The Ticker

Southie housing
next to Doughboy

Evergreen Property Group has proposed a six-story contemporary glass residential building with 33 rental units and ground-floor retail space at 248 Dorchester Ave. in South Boston, on a lot next door to Doughboy Donuts and Deli.

Burlington to get 
Bauer hockey shop

Bauer Hockey, the leading manufacturer of ice hockey equipment and a subsidiary of Performance Sports Group Ltd. announced today that it will open its first-ever Bauer retail shops beginning this summer, with six to eight more opening in key markets, including Minneapolis. The shop will house an indoor ice rink.

TUESDAY

• Labor Department releases job openings and labor turnover survey for November
• Treasury releases federal budget for December.

WEDNESDAY

• Commerce Department releases retail sales data for December. L Commerce Department releases business inventories for November.
• Federal Reserve releases Beige Book.

THURSDAY

• Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims.
• Labor Department releases the Producer Price Index for December.
• Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates.

FRIDAY

• Labor Department releases Consumer Price Index for December.
• Federal Reserve releases industrial production for December.

Nathaniel Silver has been named assistant curator of the collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

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SpaceX launches for NASA, no luck with rocket landing at sea

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX sent a supply ship soaring flawlessly toward the International Space Station on Saturday, but the booster rocket ended up in pieces in the Atlantic following a failed attempt to land on a barge.

"Close, but no cigar this time," the company's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, announced via Twitter shortly after the unprecedented touchdown effort.

Despite the high-profile flop in the dark ocean, Musk said he was encouraged. The 14-story booster managed, at least, to fly back to the floating platform from an altitude dozens of miles high.

"Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard," he said in a tweet. "Bodes well for the future tho."

He's already planning another landing test next month.

Musk, who also runs electric car maker Tesla Motors, maintains that recovering and reusing rockets is essential for bringing down launch costs and speeding up operations.

Until Saturday, no one had ever tried anything like this before.

The modified barge — nearly the size of a football field — was positioned a couple hundred miles off Florida's northeastern coast. The uncrewed platform was spared serious damage from the impact, although some equipment on deck will need to be replaced, according to Musk. A recovery ship with SpaceX staff was a safe 10 miles away.

SpaceX's primary mission was delivering more than 5,000 pounds of station supplies ordered up by NASA, including hasty replacements for experiments and equipment lost in the destruction of another company's cargo ship last fall, as well as extra groceries. Belated Christmas presents were also on board for the six station astronauts.

"Hurrah! A #Dragon is coming to visit bringing gifts," Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti said in a tweet from orbit.

Without interfering with the $133 million delivery, Musk had fins for guidance and landing legs installed on the first stage of the unmanned Falcon rocket.

Once separated from the upper stage of the rocket, the main booster reignited as planned for the flyback. Automatic engine firings maneuvered the booster down toward the autonomous, modified barge. The Air Force maintained the ability, as always, to destroy the booster if it strayed off course.

There was no good video of the "landing/impact," Musk said, noting the "pitch dark and foggy" conditions. Brief TV images from booster cameras, broadcast by NASA, showed only water bubbles.

"Will piece it together from telemetry and ... actual pieces," said Musk, one of the co-founders of PayPal.

Later in the day, Musk said the fins on the rocket ran out of hydraulic fluid right before touchdown. Regardless, he praised his team "for making huge strides towards reusability on this mission."

"Upcoming flight already has 50% more hydraulic fluid, so should have plenty of margin for landing attempt next month," he said.

In the weeks preceding the test, Musk had estimated there was a 50-50 chance, at best, that the Falcon's first-stage booster would land vertically on the platform. A pair of attempts last year to bring boosters down vertically on the open ocean went well, but company officials conceded before Saturday's try that a platform touchdown was considerably more challenging.

The platform measures 300 feet by 100 feet, with wings stretching the width to 170 feet — a relatively puny spaceport in the vastness of the sea.

NASA watched the post-launch drama with keen interest, but its primary focus was on the Dragon racing toward the space station. The capsule is due to arrive there Monday.

The shipment — the sixth by SpaceX since 2012 — is especially crucial given the recent loss of another company's supply ship.

Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in October, destroying the entire payload and damaging the Virginia launch complex. That rocket is grounded until 2016. Orbital Sciences plans to shift some of the backlog to an Atlas rocket later this year.

This SpaceX delivery was supposed to occur before Christmas, but was delayed by a flawed test-firing of the rocket. Then a problem with the rocket's steering system cropped up at the last minute during Tuesday's initial launch attempt.

NASA is paying SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to keep the space station stocked in the wake of the retired shuttle program. The $1.6 billion contract with SpaceX calls for 12 flights; the $1.9 billion contract with Orbital calls for eight. SpaceX also returns items to Earth; Orbital cannot.

Russia and Japan will make their own supply runs this year.

SpaceX, headquartered in Hawthorne, California, also has been contracted by NASA to develop beefed-up Dragons for astronaut rides to the space station, beginning as early as 2017. Boeing also is hard at work on a manned capsule. In the meantime, NASA is paying tens of millions of dollars to Russia for each U.S. astronaut launched aboard the Soyuz spacecraft.

___

Online:

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

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Massachusetts investment adviser, companies charged by SEC

BOSTON — Officials with the Securities and Exchange Commission say they've charged a Massachusetts investment adviser and his companies on allegations they misappropriated at least $16 million belonging to a fund managed by some of the defendants.

The SEC announced the charges Friday against 40-year-old Daniel Thibeault of Framingham and several companies the agency said he controls, including Graduate Leverage LLC, GL Capital Partners LLC and GL Investment Services LLC, all based in Waltham.

The SEC alleges Thibeault and GL Capital Partners were the investment advisers to a fund called the GL Beyond Income Fund and misappropriated at least $16 million from the fund to use for personal expenses and to run other businesses.

Thibeault and his lawyers didn't immediately return messages Friday.

Thibeault also was charged with securities fraud last month.

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AP Source: GM plans affordable 200-mile electric car in 2017

DETROIT — General Motors plans to start selling an affordable electric car in 2017 that will be able to go 200 miles on a single charge.

A person briefed on the matter told The Associated Press that GM plans to start selling a $30,000 battery powered family car called the Chevrolet Bolt sometime in 2017.

A concept version of the car will be unveiled Monday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the official announcement hasn't been made.

The Bolt has been in the works for years and is designed to compete with electric offerings from Tesla Motors Inc. and Nissan Motor Co.

The Palo Alto, California-based Tesla has plans for a $35,000 electric car called the Model 3, which also is expected to go 200 miles per charge. Nissan sells the electric Leaf, which starts at about $30,000 and can go up to 100 miles per charge.

GM has been selling the Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric car since late 2010, but it goes only 38 miles on electric power before a gas generator kicks in. An updated version of the Volt with greater all-electric range also will be unveiled at the auto show.

GM conceived the $35,000 Volt as a mass-market car that could handle most trips on electric power, but had the generator to end worries that people would run out of juice. A concept version of the first-generation Volt was unveiled eight years ago at a time when GM didn't know for certain that the battery system would work.

The company also offers the all-electric Chevy Spark subcompact that can go 82 miles on a charge. It starts at $26,685. Electric cars are eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit.

Doug Parks, GM's vice president of global product development, said in 2013 that GM was working on a 200-mile electric car for around $35,000, confirming that the company was in a race with other automakers to hit that mileage range at a moderate price.

GM has invested millions in developing electric cars starting with the EV1 in the 1990s. It doubled the size of its battery testing lab at a technical center in suburban Warren, Michigan, to 100,000 square feet in 2013, allowing it to test batteries and controls faster. It took about four years for GM to develop the Volt and bring it to market.

The new Volt, due out later this year, will hit showrooms at an uncertain time for electric vehicles with gas prices at $2.15 a gallon nationwide, down more than $1 per gallon from a year ago.

The 200-mile electric car was first reported late Friday by the Wall Street Journal.

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Oil price fall a top topic as Venezuelan president in Iran

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran and Venezuela vowed Saturday to work together to stabilize falling global oil prices as Iran's supreme leader accused "enemies" of using crude prices as a political weapon.

With Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by his side, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged OPEC members to "neutralize schemes by some powers against OPEC and help stabilize an acceptable oil price in 2015." Maduro also called for OPEC's cooperation in stabilizing oil prices.

Both Iran and Venezuela rely on oil prices to boost their respective economies. Oil prices have plunged more than 55 percent since June to less than $50 a barrel, placing a severe strain on the two countries.

Maduro is touring several OPEC nations to drum up support for a production cut to boost prices. He is to visit Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, to discuss the oil market slump.

"We are making efforts to create a consensus among OPEC members and other oil-producing states, including Russia, to cooperate and use novel mechanisms to reverse the oil price to an acceptable level," Maduro was quoted by Iranian state television as saying.

Maduro later met with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who blamed the freefall in oil prices on "enemies."

"Our common enemies are using oil as a political weapon and they definitely have a role in the sharp fall in oil price," state television quoted Khamenei as saying.

Khamenei did not elaborate, but Shiite power Iran indirectly has blamed the Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a regional rival, for pushing down the prices over refusing to cut its production. OPEC as a whole has yet to agree to curb production.

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Obama to focus on cybersecurity issues next week

WASHINGTON — Continuing the break with State of the Union tradition, President Barack Obama will spend most of next week previewing more of the proposals he will outline in the upcoming address, including on identity theft, electronic privacy and other cyberspace issues, the White House announced Saturday.

Traditionally, the White House closely guards plans to be offered in the State of the Union until just before the president delivers the nationally televised address.

But in a bid to generate excitement as he begins the next-to-last year of his presidency, Obama began previewing new initiatives during the week, including programs to boost homeownership by reducing mortgage insurance premiums and increase access to higher education by paying for the first two years of community college for Americans who meet certain criteria.

"I didn't want to wait for the State of the Union to talk about all the things that make this country great and how we can make it better, so I thought I'd get started this week," Obama said Wednesday in Michigan, where he discussed a rebounding U.S. auto industry. "I figured, why wait? It's like opening your Christmas presents a little early."

All of the proposals include steps Obama can put in place on his own, a practice he used frequently last year that irritated Republicans. Other proposals will require collaboration with Congress, which Republicans now control. They reacted coolly to Obama's announcements.

Last week, Obama highlighted proposals to help the economy and the middle class. The emphasis in the week ahead will be on cyberspace issues.

Obama will use an event at the Federal Trade Commission to lay out the next steps in his plan to tackle identity theft and improve consumer and student privacy. It follows up on a plan Obama announced last October to tighten security for the debit cards that transmit federal benefits, like Social Security payments, to millions of Americans.

After holding his first meeting of the new year with the top leaders in Congress on Tuesday, Obama will discuss cybersecurity, including ways to get the private sector and federal government to voluntarily share more cybersecurity information. He'll do so at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which is housed in the Department of Homeland Security and shares information among the public and private sectors.

On Wednesday, Obama will be in Iowa to talk about ways to make affordable, high-speed Internet more available nationwide. The White House would not say where in Iowa the event will take place.

Vice President Joe Biden is also pitching in, traveling to Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday to announce new funding to help train people to join the cybersecurity workforce, the White House said.

Obama's State of the Union address is scheduled for Jan. 20.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsuperville

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Health officials link Calif. apple packer to listeria deaths

WASHINGTON — Strains of listeria found inside a California apple packing facility match listeria bacteria that have sickened 32 people across the country, including at least three deaths, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The illnesses and deaths have been linked to consumption of caramel apples. Health officials warned consumers in December to avoid all prepackaged caramel apples after the deaths and illnesses in 11 states were reported.

Earlier this week, California-based Bidart Bros. recalled all shipments of Granny Smith and Gala apples that came from its Shafter, California, packing facility in 2014. The company said the last apples shipped from there on Dec. 2.

The FDA and the California Department of Public Health inspected the facility after learning the company had supplied apples to manufacturers of caramel apple brands that made people sick. The agencies found listeria on surfaces in the plant that were likely to come into contact with apples, and on Saturday the FDA confirmed that the DNA patterns of the listeria in the plant and the listeria that made people sick matched.

The agencies also found the same strains of listeria in whole apples Bidart Bros. shipped to other companies along the distribution chain.

The company's president, Leonard Bidart, said in a release that the news is "devastating" to the Bidart family.

"As a family-owned grower operating in California since the 1930s, we place safety at the forefront of everything we do," he said. "Our hearts go out to all who have been impacted by the apple-related listeriosis outbreak."

He said the company is "cooperating completely" with the investigation.

The FDA said some of the apples recalled by Bidart Bros. may be sold under the brand names "Big B" and "Granny's Best," though they could also be sold under other brand names or with no brand at all.

Most of the illnesses appear to be linked to eating caramel apples — the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 25 of those sickened reported eating commercially produced, prepackaged caramel apples before getting sick. Still, the FDA warned that consumers who have recently bought Granny Smith or Gala apples should ask retailers if they were supplied by Bidart Bros.

Several caramel apple brands have also issued recalls, including Happy Apple, Kroger, California Snack Foods and Merb's Candies. Caramel apples are most popular around Halloween, and the outbreak started just before then, in mid-October. But the commercially produced variety can have a shelf life of a month or more, and some may still be on store or home shelves.

The illnesses and deaths were reported in Arizona, California, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.

It is unclear how many deaths are directly linked to the outbreak. Seven people who contracted the strains of listeria died, the CDC said in an update posted Saturday. The agency said that listeria is known to have contributed to at least three of the deaths.

Listeria is a foodborne illness that is especially dangerous to pregnant women, newborn babies, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. It rarely causes serious illness in healthy people and can be treated with antibiotics. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, nausea and diarrhea.

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City eyes rules for Airbnb

Boston is turning its attention to Airbnb, scheduling a public hearing later this month to help determine what, if any, regulations are needed for the booming short-term rental service.

"This is a fast-growing industry here in the city of Boston; we just want to make sure it's operated safely and appropriately," said Jerome Smith, the city's chief of civic engagement, who will host the hearing. "The goal is information gathering. There are a lot of residents in the city of Boston who may use Airbnb."

Smith said it is unclear if the city will push for regulations after the Jan. 26 hearing.

"We're not saying that we're definitely regulating the industry; we're just saying that because it's a growing industry here in the city of Boston we should take a look at it," he said.

San Francisco-based Airbnb, which lets people rent out their homes nightly to strangers through its website, has steadily gained popularity nationwide and internationally. Between July 2014 and June 2014, Airbnb customers stayed in Boston homes 1,080 times, the company said.

"We want to work with leaders in Boston to make sure residents can continue to share their homes and the city they love with the world, while also creating sensible regulations that work for Boston," said Marie Aberger, an Airbnb spokeswoman.

San Francisco and Portland, Ore., have set up regulations to charge hotel taxes to private home rentals and Amsterdam last month penned an agreement with the home-rental service to collect a tourist tax. And New York's attorney general formed a city-state task force last year to investigate illegal hotels after he issued a report alleging that nearly three-quarters of Airbnb's listings in that state were illegal, a charge the company denied.

Boston has taken a more cautious approach to Airbnb, with Mayor Martin J. Walsh telling the Inspectional Services Department last summer not to fine people who rent out their homes through the service.

But City Councilor Salvatore LaMattina wants to take a closer look at Airbnb's practices after hearing complaints about apartments where people cycle through like through revolving doors. LaMattina said he refiled a bill for a hearing on Airbnb before the City Council.

"I really do think they need to be regulated, and we'll look at other cities across the United States and what they're doing to address the issues," said LaMattina. "They're not paying any hotel tax to the cities and towns, and I think there's something we really need to look at."

He said his biggest concern is potential investors buying homes or condos specifically to rent out on Airbnb.

Airbnb has also spurred the creation of Neighbors for Overnight Oversight, a national group pushing for regulation of the rental service.

"At this point we're just glad the city is having this hearing; it's an important first step," said Conor Yunits, a spokesman for the group. "The end goal will hopefully be some sort of oversight of this, so if people are abusing the laws with illegal hotels, that there's some kind of check on that."

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Wind energy shifts direction

With the Cape Wind project on the ropes, the industry's future in Massachusetts may rest on a federal wind power auction later this month for a sprawling area off Martha's Vineyard.

Twelve companies have qualified to bid Jan. 29 as the federal government auctions four commercial leases for 742,000 acres of sea roughly 14 miles south of Martha's Vineyard. The power generated, if leased and used by the industry, could provide electricity for about 1.4 million homes, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said.

The Massachusetts Wind Energy Area that is up for auction is farther offshore than Cape Wind's estimated $2.5 billion project to install 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound, but that's not enough to silence some critics.

"Offshore wind is a nonstarter. I can't imagine circumstances under which it would be justifiable from an environmental or economic standpoint," said David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute, who's been a vocal opponent of Cape Wind. "There never was any economic justification for the Cape Wind project, and now with the falling fossil fuel prices, there's even less justification for those projects."

The auction comes as Cape Wind's $150 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy is in jeopardy after National Grid and Nstar backed out of their contracts with the company, saying it had missed a Dec. 31 deadline for the necessary financing and had not provided collateral to extend the deadline.

From the beginning, the Cape Wind project was fraught with criticism from environmental advocates and economists alike, who said that it would disrupt fisheries in the area and create higher energy costs for Massachusetts residents.

"Anyone who bids on these tracts and puts up money to obtain them must be assuming that they're going to be allowed to charge even higher rates than Cape Wind got National Grid and Nstar to charge," Tuerck said. "Because however expensive it was, these projects will be more because they're farther out to sea."

But Audra Parker, president of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and a Cape Wind opponent, said both the lease area in question and the steps taken by the government to look out for the public's best interest already make this endeavor superior to Cape Wind.

"There's a right way and a wrong way of identifying areas. Cape Wind's fight was driven to maximize profit," Parker said. "This process has involved science and stakeholder input."

Although she said that it "does not address the high cost of offshore wind," it is still better "in terms of site and the process it's taken."

That process has involved tools like Coastal Marine Spacial Planning, used to avoid environmental and financial costs in ocean management, she said.

Christopher Boelke, field office supervisor for the national Marine Fisheries Services, said the lease area was reduced by a third in part to protect the fisheries. He added that people may view this project as "less intrusive" than Cape Wind, given that it's farther offshore in a lower-traffic area.

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Use an automatic battery charger when storing a car

I am the proud owner of a restored 1969 Pontiac GTO. This past summer I purchased a new battery from Sears. The salesman said for winter storage to remove one lead and leave it in the car. I have always believed in removing the battery and recharging it every so often. This year I left the battery in the car with one lead off and purchased an automatic battery charger that monitors the battery and keeps it at full charge with a display showing its condition. What do you think about these chargers and storage method?

For a minute there, I thought I was reading a question I wrote! Like you, I've followed the "old school" method of battery preservation by disconnecting, removing and periodically charging the batteries from my summer cars and recreational vehicles.

But the older I get the lazier, eh, make that more efficient, I am. So, I now have several Battery Tender automatic battery chargers connected to the disconnected batteries in my seasonal-use stuff. I've had no issues doing this over the past four years.

Well, make that one issue. My C6 Corvette has electric door locks, so when I carefully prepared it for storage, my final step was to disconnect the battery, hook up the charger and close the hood. Sounds perfect, eh? Except for the fact that with the doors, hood and rear hatch closed and the battery disconnected, there was no way to unlock the doors!

Here's the funny part. I never even thought about the issue until I tried to unlock the doors the next spring! Thankfully, the owner's manual with the little black plastic emergency key was in the house. It unlocked the rear hatch, where I could lean in and pull the emergency driver's door release so I could open the door and unlatch the hood to reconnect the battery. Live and learn.

I have a 2003 manual-transmission Honda CRV with about 100,000 miles. Ever since I bought it used with 90k it has high idle RPM when it starts up. The engine idle RPM hunts between 2,000 and 3,000 until the engine warms up. Then the idle drops to below 1,000 RPM. Any thoughts?

Whenever trying to diagnose a driveability issue, apply the KISS principle first — keep it simple. Start with the basics, which in this case is to check carefully for any type of vacuum leak in the induction system. Any air entering downstream of the MAF sensor (mass air flow) is not metered and can create a lean air/fuel ratio. Until the engine warms up to the point of switching to "closed loop" operation where the air/fuel ratio is monitored and trimmed by feedback from the oxygen sensor, the idle speed can be high and fluttery/unstable.

The IAC (idle air control) regulates air entering the induction system. If it is sticking or binding it may be contributing to this issue. And a scan tool check for DTC fault codes might help pinpoint the problem.

My 2010 Chevrolet Colorado will not start all the time. When I put the key in the ignition all accessories light up and the radio plays but the starter will not engage. Turn key off, take key out of ignition, wait 10 minutes, try again, and it will start. This has happened in all weather, approximately 10 times since May. The dealership could not find anything wrong. Can you help with this problem?

Your vehicle is equipped with a vehicle immobilizer system which will not allow the engine to start until and unless the BCM (body control module) sees the correct voltage through the ignition key resistor circuit. If the voltage generated through the resistor in the key doesn't match, the engine won't start.

Try your spare key first. Have the dealership scan the BCM for fault codes. And again, remember the KISS principle. Check the battery and starter/solenoid cables and connections.

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.

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