Cuts may stunt state’s growth

Higher worker bonuses and a strong technology sector helped the Massachusetts economy grow faster than the nation for the first three months of the year, but experts warned that federal budget cuts and the payroll tax increase are already taking a toll on the commonwealth.

"What the policy is doing is slowing the pace of our growth," said Michael Goodman, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. "It's like driving around with the emergency brake on. You're still moving forward, but not as fast as you would like."

Massachusetts' real gross state product grew at a rate of 3.9 percent in the first quarter, outpacing the nation's 
2.5 percent growth rate.

In a MassBenchmarks report issued yesterday, experts said the state's solid economic growth from January to March was likely caused by "sizable" bonus payments made to workers in the financial and professional services sectors.

However, the state's professional, scientific and business services sector took a big hit last month with the loss of 3,400 jobs even as the unemployment rate dropped down to 6.4 percent. March marked the beginning of federal automatic spending cuts.

The state grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent during the fourth quarter of last year while the United States posted a paltry 0.4 percent growth rate.

Federal budget cuts are already starting to slow the commonwealth's leading industries, including health care, higher education and research and development, experts said.

"The national and state economies are being strongly influenced by two opposing forces. On the one hand, growth in consumer demand is being supported by rising home prices, stock markets and job expansion," said Northeastern University economist Alan Clayton-Matthews, senior contributing editor of MassBenchmarks. "On the other hand, fiscal drag in the form of the payroll tax increase and federal budget cuts are slowing the economy. This fiscal drag could dampen growth by as much as 1.5 to 2 percentage points this year. And the continuing recession in Europe and an apparent slowdown in China are not helping matters."

Demand for the state's technology resources — information technology and medical devices — continues to give Massachusetts a growth edge over the nation, said Robert Nakosteen, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Isenberg School of Management. However, the sector will "take a bit of a hit" as the year progresses because it is largely supported by government spending and contracts, he added.

"The state can't sustain this high rate of growth," Nakosteen said. "We're not in danger of a renewed recession, but the growth we've seen in the last quarter is not going to be sustained."

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Gov asks SBA for loans to those hit by bombing

Gov. Deval Patrick has called on the U.S. Small Business Administration to provide some relief in the form of low-interest loans for small businesses and private nonprofits affected by the Boston Marathon bombings last week.

In a letter, Patrick asked the agency to issue an Economic Injury Declaration for Suffolk County so that long-term and low-interest SBA loans would be made available to businesses and private nonprofits.

"Requesting this federal aid will help Boston and the commonwealth recover faster from the tragic events that unfolded at the marathon," Patrick said. "I urge the Small Business Administration to approve our request quickly to help the small businesses that keep our commonwealth strong rebuild."

In order to receive this federal assistance, the commonwealth must show that businesses suffered substantial economic injury.

If the agency issues the declaration, emergency officials will coordinate with the USSBA and Boston's Office of Emergency Management to have specialists available in the city to work with businesses that may be interested in the loans, Patrick said.

Businesses were gradually allowed to reopen on Boylston Street this week, several days after two bombs went off killing three people and injuring hundreds.

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Sporty Durango handles well

Choices are limited when shopping for a seven-passenger vehicle. A minivan can take care of the seating capacity, but factor in the need for cargo space, and towing capacity and suddenly you're shopping for a hulking SUV. The 2013 Durango meets these requirements in a sporty crossover SUV that drives like a much smaller vehicle.

The Durango starts at $29,495, but our all-wheel-drive test model arrived with the top-of-line Citadel trim package that topped out at just over $44,000.

A bold chrome grille immediately catches the eye, giving the Durango a bit of muscle car bravado. Chrome continues on the door handles, ground effects, mirrors and wheels to help give the Dodge, painted in a bright silver metallic clear coat, an aggressively styled exterior.

The Durango's beige leather and black trim interior is upscale, well-built and packed with features. Both driver and front passenger seats are eight-way power adjustable. There's plenty of head and foot room with the second-row captain-style chairs. Both front and second row seats were heated along with the steering wheel. My children instinctively went for the third-row seats, which were a bit cramped for adults.

Dodge does a good job of simplifying the Durango's media center. I felt at ease with a limited number of buttons and dials on the center console controlling the radio and navigation systems. However, I found the steering wheel controls a bit overwhelming at first. Soon, though, I was controlling just about everything while keeping my eyes on the road.

Our test model had an adequately powered 3.6-liter, V6 engine with a 290-horsepower output. The Durango handled well, cruising quietly along the Mass Pike and in the city. A relatively short wheelbase helped out when trying to park in tight downtown Boston garage spaces. I did find that the Durango's five-speed transmission was a bit lacking — an extra gear would help smooth out the SUV's acceleration.

Our test model's V6 engine offered reasonable fuel economy, at 15 miles per gallon combined city and highway, along with all-wheel-drive and light to moderate towing capacity. An optional 5.7-liter, V8 engine is available for those who need the extra power, but bear in mind that the AWD feature is only available with the V6.

The Durango holds its own in the limited crossover-SUV market.

While I enjoyed the Citadel's upscale trim package, I could easily settle for the Durango's entry- to mid-level trim packages.

The Durango adequately accommodated my family of five, but rear cargo space was limited once everyone was seated. Crossover SUVs from Ford and GM are also worth considering when looking at the Durango.

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Obama: Flight delay fix a 'Band-Aid'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama chided lawmakers Saturday over their fix for widespread flight delays, deeming it an irresponsible way to govern even as he prepared to sign the legislation they hurriedly pushed through Congress.

Wary of letting Republicans set a precedent he might later regret, Obama dubbed the bipartisan bill to end furloughs of air traffic controllers a "Band-Aid" and a quick fix, rather than a lasting solution to this year's $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. The cuts have affected all federal agencies, and some cuts were undone. But flight delays last week left thousands of travelers frustrated and furious and Congress feeling pressured to respond.

"Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they've decided it was a bad idea all along," Obama said, singling out the GOP even though the bill passed with overwhelming Democratic support in both chambers.

He scolded lawmakers for helping the Federal Aviation Administration while doing nothing to replace other cuts that he said harm federal employees, unemployed workers and preschoolers in Head Start.

"Maybe because they fly home each weekend, the members of Congress who insisted these cuts take hold finally realized that they actually apply to them, too," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address released Saturday.

Rushed through Congress with remarkable speed, the bill marked a shift for Democrats, who had hoped the impact of the cuts would increase pressure on Republicans to reverse the sequester. Republicans, meanwhile, have rejected Obama's proposal to replace the across-the-board cuts with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

"There are some in the Obama administration who thought inflicting pain on the public would give the president more leverage to avoid making necessary spending cuts, and to impose more tax hikes on the American people," said Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania in the Republican address.

He argued that the FAA could have averted the flight delays on its own by cutting costs elsewhere and rejiggering work schedules — but intentionally chose not to do so.

The bill signed by Obama would let the FAA use up to $253 million from an airport improvement program and other accounts to halt the furloughs through the Sept. 30 end of the government's fiscal year.

Faced with the prospect that emboldened Republicans will push to selectively undo other painful effects of the cuts, the White House said Friday that a piecemeal approach would be impractical, but wouldn't definitely rule out signing other fixes.

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.youtube.com/HouseConference

___

Follow Josh Lederman at https://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

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Capturing the sun for Earth Week

Boston Scientific Corp. celebrated Earth Week by showing off the new 3,900-panel rooftop solar installation, left, atop the company's international distribution center in Quincy. The 1.28 megawatt solar energy system generates an average of 1,685,000 kilowatt-hours a year, or enough electricity to serve 145 average-sized American homes a year. The installation covers 120,000 square feet on a roof that is 850,000 square feet in size and powers approximately 25 percent of the Boston Scientific international distribution center. It's the third-largest rooftop solar installation in Massachusetts.     

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AP hack may prompt Twitter to start two-steppin’

This week's hack of The Associated Press' Twitter account rocked Wall Street and may force execs at the private San Francisco-based social media darling to address online security issues before another major embarrassment occurs.

While no security system is foolproof, experts say Twitter could begin by introducing a two-step authentication process to avoid a repeat of Tuesday's tweet, which claimed that two bombs had exploded at the White House, injuring President Obama.

The tweet sent the stock market tumbling 150 points before the White House reassured the nation that it was a hoax. But it wasn't the first time a news organization's Twitter account had been compromised.

Days before the AP incident, CBS' "60 Minutes" account also was targeted by hackers, another instance that might have been avoided had Twitter implemented the kind of two-step authentication that Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple already offer.

In addition to typing in your username and password to get access to your account, those systems typically also require you to enter another piece of information, such as a PIN that's sent to you in a text message.

"I wouldn't necessarily use this method to launch nuclear weapons, but it makes me feel pretty close to perfectly safe," said Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, a global computer-security firm. "It's a minor inconvenience for peace of mind."

Even a flawless security system, however, doesn't guard against the perils of bad reporting, said David Gerzof Richard, president of BIGfish Communications and professor of social media and marketing at Emerson College.

"If the tweets they're sending out are incorrect," he said, referring to some overanxious reporting in the days following the Marathon bombings, "then a two-step authentication doesn't do much good."

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Cambridge DNA whisperers

Cambridge-based Gen9 has landed another $21 million to keep pushing the limits of synthetic biology, a cutting-edge field where scientists "play God" by creating customized DNA — the building blocks of life — for a variety of different industries.

As part of the deal, Agilent Technologies of Santa Clara, Calif., gained an equity stake in Gen9 and will join its board of directors as the Bay State startup uses the money to increase the scale of its operations and ultimately to make new products, Gen9 CEO Kevin Munnelly said.

"Gen9 was founded to significantly increase the world's capacity to cost-effectively generate high-quality DNA content for use in transforming industries ranging from chemical and enzyme production to agriculture, biofuels, pharmaceuticals and even data storage," Munnelly said. "Agilent's investment is a powerful validation of our proprietary BioFab platform, and we look forward to working closely with them to further innovate around our manufacturing capabilities and build Gen9 into the leading high-throughput supplier to the synthetic biology marketplace."

The investment will also help Gen9, whose early backers include New England Patriots owner The Kraft Group, to increase its 22-person staff by about 50 percent this year, he said.

The company's clients include large chemical, agricultural and pharmaceutical companies that are "starting to realize synthetic biology can reinvent the way they do business," Munnelly said. "You can actually design what you would like these gene products to do. … You can get very inexpensive genetic constructs on a massive scale."

That kind of power is a double-edged sword, which theoretically could be used to create weapons of mass destruction, he admitted.

Because the field is relatively new, Gen9 is left to "do a lot of self-policing," Munnelly said. "We don't supply people who are looking to do those things."

Agilent makes instruments for high-end measurement and testing, including testing of water for contaminants and of fruit for pesticide residue.

"We anticipate an explosion in the use of biological machines," said Neil Cook, vice president and director of Agilent Laboratories, referring to living organisms such as bacteria or yeast, which can be used to produce everything from medicines to car fuel.

"To make molecules at will is going to fundamentally change the way we see chemical synthesis in the future," he said.

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Google makes concessions to EU antitrust body

BRUSSELS — Google is offering major concessions on how it displays search results in Europe — including a better labeling of its own promoted content and displaying links to its competitors — to appease concerns it might be abusing its dominant market position, the European Union's antitrust body said Thursday.

Google's search engine, which is the world's most influential gateway to online information and commerce, enjoys a near-monopoly in Europe. The EU Commission, which acts as the 27-nation bloc's antitrust authority, has since 2010 been investigating whether the company is unfairly stifling competition. It pointed out several areas of concern that Google is now trying to address through the proposed concessions.

Google has offered to more clearly label search results stemming from its own services such as YouTube, Google Maps or its shopping search function, allowing users to distinguish between natural search results and others promoted by Google. It also agreed to display some search results from its competitors and links to their services, the EU Commission said.

The Commission has often taken a harder line with U.S. tech companies than its American counterparts, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department. Google, which is based in Mountain View, California, was able to settle a similar antitrust complaint on its search business with the FTC in January without making any major concessions on how it runs its search engine.

The Commission is now proposing a market test of the concessions for a month as a test run. That would give competitors the chance to say whether they deem them sufficient.

Once the Commission accepts them — revised or not — they become legally binding for the company for the next five years. Google has worked closely with the Commission on the concessions' design until formally submitting them earlier this month.

"The objective of this process is to try to see if we can achieve a settled outcome in this antitrust investigation," said Commission spokesman Antoine Colombani.

The Commission said Google will "clearly separate promoted links from other web search results by clear graphical features" and "display links to three rival specialized search services close to its own services, in a place that is clearly visible to users."

Google will also give all websites the option to keep their content from being used in Google's specialized search services, "while ensuring that any opt-out does not unduly affect the ranking of those web sites in Google's general web search results," it said.

In addition, the proposed remedies will give newspaper publishers greater control over what appears in Google's news aggregator Google News. Google is also giving marketers greater ability to buy ads on rival networks.

The Commission's investigation was initially triggered by complaints from Google's rivals such as Microsoft Corp.

Google's web search service has a market share of over 90 percent in the EU, a bloc of over 500 million people that makes up the world's largest economy.

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Follow Juergen Baetz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz

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Online privacy is evolving. Does it matter to you?

WASHINGTON — Online privacy rules are changing. The question now is how much you'll care.

America's tech industry is finalizing voluntary disclosure standards on the sensitive information being sucked from your smartphone like your location, surfing habits and contacts. Senate Democrats are pushing for a clearer opt-out button for all online tracking. And Microsoft is offering a new browser that encourages people to block the technology that enables tracking.

Industry officials say they understand some people want greater control. But they are betting that consumers don't really mind trading some basic information about themselves for free access.

"Consumers are very pragmatic people," Lou Mastria, managing director of the Digital Advertising Alliance, said in an interview this week. "They want free content. They understand there's a value exchange. And they're OK with it."

Mobile applications like Google Maps, Angry Birds and GasBuddy have become popular, inexpensive ways to personalize smartphones or tablets and improve their functionality. Often free or just 99 cents to download, apps can turn a phone into a sophisticated roaming office or game console with interactive maps and 24-7 connectivity.

But like all those websites that offer medical advice or parenting tips, there's a hitch: They want information from you like your birthdate or ZIP code. Developers say data collection is necessary for the software to work as promised and to reward the intellectual creativity behind it.

"There's no free lunch," said Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. "It's essentially a quid pro quo. You'll trade a little bit of information for all that free content and great services."

The online privacy debate has stumped Congress and prompted limited input from the Obama administration, mindful of consumers' concerns but reluctant to crush a growing industry in a difficult economy.

Some lawmakers, mostly Democrats but some libertarian Republicans, say consumers should have the option of not being tracked at all. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, planned a hearing Wednesday to press his proposal to subject companies to penalties by the Federal Trade Commission if they violate a consumer's "do not track" request.

Industry is pushing back. The Digital Advertising Alliance points to its web-based icon program that links consumers to an opt-out site of participating advertisers. They say some 20 million people have visited their site and only 1 million of those consumers chose to opt out of all ad tracking.

But privacy advocates, backed by the FTC, say the issue goes well beyond targeted advertising, particularly when it comes to a mobile device. Because a smartphone can divulge a person's location, the FTC warned in a recent report that detailed profiles of a person's movements can be collected over time and in surprising ways, revealing a person's habits and patterns and making them vulnerable to stalking or identity theft.

Some researchers also say they suspect retailers are engaging in "price discrimination" — the practice of setting a price based on personal data, such as the average home price in their area or a person's proximity to a competitor.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of Electronic Privacy Information Center, said most consumers aren't even aware of the extent to which their information is being collected and how it's used. And as with any product on the market, companies should be required to take meaningful steps to make sure people don't get hurt, he said.

"You shouldn't be put at risk if a car is correctly designed when you go on the highway," Rotenberg said. "And that's our view of Internet-based services. People shouldn't have to lose their privacy to use Internet-based services."

FTC Commissioner Julie Brill says the biggest concerns are all the unknowns. The FTC has asked nine data brokers to disclose what information they collect on consumers and how they use it. Brill said she worries that companies might determine a person's eligibility for certain products and services based on information collected online, potentially violating credit reporting and fair lending laws, but without authorities knowing it.

"The industry is moving so quickly and changing so much that we need to make sure that the laws are keeping up with it," Brill said in a recent interview.

So far, the only solution to emerge has been voluntary industry standards. The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration has been coordinating among some 80 industry lobbyists to devise the new disclosure standards for mobile apps that would offer consumers a quick, easy-to-read snapshot of what information is collected and whether it's shared with third parties.

While the final agreement isn't expected until later this spring, the privacy disclosures are expected to look less like a legal manifesto and more like a nutrition label. Just as some snacks are labeled as high in fat or sodium, some mobile apps might have to fess up to being bigger data collectors than others.

In the end, Thierer isn't sure consumers will care that they've been labeled by a marketing company as someone who, for example, likes to play "Angry Birds" and lives in Ohio.

"The problem is that a lot of these cases driving the debate are worst-case scenarios ... but in reality they are still hypothetical," Thierer said.

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Review: Galaxy S4 decent, but filled with gimmicks

NEW YORK — I've seen Android phones get better and more powerful over the years, as Google and phone manufacturers pack devices with more and more features. There comes a time, though, when less is more. I'm afraid we've reached that time.

Samsung's new Galaxy S4 smartphone is an excellent device from a hardware standpoint. Measuring 5 inches diagonally, the screen is slightly larger than that on its predecessor, the Galaxy S III. Yet the S4 is a tad lighter and smaller overall. The S4's display is also much sharper, at 441 pixels per inch compared with 272 on the S III. The S4 has one of the sharpest screens out there.

The Android operating system it runs is excellent, too, and in recent years the Google-made system has become a healthy competitor to Apple's iOS system for iPhones. Like most Android phones, the S4 comes with a suite of useful Google apps, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and the voice assistant Google Now. Because Google lets device makers customize Android to suit their needs, Samsung and others have been adding their own distinguishing features.

And that's the source of the problem. Packed with bags of tricks, phones have become way too complicated for many people to use. In some cases it's because these custom features work only some of the time. In other cases, you're confronted with too many ways to do similar things.

As much as Apple can be criticized for exerting control over what goes on its iPhones, it wins on simplicity. There are no competing agendas — just Apple's.

By contrast, Android has turned into a free-for-all. For instance, the Sprint version of the S4 phone has at least four different ways to watch video — one that comes standard with Android, one added by Sprint and two added by Samsung. Some content works with one but not the others.

And to watch video on one of the Samsung apps, the one called Samsung Hub, you have to navigate through two screens trying to sell you video that I couldn't get to work on the other apps. As much as it adds to the clutter, Samsung would rather you use its service and not the standard Android one. That way, Samsung rather than Google gets revenue from video sales. Samsung Electronics Co. has its own app store, too, to rival Google's own Play store on the same device.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't consider buying the S4.

Another highly praised phone, HTC Corp.'s One, has a lot of clutter as well. The display on the One is slightly smaller than S4's, but it has a higher resolution. The One sounds better, too, with front-facing speakers, while the S4 has a speaker on the back. The One might be the one for you if you watch a lot of video and listen to a lot of music. But the One feels heavier and bulkier, and its battery holds less charge than the S4.

The four national wireless carriers, plus U.S. Cellular, Leap Wireless' Cricket and C Spire, will sell the S4 in the United States. Release dates vary, and some will start this week. Expect to pay $150 to $250 up front with two-year contracts (T-Mobile calls them installment plans as it markets contract-free service).

Despite my complaints with all the add-ons on the S4, a number of them show promise:

— Easy Mode. It's not entirely new, as the S III and the Galaxy Note 2 have it, too. But Samsung makes that option more prominent when people set up the S4 for the first time. Icons in Easy Mode are larger, so you are less likely to hit the wrong one and have to figure out how to go back. You also get fewer choices for customizing the phone and using its camera, so there's less confusion about which to pick. Easy Mode isn't as easy to use as I would have liked, though, because features and settings from the regular mode creep in now and then.

— Multi Window. Again, this feature isn't entirely new, but it's the first time I noticed it. It allows you to run two apps side by side, the way you've long been able to on traditional computers. That means I can keep up with Facebook on the top half of the screen, as I send email from the bottom half about all the dumb things my friends are saying on Facebook. Unfortunately, it works with a limited number of apps. Foursquare and Instagram aren't among them. And I needed an online video tutorial to figure it out.

— Air View. When you point to an email or calendar entry with your finger, you see contents pop up in a bubble. That way, you don't have to open the entry and find the back button to return to what you were doing. Samsung has this feature on the Galaxy Note 2 phone, but that's designed for use with a stylus. On the S4, you simply hover over the entry with your finger. I wish it would work with more apps. For instance, you can use it with Android's generic email app, but you can't on the one made specifically for Gmail.

All of these would benefit from being part of Android rather than an add-on from Samsung. Easy Mode would truly be easy if it were designed from the start that way rather than as something that couldn't fully separate itself from the main Android. More apps would work with Multi Window and Air View if they were standard features, not ones app makers have to adapt for one by one.

And then there are some features that got in the way:

— I mentioned the competing ways to watch video and buy apps.

— Another is Smart Pause, which automatically pauses video when your look away from the screen. The phone's front camera detects your eyes. Smart, but the feature also pauses the video when you cover your eyes, say, to avoid a gory scene in a horror movie. It's as if the phone is forcing you to look. And there are few times my eyes are glued to video. I typically multitask and watch video while doing other things.

— Smart Scroll detects the tilt of your head or the phone to automatically scroll text, such as when you're reading a long article on a Web browser. Smart, but it sometimes scrolls past what I want to read. It's difficult to move the text back without touching the screen, something Smart Scroll is supposed to eliminate. And at times, I have to keep my neck up in an uncomfortable position to stop scrolling.

— With Air Gesture, you wave your hand over a sensor for such tasks as browsing a photo album or scrolling through text. I can see it being useful when you need to answer a call while driving (not that you should), but I had difficulty getting the phone to respond properly with photos and Web pages. It reminds me of automated water faucets that won't let me wash my hands no matter how much motion I make.

Fortunately, the phone comes with many of these features already turned off, and you can turn off others you don't need or want. It took me a while to figure out that the Wi-Fi connection on my phone kept mysteriously turning on by itself because of some feature called Smart Mode. So Smart Mode is now off. Group Play is a feature that lets you share music and photos with other S4 users on the same Wi-Fi network. But I don't know of any S4 users, and it doesn't work with Group Play on the S III. I couldn't uninstall the app, so I buried that in a new folder called Junk.

The S4 has plenty of other features I could dismiss. Some might like the camera's ability to erase a stray individual out of photos or to combine several images of motion into a single shot. But I'm a purist, and I'm not a fan of manipulating images. And the feature for using the phone as a TV remote control? That's what remote controls are for.

I shouldn't have to spend a lot of time customizing the phone to turn off or hide what I don't want. Many people never change the default settings. I've been using the S III as my main phone since July, and I've rarely found a need to reach into its bag of tricks. I simply want a phone that is easy to use.

The S4 can be that, but first you must figure out how to hide all its gimmicks.

___

Anick Jesdanun, deputy technology editor for The Associated Press, can be reached at njesdanun(at)ap.org.

___

Online:

http://www.samsung.com/us/galaxys4

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Toyota top selling automaker despite China fall

TOKYO — Toyota held onto its status as the world's top-selling automaker in the first quarter of this year, although the three-way race with General Motors and Volkswagen is proving tight, as its sales fall in China and Japan.

Toyota Motor Corp. reported Wednesday it sold 2.43 million vehicles during the January-March period, outpacing U.S. automaker General Motors Co. at 2.36 million vehicles and Volkswagen AG of Germany at 2.27 million vehicles.

Toyota's first quarter sales declined 2.2 percent from a year earlier, while those for GM were up 3.6 percent and Volkswagen's jumped 5.1 percent.

GM's quarterly results were within about 69,000 vehicles of Toyota's.

The Japanese maker of the Prius hybrid and Camry sedan reclaimed its crown as world's top automaker last year, after losing it to GM a year earlier, when it was battered by the tsunami and quake disasters in northeastern Japan.

GM had been No. 1 for seven decades before losing that title to Toyota in 2008.

Toyota has been hit by a resurgence of anti-Japanese sentiment in China because of a territorial dispute over tiny islands, and some Chinese are worried about being seen driving a Japanese car. The company says the situation is slowly improving but getting back to solid growth again is likely to take some time.

The end of subsidies for green vehicles in Japan hurt Toyota sales in its home market. Such incentives had previously helped boost sales of its popular hybrid models.

Toyota's quarterly vehicle sales were down 13 percent in China and down 15 percent in Japan, compared to the same period last year.

Toyota is roaring back in North America, where sales rose 7 percent, as well as in many Asian nations, where it is relatively dominant.

Its stumble in China is a sore point as both GM and Volkswagen are gaining ground in that market, the world's largest, where potential for growth remains vast. The Chinese market is also crucial amid languishing sales in Europe, a far less important market for Toyota.

Last year, Toyota sold 9.7 million cars and trucks worldwide to beat GM's 9.29 million and Volkswagen at 9.1 million.

Toyota shrugged off the latest results, echoing its typical past response.

"Rather than pursuing numbers, we try to sell one car at a time, producing good cars. We aren't focused on being No. 1," said company spokeswoman Shino Yamada.

Michael Dunne, an expert on the auto industry in China and president of Dunne & Co., said that Chinese are still buying quite a number of Japanese cars, but he also warned the competition remained intense.

"They must contend with powerful American, German and Korean competitors. In addition, they must find ways to cooperate with their Chinese joint venture partners, which can be difficult duty when the two countries are at odds over territory," he said.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at www.twitter.com/yurikageyama

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Ford first quarter profit rises 15 pct to $1.6b

DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford says net income rose 15 percent in the first quarter to $1.6 billion as record North American profits overcame weakness in Europe and South America.

Ford beat Wall Street's forecast with earnings of 40 cents per share, up from 35 cents in the first quarter of 2012. Analysts polled by FactSet had forecast earnings of 37 cents per share.

Without one-time charges, including restructuring costs in Europe, Ford would have earned 41 cents.

Revenue rose 10 percent to $35.8 billion, beating Wall Street's forecast of $33.5 billion.

Ford Motor Co. earned $2.4 billion in North America, where sales of its F-Series trucks and Fusion sedan and Escape SUV have been strong. That offset a $462 million loss in Europe, where Ford's sales fell 20 percent during the quarter.

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Flight delays pile up amid FAA budget cuts

NEW YORK — Flight delays piled up across the country Monday as thousands of air traffic controllers began taking unpaid days off because of federal budget cuts, providing the most visible impact yet of Congress and the White House's failure to agree on a long-term deficit-reduction plan.

The Federal Aviation Administration kept planes on the ground because there weren't enough controllers to monitor busy air corridors. Cascading delays held up flights at some of nation's busiest airports, including New York, Baltimore and Washington. Many operations were more than two hours behind schedule.

At one point, the delays were so bad that passengers on several Washington-New York shuttle flights could have reached their destination faster by taking the train.

Nearly a third of flights at New York's LaGuardia airport scheduled to take off before 3 p.m. were delayed 15 minutes or more, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Last Monday, just 6 percent of LaGuardia's flights were delayed.

The situation was similar at Washington's Reagan National Airport, in Newark, N.J., and in Philadelphia, with roughly 20 percent of flights delayed.

At airports, Monday is typically one of the busiest days, when many high-paying business travelers depart for a week on the road. The FAA's controller cuts — a 10 percent reduction of its staff — went into effect Sunday. The full force was not felt until Monday morning.

Travel writer Tim Leffel had just boarded a US Airways plane from Charlotte, N.C., to Tampa, when the flight crew had an announcement.

"They said: 'The weather's fine, but there aren't enough air traffic controllers,'" Leffel said. Passengers were asked to head back into the terminal. "People were just kind of rolling their eyes."

His flight landed one hour and 13 minutes late.

One thing working in fliers' favor Monday was relatively good weather at most major airports. A few wind gusts in New York, snow in Denver and thunderstorms in Miami added to some delays, but generally there were clear skies and no major storms.

However, the furloughs will continue for months, raising the risk of a turbulent summer travel season. And the lack of controllers could exacerbate weather problems, especially spring and summer thunderstorms.

There's no way for passengers to tell in advance which airport or flights will experience delays.

FAA officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees — including nearly 15,000 controllers — because the agency's budget is dominated by salaries. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty.

Critics have said the FAA could reduce its budget in other spots that wouldn't delay travelers.

"There's a lot finger-pointing going on, but the simple truth is that it is Congress's job to fix this," said Rep. Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat and member of the House aviation panel. "Flight delays are just the latest example of how the sequester is damaging the economy and hurting families across the country."

Some travel groups have warned that the disruptions could hurt the economy.

"If these disruptions unfold as predicted, business travelers will stay home, severely impacting not only the travel industry but the economy overall," the Global Business Travel Association warned the head of the FAA in a letter Friday.

Deborah Seymour was one of the first fliers to face the headaches. She was supposed to fly Sunday night from Los Angles to Tucson, Ariz. First her 9:55 p.m. flight was delayed for four hours. Then at 2 a.m., Southwest Airlines canceled it.

"It's pretty discouraging that Congress can't get it together, and now it's reached the point that we can't get on an airplane and fly," Seymour said.

On some routes Monday, it was actually faster to take ground transportation. The 8 a.m. US Airways shuttle from Washington to New York pushed back from the gate six minutes early but didn't take off until almost 10 a.m.

The plane landed at 10:48 a.m. — more than two and a half hours late. If travelers instead took Amtrak's 8 a.m. Acela Express train from Washington, they arrived in New York at 10:42 a.m. — four minutes early.

Normally, there are 10 air traffic controllers at a regional facility handling arrivals for Los Angeles International Airport. On Sunday night, there were just seven, according to Mike Foote, a local union president with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. A low layer of clouds late compounded the situation.

In such weather, two controllers do nothing but watch planes as they descend below 15,000 feet to ensure they don't veer off course. That allows 68 to 70 planes to land each hour. Because of the furloughs, there were no controllers to do that Sunday, dropping the arrival rate to 42 planes an hour, Foote said.

United Airlines said there were "alarming pockets" of delays and warned that if a solution isn't found, the problem could "affect air travel reliability for our customers."

Delta Air Lines cautioned travelers to expect delays in New York, Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Many flights heading to Florida were seeing delays of up to an hour. By late Monday, delays into Los Angeles were expected to average three hours.

Having just one fewer controller to handle arrivals to Newark Liberty International Airport can result in the airport being unable to use a relief runway to handle peak traffic, reducing arrivals by about 15 percent, said Dean Iacopelli, a union official at an FAA regional facility for New York's airports.

"It is not just telling one out of 10 people to stay home and so one out of 10 planes get delayed. It's much more complicated that," Iacopelli said.

Prior to the furloughs, if a controller called in sick, there were enough people to take on the extra work, Iacopelli said, or somebody could be asked to work overtime. Now that isn't possible.

The FAA has also furloughed other critical employees, including airline and airport safety inspectors.

In a letter to the FAA Friday, Delta general counsel Ben Hirst asked the agency to reconsider the furloughs, saying it could make the cuts elsewhere and transfer funds from "non-safety activities" to support the FAA's "core mission of efficiently managing the nation's airspace."

Two airline trade associations and the nation's largest pilots union filed a lawsuit Friday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals to halt the furloughs. No hearing date has been set.

The two airline associations — Airlines for America, which represents major carriers, and the Regional Airline Association — are asking the court to place a moratorium on enforcement of the Department of Transportation's three-hour limit on the length of time airlines can keep passengers waiting inside planes on the tarmac without giving them the opportunity to return to a terminal.

Airlines can be fined as much as $27,500 per passenger for violating the limit. The Transportation Department said it is reviewing the industry's request.

___

Associated Press writers Joan Lowy in Washington and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

___

Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott .

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Reuters editor charged with hacking: I was fired

SAN FRANCISCO — A Reuters deputy social media editor accused of conspiring with hackers to deface a Los Angeles Times story said Monday he had been fired.

His dismissal came the day before 26-year-old Matthew Keys was scheduled to appear in federal court for the first time on the felony charges. His attorneys say he plans to plead not guilty.

Federal prosecutors allege Keys provided the hacking group Anonymous with login information to access the computer system of The Tribune Co., the Times' parent company.

According to a federal indictment handed down last month, a hacker identified only as "Sharpie" used information Keys supplied in an Internet chat room to alter a headline on a December 2010 Times story to reference another hacking group.

Tribune also owns a Sacramento television station Keys had been fired from months earlier.

Keys has said he did not commit the crimes he's accused of. He did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment Monday, but he did post several online messages saying Reuters had not fired him as a result of the indictment.

"Just got off the phone. Reuters has fired me, effective today. Our union will be filing a grievance. More soon," he tweeted to his more than 35,000 followers.

He later tweeted a copy of a "final written warning" he said he received from Reuters in October, which admonished Keys for mocking a Google executive from a fake Twitter account he had created, saying the action demonstrated a "serious lapse of judgment and professionalism that is unbecoming of a Reuters journalist."

His attorney Jay Leiderman confirmed the firing, but said he would not comment on it because the Newspaper Guild was representing him on the matter. He added that "there is an appeals process that I will have to let play out."

Peter Szekely, Secretary-Treasurer of the Newspaper Guild of New York, confirmed the union would be representing Keys.

"Our contract with Thomson Reuters prohibits management from dismissing anyone without just and sufficient cause. We don't believe the company has the required justification here," Szekely said in a statement. "At this point, we intend to vigorously defend Matthew Keys as we would any other hard-working member of the Newspaper Guild of New York who had been fired without cause."

Reuters hired Keys in 2012 and suspended him from his New York social media job March 14. Thomson Reuters spokesman David Girardin declined to elaborate Monday on why Keys was no longer employed.

Keys is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in federal court in Sacramento. He is charged with one count each of conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, as well as transmitting and attempting to transmit that information.

If convicted and sentenced to the maximum for each count, the Secaucus, N.J., resident faces a combined 25 years prison and a $500,000 fine, prosecutors say. However, experts say first-time offenders with no criminal history typically spend much less time in prison than the maximum term.

___

Follow Garance Burke at http://twitter.com/garanceburke.

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Tax-free Internet shopping jeopardized by bill

WASHINGTON — Tax-free shopping on the Internet could be in jeopardy under a bill making its way through the Senate.

The bill would empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. The sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives.

Under current law, states can only require stores to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state. As a result, many online sales are essentially tax-free, giving Internet retailers a big advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

The Senate voted 74 to 20 Monday to take up the bill. If that level of support continues, the Senate could pass the bill as early as this week.

Supporters say the bill is about fairness for businesses and lost revenue for states. Opponents say it would impose complicated regulations on retailers and doesn't have enough protections for small businesses. Businesses with less than $1 million a year in online sales would be exempt.

"While local, community-based stores and shops compete for customers on many levels, including service and selection, they cannot compete on sales tax," said Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation. "Congress needs to address this disparity."

And, he added, "Despite what the opponents say this is not a new tax."

In many states, shoppers are required to pay unpaid sales tax when they file their state income tax returns. However, states complain that few people comply.

"I do know about three people that comply with that," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the bill's main sponsor.

President Barack Obama supports the bill. His administration says it would help restore needed funding for education, police and firefighters, roads and bridges and health care.

But the bill's fate is uncertain in the House, where some Republicans regard it as a tax increase. Heritage Action for America, the activist arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, opposes the bill and will count the vote in its legislative scorecard.

"It is going to make online businesses the tax collectors for the nation," said Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. "It really tramples on the decision New Hampshire has made not to have a sales tax."

Many of the nation's governors — Republicans and Democrats — have been lobbying the federal government for years for the authority to collect sales taxes from online sales, said Dan Crippen, executive director of the National Governors Association. Those efforts intensified when state tax revenues took a hit from the recession and the slow economic recovery.

"It's a matter of equity for businesses," Crippen said. "It's a matter of revenue for states."

The issue is getting bigger for states as more people make purchases online. Last year, Internet sales in the U.S. totaled $226 billion, up nearly 16 percent from the previous year, according to Commerce Department estimates.

The bill pits brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart against online services such as eBay. Amazon.com, which initially fought efforts in some states to make it collect sales taxes, supports it too. Amazon and Best Buy have joined a group of retailers called the Marketplace Fairness Coalition to lobby on behalf of the bill.

"Amazon.com has long supported a simplified nationwide approach that is evenhandedly applied and applicable to all but the smallest-volume sellers," Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president of global public policy, said in a recent letter to senators.

On the other side, eBay has been rallying customers to oppose the bill.

"I hope you agree that imposing unnecessary tax burdens on small online businesses is a bad idea," eBay President and CEO John Donahoe said in a letter to customers. "Join us in letting your members of Congress know they should protect small online businesses, not potentially put them out of business."

The bill is also opposed by senators from states that have no sales tax, including Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Baucus said the bill would require relatively small Internet retailers to comply with sales tax laws in thousands of jurisdictions.

"This legislation doesn't help businesses expand and grow and hire more employees," Baucus said. "Instead, it forces small businesses to hire expensive lawyers and accountants to deal with the burdensome paperwork and added complexity of tax rules and filings across multiple states."

But Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the bill requires participating states to make it relatively easy for Internet retailers to comply. States must provide free computer software to help retailers calculate sales taxes, based on where shoppers live. States must also establish a single entity to receive Internet sales tax revenue, so retailers don't have to send them to individual counties or cities.

"We're way beyond the quill pen and ledger days," Durbin said. "Thanks to computers and thanks to software it is not that complex."

___

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

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Reddit apologizes for fueling ‘witch hunts’ after Boston blasts

Reddit issued a lengthy apology Monday for its role in fueling a social media "witch hunt" for suspects in last week's Boston bombings.

The social news website became a go-to source for updates on the Boston Marathon bombings. But it also became a place for amateur sleuths to gather and share their conspiracy theories and other ideas on who committed the crimes.

The relentless speculation and do-it-yourself CSI techniques ended up dragging in several innocent people, including Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown University student who went missing last month.

After viewing the FBI's grainy photos of the suspects Thursday, some Redditors, as the users are called, became convinced that Tripathi was one of the bombers. Users gleefully pointed out the physical similarities between Tripathi and the second suspect, who ended up being 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The growing wave of suspicion surrounding Tripathi led his family to release a statement the next day saying they knew "unequivocally" that he was not involved.

On Monday, Reddit General Manager Erik Martin posted an apology on the site, saying the crisis "showed the best and worst of Reddit's potential."

He said the company, as well as several Reddit users and moderators, had apologized privately to Tripathi's family and wanted "to take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had to endure."

"We all need to look at what happened and make sure that in the future we do everything we can to help and not hinder crisis situations," the post said. "Some of the activity on Reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties. The Reddit staff and the millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened."

Reddit consists entirely of user-generated content. Redditors can either vote a post up or down. The site's "front page" consists of its most popular posts. Reddit's thousands of threads on every sort of topic, called "subreddits," are moderated by volunteers. Last month, Reddit had nearly 64 million unique visitors from 174 countries who viewed 4.4 billion pages.

The San Francisco company said it enacted a policy a few years ago to not allow personal information on the site, a move designed to protect innocent people from being incorrectly identified and "disrupting or ruining their lives."

"We hoped that the crowdsourced search for new information would not spark exactly this type of witch hunt. We were wrong," Martin said. "The search for the bombers bore less resemblance to the types of vindictive Internet witch hunts our no-personal-information rule was originally written for, but the outcome was no different."

Last week's bombings were the first major terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the age of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. But the watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled out of control as legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on the innocent, shared bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.

Boston police officials temporarily shut down online feeds of their police scanners and asked overeager Twitter users to limit what they posted on the microblogging site, saying that detailed tweets could compromise officers' positions and safety.

———

©2013 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by MCT Information Services

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

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The Ticker

Blackstone chief
 endows scholarships

Stephen Schwarzman, right, the billionaire chairman of Blackstone Group, is setting up a $300 million scholarship for foreign students to attend China's Tsinghua University, the alma mater of senior officials including Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Schwarzman, 66, is giving $100 million of his personal wealth to the Schwarzman Scholars program, which will enroll students from the U.S. as well as Europe, South Korea, Japan, India and other nations, according to a statement yesterday. The program is seeking to raise an additional $200 million and has commitments for half that amount from sponsors including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc. and General Electric Co.

Schwarzman said he was endowing the program to spur a greater comprehension of China by the U.S. and other Western nations.

Facebook to build $1.5B data facility

Facebook is reportedly looking at building a 
$1.5 billion data facility in Altoona, Iowa — an effort previously referred to by state and local officials as "Project Catapult."

The Des Moines Register reported that the facility is being touted as "the most technologically advanced" in the world and that the 1.4 million-square-foot project is expected to be built in two phases. It will reportedly include three 466,000-square-foot data centers.

TODAY

 Caterpillar, iParty, Iron Mountain and Netflix all report quarterly financial earnings.

TOMORROW

 Apple, Delta Air Lines, iRobot, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, US Airways Group, Xerox and Yum! Brands all release quarterly financial results.

 Colliers International has hired John Hines, left, as a vice president at its Boston office's corporate services division. Hines previously served as transaction manager at CB Richard Ellis and led the client services division of Trammell Crow Co.

 The Simon Companies, a Braintree-based developer, owner and manager of commercial and multifamily real estate, has hired Michael Scurti as the company's new chief financial officer. Scurti previously served in a similar role at Boston-based Trinity Financial.

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A mission to manage

The founder of Future Chefs can focus on her nonprofit's mission of training city youth for jobs in the food industry because she has enlisted the help of one of the country's top nonprofit innovation centers to take care of the business end.

"If I had to take time away from fulfilling our mission to get up to speed on how to manage the business end of this, I would have failed," said Toni Elka, founder and executive director of Future Chefs.

Boston's Third Sector New England manages Future Chefs' budget, does its payroll, negotiates its leases, does its yearly audit and helps with hiring and diversity issues. The group even extends a tax-exempt umbrella for Future Chefs and other early stage nonprofits.

"Third Sector is a trusted partner with a great track record that provides stability and helps us grow," said Elka, who started the organization herself using Boston school kitchens, but now has six full-time employees and a new teaching kitchen in the South End. The organization has placed 85 students in restaurant jobs including 16 at Aramark at Fenway.

The "Third" in Third Sector stands for the nonprofit world, or the third pillar after government and business.

The nonprofit sector is certainly no slouch in the Bay State, where one of seven workers or some 455,900 employees is employed at a tax-exempt entity, according to a recent report by the Boston Foundation. Massachusetts nonprofits generate $234 billion in revenue annually.

And Third Sector, founded in 1959, has been at the forefront of promoting social justice and helping nonprofits working for change to grow and add workers to fulfill their missions.

"Traditionally, working in the nonprofit sector has not been seen as worthy as toiling in the corporate sector," said Jonathan Spack, Third Sector's executive director. "Nonprofits do pay less than corporations, but there's an opportunity to effect change. What we try to do here and advise our clients is to make it a respectable and desirable career path for young people with good benefits and pay that can support a family. So it's not just something people do for a year or two, but stay on as a career."

Third Sector's mantra is that well-managed organizations are key to attracting and maintaining talented people looking to make a difference in the world. It doesn't just preach good management, but practices it by doing the administrative work for 41 nonprofits, in addition to Future Chefs.

Third Sector also helps its nonprofit clients find new chief executives and create leadership paths for talented employees. And Spack says that 91 percent of the nonprofit executives that the organization has placed in the past five years are still in those positions today.

Another important part of the organization is its grant-making Inclusion Initiative that helps nonprofit clients hire a more diverse workforce that's reflective of the communities they serve.

After 22 years of giving grants to 102 organizations, Third Sector has changed gears and is now directing funds not to individual nonprofits, but to networks that include businesses and faith-based organizations.

"Networks seem to be a more effective way to make change faster," said Ayeesha Lane, program manager for Third Sector's Inclusion Initiative. "Diversity can sometimes just be about numbers. But just because you hire minorities, it doesn't mean they will stay. What we do with our nonprofit clients is to help them develop inclusion in the workplace. That means making people feel they can bring their whole selves to work, and that their perspectives and cultural insights are seen as valuable."

Third Sector doesn't just give money, Lane added. It provides ongoing support and advice even to nonprofits that received grants years ago.

Third Sector owns an eight-story building on South Street that it bought in 2003 and, in addition to its staff, its floors house dozens of other organizations that fit its mission for social change. Those nonprofits provide job training and tutoring, pursue economic development and justice in poor communities, or focus on disability rights and sustainability issues, such as urban gardening and green practices in restaurants.

The basement of the building has a large, shared office area, where smaller nonprofits pay a reduced rent for incubator-like work space.

Third Sector supports itself from rent and by charging for its services, but not just any nonprofit qualifies. Third Sector takes a percentage of its clients' budgets to pay the employees that handle those nonprofits' business matters. Most clients are in Boston, but some are in other parts of the country.

Third Sector doesn't kick nonprofits out of the shared space as a for-profit incubator space might.

Some groups, such as the Chefs Collaborative, a nonprofit that supports sustainable practices in restaurants, have been there for five years. The SAMFund, a group that supports young adult survivors of cancer, is a longtime tenant, as is Tutors for All, which hires some 300-350 college students every year for paid federal work-study positions as tutors for Boston school students.

Organizations can choose to stay under Third Sector's 501(c)3 tax-exempt umbrella or strike out on their own.

But Future Chefs' Elka said Third Sector works for her because it is as passionate about managing nonprofits as her group is about helping students get excited about, and find work in the food industry.

"Boston is a place known for its tech innovation, but our nonprofits are also some of the most innovative in the country," Elka said. "What Third Sector does for nonprofit management is a perfect match for us and is a great model for the rest of the country."

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Co. offers low-cost MBA advisers

Three Harvard Business School students have turned a class project into a startup that hires out MBA students to small businesses as low-cost consultants.

More than four dozen companies have chosen from among the 500 students and recent graduates that HourlyNerd.com has enlisted from around the country since its founding in February.

"It's a pretty good deal both for MBAs and for businesses," said Rob Biederman, a 26-year-old first-year HBS student who co-founded the company with Peter Maglathlin and Pat Petitti. "For MBAs, it's a way to make money and an attractive thing to have on your resume, and for small businesses, it can be a great leveler; it means access to high-quality labor but in a flexible and low-cost way."

Businesses post their needs on Hourly Nerd, and MBAs and masters candidates place a bid by uploading their resume and writing a pitch of up to 200 words, including how long the project should take and how much they would like to be paid.

Businesses review the bids and choose one, based on experience, cost and timeliness, and Hourly Nerd holds onto the money until the project is completed.

The MBAs typically charge from $25 to $50 an hour, and Hourly Nerd charges businesses 10 percent and students 5 percent.

Selena Cuffe's wine-importing company, Los Angeles-based Heritage Link Brands, has grown by 2,100 percent since she and her husband founded it in 2005. But before she adds to her staff of seven, she wants advice about whether she and her husband should pay for it out of their personal finances, take out a loan or seek investors.

Cuffe solicited bids on Hourly Nerd and chose Kyle Harder, a second-year MBA student at the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross School of Business who had previous experience in the wine industry and offered to complete the project by mid-May for no more than $160.

"It's a good deal for both sides," said Harder, 29. "I have extra time, and this is a chance to apply what I've learned in the classroom to a real-world problem."

For Cuffe, the value of what Harder offered at the price was too good to refuse.

"Hourly Nerd is a brilliant concept that hopefully will give small businesses like mine a boost and enable them to create jobs," she said. "That's something our country desperately needs right now."

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Reddit postings on bombing ‘suspects’ shameful

Last week we saw social media at its worst: arrogant, reckless and even racist.

Dozens of users on the social news forum Reddit resolved to launch their own public investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings by analyzing reams of publicly available photos of the attack sites. It's called crowdsourcing, and it was a dismal failure.

The bizarre mess of finger-pointing was largely confined to a subreddit, or forum, titled Find Boston Bombers.

Created by a 23-year-old British man who never set foot on the marathon route, the forum soon spun out of control.

All the "suspects" were innocent bystanders.

They had their faces enlarged, circled in red and were given glib nicknames. There was "blue robe guy" and "green hat man" and "roof man." Users singled out people in photos for holding their backpacks too tightly or looking too serious. False suspects were pointed to because of their race. And some, for all we know, were among the more than 170 victims of the blasts.

It's as if the tragic whirlwind of events in the last week unfolded in two universes.

In one, cops acted methodically, sifting through evidence and hunting down suspected terrorists in some of the finest police work we've seen. In another, self-proclaimed cyber sleuths wasted their time and ours by accusing people with a scant amount of evidence.

The low point for Reddit's gumshoes came in the wee hours of Friday's manhunt, when a member claimed to have heard compelling chatter on a police scanner. But the information was wrong and cruel: that missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, 22 — who hasn't been seen since March — was a suspect in the bombings. Worse still: Some media outlets ran with this despicable smear.

Moderation on Reddit is infrequent.

Usually that's OK because the stakes aren't this high. But this past week the stakes couldn't have been higher, especially for Boston.

This chaotic digital search could have easily spawned vigilantes who were thirsty for justice.

And what if being falsely fingered as a suspect sent someone over the edge?

Imagine witnessing unspeakable violence, only to have your photos being circulated as the perpetrator.

Reddit was lucky it didn't incite further suffering. It's lucky Bostonians are smarter than that.

So let's quit while we're ahead. No more crowdsourced "investigations."

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Charming Colonial in Braintree makes splash

This attractive single-family Colonial in Braintree Highlands has a classic elegance with a nicely landscaped yard and an in-ground heated pool with a cabana.

Built in 1998, the well-maintained three-bedroom house with a hip roof at 130 Catherine Drive has been updated several times by its current owners since 2007. Renovations include a central air-conditioning system, renovated master bathroom and all-new toilets, new high-efficiency burner and refinished oak floors. The 2,660-square-foot home, which was recently repainted outside and inside, is on the market for $639,900.

The house sits on a cul de sac at the end of a long driveway with an attached two-car garage and brick walkway. The exterior is blue clapboard with black shutters and white trim. The entrance has a widow's walk framed by a large Palladian window.

A grand two-story ceramic-tiled entry foyer has a large brass chandelier above and two closets, one for storage and the other for coats.

To the right of the foyer is a formal dining room with oak floors, crown molding, 8-over-8 windows and a built-in mantel.

On the other side of the foyer is an open living

dining area with oak floors, 8-over-8 windows and a ceramic-tiled wood-burning fireplace. There are glass doors from the dining area out to a rear deck and down to a granite patio with a heated in-ground pool enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. The pool's heater and propane tanks were recently replaced and there's a cabana at one end.

Back inside, the stylish kitchen features 26 white bargeboard-faced cabinets and built-in racks. There's a center island with grayish granite counters and a built-in electric range. All-white appliances include a cabinet-front Amana side-by-side refrigerator, built-in General Electric wall oven and new microwave and a Bosch dishwasher.

Off the kitchen is a half bathroom with gray ceramic tile floors, a linen closet and a cabinet that holds a washer

dryer hookup with shelving above. Adjacent is direct access to the home's two-car attached garage.

The stairway and second-floor landing that overlooks the foyer have paneled wainscoting.

There are three bedrooms on the second floor, including a master suite. The carpeted master bedroom has four 8-over-8 windows and a fan

light overhead. There's a deep walk-in closet with a built-in shelving system. The en-suite master bathroom, renovated last year, has beige ceramic tile floors and tile that surrounds a raised whirlpool bathtub. There's a separate glass-doored Fiberglas shower, a granite-topped double-sink vanity and a linen closet.

There are two other carpeted bedrooms ideal for children. There's also a second full bathroom with a ceramic tile floor, a linen closet, a Corian-topped vanity and a one-piece Fiberglas tub and shower.

The finished basement has a carpeted media

family room with a big storage closet for games and toys. There's also a carpeted home office with a built-in added by the current owner with desk space for two and cabinets above. And there's even a full bathroom in the basement, with access to the outdoor pool through a door.

Pros:

 Stylish kitchen with bargeboard-faced white cabinets and gray granite counters

 Open living

dining area with wood fireplace and glass doors out to in-ground pool with granite patio

 Master bedroom suite has large walk-in closet and newly renovated bathroom

Cons:

Fiberglas showers in bathrooms

 Some appliances and tile finishes are average grade

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Safety rules limited for small fertilizer plants

There were no sprinklers. No firewalls. No water deluge systems. Safety inspections were rare at the fertilizer company in West, Texas, that exploded and killed at least 14 people this week.

This is not unusual.

Small fertilizer plants nationwide fall under the purview of several government agencies, each with a specific concern and none required to coordinate with others on what they have found.

The small distributors — there are as many of 1,150 in Texas alone — are part of a regulatory system that focuses on large installations and industries, though many of the small plants contain enough agricultural chemicals to fuel a major explosion.

The plant in West had ammonium nitrate, the chemical used to build the bomb that blew up the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. According to a document filed in 2012 with the Texas Department of State Health Services, the maximum amount of this "extremely hazardous substance" the plant could store in one container was 90 tons, and the most it could have on site was 270 tons. It is unknown how much was onsite at any given time, or at the time of the explosion.

It was also authorized to handle up to 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia, a substance the Texas environmental agency considers flammable and potentially toxic.

"This type of facility is a minor source of air emissions," Ramiro Garcia, the head of enforcement and compliance at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, told The Associated Press.

"So the inspections are complaint driven. We usually look at more of the major facilities."

No federal agency determines how close a facility handling potentially dangerous substances can be to population centers, and in many states, including Texas, many of these decisions are left up to local zoning authorities. And in Texas, the state's minimal approach to zoning puts plants just yards away from schools, houses and other populated areas, as was the case in West.

That plant received a special permit because it was less than 3,000 feet from a school. The damage from the blast destroyed an apartment complex, nursing home and houses in a four-block area.

State and federal investigators have not yet determined the cause of the disaster, which occurred Wednesday night after a fire broke out at the site after work hours. The explosion that followed could be heard miles away and was so powerful it registered as a small earthquake.

The West Fertilizer Co. stored, distributed and blended fertilizers for use by farmers around the Central Texas community. The plant opened in 1962 outside the rural town of 2,800, but development gradually crept closer. Wednesday night, residents and rescue workers tried to evacuate the area as the fire consumed the plant.

Donald Adair, the plant's owner, said in a statement Friday he was cooperating with the investigation and expressed sympathy for the victims. He has not returned phone calls seeking comment.

Over the years, the fertilizer company was fined and cited for violations by federal and state agencies.

Last summer, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration assessed a $10,000 fine against West Fertilizer for improperly labeling storage tanks and preparing to transfer chemicals without a security plan. The company paid $5,250 after reporting it had corrected the problems.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also cited the plant for not having an up-to-date risk management plan. That problem was also resolved, and the company submitted a new plan in 2011. That plan, however, said the company did not believe it was storing or handling any flammable substances and didn't list fire or an explosion as a danger.

David Gray, an EPA spokesman in Dallas, said the company's plan identified a worst-case scenario as an accidental release of all 54,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia, which at room temperature is a gas.

"This scenario is a plausible worse-case scenario as gaseous anhydrous ammonia can be lethal," Gray said.

The risk management plan also did not cite a possible explosion of ammonium nitrate, the solid granular fertilizer stored at the site. But that would not be unusual, he said, because ammonium nitrate is not regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The plant's plan said there was no risk of fire or explosion and noted they had no sprinklers, water deluge or other safety mechanisms installed.

"We do not yet know what happened at this facility. The ongoing investigation will inform us on the plan's adequacy," Gray said.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality also dealt with the company and issued a permit for handling anhydrous ammonia, which requires safety equipment the company had told the EPA it didn't have. But TCEQ acknowledged it may never have checked to confirm the equipment was there.

"It's a minor source under the Clean Air Act so it doesn't get much scrutiny at all," said Neil Carman, a Sierra Club clean air expert and chemist who used to work for the TCEQ.

The company's last contact with regulation may have come as recently as April 5, when the Texas Office of the State Chemist inspected the plant. But that agency focuses mostly on ensuring that commercial fertilizers are properly labeled and blended, said Roger Hoestenbach, the office's associate director. His inspectors found no problems, he said, but they would not have checked for safety systems such as sprinklers. That office also provided the company with the required license to store and handle ammonia nitrate and renewed it in September after a summer inspection, he said.

Many other towns in Texas have small fertilizer distributors operating under similar regulations near populated areas.

Matt Murray, owner of ABC Fertilizer and Supply in Corsicana, bought his facility about 15 years ago. It sits in an industrial zone in the town of about 23,700 people, but in a community barely five miles long, it is still not far from the population center, he said.

"Every little community, town that's in Texas, has one of these," he said.

Murray's facility also has a state license to sell ammonium nitrate.

Even though Murray said he has discussed an evacuation plan with his local fire chief, there is nothing in writing. And he isn't required to have a formal plan. That may be changing now, he said.

"It's been something that's been brewing for years and years, ever since Oklahoma," he said.

____

Plushnick-Masti, who can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP , reported from Houston. Gillum, who can be followed at https://twitter.com/jackgillum , reported from Washington.

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Back Bay businesses hit hard by marathon bombings

The arduous task of rebuilding the Back Bay after the deadly Marathon Monday attacks is under way but could be a tall task for businesses as many are not covered by insurance, because the damage was from a terror attack.

"There is no insurance for terrorism for these businesses," said City Councilor Michael Ross, who represents the Back Bay. "We're talking weeks, possibly months, with no income for some of these businesses."

The bombs struck in the heart of one of the city's busiest retail and business centers, shuttering bars, restaurants and stores, while investigators sift through the wreckage. Some businesses may be beyond repair, but the full extent of damage is not yet known.

Marathon Sports, Forum restaurant and a Lens Crafters store appear to have sustained heavy destruction, while the Charlesmark Hotel may have fire, smoke and blast damage.

"We don't yet know the structural condition of any of the buildings," Ross said.

He's been working with a variety of city agencies to help business owners and will seek aid for those not covered.

Terrorism coverage is optional and most small businesses do not have it, said Robert Hartwig, president of the New York-based Insurance Information Institute.

"Most businesses would have coverage for such things as fire, smoke and explosions, and the business interruption coverage that goes along with that," Hartwig said. "But not all businesses buy (separate) business interruption coverage."

Even if they do, for terrorism coverage to take effect, the federal government must certify an event meets the formal definition of terrorism, which has yet to be done in this case. In addition insured losses must exceed $5 million, Hartwig said.

David Sapers, owner of Sugar Heaven at 669 Boylston St., which was damaged by the first bomb, said he's still waiting for answers from city officials.

"They didn't know when they're going to release our area," he said. "We'd love to have the city step in and cover our losses."

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday issued a notice to impacted residents and businesses about the city's plan for reopening Boylston Street and the surrounding area. The street will reopen slowly but the hardest hit areas could remain closed for weeks as the FBI probe continues. Information is on the city's website at www.cityofboston.gov.

"We believe that some blocks may be ready to open more quickly than others," Menino's letter said.

Ross said the historic Trinity Church has been lent space by Temple Israel, but most businesses have been left without many options. He's exploring federal, state and city aid possibilities as well as setting up a fund to help.

"The Back Bay businesses definitely need the support from the rest of the community," Ross said.

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CBS Twitter feeds are compromised

NEW YORK — The Twitter accounts for two national CBS programs have been compromised and suspended.

A CBS News spokeswoman confirms Saturday that tweets sent earlier in the afternoon from the "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" Twitter handles saying their accounts were compromised are correct.

The tweets said the network is working with Twitter to investigate. On Saturday night both accounts were suspended and inaccessible.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The CBS spokeswoman didn't comment further.

Earlier in the day tweets coming from the 60 Minutes account seemed farfetched, including one that claimed the US government was "hiding the real culprit of the Boston bombing."

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