Toyota to pay at least $1.2 billion to settle sudden-acceleration lawsuit

Toyota Motor Co. has announced an agreement worth more than $1 billion to settle a lawsuit involving unintended acceleration in some of its vehicles.

Under terms of the settlement, filed Wednesday in federal court in Santa Ana, Toyota will install a brake-override system in an estimated 3.25 million vehicles and compensate car owners for the alleged reduced value of the vehicles, among other terms.

According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, the estimated value of the settlement makes it the largest of its kind, although there have been larger non-auto industry class settlements in recent years. They said the settlement provides that 16 million current Toyota owners will be eligible for a customer care plan that provide a warranty for certain parts alleged to be tied to unintended acceleration claims.

After a fiery crash of a Lexus, Toyota's luxury brand, took four lives near San Diego in August 2009, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that floor mats could entrap pedals in Toyota vehicles, leading the Japanese automaker to issue its largest recall ever. That, in turn, led to a series of subsequent investigations and recalls stretching over several years.

Toyota has maintained that its vehicles were free from electronic flaws that caused sudden acceleration. The NHTSA and NASA investigated, but was unable to trace the defect.

ROAD TO RECALL: Read The Times' award winning coverage

“This was a difficult decision -- especially since reliable scientific evidence and multiple independent evaluations have confirmed the safety of Toyota’s electronic throttle control systems,” Christopher P. Reynolds, Toyota Motor North America’s chief legal officer, said in a statement. “However, we concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers.”

The total value of the settlement is estimated to be between $1.2 and $1.4 billion, according to Steve Berman, the lawyer in charge of directing the class litigation and leading settlement discussions.

“After two years of intense work, including deposing hundreds of engineers, poring over thousands of documents and examining millions of lines of software code, we are pleased that Toyota has agreed to a settlement that was both extraordinarily hard-fought and is exceptionally far-reaching,” Berman said in a statement.

Details of the settlement, along with a copy of the settlement proposal, are available online or by calling (877) 283-0507. More information will be available once the court gives preliminary approval to the settlement.

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Patrick Dempsey brews up coffee shop purchase

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Patrick Dempsey says he wants to rescue a coffee house chain and more than 500 jobs.

The "Grey's Anatomy" star said Wednesday he's leading a group attempting to buy Tully's Coffee. The Seattle-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.

Dempsey said he's excited about the chance to help hundreds of workers and give back to Seattle.

The actor has a strong TV tie to the city: He plays Dr. Derek Shepherd on "Grey's Anatomy," the ABC drama set at fictional Seattle Grace Hospital.

Tully's has 47 company-run stores in Washington and California, as well as five franchised stores and 58 licensed locations in the U.S.

Any sale would have to be approved by a judge. A bankruptcy court hearing is set for Jan. 11 in Seattle.

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Q & A: Should Older Adults Be Vaccinated Against Chickenpox?

Q. Should a 65-year-old who has never had chickenpox be vaccinated against it?

A. In someone who has never had chickenpox, the vaccine would protect against a disease that is far more serious in adults than it is in children, said Dr. Mark S. Lachs, director of geriatrics for the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System and professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.

After childhood chickenpox, the varicella virus is never eliminated from the body but lies dormant in nerve roots. Decades later, it may reactivate along the nerve pathway and cause the very painful rash called shingles, and later, in many cases, a persistent pain called postherpetic neuralgia, or PHN.

Therefore, for most people over 60, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the shingles vaccine. It safely reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk of both shingles and PHN in those who have had chickenpox, Dr. Lachs said.

In someone who never had chickenpox, he said, the concern is not shingles but adult chickenpox, which has “fatality rates 25 times higher than in children.”

Such a person should instead be vaccinated against a primary infection with the varicella virus, Dr. Lachs said. The vaccine differs in strength from the one for shingles and is given in two injections, a month apart.

C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Readers may submit questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018, or by e-mail to question@nytimes.com.

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Another down day on Wall Street

For the stock market, this week hasn't been the most wonderful time of the year.

U.S. stocks fell Wednesday for the third trading day in a row. Disappointing holiday sales weighed heavy on retail companies, and the unwelcome “fiscal cliff” package of higher taxes and lower government spending loomed nearer.

The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 24.49 points to 13,114.59. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 6.83 to 1,419.83 and the Nasdaq composite lost 22.44 to 2,990.16.

Karyn Cavanaugh, market strategist with ING Investment Management in New York, wrote a note to clients Wednesday highlighting the less-than-merry retail sales.

“I hope that they're reading this from the mall,” she said later, “because retail sales could use a boost.”

The MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report found that sales of electronics, clothing, jewelry and home goods increased just 0.7 percent in the two months before Christmas compared with the same period last year.

That was well below the 3 to 4 percent that analysts had expected and the worst performance since 2008, when spending shrank during the depths of the Great Recession.

Major U.S. retailers including Abercrombie & Fitch, Sears Holdings, Urban Outfitters, Limited Brands, Nike and Gap were all down. Handbag maker Coach, a bellwether of the luxury market, plummeted $3.39 to $54.13. It lost nearly 6 percent of its value, more than any other company in the S&P 500.

Right behind it was online retailer Amazon.com, which helps analysts get a read on the entire retail market. It lost nearly 4 percent, falling $9.99 to $248.63.

Plodding retail sales are a concern because consumer spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy. When shoppers pull back on spending, that can take a chunk out of company earnings, which in turn pushes down the stock market.

The retail numbers are also a sign that despite scattered hints of an improving economy, including a report Wednesday about rising home prices, many consumers remain uneasy about their prospects.

“Consumers just aren't confident,” said Jeff Sica, president and chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management in Morristown, N.J. “They don't feel a sense of security that they're going to be able to maintain their job or their income or their savings.”

Sica pointed out that normally the market rises at this time of year — the so-called Santa Claus rally. Since 1969, stocks have risen an average of 1.6 percent over the last five days of December and the first two of January, according to The Stock Trader's Almanac.

This year, it seems, the retail sales and “fiscal cliff” have been too much of an overhang.

The “fiscal cliff” refers to lower government spending and higher taxes that will kick in Jan. 1, if Republicans and Democrats can't agree to a new budget by then.

The Senate is due in session Thursday, and President Barack Obama is expected to return early from his Christmas vacation in Hawaii, arriving back in Washington early Thursday. Still, congressional officials said Wednesday they knew of no significant strides toward a compromise over the long Christmas weekend, and no negotiations have been set.

It's not clear that the market would automatically rise if there is a deal, or automatically fall if there isn't. Except for the past three days, the market has risen more or less steadily since mid-November despite the lack of a “fiscal cliff” deal. That means many traders have been assuming that lawmakers would work out something before the deadline, so any positive effect from a compromise is already baked into stock prices.

While a compromise is still possible, some analysts said that what the market feared most wasn't the cliff, but the possibility that lawmakers would come up with only a stop-gap solution. That would probably mean they'd have to meet again in the new year to hammer out a permanent deal, dragging out the uncertainty.

“It's like ripping the Band-Aid off now versus later,” Cavanaugh said. “The Band-Aid's got to come off. We've got to cut spending, we've got to pay down the debt.”

The bright spot was a report from the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller national home price index, which said that home prices rose in most major U.S. cities in October compared with a year ago. However, prices fell in many cities compared to the month before.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note edged down to 1.75 percent from 1.77 percent Monday, a sign that investors were taking money out of stocks and putting it into bonds.

It was the first trading day after the Christmas holiday. Trading volume was low, and European markets were still closed.

Just 2.3 billion shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange. For the year so far, the average has been around 3.6 billion.

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N.Y. gunman wrote that 'killing people' was what he did best

This time, there was a note.

Before ex-con William Spengler, 62, opened fire on firefighters who had responded to a blaze at his home in Webster, N.Y., on Christmas Eve, killing two and seriously wounding two others, he'd typed a couple pages announcing his plans, police said.

"I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and do what I do best: killing people," Spengler wrote, police said Tuesday.

The previous morning, Spengler shattered the holiday calm with a shocking assault that officials found uncharacteristic of the 14 years he'd spent out of prison since killing his grandmother with a hammer in 1980.

Monday's blaze -- which officials think may have started as a vehicle fire -- consumed seven homes and damaged two more in the sleepy lakeside community, a suburb of Rochester. Officials also said they'd found human remains at Spengler's house that they suspect were his sister, Cheryl, 67.

Police think Spengler used a Bushmaster .223 rifle with a flash suppressor in his rampage. They recovered the weapon along with a Smith and Wesson .38-caliber revolver and a Mossberg pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. Officials weren't sure how Spengler -- a felon who was not allowed to own guns -- had obtained his weapons, but said he was armed to the teeth.

"He was equipped to go to war and kill innocent people,” Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said at a televised news conference on Christmas Day. One of the men killed a day earlier was Mike Chiapperini, 43, a Webster  police lieutenant as well as a volunteer firefighter.

In a time of contentious debate over whether assault weapons should be banned or tightly controlled in the United States, Spengler's attack would mark the third time in two weeks that a shooter has attempted a mass killing with an assault rifle.

On Dec. 14, Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 grade-school students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., using a military-style Bushmaster .223 rifle. Lanza also killed his mother and himself. And on Dec. 11, Jacob Tyler Roberts  opened fire in a Clackamas, Ore., mall with an AR-15-style rifle, killing two and wounding one before taking his own life.

Spengler, who also shot himself,  is the only one of the three known to have left a note. Police characterized it as "rambling" and said he did not express a motive. They declined to release more excerpts Tuesday. 

“Motive is always the burning question, and I’m not sure we’ll ever really know what was going through his mind," Pickering said.

A friend of the gunman told the Los Angeles Times that Spengler hated his sister and loved his mother, who had lived with the pair until she died Oct. 7. The fire began next door to the home where Spengler had killed his  92-year-old grandmother,  for which he served 18 years in prison; he was released in 1998.

Officials Tuesday described a chaotic "combat situation." A Webster police officer used his duty rifle to trade fire with Spengler on Monday in morning darkness after the firefighters had been fired upon before getting out of their trucks, police said.

Rounds shattered the windshield of the firetruck that two of the firefighters were in; the wounded driver crashed it into a bank trying to get away.

"Had that police officer not been there, more people would have been killed, because he immediately engaged the shooter," Pickering said of his officer.

Greece, N.Y., police officer Jon Ritter was driving behind the firetruck when he also came under fire. He was wounded by shrapnel from the bullets that struck his windshield and engine block, police said.

Ritter "tried to shelter some of the fallen firemen with his car when the other firefighters -- that we later extracted from the location with the armored personnel carrier -- had taken cover under the firetruck to try to escape further harm from the ongoing gunfire," Pickering said.

The two wounded firefighters, Joseph Hofstetter and Theodore Scardino, remained in the intensive care unit and were described as stable.

Officials said that 33 neighborhood residents had been displaced by the blaze and the investigation and that hotels had offered them places to stay.

“We all have been inundated from citizens, police agencies across the nation and really across the world, wanting to provide donations," Pickering said, getting emotional.

"On a personal note, and speaking for my law enforcement associates and all my fire associates and all my EMS associates, I want to thank the community for tremendous outpouring. It has been incredible."

matt.pearce@latimes.com

John Hoeffel in Naples, N.Y., contributed to this report.

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Jessica Simpson's Christmas gift: She's pregnant

NEW YORK (AP) — Jessica Simpson's daughter has the news all spelled out: "Big Sis."

Simpson on Tuesday tweeted a photo of her baby daughter Maxwell playing in the sand, the words "Big Sis" spelled out.

The 32-year-old old singer and personality has been rumored to be expecting again. The tweet appears to confirm the rumors.

"Merry Christmas from my family to yours" is the picture's caption. Simpson used a tweet on Halloween in 2011 to announce she was pregnant with Maxwell. She is engaged to Eric Johnson and gave birth to Maxwell in May.

One possible complication regarding her pregnancy: She is a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers.

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Corporate tax rate overhaul may be part of a 'fiscal cliff' deal

WASHINGTON — Amid the wrangling over the so-called fiscal cliff, President Obama and congressional Republicans can agree on something: They want to lower the corporate tax rate.

The U.S. has the highest overall rate of any of the world's developed economies. It took the top spot in March after Japan reduced its rate, mimicking other countries that have lowered taxes to lure new businesses and keep existing companies from leaving.

Negotiations to avert automatic income tax increases and federal spending cuts scheduled to kick in Jan. 1 could provide the impetus for U.S. policymakers to tackle an overhaul of the corporate tax code next year.

The White House wants to put a corporate tax overhaul, along with changes to the individual income tax system, on a fast track as part of any deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff."

The centerpiece of an overhaul would be slashing the 35% corporate tax rate, a goal long sought by corporate executives and lobbyists.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

"In the name of global competitiveness, I think that has largely been agreed to," Jim McNerney, chief executive of Boeing Co., said about how both parties view the need for major corporate tax changes.

In February, Obama proposed lowering the federal rate to 25% for manufacturing companies and to 28% for other firms. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been pushing a plan to lower the rate to 25% for all corporations.

In both cases, the rate cuts would be accompanied by the elimination of some of the numerous tax breaks that allow many companies to pay a much lower effective tax rate — and sometimes to avoid paying any corporate taxes at all.

"The administration's position on this is very much in sync with what Republicans say they want, which is a lower rate and a broader base," said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden.

But there still are some obstacles to a deal.

Some Democrats want to use an overhaul to increase the amount of tax revenue coming from corporations, while Republicans want to keep the amount the same. The White House and congressional Republicans also differ on how the U.S. should treat money earned abroad.

And the business community itself is divided. Many small companies file taxes as individuals. They're opposed to any "fiscal cliff" deal that would raise their rates while giving corporations a rate reduction.

Analysts said the obstacles could be overcome because there is consensus around the broader point that the U.S. needs to bring its corporate tax rate in line with other developed nations.

"Regardless of your political persuasion, it is unquestionably the case that the nominal U.S. corporate tax rate is much higher than that of peer countries," said Edward Kleinbard, a USC law professor and former chief of staff of Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

The case for corporate tax reform got a boost when the overall U.S. rate of 39.1%, which includes federal, state and local corporate taxes, became the highest this year among the 34 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Two decades ago, the U.S. was 13th.

"At one time in the '80s, we had a competitive corporate tax rate," said Dorothy Coleman, vice president of tax and domestic economic policy for the National Assn. of Manufacturers. "We've fallen behind by standing still."

Quiz: The year in business

But the rate in the tax code isn't what many companies pay because of a host of deductions and tax credits. In 2011, the effective corporate tax rate in the U.S. was 29.2%, roughly in line with the 31.9% average of the six other largest developed economies, the Obama administration said.

The White House said that parity does not mean the statutory rate shouldn't be reduced. It simply means that many tax breaks should be eliminated, allowing the rate to be lowered without adding to the deficit.

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Dueling Santa trackers are off and running

A screen grab from Google's Santa Tracker. (Google / December 24, 2012)

By Deborah Netburn

December 24, 2012, 1:11 p.m.

All year long Santa keeps an eye on you. Now it's time to turn the tables.

One day a year, you are invited to keep an eye on Santa as he whips around the world in his sleigh, delivering a dizzying number of presents to children all over the world.

If you'd like to see where Santa is at the moment, you've got choices. Google and NORAD, which used to team up for your Santa tracking pleasure, have gone their separate ways this year and created two distinct tracking options.

Google's Santa Tracker is the slicker of the two. It takes you to Santa's Dashboard, where you can see Santa's current location, his next location, the number of miles traveled, and the number of presents delivered. Santa is also adding Twitter like status updates. The most recent one as of this writing: "Rudolph's nose just turned red." 

PHOTOS: Google Doodles of 2012

You can also click on the map and see where Santa has been, as noted by little present icons on the map. Click on the icon and you'll see how many presents Santa has delivered in each city. When Santa is on the move, you'll see him flying on the map in a sleigh. When he's stopped to deliver presents, you'll see him shoving presents down a chimney.

Over at the official NORAD Tracks Santa website you'll also find a running tally of how many presents Santa has delivered as well as what city he just left and what city he's currently headed toward. NORAD also offers Santa Cams that show animations of Santa flying around the world. 

Both Santa tracking services offer loads of extras. If you visit Santa's Village on Google's tracker you can send a message from  Santa to a friend or family member. And NORAD has more than 1,200 volunteers staffing a Santa hotline to answer all your Santa questions.  (877-HI-NORAD).

In the spirit of the season you might try them both out, but hurry up. The trackers shut down a few hours before Christmas morning. 

Happy tracking!

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deborah.netburn@latimes.com

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Sprint salesman refuses to sell iPhone to customer, says his ‘fingers are too fat’ to use it

We’ve known for a while now that some mobile carriers have been instructing their sales staff to start pushing their customers away from Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and toward Android or Windows Phone devices. The reason is simple: carriers pay a lot more to subsidize Apple’s popular smartphone than they do with other devices and they’d prefer to have higher gross margins at the end of each quarter. But now a Tom’s Hardware reader reports that a Sprint (S) representative has taken pushing non-iPhone products to a whole new level and is actually insulting people who insist on buying the device.

[More from BGR: Online retailers caught using ‘discriminatory’ practices to target shopping discounts]

When the customer told the Sprint representative that he wanted to get an older iPhone 4 for free as part of his upgrade, the representative called the device “a piece of s—” that breaks too easily and is too small for many users.

[More from BGR: First photos of BlackBerry 10 ‘N-Series’ QWERTY smartphone leak]

Instead, the salesman recommended that the customer by a Samsung (005930) Galaxy S III. When the customer again refused, the salesman took things a step farther and told the man that his fingers were simply too fat to use the iPhone and that he’d need a larger screen to use a smartphone properly.

Needless to say, these up-sell-by-insult tactics weren’t exactly effective for the salesperson and the customer angrily stormed out of the store without buying a new phone.

This article was originally published by BGR

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Thousands sign US petition to deport Piers Morgan

LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported from the U.S. over his gun control views.

Morgan has taken an aggressive stand for tighter U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting. Last week, he called a gun advocate appearing on his "Piers Morgan Tonight" show an "unbelievably stupid man."

Now, gun rights activists are fighting back. A petition created Dec. 21 on the White House e-petition website by a user in Texas accuses Morgan of engaging in a "hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution" by targeting the Second Amendment. It demands he be deported immediately for "exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens."

The petition has already hit the 25,000 signature threshold to get a White House response. By Monday, it had 31,813 signatures.

Morgan seemed unfazed — and even amused — by the movement.

In a series of Twitter messages, he alternately urged his followers to sign the petition and in response to one article about the petition said "bring it on" as he appeared to track the petition's progress.

"If I do get deported from America for wanting fewer gun murders, are there any other countries that will have me?" he wrote.

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