Qualcomm Co-Founder Irwin Jacobs Announces Retirement

Irwin Jacobs to Retire

Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs announced this week he will retire from the San Diego-based company's board of directors in March.

Jacobs, 78, will formally step down during Qualcomm's annual stockholder meeting on March 6, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. He will then take on the title of founding chairman and chief executive officer emeritus, the newspaper reported.

Qualcomm makes wireless chips and licenses mobile technology. It was founded in 1985.

For its most recent fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Qualcomm posted revenue of $15 billion, with earnings reaching $5.4 billion, the Union-Tribune reported.

New International Studies Major at SDSU

San Diego State University will offer a new major in comparative international studies next semester, the school announced Tuesday.

Students in the program will focus on two separate world regions, and compare them in culture and society, human and social development, populations and borders, and institutions and change.

"Ultimately, students in this discipline will be able to take a prominent topic in global affairs, such as poverty, conflict or globalization, and then look at these themes in a comparative way across geographical regions, considering the cultures and experiences of the people of those regions," said Lei Guang, director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies and a member of the curriculum committee for the new major.

He said a better understanding of different cultures is critical in a world where the old political, economic and cultural lines are becoming blurred.

Students will be required to minor in a foreign language.

Home for the Holidays

A military family of five is being treated to a trip to Philadelphia for their first Christmas visit home in five years Wednesday thanks to the San Diego-based nonprofit Home for the Holidays and Southwest Airlines.

Patrick and Kimberly Herman and their five children will make the trip. According to Home for the Holidays, a lot of the money the Hermans saved for their travel had to be spent treating a child's illness.

The organization is helping 45 military members travel to visit loved ones over the holidays, more than half of whom have suffered illness or a loss of a family member this year, and about one-third of whom are preparing to deploy.

Three recipients of travel assistance this year are simply going home to be with their wives and children, according to the group.

Home for the Holidays works with Operation HomeFront, the San Diego Armed Services YMCA and the Navy's Fleet & Family Services.