Man, 20, killed in Little Village neighborhood

Officers at the scene of the shooting on South Trumbull Avenue. (Adam Sege, Chicago Tribune / November 17, 2012)

By Adam Sege




Tribune reporter

6:13 a.m. CST, November 17, 2012

A 20-year-old man was killed in the Little Village neighborhood and at least six people were injured in shootings across Chicago early Saturday, police said.

The 20-year-old, Freddie Hernandez, was gunned down in an apparent drive-by shooting on the 2500 block of South Trumbull Avenue at about 2:40 a.m., officials said.

A neighbor, 17-year-old Anthony Briones, said he heard about eight shots and the screeching of car tires from his home two blocks from the scene.

When police arrived, Hernandez was lying on the sidewalk with multiple gunshots to the head, authorities said.

He was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:15 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

A van was seen leaving the scene, police said.

Area Central detectives are investigating the shooting, and no suspects are in custody, Gaines said.

Check back for more information.

asege@tribune.com

Twitter: @AdamSege

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Lindsay Lohan pushed for Elizabeth Taylor TV role

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Lindsay Lohan so wanted to play Elizabeth Taylor in the upcoming film “Liz & Dick” that she cut out the middle man and went straight to the producer herself, the tabloid-favorite star said in an interview on Friday.

Lohan, 26, plays Taylor in an upcoming television movie that dramatizes the long love affair between the late Hollywood legend and actor Richard Burton.

“It’s a funny story, actually. I had seen that they were going to be making the movie and I got the producers’ numbers and started harassing (producer) Larry Thompson,” Lohan said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I didn’t even care if my agents were going to do it or not, I just did it myself, too,” the “Mean Girls” actress said. “Because I was like, ‘No one else is going to play this role, I have to do this.’”

Early reviews of “Liz & Dick,” which premieres on U.S. cable channel Lifetime on November 25, have ranged from middling to poor. But TV critics noted the similarities between Lohan and Taylor, both often-troubled actresses who started life as child stars.

“‘Liz & Dick’ truly drags,” said the Hollywood Reporter. “Luckily, you can’t take your eyes off of Lohan playing Taylor, which the producers clearly thought would work because they share similar back stories.”

Lohan’s acting alongside New Zealand’s Grant Bowler as Burton was described by Variety on Friday as “adequate, barring a few awkward moments, thanks largely to the fabulous frocks and makeup … she gets to model.”

Lohan’s reputation, much like Taylor’s, has been built from her tabloid persona more than on-screen performance.

In and out of legal trouble, jail and rehab since 2007, Lohan faced media blow-back this week after canceling an in-depth interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, who said she suspected the actress’ publicity team pulled the plug knowing Walters would ask tough questions.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Jill Serjeant and Matthew Lewis)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Sources: Liguori planned as next Tribune CEO

When Tribune Co. emerges from bankruptcy, the new owners plan to name television executive Peter Liguori as the company's chief executive, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Liguori is a former top TV executive at Fox and Discovery. The decision to name him Tribune Co.'s CEO would end months of speculation and usher in a new era for the Chicago-based media company, which owns newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, and television stations.

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday signed off on waivers needed to transfer Tribune Co.'s broadcast properties to the new ownership, the final significant hurdle before the company can emerge from its long-running stay in Chapter 11.

While a date for emergence is not set, the new ownership group controlled by senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will likely take the reins by the end of the year. An initial step for the owners will be to appoint a board of directors. It will have final say on who becomes CEO, but sources say the owners have chosen Liguori.

"The decision has been made," one of the sources said.

Los Angeles Times Publisher Eddy Hartenstein has been CEO of Tribune Co. since May 2011. A Tribune Co. spokesman declined to comment.

A former advertising executive who transitioned into television more than two decades ago, Liguori, 52, is credited with turning cable channel FX into a programming powerhouse during his ascent to entertainment chief at News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting. More recently, he served as chief operating officer at Discovery Communications Inc., where he helped oversee the rocky launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Liguori is considered by some observers to be a good fit for Tribune Co. and its new owners. While the company's identity is closely connected to publishing, broadcasting is now the headline business and core profit center. One of Liguori's main jobs will be to help maximize TV ratings, advertising dollars and increasingly important affiliate fees for WGN America and Tribune Co.'s 23 local stations, according to industry insiders.

Liguori "is a very, very smart hire for Oaktree and the guys that run the company because I think what Tribune needs more than anything is somebody to kind of build the brands back and make it a true media company, as opposed to just a collection of businesses," said Jeff Shell, London-based president of NBCUniversal International, who worked with Liguori for six years at Fox beginning in 1996. Shell, whose name had once been floated as a candidate for Tribune Co. CEO, spoke recently about his former colleague's potential value as head of Tribune Co.

Liguori is also expected to address the fundamental question of whether Tribune Co. should retain its ownership of newspapers or divest them to focus on the healthier TV business. Revenues for newspapers have been halved in recent years as readership migrates to the digital world.

Liguori, who could not be reached for comment, became president of Fox's FX Networks in 1998, when it was a small basic cable channel airing reruns of everything from "M.A.S.H." to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Elevated to CEO in 2001, he remade FX by offering edgy original programming. Starting with "The Shield" in 2002, Liguori then rolled out "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me," creating first-run successes that redefined FX, and perhaps basic cable, in the process.

"FX was a channel when he took over — a little, tiny cable channel losing a bunch of money," Shell said. "He made it into something big by imagining something different, and I think that's what Tribune needs."

Liguori became president of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting Co. in 2005, where he headed up program development and marketing. Squeezed out in 2009, he then joined Discovery as chief operating officer, where one of his responsibilities was to oversee the nascent joint venture with OWN.

In May 2011, Liguori assumed the dual role as interim CEO of OWN after inaugural head Christina Norman was forced out at the struggling network. That added responsibility evaporated two months later when Winfrey made herself CEO of OWN. Liguori left Discovery in December, and the company eliminated his chief operating officer position.

Liguori has been working since July as a New York-based media consultant for private equity firm Carlyle Group. He is on the boards of Yahoo Inc., MGM Holdings Inc. and Topps Co.

Tribune Co. has been operating under bankruptcy court protection for nearly four years, having buckled under the $13 billion in total debt it took on after its 2007 buyout. The case was prolonged by a drawn-out battle for control among creditors.

With the court having resolved the major ownership questions, the FCC's decision to grant waivers was the last major piece of the puzzle to come together.

The FCC issued the waivers of its so-called cross-ownership rules for Tribune Co. in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, South Florida and Hartford, Conn., where it owns TV stations and newspapers. In Chicago, the company's properties include WGN-Ch. 9.

Getting the waivers "will enable the company to continue moving forward toward emergence from Chapter 11, a process we expect to complete over the course of the next several weeks," Hartenstein, Tribune Co.'s CEO, said in a statement.

Tribune Newspapers reporter Jim Puzzanghera contributed.

rchannick@tribune.com

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Hostess to close, cites nationwide worker strike

Indiana Hostess plants could shut down after workers strike.

Hostess Brands Inc., the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, said it had sought court permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers.

Hostess said a national strike by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union that began last week had crippled its ability to produce and deliver products at several facilities.

Hostess Chief Executive Gregory Rayburn said in an interview on CNBC Friday morning that Hostess could not avoid liquidation, even if members of its bakers' union ended their strike immediately and went back to work.

The liquidation of the company will mean that most of its 18,500 employees will lose their jobs, Hostess said on Friday.

In the Chicago area, Hostess employs about 300 workers making CupCakes, HoHos and Honey Buns in Schiller Park. Hostess also has a bakery in Hodgkins, where 325 workers make Beefsteak, Butternut, Home Pride, Nature’s Pride and Wonder breads.

The 82-year-old company said it took the decision to shut down after determining that not enough employees had returned to work by a deadline on Thursday.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy in January for the second time since 2004, said it had filed a motion with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, for permission to shut down and sell assets.

Irving, Texas-based Hostess has 565 distribution centers and 570 bakery outlet stores, as well as the 33 bakeries. Its brands include Wonder, Nature's Pride, Dolly Madison, Drake's, Butternut, Home Pride and Merita, but it is probably best known for Twinkies -- basically a cream-filled sponge cake.

"We deeply regret the necessity of today's decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike," Chief Executive Gregory Rayburn said in a statement.

"Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders," Rayburn added.

Union President Frank Hurt said on Thursday that the crisis at the company was the "result of nearly a decade of financial and operational mismanagement" and that management was trying to make union workers the scapegoats for a plan by Wall Street investors to sell Hostess.

Hostess said its debtor-in-possession lenders had agreed to allow the it to continue to have access to $75 million to fund the wind-down process.

"There's no way to soften the fact that this will hurt every Hostess Brands employee. All Hostess Brands employees will eventually lose their jobs - some sooner than others," Rayburn said in a letter to employees.

The company has canceled all orders in process with its suppliers and said any product in transit would be returned to the shipper.

In its filing with the court, the company said it would have incurred a loss of between $7.5 million and $9.5 million from Nov. 9 to Nov. 19 in lost sales and increased costs.

"These losses and other factors, including increased vendor payment terms contraction, have resulted in a significant weakening of the debtors' cash position and, if continued, would soon result in the debtors completely running out of cash," it said.

Hostess had already reached agreement on pay and benefit cuts with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, its largest union.

The case is In re: Hostess Brands Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-22052.

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Sina banks on Weibo but weak fourth quarter guidance spooks investors

(Reuters) – Chinese Internet company Sina Corp said its fourth quarter will be hit by a softer economy and posted weaker-than-expected sales guidance, despite a stronger revenue contribution from its hot microblogging platform Weibo.

Shares in Sina fell 7 percent after it forecast adjusted net revenue of $ 132 million to $ 136 million in the current quarter, below analysts’ expectations for $ 151.9 million according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sina, which makes most of its revenue from online advertising both on its website and Weibo, is facing stiff headwinds as firms slash advertising budgets due to a worsening economic outlook.

“We are going to see a weaker quarter for advertising overall in the fourth quarter,” said Charles Chao, Sina’s chief executive on an earnings conference call. The firm forecast Q4 advertising revenues would rise 6-8 percent from a year earlier.

Chao said Weibo contributed 16 percent to total revenue in the third quarter, up from 10 percent in the previous quarter. The platform, which is very popular with white-collar workers, university students and celebrities, had 424 million registered users at the end of the quarter, up from 368 million three months earlier.

Advertisers, like luxury brands, that traditionally don’t advertise with Sina’s main portal website flocked to Weibo to test out the social platform, Chao said.

There were about 230,000 Weibo advertising accounts in the quarter, and Sina was in the process of rolling out a online payment system and new Weibo advertising product to increase monetization at the end of the fourth quarter.

“We believe a ‘promoted feed advertising’ will become one of the major forms of (Weibo) advertising going forward,” said Chao, adding that the product will be effective also on mobile platforms, allowing Sina to tap into Weibo’s growth on mobile devices.

Q3 PROFIT BEAT

For the third quarter, Sina’s net profit was $ 9.9 million compared with a loss of $ 336.3 million a year earlier, and slighly ahead of analysts’ expectations of $ 7.5 million.

Sina’s quarterly advertising revenue rose 19 percent to $ 120.6 million, while non-advertising revenue rose 9 percent to $ 31.8 million.

The company started monetizing Weibo by offering special services to business accounts and selling VIP memberships to regular users earlier this year.

For its mobile-value-added-services business, Sina said it expects revenue to continue to decline due to new regulatory policies.

The company was also affected by a spat between Japan and China over islands in the East China Sea as Japanese automakers cut back on advertising in China. Chao said he expected the impact to last into the fourth quarter.

“It did have an impact on our third quarter as well as our fourth quarter. We did see cancellations from customers related to Japanese automobiles in the month of September and it impacted the fourth quarter (too),” Chao said.

Sina shares fell 6.74 percent to $ 49.52 in extended trading. They closed at $ 53.10 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Richard Pullin)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Juanes, Jesse & Joy take home top Latin Grammys

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Colombian rocker Juanes and the Mexican brother and sister pop duo Jesse & Joy took home the top Latin Grammys on Thursday in Las Vegas on a night in which the contemporary triumphed over the traditional.

Juanes, one of the most well known Latin American stars worldwide, won the coveted album of the year with his “MTV Unplugged,” which also won best long-form video. Dominican singer and songwriter Juan Luis Guerra won producer of the year for Juanes‘ album.

“Here’s to the maestro Juan Luis Guerra for making this possible,” said Juanes, 40, who now has won 19 Latin Grammys, tying him with reggaeton group Calle 13 for the most awards.

Guerra, who made the romantic Bachata music famous and is known to sweep the awards from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, led the nominations with six nods this year. But he lost out on the big awards for record and song of the year with his “En El Cielo No Hay Hospital” (In Heaven There Is No Hospital).

Those two awards went to “Corre!” (Run!) by Jesse & Joy, the duo from Mexico City who won best new artists in the same Las Vegas venue in 2007. Their third studio album Con Quien Se Queda El Perro? (Who Is The Dog Staying With?) lost out on album of the year, but won best contemporary pop vocal album.

“Viva Mexico!,” said Jesse upon accepting record of the year, a phrase repeated several times by winners at the 13th edition of the Latin Grammys Thursday night.

Like Jesse & Joy five years earlier, Mexican pop group 3BallMTY won best new artists with their musical style known as “tribal guarachero,” a mix of Mexican cumbia and electronic dance music.

The trio, barely beyond their teenage years, found success on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border with their debut album “Intentalo” (Try It). They dedicated their Latin Grammy to Mexican DJs.

Mexico’s Carla Morrison won best alternative music album with “Dejenme Llorar” (Let Me Cry). Wearing a red dress and sporting multiple tattoos on her arms, she let loose an expletive on the live broadcast after crying out “Viva Mexico!”

Among the top performances of the night were Juanes playing with veteran guitarrist Carlos Santana. The show opened with Miami-born rapper Pitbull, who sings in both English and Spanish.

Brazilian singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso was honored as the Latin Recording Academy‘s person of the year in a ceremony on Wednesday. A founder of the 1960s musical movement known as Tropicalia, Veloso continues to to be one of Brazil’s most popular and innovative artists at 70 years of age.

(Writing by Mary Milliken; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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For Alzheimer’s, Detection Advances Outpace Treatment Options

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

Awilda Jimenez got a scan for Alzheimer’s after she started forgetting things. It was positive.

When Awilda Jimenez started forgetting things last year, her husband, Edwin, felt a shiver of dread. Her mother had developed Alzheimer’s in her 50s. Could his wife, 61, have it, too?

He learned there was a new brain scan to diagnose the disease and nervously agreed to get her one, secretly hoping it would lay his fears to rest. In June, his wife became what her doctor says is the first private patient in Arizona to have the test.

“The scan was floridly positive,” said her doctor, Adam S. Fleisher, director of brain imaging at the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix.

The Jimenezes have struggled ever since to deal with this devastating news. They are confronting a problem of the new era of Alzheimer’s research: The ability to detect the disease has leapt far ahead of treatments. There are none that can stop or even significantly slow the inexorable progression to dementia and death.

Families like the Jimenezes, with no good options, can only ask: Should they live their lives differently, get their affairs in order, join a clinical trial of an experimental drug?

“I was hoping the scan would be negative,” Mr. Jimenez said. “When I found out it was positive, my heart sank.”

The new brain scan technology, which went on the market in June, is spreading fast. There are already more than 300 hospitals and imaging centers, located in most major metropolitan areas, that are ready to perform the scans, according to Eli Lilly, which sells the tracer used to mark plaque for the scan.

The scans show plaques in the brain — barnaclelike clumps of protein, beta amyloid — that, together with dementia, are the defining feature of Alzheimer’s disease. Those who have dementia but do not have excessive plaques do not have Alzheimer’s. It is no longer necessary to wait until the person dies and has an autopsy to learn if the brain was studded with plaques.

Many insurers, including Medicare, will not yet pay for the new scans, which cost several thousand dollars. And getting one comes with serious risks. While federal law prevents insurers and employers from discriminating based on genetic tests, it does not apply to scans. People with brain plaques can be denied long-term care insurance.

The Food and Drug Administration, worried about interpretations of the scans, has required something new: Doctors must take a test showing they can read them accurately before they begin doing them. So far, 700 doctors have qualified, according to Eli Lilly. Other kinds of diagnostic scans have no such requirement.

In another unusual feature, the F.D.A. requires that radiologists not be told anything about the patient. They are generally trained to incorporate clinical information into their interpretation of other types of scans, said Dr. R. Dwaine Rieves, director of the drug agency’s Division of Medical Imaging Products.

But in this case, clinical information may lead radiologists to inadvertently shade their reports to coincide with what doctors suspect is the underlying disease. With Alzheimer’s, Dr. Rieves said, “clinical impressions have been misleading.”

“This is a big change in the world of image interpretation,” he said.

Like some other Alzheimer’s experts, Dr. Fleisher used the amyloid scan for several years as part of a research study that led to its F.D.A. approval. Subjects were not told what the scans showed. Now, with the scan on the market, the rules have changed.

Dr. Fleisher’s first patient was Mrs. Jimenez. Her husband, the family breadwinner, had lost his job as a computer consultant when the couple moved from New York to Arizona to take care of Mrs. Jimenez’s mother. Paying several thousand dollars for a scan was out of the question. But Dr. Fleisher found a radiologist, Dr. Mantej Singh Sra of Sun Radiology, who was so eager to get into the business that he agreed to do Mrs. Jimenez’s scan free. His plan was to be the first in Arizona to do a scan, and advertise it.

After Dr. Sra did the scan, the Jimenezes returned to Dr. Fleisher to learn the result.

Dr. Fleisher, sad to see so much plaque in Mrs. Jimenez’s brain, referred her to a psychiatrist to help with anxiety and suggested she enter clinical trials of experimental drugs.

But Mr. Jimenez did not like that idea. He worried about unexpected side effects.

“Tempting as it is, where do you draw the line?” he asks. “At what point do you take a risk with a loved one?”

At Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Dr. Samuel E. Gandy found that his patients — mostly affluent — were unfazed by the medical center’s $3,750 price for the scan. He has been ordering at least one a week for people with symptoms ambiguous enough to suggest the possibility of brain plaques.

Most of his patients want their names kept confidential, fearing an inability to get long-term care insurance, or just wanting privacy.

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No more Twinkies? Hostess plans to shut down

Indiana Hostess plants could shut down after workers strike.

Hostess Brands Inc., the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, said it had sought court permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers.

Hostess said a national strike by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union that began last week had crippled its ability to produce and deliver products at several facilities.

Hostess Chief Executive Gregory Rayburn said in an interview on CNBC Friday morning that Hostess could not avoid liquidation, even if members of its bakers' union ended their strike immediately and went back to work.

The liquidation of the company will mean that most of its 18,500 employees will lose their jobs, Hostess said on Friday.

In the Chicago area, Hostess employs about 300 workers making CupCakes, HoHos and Honey Buns in Schiller Park. Hostess also has a bakery in Hodgkins, where 325 workers make Beefsteak, Butternut, Home Pride, Nature’s Pride and Wonder breads.

The 82-year-old company said it took the decision to shut down after determining that not enough employees had returned to work by a deadline on Thursday.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy in January for the second time since 2004, said it had filed a motion with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, for permission to shut down and sell assets.

Irving, Texas-based Hostess has 565 distribution centers and 570 bakery outlet stores, as well as the 33 bakeries. Its brands include Wonder, Nature's Pride, Dolly Madison, Drake's, Butternut, Home Pride and Merita, but it is probably best known for Twinkies -- basically a cream-filled sponge cake.

"We deeply regret the necessity of today's decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike," Chief Executive Gregory Rayburn said in a statement.

"Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders," Rayburn added.

Union President Frank Hurt said on Thursday that the crisis at the company was the "result of nearly a decade of financial and operational mismanagement" and that management was trying to make union workers the scapegoats for a plan by Wall Street investors to sell Hostess.

Hostess said its debtor-in-possession lenders had agreed to allow the it to continue to have access to $75 million to fund the wind-down process.

"There's no way to soften the fact that this will hurt every Hostess Brands employee. All Hostess Brands employees will eventually lose their jobs - some sooner than others," Rayburn said in a letter to employees.

The company has canceled all orders in process with its suppliers and said any product in transit would be returned to the shipper.

In its filing with the court, the company said it would have incurred a loss of between $7.5 million and $9.5 million from Nov. 9 to Nov. 19 in lost sales and increased costs.

"These losses and other factors, including increased vendor payment terms contraction, have resulted in a significant weakening of the debtors' cash position and, if continued, would soon result in the debtors completely running out of cash," it said.

Hostess had already reached agreement on pay and benefit cuts with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, its largest union.

The case is In re: Hostess Brands Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-22052.

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Man charged in hit-and-run that killed father of 3

A West Rogers Park man has been charged with reckless homicide in the hit-and-run death of a leader in the Chicago area's Tibetan community this week, police said.

Fernando Jasso Perez, 23, lives just a block from where Tsering Dorjee was struck as he and his brother-in-law crossed the street in the 6400 block of North Maplewood Avenue around 6 p.m. Monday, according to police.

Perez was also charged with failure to report an accident resulting in death and failure to report an accident resulting in an injury. Police said Perez has never had a driver's license.

Dorjee had spent the day helping his brother-in-law find an apartment for his family, expected to arrive from India next month. Around 6 p.m., he and Dakpa Jorden  were crossing the street on their way to get food when they both were struck by a dark blue Volkswagen that kept on driving, police said.

Dorjee, 44, was pronounced dead late Monday night at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Jorden suffered a broken leg and was also taken to Saint Francis Hospital.

Police found the Volkswagen around noon Tuesday and announced charges against Perez Thursday morning. Perez, of the 6400 block of North Campbell Avenue, is to appear in bond court today.

Dorjee worked in the Cook County Clerk’s office for 14 years and was president of the Rogers Park Chamber of Commerce. While living in India, Dorjee worked for the Tibetan government in exile, according to Lhakpa Tsering, president of the Tibetan Alliance of Chicago.

He leaves behind his wife and three children under 6.

pnickeas@tribune.com

Twitter: @peternickeas

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Texas Instruments cuts 1,700 jobs, winds down tablet chips

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Texas Instruments is eliminating 1,700 jobs, as it winds down its mobile processor business to focus on chips for more profitable markets like cars and home appliances.

Texas Instruments said in September it would halt costly investments in the increasingly competitive smartphone and tablet chip business, leading Wall Street to speculate that part of the company’s processor unit, called OMAP, could be sold.

The layoffs are equivalent to nearly 5 percent of the Austin, Texas-based company’s global workforce.

“A sale would have been better than a restructuring but a restructuring is certainly better than nothing,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said.

TI has been under pressure in mobile processors, where it has lost ground to rival Qualcomm Inc. Leading smartphone makers Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been developing their own chips instead of buying them from suppliers like TI.

Instead of competing in phones and tablets, TI wants to sell its OMAP processors in markets that require less investment, like industrial clients like carmakers.

TI is expected to continue selling existing tablet and phone processors for products like Amazon.Com Inc‘s Kindle tablets for as long as demand remains, but stop developing new chips.

“This year, the Kindle runs on the OMAP 4 and next year’s Kindle is slated, we believe, for OMAP 5. We believe that program is well along to completion and do not expect that the termination of OMAP will disrupt those plans,” said Longbow Research analyst JoAnne Feeney.

Amazon had reportedly been in talks to buy the mobile part of OMAP.

TI said it expects to take charges of about $ 325 million related to the job cuts and other cost reduction measures, most of which will be accounted for in the current quarter. Its previously announced financial targets for the fourth quarter do not include these costs, TI said.

The company, which has 35,000 employees around the world, expects annualized savings of about $ 450 million by the end of 2013 from the action.

TI shares rose to $ 29 in after-hours trading after closing at $ 28.76, down 2 percent on Nasdaq.

(Reporting By Sinead Carew in New York and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; editing by Carol Bishopric)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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