Samsung files redacted copy of Apple-HTC deal in U.S. court

(Reuters) – Lawyers for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd filed a redacted copy of a 10-year patent licensing agreement between Apple Inc and Taiwan’s HTC Corp in a U.S. court late on Wednesday following a judge’s order.

The Korean electronics company had earlier filed a motion to compel Apple — with which it is waging a bitter legal battle over mobile patents across several countries — to reveal details of a settlement that was made with HTC on November 10 but which have been kept under wraps.

The court last month ordered Apple to disclose to Samsung details of the legal settlement that the iPhone maker reached with HTC, including terms of the 10-year patents licensing agreement.

Legal experts say the question of which patents are covered by the Apple-HTC settlement, and licensing details, could be instrumental in Samsung’s efforts to thwart Apple’s subsequent quest for a permanent sales ban on its products.

The redacted copy excludes key specifics such as the royalty payments HTC would have to make to Apple for using some of the U.S. company’s patents. Also excluded are details of some of HTC’s covered products that were part of the licensing deal.

The court order had stated that “only the pricing and royalty terms of license agreements may be sealed.”

However, Samsung lawyers said in the filing that they had withheld a few other details of the licensing agreement as requested by Apple and HTC.

As per the Apple-HTC agreement, the licenses do not include Apple’s design patents, according to a filing made with the District Court of Northern California.

Apple and HTC also agreed to fully paid-up, royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licenses to certain of the other’s patents.

Apple has agreed not to initiate legal action over some of HTC’s covered products. The details of the products were not disclosed.

The copy of the Apple-HTC deal filed with the court “incorporates redactions HTC requested and the redactions Apple requested, which are a subset of HTC’s redactions. Samsung takes no position on whether the redactions are appropriate at this time,” Samsung’s lawyers said in a filing.

If all the Apple patents are included — including the “user experience” patents that the company has previously insisted it would not license — it could undermine the iPhone maker’s efforts to permanently ban the sale of products that copy its technology.

In a previous court filing, Samsung argued that it was “almost certain” that the HTC deal covered some of the patents involved in its own litigation with Apple.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, No. 11-1846.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Editing by Richard Pullin and Ted Kerr)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Snooki, JWOWW host MTV's New Year's Eve show

LOS ANGELES (AP) — New York's Times Square is getting a little bit Jersey for New Year's Eve.

MTV says "Jersey Shore" stars Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jenni "JWOWW" Farley and comedian Jeff Dye will host the network's live New Year's Eve special from Times Square.

"MTV's Club NYE 2013" will also feature performances from Ke$ha, Ne-Yo, Sean Kingston, Rita Ora and others. Ke$ha described the final night of the year as a time when people come together to celebrate "in a sweaty, drunken, dance-fueled orgy of bliss."

Polizzi said she is hoping to use "a leopard bedazzled microphone" for her hosting duties.

The special is set to air at 11 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 31.

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Antismoking Outlays Drop Despite Tobacco Revenue

Faced with tight budgets, states have spent less on tobacco prevention over the past two years than in any period since the national tobacco settlement in 1998, despite record high revenues from the settlement and tobacco taxes, according to a report to be released on Thursday.

Paul J. Richards/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

State antismoking spending is the lowest since the 1998 national tobacco settlement.

States are on track to collect a record $25.7 billion in tobacco taxes and settlement money in the current fiscal year, but they are set to spend less than 2 percent of that on prevention, according to the report, by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which compiles the revenue data annually. The figures come from state appropriations for the fiscal year ending in June.

The settlement awarded states an estimated $246 billion over its first 25 years. It gave states complete discretion over the money, and many use it for programs unrelated to tobacco or to plug budget holes. Public health experts say it lacks a mechanism for ensuring that some portion of the money is set aside for tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

“There weren’t even gums, let alone teeth,” Timothy McAfee, the director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, referring to the allocation of funds for tobacco prevention and cessation in the terms of the settlement.

Spending on tobacco prevention peaked in 2002 at $749 million, 63 percent above the level this year. After six years of declines, spending ticked up again in 2008, only to fall by 36 percent during the recession, the report said.

Tobacco use is the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 Americans every year, according to the C.D.C.

The report did not count federal money for smoking prevention, which Vince Willmore, the vice president for communications at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, estimated to be about $522 million for the past four fiscal years. The sum — about $130 million a year — was not enough to bring spending back to earlier levels.

The $500 million a year that states spend on tobacco prevention is a tiny fraction of the $8 billion a year that tobacco companies spend to market their products, according to a Federal Trade Commission report in September.

Nationally, 19 percent of adults smoke, down from over 40 percent in 1965. But rates remain high for less-educated Americans. Twenty-seven percent of Americans with only a high school diploma smoke, compared with just 8 percent of those with a college degree or higher, according to C.D.C. data from 2010. The highest rate — 34 percent — was among black men who did not graduate from high school.

“Smoking used to be the rich man’s habit,” said Danny McGoldrick, the vice president for research at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, “and now it’s decidedly a poor person’s behavior.”

Aggressive antismoking programs are the main tools that cities and states have to reach the demographic groups in which smoking rates are the highest, making money to finance them even more critical, Mr. McGoldrick said.

The decline in spending comes amid growing certainty among public health officials that antismoking programs, like help lines and counseling, actually work. California went from having a smoking rate above the national average 20 years ago to having the second-lowest rate in the country after modest but consistent spending on programs that help people quit and prevent children from starting, Dr. McAfee said.

An analysis by Washington State, cited in the report, found that it saved $5 in tobacco-related hospitalization costs for every $1 spent during the first 10 years of its program.

Budget cuts have eviscerated some of the most effective tobacco prevention programs, the report said. This year, state financing for North Carolina’s program has been eliminated. Washington State’s program has been cut by about 90 percent in recent years, and for the third year in a row, Ohio has not allocated any state money for what was once a successful program, the report said.

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L.A. and Long Beach ports spring back to life

For eight long days, the usual lunch crowd was missing from Marcos Medina's restaurant.

The eatery, called Isaac's Cafe, is located just a few blocks from the Port of Los Angeles. The longshoremen and others who make their living working at the massive seaport weren't coming through the glass doors of the family-run business.

"I have to be honest — our business runs off of them," said Medina, 42.

But on Wednesday, the port sprang to life.

Medina was back hustling and taking food orders from a long line of customers at the tiny Mexican food joint his parents opened in 1977.

For most of the lunch hour, he barked out meal orders in Spanish to his kitchen staff, who whipped up burritos and tacos to feed hungry dockworkers and others.

Thousands went back to work Wednesday morning after a strike by the 800-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit ended when the union reached a tentative agreement with employers over a new contract. Details of the settlement haven't been released.

News that the stalemate had ended couldn't have been better received by workers and businesses in the harbor area. After all, their livelihoods depend on the freight traffic that moves through the port, even if they never touch a cargo container.

"I'm glad for everybody — the economy, all the workers out here," said Phil Mladinich, a 66-year-old longshoreman from Dana Point returning to work.

But first he stopped to get food.

Clutching a paper bag with a burrito from Medina's restaurant, he said he was glad to see the union and the Harbor Employers Assn. come to an agreement.

The strike by the clerical workers, whose main grievance was over the alleged outsourcing of jobs, had essentially shut down the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as longshoreman honored their picket lines. That crippled the region's vital goods-moving industry — and deprived businesses like Medina's of much-needed customers.

The impasse was broken late Tuesday night just as federal mediators landed in Los Angeles prepared to intervene and lead the talks between the two parties.

Within an hour of the announcement, calls were made to jump-start port operations, starting with the port pilots who guide vessels into dock, said Geraldine Knatz, Port of Los Angeles executive director.

"Everyone was anxious to get back to work," she said, "and everyone jumped on it."

By 7 a.m., just as the first shift of longshoremen was reporting to union halls to be dispatched to jobs, eight cargo vessels were already at berth, ready to be unloaded.

Port officials expect the docks to be especially busy this week as employees work through a backlog of cargo containers stacked in terminals or sitting on ships. At a longshoremen dispatch hall on Terminal Island, dozens of workers were waiting to get their ship assignments.

"This was the busiest day I've ever seen," said Brockie, a 38-year-old San Pedro longshoreman who declined to provide his last name because he was not authorized by the union to speak with a reporter.

He said many of his fellow dockworkers were worried about the strike lasting longer.

"A lot of people live paycheck to paycheck, and struggle with house payments and bills," he said.

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Secure Communities is optional, Harris says

SAN FRANCISCO — California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris told local law enforcement agencies Tuesday that they were not obligated to comply with a federal program whose stated goal is to deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes.

It was Harris' first public assessment of Secure Communities. Under the program launched in 2008, all arrestees' fingerprints are sent to immigration officials, who may ask police and sheriff's departments to hold suspects for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release so they can be transferred to federal custody.

Although the intent may have been to improve public safety, Harris said that a review of data from March through June showed that 28% of those targeted for deportation in California as a result were not criminals. Those numbers, she noted, had changed little since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a year earlier pledged to reform the program to focus on the most serious offenders.

"Secure Communities has not held up to what it aspired to be," Harris said. The law enforcement bulletin she issued Tuesday stated that "immigration detainer requests are not mandatory, and each agency may make its own decision" about whether to honor them.

Harris said her office conducted its analysis after dozens of agencies across the state inquired about whether they were compelled to honor the ICE requests.

Some elected officials and local law enforcement have complained that — in addition to pulling in those found guilty of minor offenses or never convicted — Secure Communities had made illegal immigrants fearful of cooperating with police, even when they were the victims.

Harris, a former prosecutor, echoed that view Tuesday.

"I want that rape victim to be absolutely secure that if she waves down an officer in a car that she will be protected … and not fear that she's waving down an immigration officer," Harris said

While immigrant-rights advocates applauded her announcement, they said it did not go far enough. Allowing police chiefs and sheriffs to craft their own policies without state guidance, they said, could lead to disparate enforcement and enable racial profiling.

This "should eliminate the confusion among some sheriffs about the legal force of detainers," said Reshma Shamasunder, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. "The only logical next step is a strong, statewide standard that limits these burdensome requests."

One attempt by legislators to do just that unraveled in October with Gov. Jerry Brown's veto of the Trust Act. The proposed law by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) would have forbidden police departments to honor federal detainer requests except in cases in which defendants had been convicted of a serious or violent crime.

Ammiano on Monday reintroduced a modified version of the measure. Harris said she had opposed the bill's last iteration for going "too far" and had not seen the current version, but looked forward "to working with the governor and any of our lawmakers to take a look at what we can do to improve consistency."

"It's very difficult to create formulas for law enforcement," she said, noting that local agencies should have the freedom to determine which federal hold requests to honor. For example, she said, an inmate with five previous arrests for forcible rape but no convictions might still be deemed too great a risk for release.

Some law enforcement agencies, including the San Francisco Sheriff's Department and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, have declined to comply with federal requests to hold non-serious offenders. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck followed suit last month, announcing that suspected illegal immigrants arrested in low-level crimes would no longer be turned over for possible deportation.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who opposed the Trust Act, is among those who have argued that compliance with Secure Communities was mandatory.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said that Harris' opinion was welcome guidance that may offer sheriffs more flexibility in how they deal with immigration detainees.

"The attorney general's opinion is going to be taken very seriously," Whitmore said. "The sheriff applauds it and is grateful for it." Baca, he added, has been working with the attorney general and the governor on the issue.

In a written response to Harris' announcement, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency's top priorities were the deportation of criminals, recent border-crossers and repeat violators of immigration law.

"The federal government alone sets these priorities and places detainers on individuals arrested on criminal charges to ensure that dangerous criminal aliens and other priority individuals are not released from prisons and jails into our communities," the statement said.

lee.romney@latimes.com

cindy.chang@latimes.com

Romney reported from San Francisco and Chang from Los Angeles.

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Habla el hombre que definió qué significa ser un hacker

“Soy un hacker.” La frase la pronuncia, sin titubeos, Pekka Himanen, un finlandés de 39 años que publicó, en 2001, La ética del hacker y el espíritu de la era de la información , un libro fundacional en su análisis de lo que significa la tecnología moderna en nuestra sociedad, y la influencia que tendrán los hackers en la sociedad futura.

La entrevista está por comenzar. El punto de encuentro es un hotel céntrico de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, pero en lugar de recibirnos en el salón exclusivo reservado con este fin, el filósofo Himanen (recibido en la universidad de Helsinki a los 20 años) prefiere reunirse en el café del hotel, rodeado de gente y atento a su entorno.

Este hombre, que hoy es profesor en la Universidad de Arte y Diseño de Helsinki, y profesor visitante de la Universidad de Oxford y el Instituto IN3 de Barcelona, y miembro del Instituto Helsinki para la Tecnología de la Información (HIIT) es autor, también, de El Estado del bienestar y la sociedad de la información: el modelo finlandés , que realizó junto con el sociólogo español Manuel Castells.

Himanen llegó a nuestro país invitado por la Universidad Nacional de San Martín, la Universidad Diego Portales y por la Fundación OSDE, pero además de esta convocatoria también lo trajo una de sus grandes pasiones: la investigación. “Estamos estudiando, junto con Manuel Castells, qué tipo de modelo de desarrollo nuevo se necesita después de la crisis mundial. Me refiero a un modelo de desarrollo económico combinado con desarrollo humano. Creo que es fundamental combinar una economía sustentable con el bienestar sustentable”, sostiene al comenzar la entrevista. Según cuenta el filósofo, Argentina es parte de un gran estudio que está llevando a cabo en distintos países de América latina, Asia, África, Estados Unidos y Europa.

¿Usted se considera un hacker?

Sí, claro que sí. Para mí un hacker es alguien creativamente apasionado por lo que hace y quiere hacerlo con otros. No necesariamente tiene que tener que ver con las computadoras, se puede ser hacker del conocimiento o de cualquier otro campo. Es importante decir que utilizo el término hacker en el sentido original del término, que no quiere decir delincuente informático.

¿Y usted es hacker en qué área o con qué especialización?

Yo diría en la filosofía, investigación y quizás en la vida.

¿Cómo es eso?

La etica del hacker es un libro que también habla sobre la filosofía de vida, es decir, uno tiene que preguntarse a sí mismo: ¿cuál es mi pasión creativa? ¿Qué es lo que le da significado a mi vida? Esas son grandes preguntas que todos deberíamos considerar.

Popularmente el término hacker tiene una mala connotación pero según usted explica, es un error. En su libro menciona otro término: cracker ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre ambos?

Hacker quiere decir que la persona es creativamente apasionada por lo que hace, y lo quiere realizar con lo que yo denomino “interacción enriquecedora”, es decir con otras personas. Cracker, en cambio, es el delincuente informático, la persona que ingresa en los sistemas informáticos y esparce virus, entre otros delitos.

¿Por qué, entonces, los hackers son considerados delincuentes?

Todo comenzó en los medios de comunicación, en los inicios del software. Por aquel entonces los medios tomaron la palabra hacker y comenzaron a utilizarla como sinónimo de delincuente informático para hacerlo más atractivo y dar impacto en sus noticias, pero la palabra hacker no tiene nada que ver con la delincuencia informática.

Según su libro los hackers informáticos ponen a disposición gratuita de los demás su creación para que la utilicen, pongan a prueba y la desarrollen. ¿Cómo un hacker se transforma en Bill Gates? En otras palabras, ¿cómo se transforma un hacker en un hombre de negocios?

La ética hacker es una ética de trabajo creativa en la era informática que reemplaza lo que Max Weber describió como “ética de trabajo industrial” pero después depende de cuán abierto es uno en el desarrollo de otras cosas. No necesita ser cerrado para ser un éxito, por ejemplo Linus Torvalds está a favor de la apertura total y también ha tenido mucho éxito. Internet corre en Linux, tres de cada cuatro smartphones en el mundo corren en Linux, porque Android está basado en Linux. Pero más allá de eso no hay contradicciones, porque uno puede tener pasión creativa como empresario. Lo importante es dar suficiente nivel de apertura.

¿Cómo ayudan a la sociedad los hackers y las redes sociales en situaciones de conflicto, injusticia social o cuando no hay libertad de expresión?

En situaciones como la guerra de Kosovo o en la Primavera Árabe -levantamientos populares de países árabes realizados entre 2010 y 2012- la difusión de lo que estaba pasando fue a través de las redes sociales. Y es muy importante tener en cuenta que las redes sociales tienen un impacto en la vida real. Si pensamos en la Primavera Árabe, por ejemplo, algunos de los peores dictadores que nosotros pensamos que nunca dejarían el poder, colapsaron. Y las redes sociales colaboraron mucho en la caída de estos dictadores porque la Primavera Árabe estuvo organizada a través de Internet. También en Europa se produjeron hechos similares. Las redes sociales tuvieron gran protagonismo en el movimiento de “Los Indignados”, que produjeron cambios políticos en España y en Grecia.

¿Le parece que lo que escribió hace más de una década sigue vigente?

Sí. El libro es más actual ahora. Si uno toma, por ejemplo, el capítulo de open source o de código abierto, su utilización ha crecido exponencialmente si tenemos en cuenta que Internet corre en software en código abierto y se diseminan en varios equipos como teléfono, grabadores digitales y televisores. Probablemente uno no se de cuenta que está utilizando código abierto, pero todos lo estamos utilizando. En cuanto al trabajo empresarial, la nueva ética de pasión creativa enriquecedora está impulsando al Silicon Valley.

¿Cómo ve a la sociedad futura?

Creo que la gran pregunta es lo que hoy estamos investigando en el proyecto que estoy realizando, donde nos damos cuenta que el viejo modelo de desarrollo ha llegado a su fin y ahora tenemos que replantear las prácticas grandes en la economía, la sustentabilidad ecológica. Creo que vamos a necesitar del potencial completo de la cultura de la creatividad y hemos de desarrollar esa nueva forma de bienestar sustentable, especialmente la sustentabilidad ecológica. Debemos tener en cuenta que el planeta no tiene problema en cuanto al cambio climático, puede continuar sin nosotros, pero nosotros no podemos continuar sin el planeta.

Por último, ¿qué trata de decirnos con su libro?

Para mí la clave es que todos debemos preguntarnos: ¿cuál es mi pasión creativa, cuál es mi propósito significativo en esta vida?

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Capitalism and socialism wed as words of the year

NEW YORK (AP) — Thanks to the election, socialism and capitalism are forever wed as Merriam-Webster's most looked-up words of 2012.

Traffic for the unlikely pair on the company's website about doubled this year from the year before as the health care debate heated up and discussion intensified over "American capitalism" versus "European socialism," said the editor at large, Peter Sokolowski.

The choice revealed Wednesday was "kind of a no-brainer," he said. The side-by-side interest among political candidates and around kitchen tables prompted the dictionary folk to settle on two words of the year rather than one for the first time since the accolade began in 2003.

"They're words that sort of encapsulate the zeitgeist. They're words that are in the national conversation," said Sokolowski from company headquarters in Springfield, Mass. "The thing about an election year is it generates a huge amount of very specific interest."

Democracy, globalization, marriage and bigot — all touched by politics — made the Top 10, in no particular order. The latter two were driven in part by the fight for same-sex marriage acceptance.

Last year's word of the year was austerity. Before that, it was pragmatic. Other words in the leading dictionary maker's Top 10 for 2012 were also politically motivated.

Harken back to Oct. 11, when Vice President Joe Biden tangled with Mitt Romney running mate Paul Ryan in a televised debate focused on foreign policy — terror attacks, defense spending and war, to be specific.

"With all due respect, that's a bunch of MALARKEY," declared Biden during a particularly tough row with Ryan. The mention sent look-ups of malarkey soaring on Merriam-webster.com, Sokolowski said, adding: "Clearly a one-week wonder, but what a week!"

Actually, it was more like what a day. Look-ups of malarkey represented the largest spike of a single word on the website by percentage, at 3,000 percent, in a single 24-hour period this year. The company won't release the number of page views per word but said the site gets about 1.2 billion overall each year.

Malarkey, with the alternative spelling of "y'' at the end, is of unknown origin, but Merriam-Webster surmises it's more Irish-American than Irish, tracing it to newspaper references as far back as 1929.

Beyond "nonsense," malarkey can mean "insincere or pretentious talk or writing designed to impress one and usually to distract attention from ulterior motives or actual conditions," noted Sokolowski.

"That's exactly what Joe Biden was saying. Very precise," especially in conversation with another Irish-American, Sokolowski said. "He chose a word that resonated with the public, I think in part because it really resonated with him. It made perfect sense for this man to use this word in this moment."

An interesting election-related phenom, to be sure, but malarkey is no dead Big Bird or "binders full of women" — two Romneyisms from the defeated candidate's televised matchups with Obama that evoked another of Merriam-Webster's Top 10 — meme.

While malarkey's history is shaded, meme's roots are easily traced to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a Brit who coined the term for a unit of cultural inheritance, not unlike genes and DNA. The retired professor at the University of Oxford made up the word in 1976 for "The Selfish Gene," a book he published light years before the Internet and social media's capacity to take memes viral.

Sokolowski said traffic for meme more than doubled this year over 2011, with dramatic spikes pegged to political-related subjects that included Romney's Big Bird and binders remarks, social media shares of images pegged to Hillary Clinton texting and Obama's "horses and bayonets" debate rebuke of Romney in an exchange over the size of the Navy.

Dawkins, reached at home in Oxford, was tickled by the dictionary shoutout.

"I'm very pleased that it's one of the 10 words that got picked out," he said. "I'm delighted. I hope it may bring more people to understand something about evolution."

The book in which he used meme for the first time is mostly about the gene as the primary unit of natural selection, or the Darwinian idea that only the strongest survive. In the last chapter, he said, he wanted to describe some sort of cultural replicator.

And he wanted a word that sounded like "gene," so he took a twist on the Greek mimeme, which is the origin of "mime" and "mimesis," a scientific term meaning imitation.

"It's a very clever coinage," lauded the lexicographer Sokolowski.

Other words in Merriam-Webster's Top 10 for 2012:

— Touche, thanks in part to "Survivor" contestant Kat Edorsson misusing the word to mean "tough luck" rather than point well made, before she was voted off the island in May. Look-ups at Merriam-webster.com were up sevenfold this year over 2011.

— Schadenfreude, made up of the German words for "damage" and "joy," meaning taking pleasure in the misery of others, was used broadly in the media after the election. Look-ups increased 75 percent. The word in English dates to 1895.

— Professionalism, up 12 percent this year over last. Sokolowski suspects the bump might have been due to the bad economy and more job seekers, or a knowing "glimpse into what qualities people value."

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Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

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Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.

In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.

“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs as well might be taken for a longer duration.

“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”

Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.

Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.

About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them would be in premenopausal women with ER-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.

In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing nine years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.

About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.

There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.

Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.

“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.

Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots.

“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.

Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.

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Netflix buys exclusive rights to Disney movies

Netflix Inc. has acquired exclusive U.S. rights to movies from Walt Disney Studios in a deal that catapults the Internet video-on-demand service into direct competition with pay TV giants such as HBO and Showtime.

The three-year agreement takes effect in 2016 and is a blow to the pay channel Starz, which currently has the rights to broadcast Disney movies, including its Pixar animated films and Marvel superhero pictures, about eight months after they are released in theaters.

Starz's sole remaining movie provider is now Sony Pictures. That partnership ends in 2016.

VIDEO: Disney buys Lucasfilm - Mickey meet Darth Maul

Disney has also agreed to give Netflix nonexclusive streaming rights to more of its older titles — including "Dumbo," "Pocahontas" and "Alice in Wonderland" — starting immediately.

Netflix's chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, called the deal "a bold leap forward for Internet television."

"We are incredibly pleased and proud this iconic family brand is teaming with Netflix to make it happen," he said.

Netflix stock soared on the news, rising $10.65, or 14%, to $85.65.

Shares in Starz's parent company, Liberty Media Corp., fell $5.49, or 5%, to $105.56.

Currently, Netflix has nonexclusive rights to movies from Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via a deal with pay channel Epix, as well as an array of library titles from other studios. Its only exclusive movie rights come from independent studios such as Relativity Media and DreamWorks Animation. It also has a wide variety of television reruns.

Sarandos and Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings have long said the company wanted to get exclusive pay TV rights to films from one of Hollywood's six major studios to boost its online entertainment service.

PHOTOS: Disney without Pixar

However, Hastings has also at times downplayed the importance of new movies. Netflix previously had streaming rights to Disney and Sony movies via a deal with Starz. In January, investors expressed their concerns that the pending disappearance of those movies would hurt the service. Hastings said in a letter to investors that Disney films accounted for only 2% of domestic streaming and the loss would not be felt.

Since then, though, the Disney movie slate has become more attractive. At that time, Netflix did not have access to movies from Disney's Marvel superhero unit or the "Star Wars" titles from its pending acquisition of Lucasfilm Ltd.

The end of the Starz agreement accelerated a trend that has seen Netflix evolve into a television company, with reruns of shows such as "Mad Men" accounting for about two-thirds of the content streamed by users.

With several original programs launching next year, including the Kevin Spacey political drama "House of Cards," and a direct connection to a growing number of Internet-enabled televisions, Netflix is on the verge of standing on par with many TV networks.

Netflix charges $8 a month for its streaming service, while premium cable networks such as HBO cost $13 to $18 a month, and that's on top of a monthly bill for other channels that typically exceeds $50. It remains to be seen whether the addition of Disney products and more original programming could lead Netflix to increase its price.

PHOTOS: Hollywood back lot moments

The Netflix spending spree could continue, with Sarandos telling Bloomberg News on Monday that his company would bid for rights to Sony movies when its Starz deal expires.

Netflix might have a tougher time wresting away the rights to Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox or Universal Pictures releases from their current deals with HBO, which like Warner is part of Time Warner Inc. Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM are almost certain to stick with Epix, of which the trio are co-owners.

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Mexico port picks up slack from strike at L.A., Long Beach complex

ENSENADA — This sluggish port city is coming alive.

Standing atop a pier with a hulking cargo ship behind him, dock manager Rogelio Valenzuela Gonzalez motioned Monday toward four cranes as they plucked metal containers from the vessel.

Operators swiveled the cranes toward a line of flatbed trucks. Supervisors in reflective vests and hard hats watched from below, using two-way radios to dispatch trucks as they filled up.

Not even during the peak fall shipping season is this port so busy.

But a strike that has effectively shut down rival ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach has diverted ships south of the border. It has become a windfall for the port located about 50 miles from the border, its workers and the region's struggling economy.

"It's good for the workers' families," said Gonzalez, adding that the extra work will pay for additional Christmas presents. "We all know it's temporary, but it definitely helps out at the end of the year."

The Southern California strike ended its first week Monday, with negotiations continuing but no signs of an immediate resolution.

The strike by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit, which handles paperwork for incoming and outgoing ships, has crippled the nation's two busiest cargo ports.

The dispute centers on the charge by the union that employers — large shipping lines and terminal operators — have steadily outsourced jobs through attrition. The union says the employers have transferred work from higher-paid union members to lower-paid employees in other states and countries.

The employers dispute that claim, saying they've offered the workers full job security and generous wage and pension increases. Though the union has only 800 members, the 10,000-member dockworkers union is honoring the picket lines.

Economists estimate the effect of the work stoppage at $1 billion a day in forfeited worker pay, missing revenue for truckers and other businesses and the value of the cargo that hasn't been able to reach its destination. The two ports are directly responsible for an estimated 595,000 jobs in Southern California.

But while thousands of Southern California workers sit idle in Los Angeles and Long Beach, the walkout is giving Ensenada a hoped-for chance to showcase itself.

Collectively, Los Angeles and Long Beach handle 100 times more cargo each year than Ensenada.

Long seen as a backup port, Ensenada is eager to win more business from shippers inconvenienced by the second major work dispute at the L.A. and Long Beach ports in a decade.

"It's a great opportunity to show that the Port of Ensenada presents an alternative method for bringing in products from Asia and the Pacific Rim," said Kenn Morris, president of Crossborder Group, a San Diego consulting firm. "The Ensenada port can really show itself off as being something a lot of people hadn't expected."

Uncertain how long the strike may last, retailers have scrambled to find alternate ways to get their products onto shelves. Given their typically thin profit margins, retailers are concerned about the added shipping costs.

"These blockages are dead-weight losses to the system," said Carl Voigt, an international business professor at USC. "They raise costs for everybody. Everybody's goods and services are more expensive."

Ensenada is used to seeing the occasional cruise ship and maybe half a dozen cargo ships a week. Two ships have made unplanned dockings and unloaded cargo here in the last week. Three others have docked in Manzanillo, a Mexican port city 1,200 miles to the south of Ensenada.

Altogether, 17 ships bound for the L.A. or Long Beach port have been diverted elsewhere, including nine to Oakland, one to Mazatlan, Mexico, and one to Panama.

In Ensenada, dockworkers made quick work unloading 100 cargo containers from the Maersk Merlion. The giant cargo vessel was diverted over the weekend and docked early Monday morning.

Since late last week, Ensenada has been preparing for a hoped-for influx of diverted ships. The port has 200 dockworkers when operating at capacity, and an additional hundred clerical and customs workers.

Equipment is on standby. Workers are at the ready. And trucking lines have been placed on alert that cargo may need to be hauled.

"It's hard to guess how many ships we'll receive, but we are preparing for more," said Juan Carlos Ochoa, the port's trade development manager.

Ensenada is still handicapped by longer-standing obstacles, primarily its lack of railway access to move goods.

And for now, the cargo unloaded from the Maersk Merlion will sit at the port as the shipping line weighs whether to move it by truck to its final destination or have another ship pick up the containers at a later date.

The strike "is an extraordinary situation," Gonzalez said. "But it'll show our clients that this port is a good option. It's efficient, reliable and secure."

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

walter.hamilton@latimes.com

Lopez reported from Ensenada, and Hamilton from Los Angeles.

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