Group of Mass. economists back tax hike

Group of Mass. economists back tax hike

BOSTON — Gov. Deval Patrick's proposal to raise the state income tax rate to pay for investments in transportation and education has been endorsed by a group of more than 50 economists.

The economists — who come from public and private universities around Massachusetts — said in a statement on Monday that the investments are critical to the state's long-term economic health. They added that the income tax is the most equitable way to raise the revenue needed for transportation and education.

Patrick has called for hiking the state income tax from 5.25 percent to 6.25 percent, while doubling the personal exemption and eliminating dozens of itemized deductions. He also wants to lower the sales tax.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo said last week he favored a "significantly smaller" tax hike.

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Oil falls to start week; pump price down to $3.70

NEW YORK — The price of oil fell Monday as the momentum seen at the end of last week faded.

The benchmark oil contract for April delivery slipped by 55 cents to $91.40 a barrel in midday trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil rose nearly 2 percent on Thursday and Friday on signs of strength in the U.S. job market.

Many traders believe the large supply of oil in the U.S. will keep a lid on the price.

Last week the Energy Department said that the nation's supply of crude is 10.3 percent above year-ago levels. And U.S. oil production, at more than 7 million barrels a day, is at the highest level since the late 1990s. Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates, estimates that oil supplies grew another 2.5 million barrels in the week ended March 8.

Pump prices fell slightly over the weekend. The nationwide average for a gallon of gas is $3.70, down 9 cents from a year ago.

Brent crude, used to price many kinds of oil imported by U.S. refineries, fell 80 cents to $110.05 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

In other energy futures trading on the Nymex:

— Wholesale gasoline fell 3 cents to $3.17 a gallon.

— Heating oil slipped 1 cent to $2.97 a gallon.

— Natural gas rose 1 cent to $3.64 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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Pamela Sampson in Bangkok and Pablo Gorondi in Budapest contributed to this report.

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Fuel tank gets wedged under plane in Philadelphia

Fuel tank gets wedged under plane in Philadelphia

March 11, 2013

PHILADELPHIA — A fuel tank somehow disconnected from its trailer hitch at Philadelphia International Airport, rolled onto the taxiway and got stuck under an airplane.

It happened at 10:30 a.m. Monday. Airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica says it took about 10 minutes to get the wedged tanker out from under the US Airways plane.

Lupica says there was no fuel spill and no one was injured. She says the plane was towed back to the gate to be checked out and the passengers are being rebooked on other flights.

Lupica says the plane had been moving on the taxiway but may have been fully stopped when the tank rolled into it. It's not clear how the tank got unhooked from the truck.

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Massachusetts gas prices drop three cents

Bay State gas prices are down another three cents this week, according to AAA Southern New England.

Self-serve, regular unleaded gas is currently averaging $3.69 a gallon, the same price as the national average. Local prices are up a penny over the past month.

A year ago at this time, the Massachusetts average price was $3.71.

Premium unleaded is also down three cents this week to $4 a gallon. Midgrade unleaded and diesel are both down a penny to $3.88 and $4.14 a gallon, respectively.

The range in prices in the latest AAA survey for unleaded regular is 34 cents, from a low of $3.55 to a high of $3.89.

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PokerStars AC bid sparks battle with older casinos

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — A bid by the world's largest online poker website to buy an Atlantic City casino is touching off a battle with brick-and-mortar casinos that is getting very nasty, very quickly.

The Rational Group, the parent company of PokerStars, wants to buy The Atlantic Club Casino Hotel. If approved, it would mark the first ownership of an American casino by a solely-online gambling company.

But The American Gaming Association, the trade association representing traditional brick-and-mortar casinos nationwide, is urging New Jersey regulators to reject the bid. It claims PokerStars "was operated as a criminal enterprise" for years, capturing more than half the $7 billion-a-year online poker market.

The company agreed last year to pay $547 million to the U.S. Justice Department and $184 million to poker players overseas to settle a case alleging money laundering, bank fraud and illegal gambling. It admitted no wrongdoing, and says it is in good standing with governments around the world.

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission on Wednesday will consider whether to let the gaming association participate in PokerStars' licensing hearing.

The gaming association said in a filing it submitted to the casino commission that it opposes the PokerStars bid "because the integrity of the gaming industry would be gravely compromised by any regulatory approvals of PokerStars, a business built on deceit, chicanery and the systematic flouting of U.S. law."

However, because The American Gaming Association is not a party to the PokerStars licensing application, the brief it sent to the casino commission cannot legally be considered at this point. The association is seeking permission to intervene in the licensing hearing. A decision on whether PokerStars can qualify for a license is not expected for several weeks.

PokerStars has emerged as perhaps the last, best hope to save The Atlantic Club, which has been struggling to compete in the cutthroat Atlantic City market for years. It came close to having to close two years ago, until a last-minute infusion of cash from its owner, Colony Capital.

Colony agreed to pump $15 million into it to keep it afloat. In return, lenders foreclosed on and took ownership of two casinos in Mississippi that Colony owned, Bally's Tunica and Resorts Tunica, and wiped out the mortgage debt for the Atlantic Club, which at the time was called ACH, a reference to its former status as the Atlantic City Hilton.

Since the day the Rational Group announced its plan to buy The Atlantic Club, its path to approval appeared arduous. The opposition of the gaming association has turned up the heat another notch.

"Any action allowing PokerStars to be licensed would send a damaging message to the world of gaming, and to the world beyond gaming, that companies that engage in chronic law breaking are welcome in the licensed gaming business," the association wrote in its brief.

The group accused PokerStars of setting up decoy websites with domain names involving golf, shopping, pet food and other topics to disguise the fact that payments made through them were for online poker transactions. It also said the company bribed a bank executive to handle the transactions, which the group said were illegal under federal law.

Eric Hollreiser, a spokesman for the Rational Group, which is based in the Isle of Man in the U.K., called the gaming association's assertions "false and defamatory."

"No court has found PokerStars or the four named PokerStars executives guilty of any offenses, and neither they nor the companies face any criminal charges," he said. "Furthermore, the settlement with the DOJ includes no admission of any wrongdoing and explicitly says that it does not limit PokerStars from offering real-money online poker in the United States if and when it becomes permissible under relevant law."

Hollreiser said PokerStars is "one of the world's largest and most respected Internet gambling companies." The company holds licenses in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Estonia, Belgium, Malta and Isle of Man, he said.

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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

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New BlackBerry coming to the US on March 22

TORONTO — BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion will launch its new touchscreen smartphone in the U.S. with AT&T on March 22. The release will come several weeks after RIM launched the much-delayed devices elsewhere.

AT&T said Monday said the Z10 will be available for $199.99 with a two-year contract. Sales of the device began in the U.K. and Canada shortly after RIM unveiled the phone in late January.

RIM has said U.S. carriers needed more time to test the devices.

The redesigned BlackBerry is RIM's attempt at a comeback after the pioneering brand lost its cachet not long after Apple's 2007 release of the iPhone, which reset expectations for what a smartphone should do.

Shares jumped $1.32, or 10.1 percent, to $14.38 in midday trading on the Nasdaq.

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Heart-lung machines prove safe even in the elderly

SAN FRANCISCO — One of the scariest parts of bypass surgery — having your heart stopped and going on a heart-lung machine while doctors fix your clogged arteries — is safe even in the elderly and doesn't cause mental decline as many people have feared, two landmark studies show.

Bypass surgery is one of the most common operations in the world. There is great debate about the best way to do it, and patients often are given a choice.

Usually doctors stop the heart to make it easier to connect new blood vessels to make detours around blocked ones. But some patients later complain of "pumphead" — mental decline thought to be from the heart-lung machines used to pump their blood while their hearts could not.

So surgeons started doing "off-pump" bypasses on beating hearts. Nearly one quarter of bypasses are done this way now. But that brought a new complaint: Results on the blood vessels seemed not as good.

The new studies were aimed at testing all these factors in a rigorous way to see which method was best.

Dr. Andre Lamy of Canada's McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, led a study of 4,752 people in 19 countries. They were randomly assigned to have bypasses with or without the use of heart pumps.

After one year, there were no big differences in the rates of death, heart attack, stroke or kidney failure in the two groups. Slightly more people who had bypasses without a heart-lung machine needed a follow-up procedure to open clogged arteries but the difference was so small it could have occurred by chance alone.

Mental sharpness and quality of life also was similar in the two groups. That suggests that whatever decline occurred was temporary, or a result of anesthesia or something other than the way the operations were done, said Dr. Timothy Gardner, a surgeon at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Del., and an American Heart Association spokesman.

"I'm actually somewhat surprised" the methods proved equally good because the operation is so much harder to do on beating hearts, he said. "It seems pretty conclusive" that either way is fine.

That was true even in people 75 or older, a group most worried about going on a heart-lung machine. The second study tested the two bypass methods in 2,539 of these elderly patients in Germany. Again, the methods proved equally safe and effective a year later.

The studies were discussed Monday at an American College of Cardiology conference in San Francisco and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed on Twitter at (at)MMarchioneAP.

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Ex-Sen. Scott Brown takes job with law firm

Ex-Sen. Scott Brown takes job with law firm

BOSTON — Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown has a new job with an international law firm.

Brown announced Monday that he was joining Nixon Peabody LLP as counsel in the firm's Boston office.

According to a statement from the firm, the Massachusetts Republican will be involved in business and government affairs, with a focus on the financial services industry and commercial real estate.

Brown won a special election in January 2010 to fill the seat of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. He was defeated in his re-election bid in November by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Brown also recently signed on as a commentator for the Fox News network.

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YO! shifts into gap left by suspended Fung Wah

A new bus line jointly operated by Greyhound and Peter Pan Bus Lines is poised to fill the space left behind by recently suspended Fung Wah by offering six daily roundtrips between the Hub and New York's Chinatown neighborhood starting Thursday.

YO! is a non-stop bus service that launched in December between the Big Apple and Philadelphia.

The bus line, which offers fares as low as $12 according to its website, offers on-board amenities such as a guaranteed seat, extra legroom with leather seating, free Wi-Fi and power outlets, officials said.

The bus line's name is derived from the pronunciation of the Chinese word that means "to protect," officials added.

"Since we launched YO! last December, we've seen a tremendous response from the community and customers, so we're excited to bring this exceptional service to Boston," said Dave Leach, president and CEO of Greyhound Lines Inc. "YO!, which offers a safe and affordable option for travelers who like the convenience and affordability of Chinatown bus lines, is ready to meet the high demand for intercity bus service between Chinatown in New York and Boston."

YO! will operate from Gate 22 at South Station.

Federal officials ordered Fung Wah's 28 buses off the road late last month. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration pulled Fung Wah's license days later after it said the bus company refused to allow inspectors access to its safety records. Competitor Lucky Star continues to offer bus service between Boston and New York's Chinatown.

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Algeria's security forces to protect energy plants

ALGIERS, Algeria — An Algerian official says that the country's security forces will take over the job of securing the country's oil and gas sites following a spectacular terrorist attack and mass hostage-taking on a gas installation in January.

An inquiry into the Ain Amenas plant assault blasted private companies currently responsible for site security in Algeria's energy sectors for failing to prevent it, according to an Interior Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The official said the inquiry found that the site's infrastructure "was not capable of either preventing this terrorist attack and even less so repelling it."

In all, 37 hostages, including an Algerian security guard, and 29 attackers were killed in a four-day standoff.

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