Diego Based

Ron Stein has been named executive producer at San Diego-based Business Video Productions.

SAN DIEGO -- Although declining to discuss specific protection measures, Navy officials said Monday that the public can "be assured" local military bases are secure in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. "Access to installations is limited to those with proper identification cards and credentials," according to a statement issued by San Diego-based Navy Region Southwest, "and our security personnel are highly trained and extremely competent. " Security officials "consistently monitor intelligence reports and potential threats, and are prepared to increase the security condition in the region if and when necessary," it said.

Nokia won a British patent lawsuit filed by Qualcomm Inc. over patents related to cellphone technology. A justice ruled that one of San Diego-based Qualcomm's patents was invalid and that another was partially invalid. Penalties will be determined at a future hearing, he added.

Beach Business Bank, a Manhattan Beach community bank best known for lending to physicians across the country, is being acquired in a $37.2-million deal by a San Diego County-based community bank. The buyer, First PacTrust Bancorp, raised $28 million in fresh capital this summer and is expanding into Los Angeles and Orange counties. The Chula Vista-based parent of Pacific Trust Bank agreed in June to buy Cerritos-based Gateway Business Bank, a three-branch institution with a large home-lending arm, for $17 million.

Listen to Shirley MacLaine, who knows a great deal about these things, talk about Adele Tinning: "Then I remembered that I had visited a spiritual medium who contacted disembodied spiritual guides through a table that tipped and leaned and moved. . . . She lives in San Diego, is about 79 years old, is as kindly as anyone I've ever known, and quite simply has incredible mediumistic talent." MacLaine is apparently among thousands of people in the past 40 years who have gone to Tinning's bungalow in North Park to sit at her kitchen table and ask her help in contacting the dead.

John A. Doede has increased his stake in San Diego-based Crown Bancorp from 10.48% to 12.24%, or 79,727 common shares. Doede, who was given approval by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco to acquire control of Crown, purchased 24,500 shares between May 16 and May 23 for from $4 to $4.75 each, or a total of $116,000, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Navy is investigating the brief grounding of a nuclear-powered attack submarine that apparently hit a reef off the coast of San Diego, officials said. No one was hurt in the incident, which occurred shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday while the submarine, the San Diego-based Gurnard, was carrying out routine operations, according to Lt. Sonja Hedley, a Navy spokeswoman. The submarine apparently was undamaged, but was being closely inspected in port, Hedley said. She termed the incident "minor" and said it was "more of a bumping than a grounding."

Sprint Nextel Corp., under pressure from investors to abandon plans for a high-speed wireless network, will pay the executive in charge of the project as much as $500,000 if he stays through the end of the year. Chief Technology Officer Barry West will get a prorated payment if he resigns or is fired, Sprint said in a regulatory filing. West had a similar agreement in 2007, said James Fisher, spokesman for the Reston, Va., firm. Investors such as Ralph Whitworth of San Diego-based Relational Investors are urging Sprint to focus on improving its mobile-phone operations instead of building the new service, which would blanket entire cities with fast Internet access.

Five former and current M/A-COM Government Systems managers have signed a letter of intent to acquire the San Diego-based division from its corporate parent for about $70 million, the companies said Monday. The resulting company, which would have about $48 million in annual sales and 675 employees in San Diego, would be renamed Linkabit. The division manufactures digital communications systems for satellite communications. The division did not fit in with Boston-based M/A-COM's plan to "focus its resources and efforts" on manufacturing components and subsystems for missiles, electronic warfare and radar systems, according to a company spokesman.

Syntro Corp., a troubled San Diego-based biotechnology company that has lost more than $16 million since its founding in 1981, is moving its headquarters to Kansas City effective immediately and scaling back its San Diego operations, moves that resulted in layoffs of 15 employees Wednesday, the company said. Syntro also announced the resignations of president Cam Garner and chief financial officer Jack Fitzpatrick. Garner was replaced Wednesday by J. Donald Todd and Fitzpatrick by Janice E. Katterhenry.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was sent to start  the air assault to topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. Starting Oct. 7, 2001, the carrier launched 4,000 combat sorties, playing a key role in removing the Taliban grip on the Afghan capital, Kabul. Now the Vinson, whose home port is now San Diego, has played another significant role in the Afghanistan war: as the platform from which Bin Laden's body was buried at sea. The burial, Navy officials said, followed Muslim custom, with the body washed and placed in a white sheet.

For years this tiny desert town in western Imperial County has been a haven for retirees and others who desire a slow and quiet existence. Howard Kelly, 62, a Vietnam War veteran, moved here to escape the urban noise that triggers his incapacitating post-traumatic stress disorder. Joseph Asciutto, 64, a retired firefighter from San Diego, built a home in this stark landscape he visited as a boy and grew to love, and which he now calmly observes from a lawn chair on his front porch.

Like other giant banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been criticized for being "too big to fail." But that isn't stopping the company from getting even bigger. The country's second-largest bank said Tuesday that it had agreed to buy, for $1.7 billion, part of a commodity trading business jointly owned by San Diego-based Sempra Energy and Royal Bank of Scotland. The acquisition comes as President Obama and former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker have been pushing a proposal to make banks like JPMorgan smaller.

The night is cold, dark and silent in Tahquitz Valley, a bowl-shaped expanse of boggy meadows and sloping forests 8,000 feet above sea level in the San Jacinto Mountains. Suddenly, the "chirp, chirp" of an electronic bat detector is joined by the sound of footsteps trampling the undergrowth. Drew Stokes strode through knee-high ferns, the beam of his headlamp fixed on a bat caught in a net and baring its razor-sharp upper canines.

Newspapers serving military bases in San Diego County are the latest victims of the economic woes afflicting the industry. The Navy Compass, the Flight Jacket at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station and the Scout at Camp Pendleton have stopped publishing, shifting to websites. The papers closed after the private company that published them, Oceanside-based TFM Inc., ran into financial problems because of the decline in advertising. The Navy and Marine Corps hope to find a new contractor so the papers can resume publication, officials said.

Cellphone chip maker Qualcomm Inc. and Nokia, the world's biggest maker of wireless phones, signed a new licensing agreement that ends global litigation and resolves concerns about Qualcomm's future licensing program. The agreement, released after the close of trading Wednesday, sent Qualcomm shares soaring 18% after hours.

Nokia won a British patent lawsuit filed by Qualcomm Inc. over patents related to cellphone technology. A justice ruled that one of San Diego-based Qualcomm's patents was invalid and that another was partially invalid. Penalties will be determined at a future hearing, he added.

Sprint Nextel Corp., under pressure from investors to abandon plans for a high-speed wireless network, will pay the executive in charge of the project as much as $500,000 if he stays through the end of the year. Chief Technology Officer Barry West will get a prorated payment if he resigns or is fired, Sprint said in a regulatory filing. West had a similar agreement in 2007, said James Fisher, spokesman for the Reston, Va., firm. Investors such as Ralph Whitworth of San Diego-based Relational Investors are urging Sprint to focus on improving its mobile-phone operations instead of building the new service, which would blanket entire cities with fast Internet access.