Appeals court orders removal of 100 digital billboards across L.A.

A digital billboard on Lincoln Blvd. in Venice. A panel ruled Monday that 100 of these digital billboards in Los Angeles must be taken down. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times / December 10, 2012)

By David Zahniser

December 10, 2012, 4:01 p.m.

A three-judge panel on Monday ruled that roughly 100 digital billboards installed in Los Angeles under a 2006 legal settlement approved by the Los Angeles City Council must be removed.

The panel from the state's 2nd District Court of Appeal said sign companies CBS Outdoor and Clear Channel outdoor should not have been allowed to convert their existing billboards to electronic formats when existing laws prohibited such changes. "We do not see how the language could be plainer," the ruling states.

The panel instructed a lower court to order the removal of digital billboards already permitted under the agreement, many of which were on the Westside.

Dennis Hathaway, president of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, hailed the ruling. "Needless to say, [it's] a very happy day for us," he said in an email.

Of the billboards that are at issue, 79 are operated by Clear Channel. The remainder were owned by CBS.
CBS and Clear Channel sued the city nearly a decade ago, seeking to block implementation of an ordinance banning the installation of new billboards except in special sign districts. In 2006, the council backed a settlement with the two companies that allowed them to convert up to 840 existing billboards to electronic formats.

Summit Outdoor, a smaller sign company, went to court to invalidate the agreement, calling it a sweetheart deal.

A judge sided with Summit, calling the agreement "poison" and blocking the city from allowing new digital signs to go up. But he refused to order the removal of the 100 or so billboards that had already been converted to digital formats under the 2006 settlement.

"It's fantastic," said Barbara Broide, president of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Blvd. Homeowners Assn., which filed an amicus brief in support of Summit Media's lawsuit. "I think this is a hard-fought win. This city should be grateful to Summit for having brought the suit."

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Supreme Court Asked to Review $222K Landmark File-Sharing Case

Infamous file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset asked the Supreme Court on Monday to review a jury’s conclusion that she pay the recording industry $222,000 for downloading and sharing two dozen copyrighted songs on the now-defunct file-sharing service Kazaa.

Thomas-Rasset, the first person to defend herself against a Recording Industry Association of America file-sharing case, said the damages were unconstitutionally excessive and were not rationally related to the harm she caused to the music labels.

“Put more plainly: In a civil case, Thomas–Rasset cannot be punished for the harm inflicted on the recording industry by file sharing in general; while that would no doubt help accomplish the industry’s and Congress’s goal of deterring copyright infringement, singling out and punishing an individual in a civil case to a degree entirely out of proportion with her individual offense is not a constitutional means of achieving that goal,” the petition said.

The Supreme Court has never heard an RIAA file-sharing case and has previously declined the two other file-sharing cases brought before it.

Thomas-Rasset’s case concerns an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in September that upheld a jury’s award against Thomas-Rasset. (.pdf)

The case dates back to 2007, and has a tortuous history involving a mistrial and three separate verdicts for the same offense — $222,000, $1.92 million and $1.5 million. Under the case’s latest iteration, a jury last year awarded the RIAA the $1.5 million, which the court reduced to $54,000, ruling that the jury’s award for “stealing 24 songs for personal use is appalling.”

The convoluted decision of the appeals court in September, however, found that the original $222,000 verdict from the first case should stand, and that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minnesota should not have declared a mistrial in the first trial over a flawed jury instruction.

In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Thomas-Rasset argues that the Copyright Act, which allows damages of up to $150,000 per infringement, is unconstitutionally excessive. But the Obama administration, which weighed in on the case when it was in the appellate courts, said the large damages award was allowed because it “is reasonably related to furthering the public interest (.pdf) in protecting original works of artistic literary, and musical expression.”

The only other file-sharer to challenge an RIAA lawsuit at trial was Joel Tenenbaum, a Massachusetts college student, whose case followed Thomas-Rasset’s. The Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear his case in May, however, letting stand a Boston federal jury’s award of $675,000 against him for sharing 30 songs.

In the third RIAA file-sharing case against an individual to go before the Supreme Court’s justices, the high court declined to review a petition that would have tested the so-called “innocent infringer” defense to copyright infringement.

Generally, an innocent infringer is someone who does not know she or he is committing copyright infringement. Such downloaders get a $200 innocent-infringer fine.

Most of the thousands of RIAA file-sharing cases against individuals have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars. In 2008, the RIAA ceased a five-year campaign it had launched to sue individual file sharers and, with the Motion Picture Association of America, has since convinced internet service providers to begin taking punitive action against copyright scofflaws, including possibly terminating their service.

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‘Skyfall’ launches back to top spot with $10.8M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The James Bond blockbuster “Skyfall” has risen back to the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office, taking in $ 10.8 million.

That brought its domestic total to $ 261.4 million and its worldwide haul to a franchise record of $ 918 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. “Skyfall,” Sony, $ 10,780,201, 3,401 locations, $ 3,170 average, $ 261,400,281, five weeks.

2. “Rise of the Guardians,” Paramount, $ 10,400,618, 3,639 locations, $ 2,858 average, $ 61,774,192, three weeks.

3. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” Summit, $ 9,156,265, 3,646 locations, $ 2,511 average, $ 268,691,029, four weeks.

4. “Lincoln,” $ 8,916,813, 2,014 locations, $ 4,427 average, $ 97,137,447, five weeks.

5. “Life of Pi,” Fox, $ 8,330,764, 2,946 locations, $ 2,828 average, $ 60,948,293, three weeks.

6. “Playing For Keeps,” FilmDistrict, $ 5,750,288, 2,837 locations, $ 2,027 average, $ 5,750,288, one week.

7. “Wreck-It Ralph,” Disney, $ 4,859,368, 2,746 locations, $ 1,770 average, $ 164,402,934, six weeks.

8. “Red Dawn,” FilmDistrict, $ 4,236,105, 2,754 locations, $ 1,538 average, $ 37,240,920, three weeks.

9. “Flight,” Paramount, $ 3,130,305, 2,431 locations, $ 1,288 average, $ 86,202,541, six weeks.

10. “Killing Them Softly,” Weinstein Co., $ 2,806,901, 2,424 locations, $ 1,158 average, $ 11,830,638, two weeks.

11. “Silver Linings Playbook,” Weinstein Co., $ 2,171,665, 371 locations, $ 5,854 average, $ 13,964,405, four weeks.

12. “Anna Karenina,” Focus, $ 1,544,859, 422 locations, $ 3,661 average, $ 6,603,042, four weeks.

13. “The Collection,” LD Entertainment, $ 1,487,655, 1,403 locations, $ 1,060 average, $ 5,455,328, two weeks.

14. “Argo,” Warner Bros., $ 1,482,346, 944 locations, $ 1,570 average, $ 103,160,015, nine weeks.

15. “End of Watch,” Open Road Films, $ 751,623, 1,259 locations, $ 597 average, $ 39,989,766, 12 weeks.

16. “Hitchcock,” Fox Searchlight, $ 712,544, 181 locations, $ 3,937 average, $ 1,661,670, three weeks.

17. “Talaash,” Reliance Big Pictures, $ 449,195, 161 locations, $ 2,790 average, $ 2,397,909, two weeks.

18. “Taken 2,” Fox, $ 387,227, 430 locations, $ 901 average, $ 137,700,304, 10 weeks.

19. “Pitch Perfect,” Universal, $ 305,765, 387 locations, $ 790 average, $ 63,517,408, 11 weeks.

20. “The Sessions,” Fox, $ 218,973, 197 locations, $ 1,112 average, $ 4,948,342, eight weeks.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Vital Signs: Smoking Tied to Less Dense Bones for Girls

Smoking in teenage girls is associated with slower development of bone mineral density, a new study reports.

The scientists studied 262 healthy girls ages 11 to 19, using questionnaires and interviews to assess their smoking habits. The researchers also measured the girls’ bone density at the hip and lumbar spine three times at one-year intervals.

Smokers entered adolescence with the same lumbar and hip bone density as nonsmokers, but by age 19, they were about a year behind on average. After adjusting for other factors that affect bone health — height, weight, hormonal contraceptive use and more — the researchers found that even relatively low or irregular rates of smoking were independently associated with lower bone density.

The study, published last week in The Journal of Adolescent Health, used a sample that fell below national averages for calcium intake and physical activity, so the results may not be generalizable to wider populations.

The lead author, Lorah D. Dorn, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, pointed out that this is only one study and that more research is needed. Still, she said, “It tells me that for care providers — clinicians and parents — this needs to be something they’re vigilant about.”

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Euro Watch: Bonds in Spain and Italy Shaken by Italian Politics

ROME — Italian stock and bond prices fell on Monday after a weekend of political turmoil in Italy gave rise to fears that the country was headed for renewed instability.

Shares of Italian banks, which are big holders of the government’s bonds, were among the hardest hit.

The action occurred in the first day of trading after Prime Minister Mario Monti said over the weekend that he would soon step down after his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, withdrew his party’s support from Mr. Monti and said he would again seek election as prime minister.

Mr. Berlusconi, who was elected prime minister three times, left office a year ago as markets pushed Italy to the brink of financial collapse. Mr. Monti, an economist who was appointed as his temporary successor, has restored Italy’s credibility with investors, who have given the country a break on its borrowing costs. But those gains have come at the cost of painful austerity measures that have worsened the country’s economic situation and given Mr. Berlusconi an opening to attack.

The Milan benchmark index, MIB, fell more than 2 percent on Monday. Italian banks, which remain sensitive to declines in the country’s bond prices, were among the big losers. Intesa Sanpaolo, the most active stock, fell 5.2 percent, as did UniCredit.

Mr. Monti, who joined other leaders in Oslo on Monday to receive the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the European Union, said at a news conference that the market reactions “need not be dramatized.”

“I am confident,” he said, that the Italian elections would result in a government “that will be responsible and oriented toward the E.U. and this will be in line with efforts the Italian government has made so far.”

The decline in bond prices sent their yields, or interest rates, higher — an indicator of the Italian government’s borrowing costs. The spread between interest rates on Italian 10-year sovereign bonds and equivalent German securities, the European benchmark for safety, grew to 3.5 percentage points on Monday. That was up from 3.25 percentage points late Friday, suggesting that investors were growing more wary of holding Italian debt.

The yield on Italian 10-year bonds, which breached 7 percent this year, ended trading on Monday at 4.8 percent, up 29 basis points. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percent.

Bonds of Spain, which is the other big economy of concern in the euro zone, also came under renewed pressure on Monday after Mr. Monti’s announcement.

The spread between Spanish 10-year bonds and equivalent German bonds widened to 4.27 percentage points from 4.16 points on Friday. The yield on the benchmark Spanish 10-year rose 10 basis points, to 5.5 percent; it reached 7.1 percent in July amid concerns that Spain would be forced into a full bailout after having to negotiate a 100 billion euro, or $129 billion, rescue package for its banks in June.

Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister, warned that Italy’s political turmoil would affect his country.

“When doubts emerge over the stability of a neighboring country like Italy, which is also seen as vulnerable, there’s an immediate contagion for us,” he said Monday morning on Spanish national radio.

Asked whether Spain would itself seek further European rescue funding, he instead said, “The help that Spain needs is that the doubts over the future of the euro be removed.”

Speaking before the Nobel ceremony on Monday, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said Italy must “continue on the road of structural reforms.” The elections, Mr. Barroso said on Sky News, “must not be used to postpone reforms.”

A dismal economic report on Monday served as a reminder that despite Mr. Monti’s success with investors, the real economy continues to suffer. Italian industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 1.1 percent in October from September, and by 6.2 percent from a year earlier, Istat, the national statistics agency, said.

Some analysts said they thought that Mr. Berlusconi’s re-emergence as a political leader was as responsible for unnerving investors as Mr. Monti’s unexpected decision to resign. Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy, a research firm, wrote on Monday in a note that Mr. Berlusconi remained “the boogeyman of investors,” who “epitomizes the dysfunctional nature of Italian politics.”

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was to meet on Monday with Mr. Monti on the sidelines of the Nobel ceremony, said Georg Streiter, a spokesman for the chancellor.

Ms. Merkel pushed to have Mr. Monti succeed Mr. Berlusconi. But she ended up facing Mr. Monti’s own ideas for economic change, which focused more on growth and job creation than on the austere fiscal discipline championed by Ms. Merkel.

As a rule, the German government does not comment on its partners’ domestic politics, but Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned that an attempt to scale back Italy’s reform push could result in further destabilization in the euro zone.

“Italy cannot remain stagnant on two-thirds of its reform process,” Mr. Westerwelle said through a spokesman. “This would throw not only Italy but the rest of Europe into turbulence.”

Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Rome and David Jolly from Paris. Raphael Minder contributed reporting from Madrid and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.

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Jenni Rivera, Mexican American music star, feared dead in plane crash

Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera, a popular recording artist and reality television star, is feared dead after a small plane crashed early Sunday in northern Mexico. 

Mexico's Ministry of Transportation and Communications said the Learjet carrying seven people, including Rivera, was found in mountainous terrain near Nuevo Leon, just south of Monterrey. There were no survivors, authorities said.

The plane left Monterrey around 3:30 a.m., following a concert that she had given, according to the Associated Press. The U.S.-registered Learjet 25 was headed to Toluca, near Mexico City.

PHOTOS: Jenni Rivera missing

The 43-year-old Long Beach native, known to fans as "la diva de la banda," was best known for her interpretations of regional Mexican music, norteno and banda. She was one of NBCUniversal's biggest bilingual television stars, with a hugely popular reality show, "I Love Jenni," on cable channel Mun2. 

She also had a syndicated weekly radio program and clothing and cosmetics lines -- all designed to appeal to U.S. Latinas. The ABC television network was developing a sitcom starring Rivera, tentatively titled "Jenni," about a strong-willed Latina single mother.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, Rivera has sold 1.2 million albums and 349,000 digital tracks in the United States.

Rivera belonged to one of the most important dynasties in contemporary U.S.-based Mexican music. Her father, Pedro Rivera, launched the independent label Cintas Acuario in 1987; it grew out of a booth at an area swap meet. Her four brothers were also involved in music, and her younger brother Lupillo also is a wildly popular Mexican regional singer.

According to her Telemundo biography, Rivera didn't plan on joining the family's musical dynasty. But after an early marriage ended in divorce, she obtained a college degree in business administration and worked in real estate before going to work for her father's record label.

Her debut, "Chacalosa" (slang for "party girl"), was her introduction to the music scene. She eventually signed with Fonovisa, one of the most prominent labels in regional Mexican music, and began releasing bestselling Latin music CDs.

More than 16,000 people attended a concert that she headlined last year at Staples Center in Los Angeles. She was scheduled to appear next March at L.A.'s Gibson Amphitheatre.

So many fans flocked to a record-signing event in Riverside last year that police reportedly were called to help disperse the massive crowd.

Her tumultuous life included an early marriage and pregnancy, domestic abuse and divorce. She wove some of those themes into her songs and was an advocate for social responsibility. She founded a charitable organization, the Jenni Rivera Love Foundation, offering support to single mothers and victims of domestic abuse in the United States. 

Rivera had five children and a grandchild. Celebrity magazines said she was seeking a divorce from her second husband, former Major League Baseball player Esteban Loaiza.

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Star Formation in Carina

The spectacular star-forming Carina Nebula has been captured in great detail by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This picture was taken with the help of Sebastián Piñera, President of Chile, during his visit to the observatory on 5 June 2012 and released on the occasion of the new telescope’s inauguration in Naples on 6 December 2012.

Image: ESO. Acknowledgement: VPHAS+ Consortium/Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

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Bond movie “Skyfall” beats “Lincoln” at box office

(Reuters) – James Bond showed remarkable staying power as the latest installment of the spy series, “Skyfall,” captured the box office title and collected $ 11 million in its fifth week in U.S. and Canadian movie theaters, outgunning Steven Spielberg‘s “Lincoln” and “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” the final installment of the blockbuster vampire series.

“Skyfall,” the 23rd film in the series featuring Agent 007, also led movies at the box office when it first opened on November 2 and is already the best-selling movie in the 49-year old series. This weekend, it became the highest grossing movie in Sony Pictures‘ history with $ 918 million in ticket sales worldwide. The film distributed by Sony‘s Hollywood studio, has collected nearly $ 262 million in domestic sales, according to the movie tracking site Hollywood.com.

The animated “Rise of the Guardians” from Dreamworks Animation was second with $ 10.5 million in ticket sales. The movie, which was made for $ 145 million, opened with a disappointing $ 23.8 million when it first hit movie theaters on November 21. Since then, it has been steadily working its way toward becoming a solid family hit this season.

“Rise of the Guardians, which features Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and other childhood favorites who join together to save the world, was one of two family movies in a season traditionally heavy in family films. The other, Disney’s “Wreck-it Ralph,” collected $ 4.9 million for seventh place.

“Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” the box office leader for the past three weeks, tallied $ 9.2 million in ticket sales. The five-movie series, released by Lions Gate Entertainment, is based on Stephenie Meyer‘s best-selling book about young vampire love and has collected more than $ 1.3 billion in overall domestic ticket sales.

“Lincoln,” which chronicles the 16th president’s successful fight to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery, had total ticket sales of $ 9.1 million, according to studio estimates provided by the box office division of Hollywood.com.

“Life of Pi,” director Ang Lee’s movie about a boy who escapes a shipwreck but then shares his lifeboat with a tiger, sold $ 8.3 million in tickets to finish in fifth place. The movie, released by the Fox studio, is based on a best-selling 2001 novel by Yann Martel.

Hollywood studios shied away from scheduling major movies this weekend, steering clear of the expected blockbuster “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which Warner Brothers will release on December 14. The movie, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy novel about wizards and dwarves, features many of the same actors from the blockbuster “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

The only new major release, the romantic comedy “Playing for Keeps” starring Gerard Butler and Jessica Biel, opened with a lackluster $ 6 million, which was on target with forecasts by industry experts.

(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Andrea Burzynski; Editing by Bill Trott and Jackie Frank)

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A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the AIDS virus to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, her parents, Kari and Tom, said. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers are presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases.

“I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. John Wagner, director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal,” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”

A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Penn team, and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the Penn campus to bring the treatment to market.

Hervé Hoppenot, president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results hold up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also be used eventually against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.

To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turns malignant in leukemia.

The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply like crazy and start destroying the cancer.

The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.

A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.

Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.

But at the eleventh hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: Her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick. Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it, for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”

Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”

Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.

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Looking Ahead: Economic Reports for the Week of Dec. 10

ECONOMIC REPORTS Data scheduled to be released include the trade deficit for October and wholesale trade for October (Monday); import prices for November (Wednesday); weekly jobless claims, retail sales for November, the Producer Price Index for November and business inventories for October (Thursday); and the Consumer Price Index for November and industrial production for November (Friday).

CORPORATE EARNINGS Companies scheduled to report quarterly earnings include Costco Wholesale (Wednesday); and Hovnanian Enterprises and Adobe Systems (Thursday).

IN THE UNITED STATES On Monday, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, will speak at the Economic Club of New York. Also Monday, a trial will begin in Boston in a lawsuit brought by the owners of Dragon Systems, the speech-recognition company, who contend that Goldman Sachs did not warn them about risky accounting practices that led to the bankruptcy of the rival to which they sold the company for stock.

On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee will conduct a hearing about the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental housing assistance programs, and the Agriculture Department will issue its monthly crop report.

On Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee concludes a two-day meeting, and a House Financial Services subcommittee will conduct a hearing about the regulation of over-the-counter swaps markets under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.

On Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee will conduct a hearing about the effect of the Volcker Rule on markets, businesses, investors and job creation; and a House Agriculture subcommittee will conduct a hearing about derivatives changes under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.

On Friday, a lockup period will expire for 156 million shares of Facebook, and Elisse B. Walter will succeed Mary L. Schapiro as chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

OVERSEAS On Wednesday, European Union finance ministers will hold emergency talks about establishing a euro-area banking supervisor.

On Thursday, euro-area finance ministers will meet to ratify an aid payment to Greece, and European Union leaders will begin a two-day summit meeting on the future of the bloc.

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