PORTLAND, Maine — Time Warner Cable says it's decided to continue to carry New England Cable News for its New England customers.
The company says its customers who have access to NECN will continue to get it after January 1, 2014 with no disruption of service.
NECN would not comment on the decision.
DE KALB, Miss. — America's newest, most expensive coal-fired power plant is hailed as one of the cleanest on the planet, thanks to government-backed technology that removes carbon dioxide and keeps it out of the atmosphere.
But once the carbon is stripped away, it will be used to do something that is not so green at all.
It will extract oil.
When President Barack Obama first endorsed this "carbon-capture" technology, the idea was that it would fight global warming by sparing the atmosphere from more greenhouse gases. It makes coal plants cleaner by burying deep underground the carbon dioxide that typically is pumped out of smokestacks.
But that green vision proved too expensive and complicated. So the administration accepted a trade-off.
To help the environment, the government allows power companies to sell the carbon dioxide to oil companies, which pump it into old oil fields to force more crude to the surface. A side benefit is that the carbon gets permanently stuck underground.
The program shows the ingenuity of the oil industry, which is using government green-energy money to subsidize oil production. But it also showcases the environmental trade-offs Obama is willing to make, but rarely talks about, in his fight against global warming.
Companies have been injecting carbon dioxide into old oil fields for decades. But the tactic hasn't been seen as a pollution-control strategy until recently.
Obama has spent more than $1 billion on carbon-capture projects tied to oil fields and has pledged billions more for clean coal. Recently, the administration said it wanted to require all new coal-fired power plants to capture carbon dioxide. Four power plants in the U.S. and Canada planning to do so intend to sell their carbon waste for oil recovery.
Just last week former Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced he was joining the board of a company developing carbon capture technology.
The unlikely marriage of coal burners and oil producers hits a political sweet spot.
It silences critics who say the administration is killing coal and discouraging oil production. It appeases environmentalists who want Obama to get tougher on coal, the largest source of carbon dioxide.
It also allows Obama to make headway on a second-term push to tackle climate change, even though energy analysts predict that few coal plants will be built in the face of low natural gas prices and Environmental Protection Agency rules that require no controls on carbon for new natural gas plants.
"By using captured man-made carbon dioxide, we can increase domestic oil production, promote economic development, create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and drive innovation," Judi Greenwald told Congress in July, months before she was hired as deputy director of the Energy Department's climate, environment and energy efficiency office.
Before joining the Energy Department, Greenwald headed the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative, a consortium of coal producers, power companies and state and environmental officials promoting the process.
But the environmental benefits of this so-called enhanced oil recovery aren't as certain as the administration advertises.
"Enhanced oil recovery just undermines the entire logic of it," said Kyle Ash of Greenpeace, one of the few environmental groups critical of the process. "They can't have it both ways, but they want to really, really bad."
That has become a theme in some of Obama's green-energy policies. To promote new, cleaner technologies, the administration has allowed companies to do things it otherwise would oppose as harmful to the environment.
For wind power, the government has shielded companies from prosecution for killing protected birds with giant turbines.
For corn-based ethanol, the administration underestimated the environmental effects of millions of new acres of corn farming. The government even failed to conduct required air and water quality studies to document its toll on the environment.
The administration wants to make similar concessions to make carbon-capture technology a success.
The EPA last week exempted carbon dioxide injection from strict hazardous waste laws. It classified the wells used to inject the gas underground for oil production in a category that offers less protection for drinking water.
Oil companies using carbon to get oil also aren't subject now to the tougher reporting and monitoring requirements that experts say are necessary to ensure the carbon stays underground, and they're fighting an EPA proposal that would require them to be if the carbon comes from power plants covered by the new federal rules.
"It amounts to looking the other way," said George Peridas, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports using carbon for oil extraction. The group believes it replaces dirtier oil or oil produced in more environmentally sensitive places and reduces carbon in the atmosphere.
The administration also did not evaluate the global warming emissions associated with the oil production when it proposed requiring power plants to capture carbon.
A 2009 peer-reviewed paper found that for every ton of carbon dioxide injected underground into an oil field, four times more carbon dioxide is released when the oil produced is burned.
"There is no form of energy that is free of impacts. It is always about trade-offs and someone will always be unhappy," the paper's author, Paulina Jaramillo, the assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an interview.
Administration officials counter by saying the oil was going to be extracted anyway, so the policy should only be seen as reducing carbon dioxide from coal plants.
The administration also promotes the benefits for energy security. Every barrel of oil produced here will mean one less produced abroad.
"We are taking carbon dioxide that would have gone to the atmosphere in coal plants, storing it and displacing imported oil with domestic oil," said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, asking a question posed by The Associated Press on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program in September.
In Mississippi, where Southern Company's Kemper County power plant eventually will supply two oil producers with carbon dioxide, Denbury Resources Inc. says it would not be able to produce oil there otherwise.
Denbury is already using carbon dioxide trapped beneath a salt dome near Jackson to produce oil in the state. But it can use more carbon dioxide than nature can provide. That's where the power plant comes in.
The federal support for Kemper lowers the cost of installing the carbon capture equipment, and ultimately, the cost of carbon dioxide for the oil producer.
The company has entered into a long-term contract with Southern for carbon dioxide. It will allow Denbury to recover a total of between 3.5 million and 4.2 million barrels of oil, a tiny fraction of the 91 million barrels of oil the world consumed daily last month. But for the oil companies, it still means millions of dollars more in revenue.
The nearly $5-billion project received $270 million from the Energy Department, prior to the Obama administration, and $279 million more in federal tax credits.
A member of Mississippi's Public Service Commission, Brandon Presley, bristled over what he described as pressure from Washington to approve the project, which already has meant a 15 percent increase in utility bills for Mississippi Power customers.
Secretary Chu wrote Presley a letter in May 2010 that said without the Kemper County project, the U.S. government might not be able to use the technology anywhere. The commission approved it over Presley's objection.
"The (Energy Department) is knee deep in this," Presley said. "I don't think you'll find anywhere in the country where you've found more heavy-handedness by the federal government or by elected officials than what went on here to try and get this passed."
In an interview with the AP, Chu said pairing oil production with pollution reduction is an imperfect method for "developing the capture and ramping up the technologies."
"It's not one for one," he said. "You are not sequestering all the carbon dioxide."
While Kemper is the first, it's not the only one.
The Energy Department has provided $1.1 billion to six projects that capture carbon and sell it to oil companies. Four of those projects are power plants.
The EPA recently highlighted two of those projects, with a combined $858 million in federal money, as a way to reduce power plant emissions. Both plan on selling the carbon dioxide to oil companies.
"We sold the carbon dioxide immediately," said Laura Miller, a spokeswoman for Summit Power's Texas Clean Energy Project, which is still working on getting the financing needed to break ground on the 400-megawatt power plant in West Texas. "The projects that are still alive are the ones that are selling the carbon dioxide."
Despite billions in federal aid, coal projects that simply stored carbon dioxide failed to take off.
In 2010, a plan for a $1.8 billion power plant in Illinois was replaced with a scaled-back project after it couldn't secure private financing. In July 2011, American Electric Power, shelved a project in West Virginia that had received $334 million in late 2009, in part because a Democrat-controlled Congress failed to enact legislation, backed by the administration, that would have created a marketplace for carbon dioxide.
Oil recovery provided a market for carbon dioxide in the absence of federal legislation or regulations that put a price on it. For power plant operators, it could help offset the cost of the technology to capture it.
But the marriage was rocky from the start.
Oil companies want to use the least amount of carbon dioxide possible to extract oil, not exactly what is desired in a strategy to reduce pollution. Oil producers, no stranger to federal regulations, don't want to deal with any more rules, such as strict and costly monitoring and reporting requirements aimed at verifying that the carbon doesn't escape.
On the coal side, it takes more energy, and thus more coal and more carbon dioxide pollution, to run the equipment needed to capture carbon and compress it to be sent down a pipeline to an oil field.
It's the other environmental effects that have local environmentalists concerned.
There still is a 31,000-acre surface mine, and the other pollutants that power plants emit that could sully the air locally. Southern Co. was recently cited by the state for discharges from its reservoir on site, which the company blames on excessive rainfall and the fact that equipment that draws water from the reservoir for use in the plant was not ready.
"If you add up all the environmental costs, this is not going to be green," said Stan Flint, a Jackson-based consultant who works with environmental groups.
In June, the Energy Department and California Energy Commission raised serious environmental concerns about a California-based carbon capture-enhanced oil recovery project funded by the Obama administration and recognized by the EPA when it released its power plant standards.
In a preliminary environmental evaluation, state and federal officials found the Hydrogen Energy California Project would fail to comply with laws and standards in eight out of 16 environmental areas evaluated. The concerns included whether the project would comply with state landfill rules and its impacts on the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, a protected species.
Other studies have looked at the association between carbon dioxide injection and earthquakes. A peer-reviewed study published in November linked for the first time earthquakes in Texas to the injection of carbon dioxide in oil fields.
Another potential risk is blowouts. Many oil fields that are ideal candidates for carbon dioxide injection have many old and abandoned wells that may or may not be plugged properly.
Denbury Resources has had a series of uncontrolled blowouts in recent years, as the pressure created by injecting carbon dioxide tests the cement plugs in long-shuttered wells. The largest, and one that was responsible for one of the largest environmental fines in Mississippi in the past decade, occurred in 2011 at the Tinsley Field, one of several old oil fields that will receive carbon from Southern Co.'s power plant.
The company paid $662,500 for a blowout that vented carbon dioxide, oil and drilling mud for 37 days. So much carbon dioxide came out that it settled in some hollows, suffocating deer and other animals, Mississippi officials said. The company ultimately drilled a new well to plug the old one, and removed 27,000 tons of drilling mud and contaminated soil and 32,000 barrels of liquids from the site.
The company still claims it's green because of the carbon it is storing as part of its oil production process.
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Follow Dina Cappiello on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dinacappiello
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
Buying a home will be more costly next year for many people thanks to planned fee increases.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will hike the guarantee fees on government-backed mortgage loans — fees that typically are passed along to borrowers and will result in higher mortgage rates.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced the policy change Dec. 9 as part of an effort to decrease the government-owned mortgage finance companies' presence in the U.S. mortgage market and bring private capital back into the mix.
"Any increased fees impact people's ability to obtain home ownership," said Brenda Clement, executive director of the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association, a nonprofit umbrella group for affordable housing and community development in Massachusetts. "The housing market has come back slowly, particularly for people at the low-income levels, and anything that increases fees or increases the complexity of buying a home is always problematic."
On Monday, Fannie and Freddie, which currently back about two-thirds of new U.S. mortgages, said fees will rise sharply for many borrowers who don't make down payments of at least 20 percent and don't have high enough credit scores — a large share of homebuyers.
The fee increases are especially hard to swallow in Massachusetts, a higher- value area in terms of real estate and housing costs in general, said Peter Ruffini, incoming president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and regional vice president at Jack Conway Realtors in Norwell. "Whenever we hear news like this, oftentimes it impacts us to a greater extent," he said.
Interest rates already are expected to creep into the 5 percent to 5.5 percent range, absent the fee increases, Ruffini noted. "Things like this affect a first-time homebuyer's ability to get into the market," Ruffini said. "It decreased their purchasing power, and it's tough to get a loan right now anyway."
Making mortgages more expensive, especially while interest rates already are rising, may inhibit the recovery and have unintended consequences, said David Abromowitz, a Boston attorney who specializes in affordable housing. "Raising the guaranty fees now won't make the housing system safer, as lenders are already screening out borrowers without high credit scores and strong, documented income," said Abromowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington, D.C., public policy think tank. "But it will make home-buying more costly, while rents are also shooting up — with the consumer losing out either way."
Herald wire services contributed to this report.
ATLANTA — More Americans are deciding to shop online this holiday season instead of heading to crowded stores.
But that alone won't save what is turning out to be a ho-hum Christmas for department stores and clothing chains.
Online sales have surged 9 percent so far this holiday season as Wal-Mart, Macy's and other retailers improved their web sites and prices to better compete with their online nemesis Amazon.com. Meanwhile, shopping at physical stores is up just 2 percent.
Still, it's estimated that for every $9 shoppers spend in physical stores during the two-month season that ends on New Year's Eve, they'll only spend $1 online, according to research firm comScore.
Why? Retailers haven't solved many of the challenges that initially turned many shoppers off from buying online. Some web sites still crash fairly frequently. Hot merchandise often sells out quickly online. And retailers haven't convinced people to use their shopping apps on smartphones and tablets.
These lingering issues come from years of brick-and-mortar retailers mostly ignoring the possibilities of online shopping while online giants like Amazon got shoppers used to the convenience of it. Solving these problems will help determine how retailers fare during the holiday season and beyond as shoppers increasingly buy online.
"The people that are going to win ... are the ones that are there for the customer however they want to shop," said Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Walmart.com, Wal-Mart's online business.
The growing interest in online shopping is evident this season. Sales were up 2 percent to $176.7 billion from Nov. 1 through last Sunday compared with the same period last year, according to ShopperTrak, a Chicago store data tracker. Meanwhile, online spending from home and work desktop computers was up 9 percent during the same period to $37.8 billion, according to research firm comScore.
Still, analysts say online shopping isn't reaching its full potential because of a number of factors.
SELLOUTS AND CRASHES
In the early days of online shopping, frustrated shoppers often found the items they wanted to buy online were out of stock. In recent years, though, retailers have worked to boost their online inventory: For examples, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has doubled the number of items it carries online this year to 6 million.
Overall, retailers are better prepared than they were a few years ago to fill online orders via their inventory in store or in manufacturers' distribution centers, said Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru. But they still have inventory problems that cause them to run out of popular merchandise, analysts say. And when that happens, retailers can lose potential sales.
But inventory isn't the only problem that continues to plague online shopping. Retailers have come a long way toward fixing some of the problems that caused their sites to crash and freeze up in the early days of online shopping.
Crashes and slowdowns occur far less today than they did a few years ago, said Aaron Rudger, senior manager web performance of Keynote, which monitors retailers online performance. Keynote estimates that 23 percent of retailers had web site problems during the official kickoff of the holiday shopping season, the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, compared with 71 percent 5 years ago.
But crashes still happen far more often than they should, says Rudger, who found that the Motorola web site crashed on the Monday after the four-day Thanksgiving weekend known as 'Cyber Monday' when it launched its Moto X phone. Urban Outfitters also crashed, he says. "Those are pretty well known brands so that to us is a bit of a surprise," Rudger said.
Those types of experiences can turn off shoppers from buying online. For instance, Patrice Grell Yursik, 34, wanted to buy a warm coat for her husband when she started shopping online on Cyber Monday, but changed her mind after she ran into troubles on Macy's web site.
"Macy's had really great deals and I had an awesome Michael Kors coat in mind but when I went to try to get it in black it was sold out," said the style blogger who lives in Chicago. "The site kept freezing and locking up, but by the time I tried it again the coat was gone."
That experience drove her ultimately drove her offline.
Macy's says due to the volume of traffic and shopping on Cyber Monday, there were "rare occasions" when an item sold out almost immediately after a customer put it into their virtual shopping cart.
GETTING SHOPPERS TO USE MOBILE APPS
There's evidence that Americans increasingly want to shop on their smartphone and tablets this holiday season. In fact, while mobile shopping accounts for about 10 percent of online sales, it made up half of all online traffic during Black Friday weekend, according to IBM Benchmark, which did not give dollar amounts.
But more often than not, people are shopping on their smartphones and tablets using retailers' web sites. That's a problem because having specific shopping app is important when it comes to converting window shoppers into buyers.
That's because apps are more streamlined than websites, which can be clunky and hard to navigate on smaller screens on smartphones and tables. Also most apps store shoppers' information so customers don't have to type in a lot of information each time they buy.
"One of the reasons people don't convert (to mobile shopping) is that there is a lot of friction in the process," said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis for comScore. "If I have to enter all my information on the phone, I might not convert. But if there's an easy log in and all I have to do is one-click or a couple of easy clicks to buy, people will convert that way."
According to comScore data, Amazon and eBay are the only major retailers that have visitors spend more time on their app rather than their web site — by a wide margin. Meanwhile, only about 2 percent of time spent on Macy's and Sears online presence is via an app, according to the data.
The problem? Analysts say retailers have not marketed their shopping apps well enough to encourage shoppers to find and download them.
"Retailers should put specific incentives in front of consumers to download and use that app," Lipsman said. "Doing that now will pay dividends down the road."
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronauts removed an old space station pump Saturday, sailing through the first of a series of urgent repair spacewalks to revive a crippled cooling line.
The two Americans on the crew, Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins, successfully pulled out the ammonia pump with a bad valve __ well ahead of schedule. That task had been planned for the next spacewalk, originally scheduled for Monday but now delayed until Tuesday, Christmas Eve, because of the need for a suit swap.
"An early Christmas," observed Mission Control as Mastracchio tugged the refrigerator-size pump away from its nesting spot.
If Mastracchio and Hopkins keep up the quick work, two spacewalks may be enough to complete the installation of a spare pump and a third spacewalk will not be needed as originally anticipated.
Several hours after Saturday's spacewalk ended, Mission Control bumped spacewalk 2 to Tuesday to give Mastracchio enough time to prepare a spare suit. His original suit was compromised when he inadvertently turned on a water switch in the air lock at the end of Saturday's excursion. NASA officials said Saturday night that it's unclear whether a third spacewalk will be needed and when it might occur, if required. A third spacewalk had been slated for Christmas Day before the latest turn of events. NASA requires a day off between spacewalks for astronaut rest.
The space station breakdown 10 days earlier left one of two identical cooling loops too cold and forced the astronauts to turn off all nonessential equipment inside the orbiting lab, bringing scientific research to a near-halt and leaving the station in a vulnerable state.
Mission Control wanted to keep the spacewalkers out even longer Saturday to get even further ahead, but a cold and uncomfortable Mastracchio requested to go back. The spacewalk ended after 5½ hours, an hour short on time but satisfyingly long on content.
Earlier, Mastracchio managed to unhook all the ammonia fluid and electrical lines on the pump with relative ease, occasionally releasing a flurry of frozen ammonia flakes that brushed against his suit. A small O-ring floated away, but he managed to retrieve it.
"I got it, I got it, I got it. Barely," Mastracchio said as he stretched out his hand.
"Don't let that go, that's a stocking stuffer," Mission Control replied.
"Don't tell my wife," Mastracchio said, chuckling, as he put it in a small pouch for trash.
Mastracchio, a seven-time spacewalker, and Hopkins, making his first, wore extra safety gear as they worked outside. NASA wanted to prevent a recurrence of the helmet flooding that nearly drowned an Italian astronaut last summer, so Saturday's spacewalkers had snorkels in their suits and water-absorbent pads in their helmets.
To everyone's relief, the spacewalkers remained dry while outside. But midway through the excursion, Mastracchio's toes were so cold that he had to crank up the heat in his boots. Mission Control worried aloud whether it was wise to extend the spacewalk to get ahead, given Mastracchio's discomfort.
Not quite two hours later, Mastracchio had enough as he clutched the old pump. When Mission Control suggested even more get-ahead chores, he replied, "I'd like to stow this old module and kind of clean up and call it a day." He said a couple of things were bothering him, not just temperature, and declined to elaborate when asked by Mission Control what was wrong.
Flight controllers obliged him. Once the old pump was secured to a temporary location, the spacewalkers started gathering up their tools to go in.
Adding to the excitement 260 miles (418 kilometers) up, a smoke alarm went off in the space station as the astronauts toiled outside. It was quickly found to be a false alarm.
The pump replacement is a huge undertaking attempted only once before, back in 2010 on this very unit. The two astronauts who tackled the job three years ago were in Mission Control, offering guidance. Mastracchio promised to bring back a wire tie installed on the pump by the previous spacewalkers. "Oh, awesome, thanks Rick," replied the astronaut in Mission Control who put it on.
The 780-pound (354-kilogram) pump is about the size of a double-door refrigerator and extremely cumbersome to handle, with plumbing full of toxic ammonia. Any traces of ammonia on the spacesuits were dissipated before the astronauts went back inside, to avoid further contamination.
NASA's plan initially called for the pump to be disconnected in the first spacewalk, pulled out on the second spacewalk and a fresh spare put in, and then all the hookups of the new pump completed in the third outing.
In the days following the Dec. 11 breakdown, flight controllers attempted in vain to fix the bad valve through remote commanding. Then they tried using a different valve to regulate the temperature of the overly cold loop, with some success. But last Tuesday, NASA decided the situation was severe enough to press ahead with the spacewalks. Although the astronauts were safe and comfortable, NASA did not want to risk another failure and a potential loss of the entire cooling system, needed to radiate the heat generated by on-board equipment.
NASA delayed a delivery mission from Wallops Island, Virginia, to accommodate the spacewalks. That flight by the private firm Orbital Sciences Corp., which should have occurred this past week, is now targeted for Jan. 7.
Until Saturday, U.S. spacewalks had been on hold since July, when an Italian astronaut's helmet was flooded with water from the cooling system of his suit. Luca Parmitano barely got back inside alive.
Engineers traced the problem to a device in the suit that turned out to be contaminated — how and why, no one yet knows.
For Saturday's spacewalk, Hopkins wore Parmitano's suit, albeit with newly installed and thoroughly tested components.
Just in case, NASA had Mastracchio and Hopkins build snorkels out of plastic tubing from their suits, before going out. The snorkels will be used in case water starts building up in their helmets. They also put absorbent pads in their helmets; the pads were launched from Earth following the July scare. None of the precautions were needed, in the end.
Besides the two Americans, three Russian and one Japanese astronaut are living on the space station, all men.
SEATTLE — National leaders of the Machinists union are scheduling a vote on a proposed contract between Boeing and Puget Sound machinists, despite objections from local union officials who have already rejected the company's latest offer.
The lead negotiator for the union's national headquarters, Rich Michalski, told The Seattle Times in a phone interview that a vote is set for Jan. 3, the newspaper reported Saturday.
The contract would secure work on Boeing new 777X airplane at a time when 22 states are vying for those jobs. The company says it expects to pick a location early next year.
The local union, District 751, said on its website Saturday that there's no stopping the vote and urged members to reject the contract.
"Despite objections from District 751 leadership, the International has insisted on a vote on January 3rd to ensure you spend your holidays studying and debating a concessionary proposal that is largely unchanged from the one you rejected by a 2-to-1 margin on Nov. 13," the statement said.
"We're adamantly recommending that our members reject the offer," local union spokesman Bryan Corliss said Saturday. "The timing will make it hard to get members information to make a decision."
National union spokesman Frank Larkin said Saturday the vote is being scheduled to respond to members who have been calling for one and in keeping with a long union tradition that members have the final say.
He added: "It's obviously a controversial proposal. There is a range of opinions. The vote will be by secret ballot and the members will have the last word."
Local leaders of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers have faced pressure in recent days for declining to put Boeing's last offer to a vote.
"The terms of Boeing's enhanced contract offer to the IAM on December 12 stand," Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said in a statement Saturday. "If ratified by the membership, Boeing would honor that contract."
Boeing has gotten proposals from 22 states covering 54 locations that all want to build the plane. Boeing says it is narrowing the list down and is telling each location its status in the process. Boeing isn't releasing the list publicly.
State officials in North Carolina said Boeing told them Friday that sites in Charlotte, Greensboro and Kinston were out of the running.
The 777X is expected to bring thousands of well-paying jobs to wherever it is assembled.
Boeing began looking for a new location to build the successor to its popular 777 after union workers in Washington state rejected a deal that would have kept the work there.
The latest round of contract talks collapsed earlier this month when local Machinists officials said they could not recommend Boeing's latest proposal to members.
HAVANA — President Raul Castro issued a stern warning to entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of Cuba's economic reform, telling parliament on Saturday that "those pressuring us to move faster are moving us toward failure."
Castro has legalized small-scale, private businesses in nearly 200 fields since 2010, but has issued tighter regulations on businesses seen as going too far or competing excessively with state enterprises. In recent months, the government has banned the resale of imported hardware and clothing and cracked down on unlicensed private videogame and movie salons.
Castro threw his full weight behind such measures in an address to the biannual meeting of the communist legislature, saying "every step we take must be accompanied by the establishment of a sense of order."
"Inadequate controls by government institutions in the face of illegal activities by private businesspeople weren't resolved in a timely fashion, creating an environment of impunity and stimulating the accelerated growth of activities that were never authorized for certain occupations," Castro said.
He told lawmakers that Cuba wants better relations with the U.S. but will never give in to demands for changes to Cuba's government and economy, saying "we don't demand that the U.S. change its political or social system and we don't accept negotiations over ours."
"If we really want to move our bilateral relations forward, we'll have to learn to respect our differences," Castro said. "If not, we're ready to take another 55 years in the same situation."
Cuba blames a half-century-old U.S. embargo for strangling its economy but Castro's government has also acknowledged that it must reform the state-run economy with a gradual opening to private enterprise. Many Cubans have enthusiastically seized opportunities to make more money with their own businesses, but new entrepreneurs and outside experts alike complain that the government has been sending mixed messages about its openness to private enterprise.
The conflicting signals were apparent in Cuba's handling of the dozens of private home cinemas and video game salons that sprung up around the country this year, drawing crowds of young people willing to spend a few dollars for access to the latest home entertainment technology imported, purportedly for private use, by Cubans returning from the U.S., Canada or other countries.
The government denounced the cinemas as spreading uncultured drivel to the young, and ordered them closed last month for stretching the boundaries on the kinds of private businesses allowed under reforms instituted by Castro. Then came the backlash, with entrepreneurs bemoaning thousands of dollars in lost investment and moviegoers saying they were exasperated by heavy-handedness toward a harmless diversion. The official reaction was swift, and unprecedented.
An article in the Communist Party newspaper Granma on last month acknowledged there was wide disapproval of the ban, and hinted it was being rethought. The same Granma article also offered a full-throated defense of the ban on the reselling of imported hardware and clothes.
Castro appeared to justify all of the recent moves to clamp down on private enterprise.
"We're not ignorant of the fact that those pressuring to move faster are moving us toward failure, toward disunity, and are damaging the people's confidence and support for the construction of socialism and the independence and sovereignty of Cuba."
Several Cubans interviewed on the streets of Havana said they generally approved of Castro's speech but wanted more details on economic reforms, and a softer line toward the U.S.
"I would have liked to know exactly what pace of reform we're going to follow," said Daniel Mora, a 72-year-old retired state worker. "And he told the United States that we're ready for another 55 years of blockade, but I'm not ready for that. I'm 72 and I'd like to see the light at the end of the tunnel before I die."
Castro praised the Cold War ties between Cuba and South Africa's anti-apartheid movement but did not mention his handshake with President Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela's funeral this month.
He lamented that growth would come in at 2.7 percent for 2013, nearly a full percentage below the predicted 3.6 percent. He said growth for 2014 was expected to be 2.2 percent.
It is nearly impossible to know on the true size of Cuba's economy because Cuba uses two currencies, a convertible peso for tourists that's pegged to the U.S. dollar and a Cuban peso worth about 4 cents, and the government doesn't clearly distinguish between them in economic statistics.
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Anne-Marie Garcia contributed to this report.
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A Plymouth company will help hydrate soccer fans across the globe under a licensing deal with the Federation Internationale de Football Association.
Cool Gear International will produce FIFA-themed, reusable chillers, tumblers and its signature coolgearcans to mark the 2014 FIFA World Cup that will be hosted by Brazil from June 12 to July 13.
"We've done some really fun stuff for the World Cup," Cool Gear founder and CEO Donna Roth said. "It's an exciting deal for us because it's hitting a different market for us — sports — but still is viable for (the mass market) as well."
Cool Gear pursued the FIFA contract because it recently broke into the sporting goods market, and it has strong distributors in Brazil and key countries around the world, according to Roth.
"We developed a line of products that was more geared to the sporting goods industries — higher scale bottles, with a little more bells and whistles," she said.
In addition to World Cup venues, the collectable products will be sold in North America, elsewhere in Brazil, Europe, Colombia, Africa and South Korea. They'll be available locally at Dick's Sporting Goods this month and at www.coolgearinc.com.
Roth, who categorized Cool Gear as a mid-middle market company, declined to reveal the value of the FIFA deal or privately held Cool Gear's annual revenue. Mid-middle market companies' revenue range from $50 million to $500 million.
"It will be a nice piece to add," Roth said of the FIFA deal. "The time frame is short. We'll get a big hit this first and second quarter, and then it will be over."
The FIFA deal — along with a three-year agreement signed with Coca-Cola in October — is part of a move by Cool Gear to get back into licensing.
Its predecessor company, Fun Designs, was heavily into licensing in the 1990s and had deals with companies including Disney, Warner Bros. and Nickelodeon. But at the same time, it was developing its Cool Gear brand, and when licensing royalties "went through the roof," it decided to concentrate on its own brand and renamed the company.
All of Cool Gear's products are proprietary, and it has more than 150 patents for them. Introduced this summer, its coolgearcan is a double-wall insulated, BPA-free plastic beverage holder that looks like a 12-ounce can, but is reusable and has a spill-proof slider lid.
I have a 2006 Ford F-150 with the 5.4 V8 engine. The truck has only 32,000 miles on it. When the oil is changed, sometimes it is somewhat milky. I know this is most likely from cold morning starts coupled with a 2-mile drive to work. The engine barely has time to warm up. My question is the use of a block heater overnight when it is extremely cold. Will the heat from the block heater cause engine condensation? The heater makes a huge difference in ease of start-up and the engine warms quicker. Should I not be using the block heater? I started using synthetic oil as well.
Entirely appropriate question with the recent spell of frigid temperatures across much of the country. I'm a firm believer in engine block heaters in areas where temperatures drop to zero or below. The benefits of easier cranking, faster starting, lower stress on the starter motor, battery and engine and faster lubrication to critical components far outweigh any — well, I can't think of any downsides!
Condensation inside the crankcase is going to occur during cold weather starts when moisture in the air inside the engine is rapidly heated upon start-up. The only way to eliminate this moisture is to drive the fully warmed up vehicle long enough to evaporate and expel the moisture through the PCV system. In addition, more frequent oil changes during cold weather can be a useful tool in removing moisture and fuel contamination from the oil.
Does using a block heater contribute to higher levels of moisture contamination? I don't know for sure, but the fact that a block heater slowly warms up the engine, coolant (and to some extent the oil) and maintains that temperature would likely contribute little if any additional condensation.
Thus, I think your use of synthetic oil and a block heater is a very solid game plan for winter.
I have a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan. If it sits three to four days without starting, the battery is dead. I have taken it to the dealer several times and they cannot find anything wrong with the charging system. Their report states "tested for excessive IOD and it is at 14ma and well within spec. Saw the IOD jump to 3M randomly for just a second but never above the max spec of allowable draw." They advised to "pull the IOD fuse" when planning on not starting the vehicle for a few days at a time. They also told me that this was normal, which I find difficult to believe.
This is not normal. Your first test should be to disconnect the battery while the vehicle is parked, then after three or four days reconnect it and see if the vehicle will start. If not, the battery is not holding a charge and needs replacement. This could easily be the issue.
If it does start after three to four days, there must be some type of parasitic current draw that's draining the battery. Current drawn with the ignition off should not exceed roughly 50ma (.05 amperes). This level of parasitic current will not kill a good battery in a few days.
The "IOD" fuse in your vehicle controls ignition-off power to those circuits with KAMs — keep-alive memories. Removing this fuse will only stop current flow to those components but won't stop a parasitic draw from some other source.
To find a parasitic draw, disconnect the negative battery cable and connect an ammeter or 12-volt taillamp bulb in series between the cable and negative terminal. If the bulb glows and/or the ammeter reads a significant parasitic loss, pull each and every fuse and relay, one at a time. Hopefully the current flow will stop when you find the circuit drawing current.
A small lamp, such as the glovebox light, or a stuck electrical relay would be likely culprits in a dead battery after several days.
Paul Brand, author of "How to Repair Your Car," is an automotive troubleshooter, driving instructor and former race-car driver. Readers may write to him at: Star Tribune, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn., 55488 or via email at paulbrand@startribune.com. Please explain the problem in detail and include a daytime phone number. Because of the volume of mail, we cannot provide personal replies.
NEW YORK — The U.S. is the juiciest target for hackers hunting credit card information. And experts say incidents like the recent data theft at Target's stores will get worse before they get better.
That's in part because U.S. credit and debit cards rely on an easy-to-copy magnetic strip on the back of the card, which stores account information using the same technology as cassette tapes.
"We are using 20th century cards against 21st century hackers," says Mallory Duncan, general counsel at the National Retail Federation. "The thieves have moved on but the cards have not."
In most countries outside the U.S., people carry cards that use digital chips to hold account information. The chip generates a unique code every time it's used. That makes the cards more difficult for criminals to replicate. So difficult that they generally don't bother.
"The U.S. is the top victim location for card counterfeit attacks like this," says Jason Oxman, chief executive of the Electronic Transactions Association.
The breach that exposed the credit card and debit card information of as many as 40 million Target customers who swiped their cards between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15 is still under investigation. It's unclear how the breach occurred and what data, exactly, criminals have. Although security experts say no security system is fail-safe, there are several measures stores, banks and credit card companies can take to protect against these attacks.
Companies haven't enhanced security so far because it can be expensive. And while global credit and debit card fraud hit a record $11.27 billion last year, those costs accounted for just 5.2 cents of every $100 in transactions, according to the Nilson Report, which tracks global payments.
Another problem: retailers, banks and credit card companies each want someone else to foot most of the bill. Card companies want stores to pay to better protect their internal systems. Stores want cards companies to issue more sophisticated cards. Banks want to preserve the profits they get from older processing systems.
Card payment systems work much the way they have for decades. The magnetic strip on the back of a credit or debit card contains the cardholder's name, account number, the card's expiration date and one of two security codes. When the card is swiped at a store, an electronic conversation is begun between two banks. The store's bank, which pays the store right away for the item the customer bought, needs to make sure the customer's bank approves the transaction and will pay the store's bank. On average, the conversation takes 1.4 seconds.
During that time the customer's information flows through the network and is recorded, sometimes only briefly, on computers within the system controlled by payment processing companies. Retailers can store card numbers and expiration dates, but they are prohibited from storing more sensitive data such as the security codes printed on the backs of cards or other personal identification numbers.
Hackers been known to snag account information as it passes through the network or pilfer it from databases where it's stored. Target says there is no indication that the three or four-digit security codes on the back of customer credit cards were stolen. That would make it hard to use stolen account information to buy from most internet retail sites. But because the magnetic strips on cards in the U.S. are so easy to generate, thieves can simply reproduce them and issue fraudulent cards that look and feel like the real thing.
"That's where the real value to the fraudsters is," says Chris Bucolo, senior manager of security consulting at ControlScan, which helps merchants comply with card processing security standards.
Once thieves capture the card information, they check the type of account, balances and credit limits, and sell replicas on the Internet. A simple card with a low balance and limited customer information can go for $3. A no-limit "black" card with the security number printed on the back of the card can go for $1,000, according to Al Pascual, a senior analyst at Javelin Strategy and Research, a security risk and fraud consulting firm.
To be sure, thieves can nab and sell card data from networks processing cards with digital chips, too, but they wouldn't be able to create fraudulent cards.
Credit card companies in the U.S. have a plan to replace magnetic strips with digital chips by the fall of 2015. But retailers worry the card companies won't go far enough. They want cards to have a chip, but they also want each transaction to require a personal identification number, or PIN, instead of a signature.
"Everyone knows that the signature is a useless authentication device," Duncan says.
Duncan, who represents retailers, says banks want to preserve the higher profits they can get when a signature is needed because there are fewer signature processing networks, and less price competition. The higher profits outweigh the cost of fraud, Duncan says.
"Compared to the tens of millions of transactions that are taking place every day, even the fraud that they have to pay for is small compared to the profit they are making from using less secure cards."
Even so, there are a few things retailers can do, too, to better protect customer data. The most vulnerable point in the transaction network, security experts say, is usually the merchant.
"Financial institutions are more used to having high levels of protection," says Pascual. "Retailers are still getting up to speed."
The simple, square, card swiping machines that consumers are used to seeing at most checkout counters are hard to infiltrate because they are completely separate from the Internet. But as retailers switch to faster, Internet-based payment systems they may expose customer data to hackers.
Retailers need to build robust firewalls around those systems to guard against attack, security experts say. They could also take further steps to protect customer data by using encryption, technology which scrambles the data so it looks like gibberish to anyone who accesses it unlawfully. These technologies can be expensive to install and maintain, however.
Thankfully, individual customers are not on the hook for fraudulent charges that result from security breaches. But these kinds of attacks do raise costs —and, likely, fees for all customers.
"Part of the cost in the system is for fraud protection," Oxman says. "It costs money, and someone's going to pay for it eventually."
Jonathan Fahey can be reached at http://twitter.com/JonathanFahey .
