said. “The doctor said: ‘You have to stop drinking. You have to lose weight.’ ”

To help combat the depression, her doctor referred her to Jewish Association Serving the Aging, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. She began weekly counseling sessions with a social worker and started taking an antidepressant medication. The federation drew about $600 from the fund in May so that Ms. Morales could buy a mattress.

“I had a horrible bed,” she said. “I felt like I was sleeping on rocks, and with rods in my back, I was waking up every hour.”

After several months of therapy and starting a diet, Ms. Morales was on her way to losing 60 pounds. Today, she weighs 148.

Light was starting to show itself again when the family took an unexpected financial hit this summer. While taking time off from attending Hostos Community College, Katherine Morales looked for work on Craigslist.

“I saw my mom, and I realized I needed to get a job,” Katherine said shyly. “This guy asked me to be his personal assistant, and he asked me to wire money.”

Offering $400 a week, the man requested help transferring almost $2,000 from what he said was his wife’s account. He transferred the money to Katherine’s account, asking her to wire it to a bank account in Malaysia.

Shortly after she wired the money, the bank froze the account, which Katherine and her mother shared. It was then that Katherine realized she had been the victim of a scam. The money transferred into her account turned out to have been stolen, and she was responsible for repaying it.

Katherine went to detectives immediately with more than 20 pages of evidentiary e-mails, but found that she was unable to file a complaint.

“They told me it wasn’t enough,” she said. “These things happen all the time.”

They lost almost $2,000.

Ms. Morales lives on a fixed income. She receives just over $700 a month from Social Security and $200 month in food stamps. The rent for the apartment she shares with her daughter in the Throgs Neck neighborhood of the Bronx is $230, and Ms. Morales has a monthly combined phone and cable bill of $140. Ms. Morales has a son, but he is unable to help the family.

Falling behind on her bills, Ms. Morales turned once again to JASA for help paying a combined phone and cable bill of nearly $200, a grant the agency drew from the Neediest Cases Fund.

“It was terrible, because my intention was to help my mom,” said Katherine, who has since found a part-time job at a vitamin shop.

Ms. Morales has been feeling much better, but she is nervous about an appointment with her hepatitis C specialist in January.

“I’m taking things one day at a time, but I’m looking forward to someone taking care of me,” she said. “I want to live a little bit longer, but not that long.”

“Why are you putting a time limit on it?” Katherine said, jokingly. “Seventy’s the new 20!” she added, nudging her mother in the side. “Remember, the doctor said you wouldn’t live past your late 50s, but you did.”

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Naomi Gleit helps keep Facebook growing

The gig: As senior director of Facebook Inc.'s growth, engagement and mobile team, Naomi Gleit helps grow the social network's 1-billion-plus user base.

Facebook employee No. 29: Few people outside Facebook have heard of Gleit, but she's the second-longest-serving Facebook employee, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Gleit, 29, talked her way into a job at Facebook on July 18, 2005 — her birthday. She was Facebook's 29th employee, coming on board shortly after the company hit 1 million users and before anyone had an inkling of the colossus it would become.

Dogged spirit: Unlike most other early employees who eventually dispersed to seek new fortunes, Gleit says she has no intention of leaving Facebook. She gets that tenacity from her "tiger mom," a computer programmer who ferried her to ballet, piano, karate and Chinese lessons, and her Jewish father, an immigration lawyer who took her to Hebrew school, she said. "I know it sounds completely irrational, but I had no doubt in 2005 that Facebook would be something incredible in the future," she said.

Rival social networks: Her passion for Facebook began before she was hired, when she was a Stanford undergraduate studying science, technology and society, an interdisciplinary major. She wrote her senior thesis on why Facebook beat out rival college social networking site Club Nexus at Stanford. (Club Nexus was started by Stanford student and Turkish software engineer Orkut Büyükkökten, who went on to create Orkut, Google's first attempt at a social network.) Getting in on the ground floor at Facebook made her feel like she was taking part in something bigger than herself, the same feeling she got volunteering for six months in a refugee camp in Botswana, she said.

Growing with Facebook: Gleit helped Facebook push beyond colleges to high schools and eventually to everyone. In late 2007, when the torrid growth pace temporarily cooled, Zuckerberg tapped a team of five to reignite it and asked Gleit to lead product management. It fell to the growth team to identify the obstacles to the company's momentum. In a company ruled by engineers, Gleit, who never studied programming, earned respect with her analytical approach and intuitive understanding of people. "I always believed that growth was the most important thing, the most important way to impact the company," she said. There are now more than 150 people on the team. "It's been an incredible learning experience," she said. "Each year is different."

That magic moment: Those who work closely with Gleit say part of her success early on was her ability to seize on the "magic moment" that makes users fall in love with Facebook. She made it simpler to sign up, and she helped people find friends as soon as they joined. She also helped Facebook spread quickly to new countries by enlisting users to translate the service into more than 80 languages. Gleit helps her team parachute into new markets and traverse less-familiar languages and cultures. It's something that comes from her own passion to see the world and have new experiences. She has taught on a Navajo reservation and lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

One billion users: Around noon Sept. 14, Zuckerberg gathered with Gleit and dozens of employees in front of a big screen as the number of Facebook users crossed 1 billion. "The scale was insane," she said. "But that is not the goal. When Mark talks about his vision for Facebook, he talks about being able to connect everyone in the world to the people that they care about and provide some value for them every single day."

A problem solver: Zuckerberg calls on Gleit for high-profile projects. In May 2010, when Facebook was under siege because of how it was handling users' personal information, he put Gleit in charge of simplifying privacy settings. Last year she worked on a popular feature that lets users subscribe to a News Feed without having to become Facebook friends.

Betting on mobile: Now Gleit is focused on the future: mobile devices and how they can unlock emerging markets. Gleit knew back in 2011 that people would begin to log on to Facebook from mobile devices in greater numbers than from desktops, particularly in the developing world. So she traveled to Tel Aviv to buy Snaptu, which makes software that helps people on low-tech phones access Facebook, and she brought the whole team back to Silicon Valley with her. Now Facebook is surging in popularity on mobile devices in Tokyo and Nairobi, Kenya. "I have always been interested in technology and how it can be used to improve lives," Gleit said.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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RIM shares dive as fee changes catch market off guard

(Reuters) – Shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd dropped 20 percent on Friday on fears that a new fee structure for its high-margin services segment could put pressure on the business that has set the company apart from its competitors.

The shares were still more than 80 percent above the year’s low, which was hit in September. They started to rally in November as investors began to bet that RIM’s long-awaited new BlackBerry 10 phones, to be launched in January, would turn the company around.

The services segment has long been RIM’s most profitable and accounts for about a third of total revenue. Some analysts said there was a risk that the fee changes could endanger its service ecosystem and leave the Canadian company as just another handset maker.

The fee changes, which RIM announced on Thursday after the close, overshadowed stronger-than-expected quarterly results. The company said the new pricing structure would be introduced with the BlackBerry 10 launch, expected on January 30.

RIM said some subscribers would continue to pay for enhanced services such as advanced security. But under the new structure, some other services would account for less revenue, or even none at all.

Chief Executive Thorsten Heins tried to reassure investors in a television interview with CNBC on Friday, saying RIM’s “service revenue isn’t going away”.

He added: “We’re not stopping. We’re not halting. We’re transitioning.”

Since taking over at RIM in January, Heins has focused on shrinking the company and getting it ready to introduce its new BB10 devices, which RIM says will help it claw back ground it has lost to competitors such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

But the news of the new services pricing strategy came as a shock to markets, and some analysts cut their price targets on RIM stock.

RIM will not be able to sustain profitability by relying on its hardware business alone, said National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson, whom Thomson Reuters StarMine has rated the top RIM analyst based on the accuracy of his estimates of the company’s earnings.

Thompson downgraded RIM’s stock to “underperform” from “sector perform” and cut his price target to $ 10 from $ 15.

Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin said the move was likely about stabilizing market share: “At the moment, they need to stem the bleeding.”

He said the tiered pricing might line up better with RIM’s subscriber base as it expands in emerging economies.

RIM’s Nasdaq-listed shares were down 19.8 percent at $ 11.32 on Friday afternoon. The stock was down 19.6 percent to C$ 11.21 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH

The success of the BB10 will be crucial to the future of RIM, which on Thursday posted its first-ever decline in total subscribers. Heins said on CNBC that the company expected to ship millions of the new devices.

He cautioned that this will require heavy investment, which will reduce RIM’s cash position in its fourth and first quarters from $ 2.9 billion in its fiscal third quarter. He said, however, it would not go below $ 2 billion.

Still, doubts remain about whether RIM can pull off the transformation. Needham analyst Charlie Wolf said the BB10 would have to look meaningfully superior to its competitors for RIM to stage a comeback.

Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley said it was highly unlikely that the market would support RIM’s new mobile computing ecosystem, and he remained skeptical about the company’s ability to survive on its own.

“We believe RIM will eventually need to sell the company,” said Walkley, who cut his price target on RIM shares to $ 9 from $ 10.

Baird Equity Research analysts said BB10 faced a daunting uphill battle against products from Apple, as well as those using Google Inc’s Android operating system, and, increasingly, phones with Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 operating system.

Baird maintained its “underperform” rating on the stock, while Paradigm Capital downgraded the shares to “hold” from “buy” on uncertainty around the services revenue model.

“RIM has gone from having one major aspect of uncertainty – BlackBerry 10 adoption – to two, given an uncertain floor on services revenue,” William Blair analyst Anil Doradla said.

RIM will have to discount BB10 devices significantly to maintain demand, Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said.

The BlackBerry, however, still offers the security features that helped it build its reputation with big business and government, a selling point with some key customers.

Credit Suisse maintained its “neutral” rating on the stock, but not because it expected BB10 to be a big success.

“Only the potential for an outright sale of the company or a breakup keeps us at a neutral,” Credit Suisse analysts said.

Separately on Friday, ailing Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia said it had settled its patent dispute with RIM in return for payments. Nokia did not disclose detailed terms, but said the deal included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM. [ID:nL5E8NL22K]

($ 1=$ 0.98 Canadian)

(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore and Allison Martell in Toronto. Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Ted Kerr, Dale Hudson, Janet Guttsman,; Lisa Von Ahn and Peter Galloway)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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State unemployment rate falls to 9.8% even as employers shed jobs

California's unemployment rate hit single-digits in November for the first time in almost four years, thanks in part to a holiday hiring surge by retailers.

The jobless rate fell to 9.8% from 10.1% in October, according to data in an overall jobs report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department.

The drop in the unemployment rate, determined in a survey of households, came even as a separate payroll survey found that employers in the state shed 3,800 jobs.

“The state showed a very significant and encouraging drop in the unemployment rate,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at the Fermanian Business and Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University. “A fall below 10% is welcome news.”

For months, economic forecasts have said the unemployment rate wouldn’t fall to single digits until at least next year.

Both surveys in the report provide a mixed view, though, of what is still a fragile economic recovery in the state.

For instance, the state's labor force -- the number of people who are able to work and either have a job or are looking for one -- grew by 34,100 people in November. That typically indicates that job seekers feel encouraged to resume looking for work again.

“The good news in California was that we saw more people looking for work and more people getting jobs,” Reaser said. “But the bad news was that the nonfarm payroll survey, which is usually the more reliable source, showed a small drop in employment ... and comes as quite a disappointment.”

The payroll survey of employers showed that the biggest drop in jobs -- 11,000 -- came in the education and health services sector. The manufacturing sector lost 8,900 positions. The biggest gains offsetting most losses came in retail, which added 15,900 jobs.

The disparity between the falling unemployment rate and the drop in payroll jobs reflects the fact that the two are derived from different surveys: The unemployment rate is calculated from a survey of a small number of households, while the payroll job data come from a more thorough survey of businesses that report on changes in their monthly payrolls.

Other economists were skeptical of November’s reports, particularly losses reported in the healthcare and professional and business services sectors.

“Over the last year, [these sectors] have been very strong,” said Christopher Thornberg, founding principal at Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles consulting firm. “Why should it turn on a dime?”

Thornberg pointed out that healthcare has been resilient, expanding even through the economic recession.

He said he expects November’s job report to be revised early next year and the loss in payroll jobs will probably be reversed.

“The truth is, [the report] is not as good as what the household survey says, but it’s not as bad as the payroll survey,” Thornberg said. “None of this should be a surprise to us. California’s economy has clearly been gaining strength.”

In recent months, employers in the retail trend industry have beefed up payrolls as the 2012 holiday shopping season shapes up to be the strongest in years. The trade, transportation and utilities sector notched the largest over-the-month increase, as a group adding 12,900 jobs. The sector includes retail jobs.

The next-largest gain was in leisure and hospitality, which added 3,300 jobs. Construction, aided by a housing recovery that is slowly unfolding, notched a gain of 1,700 jobs last month.

Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University, called the report a “mixed bag.”

“Overall, yes, unemployment went down,” Adibi said. “Some people will see that as good news, but the question will be: Is this downtick going to be sustainable?”

Adibi said that even though the job figures are adjusted for seasonal hiring, he predicted that much of the retail hiring that has occurred in recent months will be temporary. Furthermore, losses in professional and business services suggest that firms are holding out on hiring until the so-called fiscal cliff crisis is resolved.

The fiscal cliff refers to the tax hikes and government spending cuts set to kick in Jan. 2 if Congress and the White House don't reach a deal to resolve those issues.

Economists have said that if the fiscal cliff is not avoided, the country will be pushed back into recession.

“If firms are worried about a significant slowdown, they’re not going to commit themselves to hiring people,” Adibi said.

Over the year, California has added 268,600 nonfarm jobs, an annualized growth rate of 1.9%. That's a faster pace than the nation as a whole, which has grown at an annual rate of about 1.4%.

The Golden State’s unemployment rate, still the third-highest in the nation, has fallen 1.5 percentage points since November 2011.

The state also reported that October’s job gains were revised slightly downward to 38,800 jobs net new jobs instead of the 45,800 originally reported last month.

ALSO:

In defense-heavy San Diego, 'fiscal cliff' threat hits home

Third-quarter GDP growth revised higher but weakness looms 

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

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

Follow Ricardo Lopez on Twitter.

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PSY's 'Gangnam Style' reaches 1B views on YouTube

NEW YORK (AP) — Viral star PSY has reached a new milestone on YouTube.

The South Korean rapper's video for "Gangnam Style" has reached 1 billion views, according to YouTube's own counter. It's the first time any clip has surpassed that mark on the streaming service owned by Google Inc.

It shows the enduring popularity of the self-deprecating video that features Park Jae-sang's giddy up-style dance moves. The video has been available on YouTube since July 15, averaging more than 200 million views per month.

Justin Bieber's video for "Baby" held the previous YouTube record at more than 800 million views.

PSY wasn't just popular on YouTube, either. Earlier this month Google announced "Gangnam Style" was the second highest trending search of 2012 behind Whitney Houston, who passed away in February.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

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Herbalife to answer 'pyramid scheme' claim; stock slide continues

With its three-day stock plunge accelerating Friday, Herbalife Ltd. said it will defend itself against a hedge fund manager’s accusations that the business is a “pyramid scheme” – but the company said its response won't come until next month.

The Los Angeles maker of nutritional products said Friday that it will wait until the week of Jan. 7 to host an event for analysts at which it will respond to the “distorted, outdated and inaccurate information” alleged by moneyman Bill Ackman.

Ackman, who founded Pershing Square Capital Management, says Herbalife rewards its sales representatives more for recruiting distributors than for selling products. The compensation structure, he says, leaves millions of small-scale sellers making next to nothing while an elite few rake in huge paydays.

Ackman called Herbalife “the best-managed pyramid scheme in the history of the world” – allegations he spelled out in a multimedia presentation delivered Thursday to a full house in New York and streamed live online.

Herbalife's stock price has plummeted since Ackman indicated Wednesday that he is “shorting” the stock. In a short sale, an investor borrows stock and immediately sells it, intending to eventually return the shares to the original owner after buying them back at a lower price.

The company's shares were trading late in trading day Friday at about $27 a share, down 36% from their closing price Tuesday.

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U.S. says UBS was motivated by 'sheer greed' in Libor rigging

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