Can Mass. casinos compete?

The state's gaming czar says local casinos are ready to weather mounting competitive pressures in New York and Connecticut in 2015, as his commission gears up to regulate its first gambling facility in Plainville and grapples with uncertainty over whether there will be a third Bay State casino in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Gaming Commission chairman Stephen Crosby said developments such as New York approving three new upstate casinos on Dec. 17 — including one in Schenectady, 90 minutes from the MGM Springfield project — have been "part of the calculation from the beginning."

"The Springfield facility is going to take a backseat to nobody," Crosby said. "I think we are going to have by far the most compelling, most competitively well-positioned facilities out there."

But Michael Paladino, who assesses the credit worthiness of casino companies for Fitch Ratings, said the types of casinos New York has opened, and the commercial one rumored on Connecticut's Bay State border, generally eat away at the existing local customer base, not add to it.

"We do think the market in the Northeast is saturated, particularly with the competition coming online in New York and Massachusetts," Paladino said. "It means that, generally, new competition has limited ability to grow the market, and essentially cannibalizes existing properties to a great degree."

MGM, which this year was licensed to build an $800 million casino in downtown Springfield, isn't worried.

"We are confident that as an urban revitalization project our innovative design, tested marketing plan, and strong brand will make MGM Springfield a premiere destination resort casino in the Northeast," MGM spokeswoman Carole Brennan said. "We are moving full steam ahead for a spring 2015 groundbreaking."

Boston College professor Richard McGowan, a casino expert, expects to see Massachusetts projects cut back as New York facilities come online, and for the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos to adjust to hold on to market share.

"In the long run ... you're going to see a repeat of Atlantic City, eventually," McGowan said, referring to the widespread shuttering of casinos this year. "There's going to be too many."

The first facility to open will be the $225 million Penn National slots parlor at the Plainridge Race Course in Plainville, expected in June. Crosby said the commission will add 10 to 15 staff members to regulate the Penn facility, which he called the gaming panel's "real focus" in 2015.

Meanwhile, there is a dearth of developments for the "Region C" resort casino license in the southeastern part of the state, with a Jan. 9 deadline for interested parties to submit a list of principals for background checks.

KG Urban has been approved to pursue a license in Region C, but has yet to announce an operator or win the support of New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, who is shopping the municipal golf course and a waterfront industrial site to casino operators.

"The market here in the Southeast is clearly weaker than it is in the other two regions," Mitchell said. "We're not holding our breath, but we're also open for a good proposal still."

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Market Basket ends 4 percent discount

BOSTON — The 4 percent discount that Market Basket shoppers enjoyed on most purchases for the past year is coming to an end.

The New England supermarket chain introduced the discount in January in response to high energy costs and cutbacks in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Company officials tell The Boston Globe the plan was always to phase out the discount, which ends on Saturday.

A family feud over the company's future led to a worker revolt and customer boycotts last summer. It ended with Arthur T. Demoulas gaining control from his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas.

While some customers hoped the discount would continue, others say Market Basket still offers lower prices than many competitors.

The company operates more than 70 stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

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Latest advertising spending estimates underscore softness in TV

The latest numbers on advertising expenditures underscore the trend of softness in TV growth this year, according to ad tracking firm Kantar Media.

Spanish-language TV was the big driver of modest TV advertising growth during the third quarter, according to the latest Kantar report. Spanish-lingo TV registered a 23.7% gain in spot TV advertising, thanks in large part to the World Cup soccer tournament. Cable networks saw a 7.9% gain in the third quarter, compared to just 0.2% for national network buys, even as the spending on the midterm elections heated up in key battleground states.

For the first nine months of the year, overall TV spending was up 7.1% compared to the comparable period in 2013. That's better than the magazine (-4.3%), newspaper (-9.2%) and radio (-3.8%) advertising categories, which were down year-over-year, and a slightly bigger gain than Internet advertising (5.7%) during the frame.

But the disproportionate gains for Spanish-lingo TV (28.1%) during the nine-month period raise questions about growth potential for the rest of the TV market. Cable TV grew 7.9% during the January to September frame, while broadcast networks eked out a 3.0% gain, according to Kantar.

Overall spending by the top 10 advertisers was $11.5 billion from January to September, down 1.7% from the comparable period in 2013. Packaged goods giant Procter & Gamble claimed the top spot among advertisers overall with $2 billion during the frame, which still marked a 16.1% year-over-year drop and the company's third consecutive quarter of declining advertising expenditures across all media. AT&T, another blue-chip advertiser, saw spending decline 11.3% for the frame.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is the biggest gainer overall, growing 19.5% to $1.03 billion. General Motors also registered a 4.5% uptick to $1.3 billion.

Kantar execs noted a clear trend of smaller advertisers helping to fill the gap in spending during the third quarter.

"After a relatively robust first half when spend grew by 3.1%,the pace of ad spending slowed during Q3 and a principal cause was Top 100 marketers becoming more restrained with their budgets," said Jon Swallen, Kantar Media North America's chief research officer. "In contrast, mid-sized advertisers, who are the core of the ad market, continued to supply foundational support and grew their total spending by 6-7 percent during the quarter."

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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China jails 4 for 2013 fatal fire at poultry plant

BEIJING — Two fire chiefs and two poultry farm bosses have been convicted and sentenced to prison terms of up to nine years in relation to a fire at a plant in northeastern China last year that killed 121 people and injured 76 others, state media reported Saturday.

The June 2013 fire in Jilin province was China's deadliest industrial accident in five years and highlighted continuing violations of safety regulations despite recent improvements in the country's work safety record.

Survivors at the time described workers, mostly women, struggling through smoke and flames in the poultry processing plant to reach doors that turned out to be locked or blocked after an electrical short ignited flammable goods.

On Friday, two district courts in Changchun city sentenced two bosses of the plant and two fire officials, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The chairman of Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Co., Jia Yushan, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 1 million yuan ($160,000) for not ensuring the working environment was safe, and former general manager Zhang Yushen was sentenced to four years for installing substandard equipment, Xinhua said.

Lyu Yandong, the former chief of the local fire department, and his deputy Liu Guicai were convicted of abuse of power and sentenced to prison terms of up to 5 1/2 years. Prosecutors previously said they had failed to carry out any serious inspections of the plant and falsified information after the fire to try and cover that up.

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US mission in Havana to become embassy amid thaw

HAVANA — A half-century after Washington severed relations with Cuba, the United States' seven-story mission looms over Havana's seaside Malecon boulevard as the largest diplomatic outpost in the country.

Cuban guards stand at close intervals on the street outside, and islanders line up by the thousands each year for a shot at a coveted visa.

The gleaming U.S. Interests Section suddenly is poised to become an even more important presence in Cuba as the two countries negotiate the first phase of their historic detente — transforming the complex into a full embassy that would reflect the Obama administration's hopes of new influence on the communist island.

Roberta Jacobson, assistant U.S. secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, will be the highest known U.S. administration official to visit in decades when she comes next month for annual talks on migration that will now also focus on the details of re-establishing full diplomatic relations.

The discussions are expected to cover expanding staffing in the two countries' interests sections and letting diplomats travel outside their respective capitals without having to ask permission.

Also part of the reopening of the embassy: symbolic measures such as raising the American flag on the Malecon.

"Opening an embassy is a symbolic gesture, but symbols are really important," John Caulfield, who was Interests Section chief from 2011 to 2014, said by phone from Jacksonville, Florida, where he retired.

"This is a pretty powerful symbol by our president that we want to have a more normal relationship with Cuba despite the fact that we have the obvious differences," he added.

Cuba's interests section is a stately manor in Washington's Adams Morgan neighborhood. It, too, stands to become an embassy.

Diplomats say privately that Washington hopes to boost staffing in Havana, currently at about 50 Americans and 300 Cuban workers, as more American travelers and trade delegates are expected to come here under new rules to be set by the White House softening the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

An agreement could also ease or scrap rules that require U.S. diplomats to channel all requests through Cuba's Foreign Ministry; the diplomats would be able to deal directly with at least some other branches of government.

The U.S. Interests Section has often been a flashpoint for conflict, and its decades of hybrid status reflect the dysfunctional relationship between the two deeply intertwined countries.

The building first opened as an embassy in 1953, the same year Fidel Castro launched an ill-fated assault on a barracks that is considered the onset of the Cuban Revolution.

Eight years later, with Castro then in power, the countries broke ties and Switzerland stepped in to safeguard both the embassy and the ambassador's residence, a sprawling, immaculately groomed estate in Havana's finest neighborhood.

After the break, Washington was without a presence in Cuba until 1977, when the interests sections were opened under President Jimmy Carter. The missions technically operate under the aegis of the "protecting power" Switzerland.

Cuba later built the adjacent "Anti-Imperialist Plaza," which has hosted nationalist rallies where Castro gave long speeches railing against Washington, and concerts demanding the return of the Cuban intelligence agents whom the U.S. freed last week as part of the detente. Huge marches streamed past the Interests Section in 2000 to demand the return of the young Cuban rafter Elian Gonzalez.

On the wall of a conference room in the mission hangs the bronze head of an eagle that topped the nearby USS Maine monument until it was ripped down in a 1961 anti-Yankee protest following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. The wings and body sit in a musty Cuban museum storage room awaiting a possible reunion with the head on the day that Havana and Washington become friends.

In 2006, U.S. diplomats installed an electronic billboard that scrolled messages extolling democracy and human rights to Cubans on the street below. An outraged Cuban government erected dozens of black flags to obscure the signs.

"The consequence of that was, for years, they did not allow us to import lightbulbs," Caulfield recalled with a chuckle.

The U.S. Interests Section is closely watched by cameras and guards on both sides, a function of both the longtime tensions and general increased security at American diplomatic missions following 9/11. Cuban police make pedestrians cross the street to use another sidewalk, and no parking is allowed.

Some neighbors say they love living nearby: Nobody ever gets robbed, and the employees and visa-seekers support local private businesses that were allowed to open under President Raul Castro's economic reforms of recent years.

"Because the whole area is so well guarded, it's very safe," said Pedro Hernandez, 73, who runs a modest snack bar out of his home. "There are no problems with crime of any kind, and that's very good for us."

American diplomats say low-level harassment was routine for many years, as Cuba restricted their movements and activities and dragged its feet on permission to do standard maintenance. Cuban state media routinely portrayed the building as a den of spies.

Both sides gradually moved toward a remarkably civil relationship in recent years. The electronic sign came down in 2009, as did the black flags — though they still fly on special occasions. The countries started granting diplomatic travel permission more easily. Envoys exchanged home phone numbers and even dined together occasionally. Long-stalled talks on migration and restoring mail service resumed.

Once details of the new diplomatic relationship are worked out, actually turning the mission into an embassy requires little more than changing a few signs and ordering a new letterhead, experts said.

"A few strokes of the pen and that's it," said Wayne Smith, who was a junior diplomat in Cuba when relations were severed in 1961 and returned to head the Interests Section in the late 1970s.

Some who served in the U.S. Interests Section are awaiting the change with a mixture of excitement and wistfulness at not being here for the transition.

"I would have loved to be there to raise that flag," Caulfield said.

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Associated Press writers Anne-Marie Garcia and Michael Weissenstein in Havana contributed.

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Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

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Hearing set on regulations for ride-sharing companies

BOSTON — Fans and critics of popular ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft will get a chance to weigh in on proposed regulations that could govern how the firms operate in Massachusetts.

Gov. Deval Patrick wants to give the state Department of Public Utilities the power to regulate the activity.

The hearing is scheduled for Wednesday morning at the state transportation building in Boston before the Department of Transportation and Registry of Motor Vehicles.

The proposed regulations would require the companies to obtain certificates to operate, conduct criminal background checks on drivers and have liability insurance.

A union representing cab drivers have argued that the changes would do little to help the taxi industry, which claims the ride-sharing firms operate illegally.

Uber-Boston has issued a statement in support of the proposal.

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Hospital closes, leaves emergency room open

QUINCY — An emergency room is all that remains of a 124-year-old hospital in Quincy.

After reaching an agreement with state regulators, Quincy Medical Center officially closed its doors at midnight, replaced on Saturday by the 24-hour satellite emergency care facility that will continue operations until at least the end of 2015.

The hospital's owner, Steward Health Care, said it was losing $20 million a year in the face of increased regional competition.

Quincy Medical Center announced in November that it planned to close, and state officials waived a required 90-day notice that would have forced Steward to keep it open until February.

The hospital said it had no inpatients remaining at the time of closing.

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Mass. skiing awaits cold

Massachusetts ski areas are awaiting this week's forecasted return of colder weather to make more snow and kick the season up a notch.

Wachusett Mountain Ski Area in Princeton, which opened Nov. 21, had one of its strongest and earliest launches in years for a record month.

"As the result of cold early temperatures, we were able to make snow early, and then we got the bonus of a 10-inch snowstorm around Thanksgiving," marketing director Tom Meyers said. "So we've had one of the best Novembers we've ever had."

But December has been a different story.

"December has been challenging all month, not just the last few days," Meyers said. "We've made snow whenever we can, but it's been not as cold as it was early. But, nevertheless, we still have over three-quarters of the mountain open, and the forecast now calls for cold temperatures to return … and we're looking to start making snow again and building base depths, expanding coverage and opening additional terrain."

Wachusett had 14 trails and four lifts open yesterday, with snow base depths of eight inches to 12 inches.

Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in Hancock opened Nov. 16 with expanded snow-making operations. Yesterday, 34 trails and nine lifts were in operation with average snow base depths of eight inches to 28inches. 

"The season started out very solid and … we were able to get all our snow-making terrain open before Christmas," CEO Tyler Fairbank said. "We've never been able to do that before."

Rain on Christmas Eve and into Christmas knocked down Jiminy Peak's trail count a bit, but with a significant amount of manmade snow on the mountain, it was able to recover very quickly with its grooming fleet, according to Fairbank.

It's been a slow start at Nashoba Valley Ski Area in Westford, where eight of 18 trails and eight of 11 lifts were open yesterday.

The recent warmer weather has proved a challenge, according to marketing and corporate sales director Pam Fletcher. This time last year, Nashoba Valley had its entire mountain open thanks to a series of December snowstorms and more days of super cold temperatures.

"But with the cold weather coming, we can cover and open a slope from bare ground," Fletcher said. "And we already had, going into the rain, decent coverage — anywhere from 2 feet in some areas to 2 inches. That depth really helps you when you're going into the warm weather that we got over the holiday. We just need a couple of cold nights, and they can cover the whole thing."

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Short-sellers get last-minute gift with debt relief extension

WASHINGTON — For David Foster of Chicago, it was a stunning and welcome early Christmas present for him, his wife and three young children.

The Senate's 11th-hour extension of the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act through Dec. 31 will save Foster, who works for a nonprofit ministry group, from having to pay the IRS about $28,000 next year on $100,000 of mortgage debt canceled by his bank as part of a short sale on his condo. Before the Senate's action, he told me he had no idea "how or where we could come up with" that sort of money.

The federal tax code treats forgiven debt as ordinary income to the borrower, taxable at regular rates. But under an exception that took effect in 2007, qualified home mortgage debt that is canceled by a lender as part of a short sale, loan modification or foreclosure is treated as non-taxable. However, that exception expired last Dec. 31 and its renewal has been in doubt all year leaving short-sellers such as Foster unsure whether they would be facing crushing taxes in 2015.

Thousands of Americans who completed short sales during 2014 and received cancellations of mortgage debt by banks had reason to celebrate when the Senate extended the exception for transactions just before adjourning for the holidays. According to data prepared for this column by research firm RealtyTrac, nearly 122,000 short sales went to closing nationwide between January and October, involving an estimated average debt forgiveness of about $88,500. The average seller had a mortgage balance one and a half times higher than the market value of the house.

In a short sale, an underwater homeowner agrees to sell the property to a new purchaser, typically for a price well below what is owed to the bank. If the bank agrees to the sale, the proceeds pay off part of the loan balance and the bank forgives, or writes off, the rest.

Richard Eastern, CEO of Washington Property Solutions Inc. in Bellevue, Wash., a brokerage specializing in short sales, says people such as Foster are the lucky ones. Substantial numbers of owners have been rushing to beat the Dec. 31 deadline. "I got a call today from a client who asked, 'we're still scheduled for Dec. 29, right?' " Eastern recounted. The typical client served by his firm is an underwater owner with $300,000 of mortgage debt on a $200,000 house.

But Eastern said he has dozens of other listings where a 2014 closing won't be possible, and some of these clients "are now devastated" in the wake of the Senate's limitation of the extension to 2014 transactions only. They could be plunging into a federal tax policy black hole when they complete their sales next year, uncertain of any further extension of the debt forgiveness law.

Eastern is mystified that Congress could not have lengthened the extension to two years, retroactive for 2014 and good through Dec. 31, 2015, a provision approved in a bipartisan vote by the Senate Finance Committee last summer. He predicts that without protection from heavy tax burdens, many underwater owners will opt instead for bankruptcy filings. In some cases, they might be able to qualify for an "insolvency" declaration, which could wipe away tax liability for unpaid mortgage balances.

How do you know whether your short sale, loan modification or foreclosure is covered by the extension for 2014? Though a tax professional familiar with the law should be your best guide, here are the key tests you'll need to pass: The house securing the mortgage debt must be your principal residence. The maximum amount of debt that qualifies for relief is $2 million ($1 million if you are married filing taxes separately.) Any portion of the mortgage debt forgiven that was used for purposes other than improving or building the house — say you refinanced, pulled cash out and used it to buy a car — will not qualify for the exclusion and may be taxable.

What are the prospects that Congress will extend the law for 2015, covering people who didn't quite make the deadline for 2014? Not great. The Republican tax policy leadership in the House favors broad tax reforms in the upcoming session and wants to put an end to temporary tax code benefits that require periodic extensions.

Unless proponents can make a strong case for mortgage debt relief as a permanent part of the tax code, it will be tough to get it extended again.

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SpaceX plans lots of launches, and then a Mars mission

Once the launchpad for Apollo and space shuttle flights, NASA's Launch Complex 39A is now in the hands of SpaceX and its enigmatic billionaire leader, Elon Musk.

With a 20-year lease, the privately held Hawthorne, Calif.,-based company is rebuilding the launch complex at Kennedy Space Center to fit its rockets — the Falcon 9 and the soon-to-debut Falcon Heavy super-rocket — just as it envisions reshaping the space-launch industry.

The overhaul of 39A is the Central Florida centerpiece of SpaceX's plans. The company also has two other leased launchpads, Launch Complex 40 nearby at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and one at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. It plans to build a fourth pad near Brownsville, Texas.

Its short-range goal is to pursue private and military launch contracts. Eventually, SpaceX hopes to colonize Mars.

Next up will be the company's fifth NASA-contracted mission to haul equipment and supplies to the International Space Station.

The launch of SpaceX's Dragon resupply capsule, postponed three times, now is scheduled for a Jan. 6 liftoff from Launch Complex 40.

Starting in 2018, SpaceX is one of two private rocket companies with contracts to ferry astronauts to the space station.

"Elon wants to rule the world," said John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. "The company has a long-term strategy to become a, or maybe the, dominant player in space activity."

SpaceX's longer-term plans are not dependent on NASA, but on spurring a worldwide increase in private space launches, Logsdon said.

And with all the company is investing now, it is gambling on an extremely robust private-space business in the 2020s, said George Abbey, a former director of NASA's Johnson Space Center and now a senior fellow of space policy at the Rice University Baker Institute for Public Policy.

The company "has got to be successful in capturing the launch-vehicle market," Abbey said of SpaceX. The company would not grant an interview.

Industry advocates such as Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation trade group, think there will be a lot of space-launch business in the next decade.

Stallmer said launches are by far the biggest cost of putting a private satellite into service. So as competition and innovation drive down launch costs and increase reliability, the market should increase "exponentially" from the 30 commercial launches a year now seen worldwide, he said.

"They (SpaceX) keep challenging themselves and the industry, and they keep succeeding, and it's really changing the way we do business in space," he said.

In interviews, Musk often has talked of his dream of sending astronauts to Mars. SpaceX already is pursuing some Mars-landing technologies. Musk has said he could reach Mars by 2030 — ahead of NASA's plans to do so — and envisions creating a colony there.

The commercial space industry is full of ambitious new companies, including others like SpaceX, run by charismatic billionaires. They must compete with established companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the European cooperative Arianespace, Russia's Soyuz and others that have strong relationships with governments and satellite companies.

Two, Orbital Sciences and Virgin Galactic, had disastrous setbacks this fall. Orbital's rocket and capsule blew up on liftoff in Virginia, on a space station resupply mission in October. Three days later, Virgin's SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test, killing a pilot.

SpaceX has successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket 13 times.

During the next several years, SpaceX has contracts for 40 more rockets, include five for launching the Falcon Heavy.

All five of the big rockets and 23 of the others are scheduled to launch from Florida.

That could change once SpaceX finishes its private launch complex near Brownsville, said Roger Handberg, who specializes in space policy at University of Central Florida.

In Florida, SpaceX can launch only on dates approved by the Air Force, but in Texas the company has freedom to launch on its own schedule. He expects the company's private payloads to be launched mostly in Texas.

SpaceX nearly went bankrupt before it started winning NASA contracts, Handberg said. And the company's deals with NASA to service the space station likely will last only through 2025, when the station is scheduled to be decommissioned.

Though SpaceX has won some U.S. military launches, most remain committed to old-guard contractors such as the United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

This year, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded to ULA a long-term, no-bid contract extension for 36 military launches. Musk blasted the deal in congressional testimony, and then SpaceX sued the federal government. That suit is pending.

UCF's Handberg said it's unclear whether there will be enough private rocket-launch business for SpaceX, as other companies emerge and older ones dig in.

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