BBC Worldwide is expected to announce today that their oft-delayed international iPlayer will cost $10 per month.

In the UK, the service gets over 1 million users per month, and has been a runaway success, much in the way Hulu is in the United States.

Western Europe will be the first to get the app, followed by other nations in a phased rollout.

The iPlayer gives access to hit shows like Doctor Who the day (or week) after they air, for free, with ads.

In its international form, the subscription will allow users to check out history, food and children's programs, as well.

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J.C. Penney has announced this morning the recruitment of Ron Johnson, Apple's current senior vice president of retail, as CEO.

Johnson will start on November 1st, taking over the position from Myron Ullman, who will stay on as executive chairman of the board.

Penney's market value rose a ridiculous $1 billion during trading on Tuesday following the news with investors and traders clearly seeing Johnson as a huge benefit to the company.

The new CEO was also given $50 million worth of warrants, which will replace the Apple equity award that would have been vested in March of next year.

Since Johnson came on board, Apple has expanded from 1 retail store to over 300, and each store brings in, on average, $34 million in profit per year.

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Google's $900 million "stalking-horse" bid for 6000 Nortel patents has been approved by the Department of Justice, meaning an auction is set to begin next week.

Nortel has been selling off assets since going bankrupt in 2009 in an effort to pay off creditors. Once trading as high as $600 a share in the tech bubble of the late 90s, Nortel shares now trade for 4 cents.

Google first bid on the patents in April but met with resistance from Apple, Research in Motion, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia, each of which filed objections.

The search giant is looking to acquire the patents (which include hundreds of each for wireless, 4G, data networking, optical, voice, and semiconductors) in a defensive move as it fights lawsuits from Oracle and others over its Android operating system.

Said the company with its original bid:

One of a company's best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services. Google is a relatively young company, and although we have a growing number of patents, many of our competitors have larger portfolios given their longer histories.

For now, the $900 million will be the starting bid in next week's auction, which is expected to see other bids.

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According to the NPD's latest figures, and a little bit of bragging from the console makers themselves, it appears the Microsoft Xbox 360 won the month of May with 270,000 units sold, a 39 percent boost year-over-year.

The PS3 sold 173,000 consoles, good for a 14 percent bump year-over-year.

Microsoft says it has now topped the list for 11 out of the last 12 months and that the console is expected to have its biggest year. ever, in 2011.

On the downside, however, software sales were down 20 percent year-over-year for the month thanks to a weak release month, comparatively. The top game, easily, was L.A. Noire, with strong sales for the 360 and PS3.

Software sales were down to their lowest point since 2006.

Total industry sales fell 14 percent YoY to $743.1 million, with hardware down 5 percent to $228.9 million and accessories down 6 percent to $114 million.

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According to FT, Apple has settled with Nokia over their long-standing iPhone patent dispute.

Apple will now pay Nokia a royalty payment for each iPhone sold.

Following the settlement, Nokia confirmed all patent litigation between the two companies has been withdrawn, as well as the complaints to the US ITC.

Nokia nor Apple detailed the financials of the deal, but most industry specialists say the royalty payments will end up being 1.5 percent of the iPhone's $600 average selling price. At an average of 18 million iPhones being sold each quarter, payments to Nokia will be over $640 million per year.

However, because Apple brought multiple patent complaints against Nokia, as well, the royalty payments could be much lower to take that into account.

Concludes Nokia CEO Stephen Elop:

We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees. This settlement demonstrates Nokia's industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.

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Apple has now begun selling unlocked GSM iPhone 4s online.

In the States, the phone will work on AT&T and T-Mobile and on any GSM network around the world.

The phone is on sale for $649 for the 16GB model or $749 for the larger 32GB model, in white and black, and without contract.

While the phone does work for T-Mobile USA there is very little point as you can only connect to EDGE (2G) speeds and not 3G or T-Mobile's HSPA+ (4G).

Apple confirms that the unlocked model can do everything a non-unlocked version can, with no restrictions.

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The 'Anonymous' group of hackers has promised action against the Federal Reserve and its chairman Ben Bernanke in a video dubbed "Ctrl+Alt+Bernanke."

If it comes to fruition, the action will be called "Operating Empire State Rebellion."

You can read the full text of the video here or watch it below.

The operation is set to begin today, but so far the Fed's site seems to be working without any issues.

Anonymous is said to be behind high profile attacks in multiple nations, and behind attacks on Sony/PSN and more.

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The latest report from Asymco says it now costs Apple $1.3 billion to run iTunes on a yearly basis.

Horace Dediu used the numbers from Apple's latest quarterly earnings and then cross referenced them average prices for music and apps to get a "content margin."

The numbers used were:

15 Billion iTunes song downloads
130 million book downloads
14 billion app downloads
$2.5 billion paid to developers
225 million accounts
425k apps
90k iPad apps
100k game and entertainment titles
50 million game center accounts

Dediu estimates the monthly content margin now comes in at $113 million, which the editor believes all goes back into running the store and paying for traffic/payment processing and increasing storage capacity.

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