Judge Tells Apple, Amazon to Try to Settle Their 'Appstore' Beef

The judge presiding over the Apple and Amazon lawsuit over rights to the “appstore” name has told the two companies to sit down and at least try to settle their dispute before trial.

San Francisco U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte issued an order Tuesday telling the two sides to talk it out. This doesn’t mean they’ll come to terms before the August 19 trial, but they must at least pretend to try.

If the talks, first reported by Bloomberg, don’t lead to a settlement, the mess lands in U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton’s courtroom in Oakland. Hamilton, like Laporte, seems tired of the bickering. On January 2, Hamilton dismissed Apple’s claim that the Amazon Appstore for Android was falsely advertising itself as an app store for iOS apps. No one is confusing the Appstore for Apple’s App Store, she said.

Apple filed its lawsuit against Amazon the day the Appstore for Android (which only sells apps that run on Google’s Android operating system) went live, back on March 22, 2011. The iPhone maker is accusing Amazon of infringing on its copyrighted “App Store” name. Meanwhile, Amazon countersued Apple, arguing that “app store” is a generic phrase and that Apple shouldn’t be the only company to use the term.

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Pregnant Kim Kardashian wants to be more private

NEW YORK (AP) — As the tabloids speculated about whether Jessica Simpson is expecting again (she is) and the media zeroed in on Kate Middleton‘s acute morning sickness, Kim Kardashian says it was nice to be out of the media spotlight during the early stages of her pregnancy.

“I’m obviously so happy for them, but if anything I loved the privacy,” the 32-year-old reality TV star said in an interview Wednesday.

That bit of privacy went out the window when Kardashian’s boyfriend, Kanye West, revealed during a Dec. 30 concert in Atlantic City, N.J., that they are expecting their first child together.

Now that the word is out, Kardashian says her motherly instincts have made her pull back from being so open about her personal life.

“I think that definitely kicks in where you’re like, ‘OK, I have to go in protect mode,’ and as ironic as it sounds, you live your life on a reality show but then when you grow up … certain things change your life that make you want to be more private and this is definitely one of them.”

The couple went public with their relationship in March.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West rarely grants interviews, and the 35-year-old rapper is the ying to the Kardashian family’s “out there” yang. Kardashian says she is somewhat influenced by West’s approach.

“When you spend time with someone, you learn things from them, so I see what (his) views are in wanting to be private, so that’s a choice we make together as a family just in how we’re gonna raise our kid,” she said. “… But my personal experience of having really open relationships on the show, I’ve done that, and for me I feel like I got really scrutinized when people didn’t maybe understand my decisions at some point, so I feel like after that experience I’ve become more private more so than just like Kanye’s views or anything.”

Kardashian is due in July.

A new season of her reality show with her sister Kourtney, “Kourtney and Kim Take Miami,” premieres Sunday on E! (9 p.m. EST).

___

Online:

http://www.eonline.com/shows/kourtney_and_kim_take_miami

___

Alicia Rancilio covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow her online at http://www.twitter.com/aliciar

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely.

The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents think and talk about autism, experts said.

Researchers on Wednesday cautioned against false hope. The findings suggest that the so-called autism spectrum contains a small but significant group who make big improvements in behavioral therapy for unknown, perhaps biological reasons, but that most children show much smaller gains. Doctors have no way to predict which children will do well.

Researchers have long known that between 1 and 20 percent of children given an autism diagnosis no longer qualify for one a few years or more later. They have suspected that in most cases the diagnosis was mistaken; the rate of autism diagnosis has ballooned over the past two decades, and some research suggests that it has been loosely applied.

The new study should put some of that skepticism to rest.

“This is the first solid science to address this question of possible recovery, and I think it has big implications,” said Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the research. “I know many of us as would rather have had our tooth pulled than use the word ‘recover,’ it was so unscientific. Now we can use it, though I think we need to stress that it’s rare.”

She and other experts said the findings strongly supported the value of early diagnosis and treatment.

In the study, a team led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut at Storrs recruited 34 people who had been diagnosed before the age of 5 and no longer had any symptoms. They ranged in age from 8 to 21 years old and early in their development were in the higher-than-average range of the autism spectrum. The team conducted extensive testing of its own, including interviews with parents in some cases, to gauge current social and communication skills.

The debate over whether recovery is possible has simmered for decades and peaked in 1987, when the pioneering autism researcher O. Ivar Lovaas reported that 47 percent of children with the diagnosis showed full recovery after undergoing a therapy he had devised. This therapy, a behavioral approach in which increments of learned skills garner small rewards, is the basis for the most effective approach used today; still, many were skeptical and questioned his definition of recovery.

Dr. Fein and her team used standardized, widely used measures and found no differences between the group of 34 formerly diagnosed people and a group of 34 matched control subjects who had never had a diagnosis.

“They no longer qualified for the diagnosis,” said Dr. Fein, whose co-authors include researchers from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; the Institute of Living in Hartford; and the Child Mind Institute in New York. “I want to stress to parents that it’s a minority of kids who are able to do this, and no one should think they somehow missed the boat if they don’t get this outcome.”

On measures of social and communication skills, the recovered group scored significantly better than 44 peers who had a diagnosis of high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Dr. Fein emphasized the importance of behavioral therapy. “These people did not just grow out of their autism,” she said. “I have been treating children for 40 years and never seen improvements like this unless therapists and parents put in years of work.”

The team plans further research to learn more about those who are able to recover. No one knows which ingredients or therapies are most effective, if any, or if there are patterns of behavior or biological markers that predict such success.

“Some children who do well become quite independent as adults but have significant anxiety and depression and are sometimes suicidal,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, the director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. There are no studies of this group, he said.

That, because of the new study, is about to change.

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DealBook: H.P. Said to Have Suitors for Two Units

Hewlett-Packard has received a number of inquiries from would-be buyers for its Autonomy and Electronic Data Systems units in recent weeks, though the technology company isn’t interested in selling at the moment, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

The volume of calls from potential suitors and bankers picked up after H.P. filed its annual report with regulators on Dec. 28, this person said. In the securities filing, the company said, “We also continue to evaluate the potential disposition of assets and businesses that may no longer help us meet our objectives.”

That is fairly standard legal boilerplate. But H.P. has been struggling with poor performance at both Autonomy and E.D.S., having significantly written down the value of those acquisitions. The company has also claimed to have found accounting and disclosure issues at Autonomy, and has forwarded findings from an internal inquiry to securities regulators in the United States and the division’s home in Britain.

Some of the expressions of interest may also have arisen amid the sudden flurry of news coverage surrounding a potential leveraged buyout of Dell.

Still, H.P.’s management team, led by its chief executive, Meg Whitman, is not interested in selling what it considers to be “core” businesses. The company is focused on growing its enterprise business, which sells software and services to corporate clients.

Shares in H.P. were up 3 percent by late afternoon on Wednesday, to $17.03, after The Wall Street Journal reported news of the inquiries. The company’s stock remains down some 35 percent for the last 12 months.

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December home prices jump 19.6% in Southern California

Southern California¿s housing market ended last year with sharp home-price gains and the highest sales for a December in three years.

Southern California's housing market ended the year with sharp gains, rounding out the first solid year of sustained improvement after nearly five years of real estate malaise — and helping set up further improvement in 2013.

The region's median home price registered a sizable 19.6% pop in December compared with the same month last year to hit $323,000, real estate firm DataQuick reported Tuesday. A record level of cash buyers flooded into the market and more move-up homes sold last month.

While Southland housing is on the mend, the steep increase in the region's median price last month probably reflects a variety of factors, such as the mix of what sold in December, and the run-up may not continue at that brisk pace, experts said. The median is the point at which half the homes in the region sold for more and half for less.

"There is no possible way that number can be sustained nor should anybody look at that as a long-term trend," said Stuart Gabriel, director of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA. "We haven't shifted from bust back to bubble, and nobody should think we have, and nor likely will we."

When compared with the prior month, the median was essentially flat, up only 0.6%. San Bernardino and Riverside counties posted the strongest year-over-year increases, up 20.0% and 19.1%, respectively, indicating that the once hard-hit Inland Empire is now probably in recovery.

The median is heavily influenced by the types of homes selling, and some of last month's pricier sales may have been driven by fears of increased tax burdens on the wealthy, as Washington wrangled with the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.

A rise in prices will mean more homeowners who had been underwater — owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, a condition also known as negative equity — can now put their properties on the market. That would help ease the region's inventory squeeze, which is another major factor driving up prices.

Last year was the first year of solid improvement since housing crashed in 2007. The strong performance last month indicates that 2013 will continue to bring home price gains, analysts said.

"Our forecast over the next 12 months is for equally strong appreciation," Zillow.com chief economist Stan Humphries said. "Even though we have got a lot of homes still in negative equity in Southern California, the tight inventory is definitely creating some price appreciation."

An estimated total of 20,274 new and previously owned homes and condominiums sold throughout the six-county region in December. That was a 5.1% increase from November and up 5.3% from December 2011. Last month's tally was the highest for a December since 2009.

The 2012 housing rebound came after foreclosures declined, housing inventory plummeted, mortgage interest rates hit record lows and demand from investors surged last year.

In addition, the overhang of the last housing bust resulted in some unexpected benefits.

For instance, the high number of underwater borrowers actually served as a boost to the market rather than being a drag, as people kept their homes off the market, decreasing inventory.

"The lock-out phenomenon, combined with the rise in investors converting foreclosures into rentals, led to a lack of for-sale inventory," CoreLogic economist Sam Khater wrote in a research note. "With home prices rising in 2012 and 2013, tight for-sale inventory will begin to ease."

Nationally, CoreLogic reported that home prices were on a sharp upward trajectory in November, with almost all states posting gains that month. The firm's home price index report, also released Tuesday, showed that home prices nationwide increased 7.4% year-over-year.

"Consistent price increases throughout 2012 have started the process of lifting households out of negative equity, which will support home sales and refinancing volumes," Paul Diggle, an economist for Capital Economics, wrote in an emailed analysis. "Lower levels of negative equity is good news for housing market activity and sets up a virtuous circle of rising activity leading to rising prices and pushing negative equity down further."

In California, buyers can anticipate a tight market in the near term. A supply of only about 2 1/2 months' worth of single-family homes for sale was available statewide at the end of December, the California Assn. of Realtors reported Tuesday. A supply of six or seven months is considered healthy by most economists.

Supply from distressed sales, particularly from foreclosed homes, will remain limited as those homes are being quickly snapped up by investors while the number of troubled borrowers entering foreclosure continues to decline. The number of notices of default — the first step in the formal foreclosure process — fell 14.5% in December from November and dropped 39.8% from December 2011, according to foreclosure tracker ForeclosureRadar.com.

The decline in foreclosures has been aided by an increase in short sales, as The Times recently reported, as well as other loan aid for borrowers. The drop in foreclosures should continue to help lift prices.

"For 2013, we largely expect more of the same," Sean O'Toole, chief executive of ForeclosureRadar, wrote in a blog post this week. "Demand will remain strong thanks to Federal Reserve-manipulated low interest rates and affordability. Housing supply will remain constrained, largely due to government foreclosure intervention. As a result, prices will rise, though likely at a slower pace."

The increase in the median home price in Southern California reflects market dynamics as fewer sales are logged in cheaper neighborhoods and pricier places take off.

Throughout Southern California, sales of mid-to-higher-cost markets rose in December, DataQuick reported. Sales of homes between $300,000 and $800,000, the typical move-up range, jumped 31.4% year-over-year. Sales of homes above $500,000 soared 40.0% year-over-year, while sales of homes of more than $800,000 were up 36.3%.

Meanwhile, cheaper neighborhoods posted weak sales. Most notably, the number of homes throughout the region that sold below $200,000 dropped 28.1% while those below $300,000 fell 18.2%.

Sales of foreclosed homes made up just 14.8% of the market last month, down from 15.4% the month before and 32.4% in December 2011. That compares with a high of 56.7% of the market in February 2009.

Cash buyers and investors are playing a big part in snapping up home inventory. Cash buyers bought up 33.8% of all resale homes last month, while absentee buyers purchased 29.1% of Southland homes in December, DataQuick said.

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

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Syria Dropped Hallucinogen Weapon on Rebels, Secret Cable Says

Updated 10:00 p.m.

The Syrian military used an exotic chemical weapon on rebels during an attack in the city of Homs, some U.S. diplomats now believe.

That conclusion — first reported by Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin and laid out in a secret cable from the U.S. consul general in Istanbul — contradicts preliminary estimates made by American officials in the hours after the December 23 strike. But after interviews with Syrian activists, doctors, and defectors, American diplomats in Turkey have apparently rendered a different verdict. It’s important to note, however, that this was the conclusion of a single consulate within the State Department, and there is still wide disagreement within the U.S. government over whether the Homs attack should be characterized as a chemical weapons incident.

“We can’t definitely say 100 percent, but Syrian contacts made a compelling case that Agent 15 was used in Homs on Dec. 23,” an unnamed U.S. official tells Rogin.

Agent 15 is another name for 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, a powerful hallucinogen that the American military tested out on its own soldiers during the Cold War. Its emergence on the Syrian battlefield would be nothing short of bizarre. While Syria is well-known to have a massive supply of chemical weapons, international observers haven’t ordinarily included BZ on that list.

Over the years, there have been rumors of BZ being used on a battlefield — including one that Iraqi insurgents were dosing themselves with the drug to pump up their aggressiveness. If the cable is accurate, this would be the first confirmed case of BZ employed as a weapon. At the moment, however, the cable’s claims are not confirmed.

“The reporting we have seen from media sources regarding alleged chemical weapons incidents in Syria has not been consistent with what we believe to be true about the Syrian chemical weapons program,” White House national security council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. “If the Assad regime makes the tragic mistake of using chemical weapons, or fails to meet its obligation to secure them, the regime will be held accountable.”

President Obama has called the use of chemical arms in Syria a “red line” that could trigger outside intervention in the civil war that has killed more than 60,000 people. It’s unclear whether the White House would consider a BZ strike to be a step over that line; Agent 15 isn’t nearly as deadly as a nerve agent like sarin. Last week, America’s top military officer said preventing a chemical attack by the Assad regime would be “almost unachievable.”

American and allied intelligence services have been watching the Syrian government’s acquisition and possible use of chemical weapon components for years. They’ve blocked the importation of precursor chemicals and equipment into Syria when they’ve been able, and immediately reported to the White House when the Syrian military began mixing those precursor chemicals and loading them into munitions for a possible attack.

But when U.S. officials first caught wind of Syrian rebels’ chemical weapons claim, the officials didn’t make much of it. In graphic videos uploaded to YouTube, opposition activists said they were hit by a gas that was “something similar to sarin,” a deadly nerve agent. The videos showed victims howling in agony and barely able to breathe. But the symptoms, as gruesome as they were, didn’t seem like the one produced by sarin.

There were complaints of strong smells in the videos; sarin is often odorless. There were reports that the victims inhaled large amounts of the chemical; a minuscule of amount of inhaled sarin can be fatal.

“It just doesn’t jibe with chemical weapons,” one U.S. official told Danger Room at the time.

Later accounts from Homs more closely match what one might expect from a nerve gas victim. Rogin spoke with Dr. Nashwan Abu Abdo, a neurologist from Homs, who talked about victims with pinpoint pupils, “choking on their own secretions.”

Abdo’s descriptions, however, don’t correspond with the conclusions of the State Department cable. A hallucinogen like BZ is unlikely to produce the effects Abdo outlined; such drugs typically cause pupils to grow, for instance, not contract.

Something horrible happened in Homs on December 23. Exactly what that horrible event was still isn’t clear.

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Americans favor “Lincoln” for top Oscars: poll

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Director Ben Affleck and “Argo” may have been the big winners at the Golden Globes, but many Americans think Steven Spielberg and “Lincoln” should take home the top Oscars at next month’s awards.

Nearly a quarter of Americans questioned in an Ipsos poll for Reuters thought the Civil War drama “Lincoln” should win the Oscar for best picture at the 85th Academy Awards in Los Angeles on February 24. Spielberg was also their top choice for best director, with 36 percent choosing him.

Only 4 percent of Americans thought “Argo,” which depicts the rescue of American diplomats in Iran in the 1970s, should win the Academy Award for best picture.

The poll results have little if any implication for who will ultimately win the Oscars, which are voted on by movie industry professionals.

The Golden Globes are sometimes looked to for hints on the eventual Oscar victors, the biggest prizes in the film industry, as many Globe winners have gone on to Oscars success. But Affleck is not even in the running for best director after he was snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which announced its nominations last week.

Americans chose Daniel Day-Lewis as their clear favorite to follow up his Golden Globe win for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln with a best actor Oscar.

Twenty-two percent chose him over Denzel Washington in “Flight,” who polled 16 percent while Hugh Jackman, who won a Golden Globe for his role in the musical “Les Miserables” was third.

But the choice for best actress was less clear cut. Twelve percent of the 1,158 Americans polled voted for Naomi Watts as the distraught mother in the tsunami drama “The Impossible,” followed by 10 percent for Jennifer Lawrence in “Silver Linings Playbook” and 9 percent for Jessica Chastain in the search for Osama Bin Laden thriller, “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Lawrence won the Golden Globe on Sunday for best actress in a comedy or musical, while Chastain took home the prize for best actress in a drama.

“Lincoln” was also the top choice in the poll for the supporting categories, with Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field favorites for their performances in the film.

Comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who won praise for their first stint hosting the Golden Globes, will be a hard act to follow but 42 percent of Americans approved of the choice of outspoken comedian and creator of “Family Guy” Seth MacFarlane to helm the Academy Awards.

If given the opportunity to select the host for the Oscars, 15 of people said they would opt for comedian Billy Crystal, followed by 12 percent who chose Ellen DeGeneres while 10 percent wanted Steve Martin.

To view the full poll results go to http://link.reuters.com/deh35t

The poll, which was conducted online from January 11-15, has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Breaking Link of Violence and Mental Illness

No one but a deeply disturbed individual marches into an elementary school or a movie theater and guns down random, innocent people.

That hard fact drives the public longing for a mental health system that produces clear warning signals and can somehow stop the violence. And it is now fueling a surge in legislative activity, in Washington and New York.

But these proposed changes and others like them may backfire and only reveal how broken the system is, experts said.

“Anytime you have one of these tragic cases like Newtown, it’s going to expose deficiencies in the mental health system, and provide some opportunity for reform,” said Richard J. Bonnie, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia’s law school who led a state commission that overhauled policies after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings that left 33 people dead. “But you have to be very careful not to overreact.”

New York State legislators on Tuesday passed a gun bill that would require therapists to report to the authorities any client thought to be “likely to engage in” violent behavior; under the law, the police would confiscate any weapons the person had.

And in Washington, lawmakers said that President Obama was considering a range of actions as part of a plan to reduce gun violence, including more sharing of records between mental health and law enforcement agencies.

The White House plan to make use of mental health data was still taking shape late Tuesday. But several ideas being discussed — including the reporting provision in the New York gun law — are deeply contentious and transcend political differences.

Some advocates favored the reporting provision as having the potential to prevent a massacre. Among them was D. J. Jaffe, founder of the Mental Illness Policy Org., which pushes for more aggressive treatment policies. Some mass killers “were seen by mental health professionals who did not have to report their illness or that they were becoming dangerous and they went on to kill,” he said.

Yet many patient advocates and therapists strongly disagreed, saying it would intrude into the doctor-patient relationship in a way that could dissuade troubled people from speaking their minds, and complicate the many judgment calls therapists already have to make.

The New York statute requires doctors and other mental health professionals to report any person who “is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.”

Under current ethical guidelines, only involuntary hospitalizations (and direct threats made by patients) are reported to the authorities. These reports then appear on a federal background-check database. The new laws would go further.

“The way I read the new law, it means I have to report voluntary as well as involuntary hospitalizations, as well as many people being treated for suicidal thinking, for instance, as outpatients,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, director of the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry at Columbia University’s medical school. “That is a much larger group of people than before, and most of whom will never be a serious threat to anyone.”

One fundamental problem with looking for “warning signs” is that it is more art than science. People with serious mental disorders, while more likely to commit aggressive acts than the average person, account for only about 4 percent of violent crimes over all.

The rate is higher when it comes to rampage or serial killings, closer to 20 percent, according to Dr. Michael Stone, a New York forensic psychiatrist who has a database of about 200 mass and serial killers. He has concluded from the records that about 40 were likely to have had paranoid schizophrenia or severe depression or were psychopathic, meaning they were impulsive and remorseless.

“But most mass murders are done by working-class men who’ve been jilted, fired, or otherwise humiliated — and who then undergo a crisis of rage and get out one of the 300 million guns in our country and do their thing,” Dr. Stone said.

The sort of young, troubled males who seem to psychiatrists most likely to commit school shootings — identified because they have made credible threats — often do not qualify for any diagnosis, experts said. They might have elements of paranoia, of deep resentment, or of narcissism, a grandiose self-regard, that are noticeable but do not add up to any specific “disorder” according to strict criteria.

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Daniel J. Edelman, a Publicity Pioneer, Dies at 92

Daniel J. Edelman, the founder and chairman of one of the largest public relations firms in the world and a groundbreaker in the field, died on Tuesday in Chicago. He was 92.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son Richard, president and chief executive of the company.

Daniel Edelman started the company, Edelman, in a small office in Chicago in 1952. It now has 63 offices in 26 countries with more than 4,600 employees and revenue of $660 million last year.

Steve Barrett, editor of the trade publication PRWeek, called Edelman “easily the biggest agency in the world.”

Over the years, Mr. Edelman helped build leading brands like Sara Lee and KFC. The firm’s current clients include Microsoft, Pfizer, General Electric, Wal-Mart Stores, Abbott Laboratories, Samsung, Royal Dutch Shell, Kraft, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever.

In the 1950s, Mr. Edelman arranged for Businessweek and Life magazines to publish articles about the manufacturing and distribution processes at Sara Lee, the baked goods company.

When the California wine industry turned to him in 1966 to promote its products nationwide, Mr. Edelman hired Vincent Price as a spokesman and had him appear on “The Tonight Show.”

Beyond promoting his clients, Mr. Edelman had a significant influence on the methodology of public relations.

“When I teach the modules on the history of public relations, I tell my students that Mr. Edelman was one of our pioneers,” said Maria P. Russell, chairwoman of the public relations department at Syracuse University’s S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “Specifically, he helped public relations professionals move away from being order-takers to respected counselors to business executives and government leaders.”

As an example, Richard Edelman cited his father’s work in the firm’s representation of the Mormon Church for a decade, starting in the mid-1990s. The idea of the publicity campaign, he said, “was that this religion has made a very important contribution to America and had changed from some of its original precepts.”

Daniel Joseph Edelman was born in Manhattan on July 3, 1920, one of five children of Selig and Selma Edelman. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a concert pianist. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and from Columbia University in 1940, then earned a master’s degree in journalism there.

After a stint as a sports reporter at a newspaper in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., he served in an Army psychological warfare unit in World War II, broadcasting in Europe. After the war, he was a night news reporter for CBS in New York, but he soon took a job as a publicist for Musicraft Records, helping to promote jazz stars like Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan and Artie Shaw.

By 1947, Mr. Edelman had moved to Chicago to become public relations director for Toni, a home hair care company. The company had an ad campaign featuring identical twins, one with a beauty salon permanent, the other with curls from a Toni do-it-yourself kit. Women were challenged to determine “which twin had the Toni.”

Mr. Edelman’s idea was to send six sets of twins on a media tour to 72 cities. After four years at Toni, he started his own public relations company, with Toni as his first client.

Besides his son Richard, he is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Ruth Ann Rozumoff; another son, John; a daughter, Renee; and three granddaughters.

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L.A. County coroner changes Natalie Wood's cause of death

Through three decades of fevered tabloid speculation and whispers of a deeper story, the official account never changed: Natalie Wood drowned accidentally. The 43-year-old star of "West Side Story," who couldn't swim, had been drinking the night before she was found floating face-down in frigid waters off Santa Catalina Island.

When the L.A. County Sheriff's Department reopened the case in November 2011, around the 30th anniversary of her death, skeptics questioned the timing and doubted whether there was anything new to be learned.

Instead of quieting speculation, however, the investigation has raised fresh — and probably unanswerable — questions about one of Hollywood's most enduring puzzles.

PHOTOS: Natalie Wood | 1938-1981

In a report released Monday, the coroner, Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, questioned the original 1981 findings and changed Wood's cause of death from "accidental drowning" to "drowning and other undetermined factors."

The coroner's report cited unexplained fresh bruising on the actress' right forearm, left wrist and right knee, along with a scratch on her neck and a superficial scrape on her forehead. Officials said the wounds open the possibility that she was assaulted before drowning.

"This Examiner is unable to exclude non-accidental mechanism causing these injuries," the report said, adding that evidence suggested the bruising occurred before Wood entered the water.

Sheriff's investigators said that the Wood case remains open but that detectives have reached an impasse. One law enforcement source who has worked on the case said detectives may never have a conclusive answer given that "evidence is stale — with fading memories and incomplete forensics."

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing, said there was not enough evidence to classify the case a crime, much less a homicide.

Experts said it was highly unusual for coroners to contradict the autopsy findings performed by their own office. Michael Baden, a former New York examiner and noted trial expert witness, said that although both examinations of Wood's body looked at the same evidence, the new report found the bruising to be far more significant — enough to change the cause of death.

"Sathyavagiswaran knows by issuing this opinion that he will unleash criticism on his predecessor and questions over how it handled a celebrity death three decades ago," Baden said. "He knows in saying this he has criticized [former coroner] Dr. [Thomas] Noguchi and the office back in 1981."

Noguchi did not return calls for comment.

The new report noted "conflicting statements" about when Wood disappeared, and whether she had argued with her husband, actor Robert Wagner, who — along Christopher Walken, her co-star in the film "Brainstorm" — were aboard the 60-foot yacht where she was last seen alive Nov. 28, 1981.

Hours before her death, authorities said, the three actors had had dinner at Doug's Harbor Reef restaurant and then returned to the yacht, called the Splendour, where they drank and an argument ensued between Walken and Wagner.

According to the new autopsy report, Wood went missing about midnight, and an analysis of her stomach contents placed her death around that time. The report said Wagner placed a radio call to report her missing at 1:30 a.m.

Roger Smith, the L.A. County rescue boat captain who helped pull Wood's body from the water, said he did not receive a call to look for her until after 5 a.m.

The original investigators believed Wood sustained her bruises after falling off the yacht and struggling to pull herself from the water into a rubber dinghy, whose starboard side bore scratch marks that seemed consistent with that theory.

But in his report, Sathyavagiswaran noted that investigators did not take nail clippings from Wood's body to determine whether she had made the scratch marks, and the dinghy was no longer available to be examined. The coroner believes Wood died soon after entering the water.

In an interview Monday, Smith said he wondered whether Wood might have been found alive if the rescue effort had gotten underway sooner. "There's no question in my mind that he just delayed calling for us," Smith said, referring to Wagner.

Smith said he and a deputy examined Wood's body but saw no bruises."We went over her very closely," said Smith, 68. "When we looked at her, we didn't see any bruises. We were looking for needle marks or anything like that — we didn't see anything."

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