With record highs in sight, stocks face roadblocks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - If Wall Street needs to climb a wall of worry, it will have plenty of opportunity next week.


Major U.S. stock indexes will make another attempt at reaching all-time records, but the fitful pace that has dominated trading is likely to continue. Next Friday's unemployment report and the hefty spending cuts that look like they about to take effect will be at the forefront.


The importance of whether equities can reach and sustain those highs is more than Wall Street's usual fixation on numbers with psychological significance. Breaking through to uncharted territory is seen as a test of investors' faith in the rally.


"It's very significant," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.


"The thinking is, there's just not enough there for an extended bull run," he said. "If we do break through (record highs), then maybe the charts and price action are telling us there's something better ahead."


Flare-ups in the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis and next Friday's report on the U.S. labor market could jostle the market, though U.S. job indicators have generally been trending in a positive direction.


Small- and mid-cap stocks hit lifetime highs in February. Now the Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> and the S&P 500 <.spx> are racing each other to the top. The Dow, made up of 30 stocks, is about 75 points - less than 1 percent - away from its record close of 14,164.53, which it hit on October 9, 2007. The broader S&P is still 3 percent away from its closing high of 1,565.15, also reached on October 9, 2007.


The advantage may be in the Dow's court. So far in 2013, it has gained 7.5 percent, beating the S&P 500 by about 1 percent.


THE RALLY AND THE REALITY CHECK


The Dow's relative strength owes much to its unique make-up and calculation, as well as to investors' recent preference for buying value stocks likely to generate steady reliable gains, rather than growth stocks.


But the more defensive stance illustrates how stock buyers are getting concerned about this year's rally. While investors don't want to miss out on gains, they're picking up companies that are less likely to decline as much as high-flying names - if a market correction comes.


The Russell Value Index <.rav> is up 7.6 percent for the year so far, outpacing the Russell Growth Index's <.rag> 5.7 percent rise. Within the realm of the S&P 500, the consumer staples sector led the market in February, gaining 3.1 percent.


There is some concern that growth-oriented names are being eclipsed by defensive bets, said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati.


"This isn't a be-all and end-all sell signal by any means, but we would feel much more comfortable if some of the more aggressive areas, like technology and small caps, would start to gain some leadership here," Detrick said.


Signs that investors are becoming concerned about the rally's pace is evident in the options market, where the ratio of put activity to call activity has recently shifted in favor of puts, which represent expectations for a stock to fall.


"We are seeing some put hedging in the financials, building up for the past month," said Henry Schwartz, president of options analytics firm Trade Alert in New York.


The put-to-call ratio representing an aggregate of about 562 financial stocks is 1:1, when normally, calls should be outnumbering puts.


Investors have no shortage of reasons to crave the relative safety of blue chips and defensive stocks. Although markets have mostly looked past uncertainty over Washington's plans to cut the deficit, fiscal policy negotiations still pose a risk to equities.


The $85 billion in spending cuts set to begin on Friday is expected to slow economic growth this year if policymakers do not reach a new deal. Markets so far have held firm despite the wrangling in Washington, but tangible economic effects could pinch stock prices going forward.


The International Monetary Fund warned that full implementation of the cuts would probably take at least 0.5 percentage point off U.S. growth this year.


EASY MONEY AND TEPID HIRING


Investors will also take in a round of economic data at a time when concerns are percolating that the market is being pushed up less by fundamentals and more by loose monetary policy around the world.


The main economic event will be Friday's non-farm payrolls report for February. The U.S. economy is expected to have added 160,000 jobs last month, only a tad higher than in January, in a sign the labor market is healing at a slow pace. The U.S. unemployment rate is forecast to hold steady at 7.9 percent.


While lackluster data has been a catalyst in the past for stock market gains as investors bet it would ensure continued stimulus from the Federal Reserve, that sentiment may be wearing thin.


Markets stumbled last week following worries that the Fed might wind down its quantitative easing program sooner than expected.


"It shows the underpinning of the market is being driven at this point by monetary policy," Hellwig said.


With investors questioning what is behind the rally, it will make a run to record highs even more significant, Hellwig added.


"There's smart people that are in the bull camp and the bear camp and the muddle-through camp," Hellwig said. "The fact that you can statistically, using historical evidence, make a case for going higher, lower, or staying the same makes this number very important this time around."


(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Comments or questions on this column can be emailed to: leah.schnurr(at)thomsonreuters.com)


(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Additional reporting by Doris Frankel in Chicago; Editing by Jan Paschal)



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Venezuela rejects "absurd" rumors over Chavez's death


CARACAS (Reuters) - Senior aides and relatives of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez countered on Friday a crescendo of rumors that the socialist president may be dead from cancer, saying he was still battling for his life.


"There he is, continuing his fight, his battle, and we are sure of victory!" his older brother Adan Chavez, the governor of Barinas state, told cheering supporters.


Speculation about Chavez, 58, hit fever pitch this week, fed in part by assertions from Panama's former ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Guillermo Cochez, that the Venezuelan leader had died.


"The launching of absurd and bizarre rumors by the right wing simply discredits them and isolates them further from the people," said Chavez's son-in-law Jorge Arreaza, adding that the president was "calm" in a hospital with his family and doctors.


Apart from one set of photos showing Chavez lying in a Havana hospital bed, he has not been seen nor heard from in public since December 11 surgery in Cuba, his fourth operation.


The president made a surprise pre-dawn return to a military hospital in Caracas last week, with none of the fanfare that had accompanied his previous homecomings after treatment.


Vice President Nicolas Maduro, the OPEC nation's de facto leader and Chavez's preferred successor, urged Venezuelans to stay calm, patient and respectful of the president's state.


"The treatments Commander Chavez is receiving are tough, but he is stronger than them," Maduro said after a Catholic Mass in Chavez's honor at a chapel in the hospital.


"He's in good spirits, battling ... . Leave him in peace. He deserves respect for his treatments, because he's a man who has given everything for our fatherland."


Opposition politicians accuse the government of being deceitful about Chavez's condition, and compare the secrecy over his medical details with the transparency shown by other Latin American leaders who have suffered cancer.


"Maduro has lied repeatedly to the president's supporters and to Venezuelans about his real situation," opposition leader Henrique Capriles said on Friday. "Let's see how they explain to the nation in coming days all the lies they have told."


Panamanian diplomat Cochez said Chavez's relatives had switched off his life support several days ago after he had been in a vegetative state since the end of December. He challenged officials to prove him wrong by showing the president in public.


HIGH STAKES


Across the South American nation of 29 million people, Venezuelans are extremely anxious, speculating almost non-stop about Chavez's condition and wondering what the potential end of his 14-year rule might mean for them.


Adding to the tension, several dozen opposition-supporting students have chained themselves together in a Caracas street, demanding to see the president and arguing that Maduro has no right to rule because he was not elected.


With the country on edge, the relatively routine shooting by police of a murder suspect during a gun battle in downtown Caracas on Friday forced Information Minister Ernesto Villegas to take to Twitter to issue reassurances.


"(Some people) took advantage of the episode to try to sow panic in the city center," he said. "The situation is calm."


Should Chavez die or step down, a vote would be held within 30 days, probably pitting Maduro against Capriles for leadership of the country which boasts the world's biggest oil reserves.


The stakes are high for the region, too. Chavez has been the most vocal critic of Washington in Latin America and financed hefty aid programs for leftist governments from Cuba to Bolivia.


Amid the flurry of rumors, Spain's ABC newspaper said on Friday that Chavez had been taken to a presidential retreat on La Orchila island in the Caribbean off Venezuela's coast with his closest family to face the "final stages" of his cancer.


Venezuelan officials have frequently lambasted ABC as being part of an "ultra-right" conspiracy spreading lies about Chavez.


"The bourgeoisie harass him and they assault him constantly," added Maduro, singling out ABC and Colombia's Caracol radio for particular criticism.


"Stop the attacks on the commander! Stop the rumors, stop trying to create instability!"


In the latest of a series of short updates on Chavez's health, the government said last week that his breathing difficulties had worsened, and he was using a tracheal tube.


Officials say he suffered a severe respiratory infection following the six-hour operation he had in December for a cancer that was first detected in his pelvic region in June 2011.


Chavez has never said what type of cancer he has.


Remarkably, two opinion polls this week showed that a majority of Venezuelans - 60 percent in one survey, 57 percent in another - believe he will be cured.


Chavez's millions of passionate supporters, who love his down-to-earth style and heavy spending of oil revenue on welfare policies, are struggling to imagine Venezuela without him.


"Of course, he's coming back, back to government," said Jose Urbina, 47, though he was also buying photos of Chavez at a pro-government rally as mementoes. "I want to remember him. I want to put them in my house."


(Additional reporting by Girish Gupta; Editing by Kieran Murray and Xavier Briand)



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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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Stock index futures signal mixed start to March

LONDON (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a mixed open on Wall Street on Friday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.3 percent, while Dow Jones and Nasdaq 100 futures were broadly flat at 0956 GMT.


Overnight equity market performance has been mixed, with Tokyo shares edging higher <.n225>, while European bourses were hit by economic growth concerns <.fteu3>.


China's factory growth cooled to multi-month lows in February as domestic demand dipped, weighing on firms already hit by slack foreign sales and underlining the patchiness of the country's economic recovery.


Euro zone manufacturing activity appeared no closer to recovery last month, when a dire performance in France offset a return to growth in Germany, PMI data showed. British manufacturing, meanwhile, shrank unexpectedly.


Absent a highly unlikely last-ditch deal, the $85 billion in cuts across federal government agencies start on Friday after the White House and Republicans failed to reach a deal. The measures are expected to shave at least 0.5 percent off U.S. economic growth.


Groupon Inc fired Andrew Mason as chief executive officer on Thursday, sending its shares up as much as 8 percent in after-hours trade, ousting a co-founder who failed to stop a gradual erosion of its main daily deals business.


Boeing Co will cut hundreds of jobs at a South Carolina plant that makes 787 Dreamliners over the course of this year, but the move has nothing to do with the recent grounding of the troubled jetliner, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.


U.S. government-run mortgage finance provider Freddie Mac earned $11.0 billion last year, the first annual increase in its net income since 2006, the year the nation's housing bubble peaked.


Bank of America Corp BAC.N said in a securities filing on Thursday that the New York State Attorney General was investigating the bank over its purchase, securitization and underwriting of home loans.


Gap Inc's fourth-quarter profit beat estimates, helped by higher comparable store sales in North America and the apparel retailer raised its dividend for this year by 20 percent to 60 cents.


Salesforce.com Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly sales of $835 million on Thursday, as its cloud-based services continued to sell well despite an uncertain macroeconomic picture. Its shares gained 4.9 percent after hours to $177.50.


Paulson & Co, the largest shareholder of MetroPCS Communications Inc , said it will vote against the wireless service provider's proposed merger with T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG , unless the companies sweeten the deal.


Best Buy Co ended talks with founder Richard Schulze over a deal in which he and a group of buyout firms were proposing to take a minority stake in the firm in exchange for three seats on the board, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter.


Friday's bumper data calendar features PCE inflation data for January alongside the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment index and the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for February.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 20.88 points, or 0.15 percent, to 14,054.49 on Thursday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 1.31 points, or 0.09 percent, to 1,514.68. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> fell 2.07 points, or 0.07 percent, to end at 3,160.19.


(Reporting by Francesco Canepa and Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Catherine Evans)



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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 Prepares for Parenthood with a 'Low-Key' N.Y.C Night















UPDATED
03/01/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

Originally published 03/01/2013 at 06:00 AM EST



Josh Duhamel might be ready to take on daddy duties, but that doesn't mean he's forgotten how to work a red carpet.

The Safe Haven actor stepped out on Tuesday to celebrate his Moves magazine cover at TOY Restaurant in New York City.

After "glowing" while speaking to photographers, Duhamel had a low-key evening, an onlooker tells PEOPLE. "He sat in a corner of the restaurant and enjoyed dinner."

At his table: several sushi rolls, shrimp toast cigars, tuna toro and mahogany chicken.

Duhamel's wife Fergie announced the couple is expecting their first child on Twitter last month.


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Stock index futures point to slightly higher open

LONDON (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a slightly higher open on Wall Street on Thursday.


Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones rose 0.2 percent, while contracts on the Nasdaq 100 were up 0.1 percent at 0852 GMT.


European shares also rose as investors took heart from fresh signs that central banks would continue steps to support the world's economy.


Revised U.S. GDP data at 1330 GMT is expected to show the U.S. economy grew by 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter, rather than a 0.1 percent contraction as initially estimated.


Weekly new jobless claims figures, due at the same time, are seen slowing to 360,000 from 362,000 in the previous seven days.


February's Chicago PMI, due out at 1445 GMT, is expected to come in at 54.3, from 55.6 last month.


Liberty Media Corp , which holds a large stake in Barnes & Noble, said on Wednesday it had the power to block a sale of Barnes & Nobles' retail stores and it is waiting to see whether the bookseller's chairman Leonard Riggio will make an offer.


J.C. Penney Co Inc on Wednesday reported its sharpest sales drop since announcing a grand transformation plan 13 months ago, sending shares in the department store operator's shares down 14.5 percent in after hours trading.


Groupon Inc lost a quarter of its market value in after hours trading on Wednesday after the company revealed it began to take a smaller cut of revenue on daily deals during the holidays, sacrificing revenue and profits to attract and keep merchants.


Business software provider Salesforce.com and clothes retailer Gap are due to report results after the market close.


U.S. authorities investigating possible insider trading in ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co are studying a derivatives bet that was routed through London, the New York Times reported, citing two people briefed on the matter.


Bond insurer MBIA Inc said there was a significant risk that its structured finance insurance unit would be put into liquidation or rehabilitation by its New York regulator if it was unable to settle its claims with Bank of America .


Generic drugmaker Mylan Inc said it will buy a unit of India's Strides Arcolab Ltd for $1.6 billion to expand its presence in the fast-growing injectable drugs market.


The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it has won a $1 billion tax shelter case against Dow Chemical Co that involved a Swiss partnership, Wall Street financial giant Goldman Sachs and international law firm King & Spalding.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 176.32 points, or 1.27 percent, at 14,076.45 on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 19.07 points, or 1.27 percent, at 1,516.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 32.61 points, or 1.04 percent, at 3,162.26.


(Reporting by Francesco Canepa; Editing by Alison Williams)



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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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