Vietnam protests Chinese oil rig in disputed sea

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam has protested China's decision to send an oil drilling platform to a disputed area of the South China Sea.

The move by Beijing is the latest in a series of provocative actions in the waters that have raised tensions with Southeast Asian countries and drawn the attention of the United States.

According to the China Maritime Safety Administration, the deep see rig CNOOC 981 would be drilling in the South China Sea from May 4 to Aug. 15, and that entering a 3 mile (4.8 kilometers) radius around the area is prohibited.

Vietnam's foreign ministry on Monday said the area was well within Vietnam's exclusive economic zone and China's act was "illegal."

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Startup targets music genre void

A local startup is hoping to break into the lucrative world of hip-hop with its new online portal, KillerBoomBox.com.

The site is run by KillerBoomBox Media Group, a plucky new company that recently won a coveted spot in the Smarter in the City startup accelerator in Dudley Square.

The brainchild of local digital product manager Darius McCroey and veteran music journalist Gregory Valentino Ball, the company now faces the hurdle of convincing investors that enough advertising dollars will come from their business model, which involves producing articles and video documentaries on their website. They also organize and film concerts that highlight urban music. That content — a sampling of which is available on the company's sleekly designed website — is to be repackaged and resold in a variety of different ways, including a forthcoming mobile app, another potential revenue generator.

"The whole idea is to cover urban music, hip-hop and R&B from an intelligent perspective," said Ball, who lives in Dorchester. "We have a passion and that puts us in a better place than some of the competition."

The company already has been selected as runner-up in the Roxbury Innovation Challenge Business Pitch Contest and was a member of the Future Boston Alliance's 
Accelerate Boston Class of 2013, a six-month educational program for entrepreneurs.

Their competition includes Revolt TV, an online magazine and network owned by hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, who just last week predicted that his network would become the ESPN of hip-hop music. These new platforms recognize the vacuum left by MTV and VH1's near-total abandonment of music news coverage — and an estimated 45 million hip-hop consumers nationwide who are waiting for another music media renaissance. There's plenty of room for competition within the $10 billion-a-year hip-hop industry.

Yet corporate America largely has ignored the purchasing power of the hip-hop culture that business empires have sprung from. Moguls such as Dr. Dre, Jay-Z and Diddy are potentially on their way to becoming billionaires in the next decade.

Ball and McCroey say Boston's role in urban music often lives in the shadow of New York City, but there are many up-and-coming artists who originated here and have a fan base ready and waiting. In fact, McCroey envisions being able to use Boston as a test market for new artists.

"Boston is a world-class college town," he said. "So when we take new music to that market, we're testing it for people all over the world."

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China manufacturing shrinks for 4th month

HONG KONG — China's manufacturing contracted in April for the fourth straight month but the pace of decline was less severe, suggesting the downturn in the world's No. 2 economy is bottoming out.

HSBC's purchasing managers' index released Monday ticked up to 48.1 from 48.0 in March on a 100-point scale on which numbers above 50 indicate expansion.

The reading is slightly lower than 48.3 in a preliminary version of the report last month. But it's the first time the index has risen since it started falling from 50.9 in October.

The report said new export orders contracted in April although the decrease was slight and outpaced by a faster decline in new orders overall, indicating that weak domestic demand was mainly to blame for weakness in manufacturing. Employment at factories declined for the sixth month in a row.

"The latest data implied that domestic demand contracted at a slower pace, but remained sluggish," said HSBC's chief China economist, Qu Hongbin. The numbers "indicate that the manufacturing sector, and the broader economy as a whole, continues to lose momentum."

HSBC's report was more pessimistic than a manufacturing index released last week by the state-sanctioned China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, which hovered above the no-change level at 50.4. The official survey gives more weight to China's big state companies while HSBC's focuses more on small private enterprises, and the difference indicates the latter are under more pressure amid the slowdown.

Economic growth slowed to 7.4 percent over a year earlier in the first quarter, with weak trade and manufacturing fuelling concern about a possible rise in politically volatile job losses.

Chinese leaders are trying to shift the economy to growth based on domestic consumption instead of exports and investment.

In the past few years, Beijing has rolled out mini-stimulus efforts when growth appeared to be cooling too sharply, but Qu said "bolder actions" will be required to ensure growth regains momentum.

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China refuses Vietnam's call to stop oil drilling

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam demanded China stop oil drilling operations in a disputed patch of the South China Sea, saying on Monday that Beijing's decision to deploy a deep sea rig over the weekend was illegal.

China dismissed the objections, saying the activity was being carried out in its territorial waters.

Beijing's increasingly assertive territorial claims to the waters, which are thought to have large oil and gas deposits beneath them, have angered Vietnam, the Philippines and other claimants. The region is widely seen as a potential area of conflict.

Last week, President Barack Obama signed a new defense pact with the Philippines aimed at reassuring Asian allies of American backing as they wrangle with Beijing's growing economic and military might.

The China Maritime Safety Administration posted a navigational warning on its website advising that the CNOOC 981 rig would be drilling in the South China Sea from May 4 to Aug. 15, in an area close to the Paracel Islands, which are controlled by China but Vietnam claims as its own.

China's maritime administration also said that ships entering a 3-mile (4.8-kilometers) radius around the area are prohibited.

Vietnam's foreign ministry said the area where the rig was stationed lay within Vietnam's exclusive economic zone and continental shelf as defined by the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

"All foreign activities in Vietnam's seas without Vietnam's permission are illegal and invalid," the ministry said in a statement. "Vietnam resolutely protests them."

Vietnam's state-owned oil company, PetroVietnam, demanded that China National Offshore Oil Corporation "immediately stop all the illegal activities and withdraw the rig from Vietnamese waters."

Asked about Vietnam's objections, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the drilling was taking place in Chinese waters.

Many analysts believe China is embarking on a strategy of gradually pressing its claims in the water by seeing what it can get away with, believing that its much smaller neighbors will be unable or unwilling to stop them. Vietnam has accused Chinese ships of cutting cables to its exploration vessels and harassing fishermen, as has the Philippines.

Chinese assertiveness puts Vietnam's authoritarian government in difficult position domestically because anger at China, an ideological ally, runs deep in the country. This is exploited by dissident movements, who accuse the government of being unwilling to speak out against Beijing.

Tran Cong Truc, the former head of a government committee overseeing the country's border issues, said the latest Chinese move was especially provocative.

"This act by China is much more dangerous than previous actions such as cutting the exploration cable or fishing bans," he said.

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Associated Press news assistant Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed to this report.

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'Orange Is the New Black' wins GLAAD Media Award

NEW YORK — GLAAD celebrates "Orange Is the New Black."

The Netflix show set in a women's prison was named outstanding comedy series at the 25th annual GLAAD Media Awards' New York ceremony.

Cast members — including Laverne Cox, who won her own GLAAD honor at the organization's Los Angeles awards ceremony last month — accepted the award Saturday at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.

George Takei received the Vito Russo award, presented to an openly gay media professional for promoting equality for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Other winners Saturday included the films "Concussion" and "Philomena" and Oprah Winfrey's interview with openly gay professional basketball player Jason Collins.

The GLAAD Media Awards recognize fair, accurate and inclusive representation in media of the LGBT community and the issues that affect their lives.

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Thousands descend on Omaha to hear Buffett speak

OMAHA, Neb. — Warren Buffett shrugged off concerns about his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, which has trailed the overall market, and told shareholders Saturday to remain optimistic about his company, as well as the American economy.

More than 30,000 people descended on the annual gathering to listen to Buffett and Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, who faced tough questions about Berkshire's prospects for growth and acquisitions, and also how Buffett came to handle a vote on pay packages crafted for Coca-Cola executives, a company in which Berkshire holds a major stake.

Buffett abstained from voting Berkshire's 400 million shares against the compensation plan last week, though he has long advocated against exorbitant executive pay, and after he described Coca-Cola's package as excessive.

"I thought this was the most effective way of behaving at Berkshire," Buffett said Saturday.

Buffett said he told Coke's CEO privately that he opposed the compensation plan, but didn't want to criticize the company publicly or join another Coke investor's very public campaign to curtail that pay.

"We made a clear statement about the excessiveness of the plan, but we didn't go to war with Coke in any way," Buffett said.

Shareholder Jake Kamm said the explanation Buffett offered initially for not voting against the pay package was not convincing.

"It's a little bit of spin," said Kamm, who teaches finance at Baldwin Wallace University near Cleveland, Ohio.

Buffett said the true test will come when Coke reveals its pay packages over the next year.

Buffett's son, Howard Buffett, serves on Coke's board and supported the compensation plan, which raised some hackles among Berkshire shareholders because he is on the shortlist to take a powerful position at the company on Buffett's departure. But Buffett said Berkshire shareholders shouldn't worry about his preference that his son one day become Berkshire's chairman.

Buffett also defended joining with investment firm 3G Capital last year to buy H.J. Heinz Co. That $23.3 billion deal represents a shift in Buffett's investing style because Berkshire usually operates alone and leaves the companies it acquires largely unchanged.

"I do think 3G does a magnificent job running a business," Buffett said.

Since the acquisition, 3G has announced plans to eliminate roughly 2,000 jobs and close three manufacturing plants to improve efficiency. Buffett said he doesn't expect Berkshire to use 3G's approach, but the two may pair up on future deals and he expects Heinz profits to improve significantly.

Inevitably, there were rumblings about Berkshire's failure to beat the stock market in four of the past five years. Buffett said investors shouldn't have been surprised that Berkshire's results trailed the S&P 500 last year.

"We will underperform in very strong up years," Buffett said.

Shareholder Jack Lewis, from Holt, Missouri, said he's happy with Berkshire.

"Berkshire is the kind of stock that's not going to be a super growth stock," Lewis said. "It's going to be a stock that will continue to grow."

Buffett and Munger have said for several years that the massive size of Berkshire makes it impossible to match the investment gains that the company delivered decades ago.

"It's not a tragedy that you succeed so much that future returns go down," Munger said. "That's success."

Berkshire will keep looking for possible acquisitions, preferably large ones, to boost profits and use some of its roughly $49 billion in cash. Buffett reiterated Saturday that he'd be willing to sell stocks or even take on more debt if he needed more resources for a quality acquisition.

"If we see a really good $50 billion acquisition, we'll find a way to do it," Buffett said.

American businesses are doing great, Buffett said, and he doesn't see signs that a bubble is forming in bonds or any other assets even after years of interest rates near zero.

Retired salesman Robert Brillante made his first trip to the annual meeting from Washington D.C. this year to listen to Buffett and to experience the spectacle.

"He's always been my hero, so I figured I had to make the pilgrimage," said Brillante, as he stood a few feet away from a mob of admirers trying to get a glimpse of Buffett as he toured an exhibit featuring products from the companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

At one point, a pack of shareholders six-people deep followed Buffett throughout the exhibition hall while supermodel Kathy Ireland, the former Sports Illustrated model who sells products at Berkshire's Nebraska Furniture Mart, attracted a handful of fans a few feet away.

Roughly 97 percent of Berkshire Hathaway Class A and Class B shareholders rejected a proposal that would have encouraged the conglomerate to pay a dividend.

Buffett and the board had opposed the idea because they believe shareholders gain more if the cash is reinvested.

Berkshire owns roughly 80 subsidiaries, including clothing, furniture and jewelry firms. Its insurance and utility businesses typically account for more than half of the company's net income. It also has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.

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Follow Josh Funk online at www.twitter.com/funkwrite

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Online:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: www.berkshirehathaway.com

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Westfield State U. agog over new Google technology

WESTFIELD, Mass. — It was a futuristic sight, as about a dozen students, faculty, and community members gathered around a cluster of screens on the second floor of the Ely Library at Westfield State University late last month to behold a wonder of modern technology.

The wonder that lay before them, projected onto seven screens standing seven feet tall, is Liquid Galaxy, a revolutionary product developed by Google which utilizes the company's Google Earth component to take users almost anywhere in seconds, on Earth or elsewhere.

"It sends Mars data, too," said Tom Raffensperger, the dean of Academic Information Services at Westfield State. "There's a rover up there taking pictures and mapping."

Capable of showing off the red planet just as adeptly as taking users to Fenway Park, Liquid Galaxy's potential is seemingly limitless, and Raffensperger says it will be available to the greater Westfield community during open lab times, after being made available to professors and students first.

As the jaws of students and faculty alike dropped to the floor at the startling realism and accuracy of Google Earth's mapping, professors in the school's geography department took the opportunity to speak about the project, it's humble beginnings, and what it means for the institution.

"It all started when Tim (LeDoux) and I were invited to attend the geospatial technology and higher education workshop at Google in California last summer," said Dr. Carsten Braun, a professor of Geography and Regional Planning at the University. "When we saw the Liquid Galaxy we said 'wow, this is cool, but not just cool — a great teaching tool.' So when we came back, we launched an idea to (Dr.) Liz Preston and Tom Raffensperger saying 'Hey, is this something we could get?'"

Various university departments collectively paid $25,000 to use the program.

"It was really a collaborative effort," said Raffensperger. "It was a lot of departments getting together. The library, we worked hard to make this space available, and the people at IT, academic information services, academic affairs, just a lot of different departments seeing how this would benefit the university as a whole."

Raffensperger added that professors such as LeDoux will be using the program for introductory and advanced global imaging systems (GIS) courses to take students to distant cities.

"As a geographer and planner, I talk a lot about different cities and the issues they're facing, such as Detroit with its bankruptcy," LeDoux said. "I can talk a lot about the legacy — the racism, the disinvestment issues — and that helps students paint a picture, but to take them on the ground and walk through the neighborhoods of Detroit using this, they see it, the abandoned buildings, and it brings home the visual element to them."

"I will be using this in my physical geography class, which is about landforms — glaciers, rivers, mountains, beaches — all kinds of stuff that. With this immersive program, you can experience beach erosion, experience sea level rise, much better than a static picture," Braun said. "We can do labs and say 'let's go to the Grand Canyon, let's look at what goes on at the intersection of land and ocean.'"

"(We'll be) working with the folks from the Art Department, or any other interested people to create content experiences that they can use in their classes," he added. "That's what we're going to be working on in the next few months. 'You teach English Literature, you teach Art, let's see how we can create activities that let students experience this in a special sense.'"

"This can be applied to all the different disciplines at the University," LeDoux added. "Whether you're trying to ground literature for students, poetry that a poet is writing about a landscape, it's a very vivid image, but actually seeing what they're writing about is very powerful."

When asked about the prevalence of this technology, Braun was proud to admit that Liquid Galaxy is so far only available in museums and large research-based institutions, none of which are the size of Westfield State.

"I'd be super happy to talk to anybody about how to make this useful," Braun said. "In a perfect world, we want to help everybody get this. But first, let's take this off the campus and bring it into the community, working in the local schools and make this a tool or experience that we share with the entire community."

"We are very excited to be able to provide this," said Westfield State University President Dr. Elizabeth Preston during the demo. "Part of the reason we decided to invest in the technology is because it's very clear that it has applications for all kinds of disciplines beyond the obvious. So we're very excited to have the technology on campus."

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Buffett says US firms prosper as economy improves

OMAHA, Neb. — Investor Warren Buffett says the U.S. economy continues to improve gradually, and he doesn't think any price "bubbles" are developing.

Buffett told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders at the company's annual meeting Saturday that American businesses are thriving as is evident in their profit reports.

The fact that interest rates have remained near zero for several years has some investors worried about bubbles forming in prices.

Buffett doesn't see signs that a bubble is forming in bonds or any other assets. But he says it's unusual that rates have remained low this long.

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BC Law School gets Thomas More statue

Boston College Law School yesterday hosted a dedication ceremony for a newly installed sculpture of St. Thomas More that was donated by a family that is known for its generosity throughout the city of Boston.

The statue is the latest gift from the Privitera family who has given statues to the Dante Alighieri Cultural Society in Cambridge and the Sacred Heart Church in the North End. There is also a scholarship and award in their name at the law school.

The sculpture of St. Thomas More, who was a lawyer, author and councilor to Henry VIII of England, was made by Bolivian-born Pablo Eduardo, who now lives in Gloucester.

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Jury gives Apple $120M, Samsung $158G in patent fight

A California jury yesterday awarded Apple $120 million and Samsung $158,000 after finding both companies infringed each other's smartphone patents.

The damages awarded to the two tech giants paled in comparison to what each had sought. Samsung Electronics Co. sued for 
$6 million after arguing that Apple had infringed on two patents related to camera use and video transmission, while Apple sought $2.2 billion after accusing Samsung of infringing on five patents covering universal searching, quick linking, automatic word correction and background syncing and slide-to-lock functions.

"This is a victory for Samsung, in my view, as it sought to downplay the patents' real value," said N. Venkat Venkatraman, a Boston University professor of management. "Clearly, the jury has sided with the arguments forwarded by Samsung's lawyers that Apple's patents are not worth as much."

The verdict marked the latest intellectual property battle between the world's top two smartphone makers.

Two years ago, another jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $930 million after finding it had used Apple technology to create older-generation devices. Samsung is appealing that verdict.

"You'd like to think what they'll learn is this continuous patent litigation is not going to deliver the clear verdict either sought," said Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner. "The Samsung award probably won't even cover the company's legal fees. You would hope this would lead both of them to settle their differences and come to a cross-licensing agreement."

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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