Loss of Cape Wind sinks bid for marine terminal

A major port operator is no longer competing to run the state's New Bedford marine terminal — a $113 million taxpayer-­funded boondoggle — after the Cape Wind project folded.

"They had a good plan with the wind energy and that's really what we were banking on," said Frank Vannelli, senior vice president for commercial and business development at Logistec Corp. "But when the deal fell through, we just stepped back and we said, 'Let's take a look here at how we're spending our resources' and we decided to put it in a holding pattern."

Without Cape Wind as the main terminal tenant, a bid no longer made sense for Logistec, Vannelli said.

Executives with Cape Wind, who are planning to plant 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound, backed out of a two-year, $4.5 million deal to rent the 28-acre terminal after National Grid and Eversource terminated contracts to buy power from the wind project.

State officials have said a new lease is expected to fetch a lower price for the terminal, which is overbudget and months behind schedule.

Vannelli said the South Coast Marine Commerce Terminal could be conducive to smaller vessels with refrigerated goods, such as frozen fish and fresh fruit, because the area isn't optimal for larger container ships.

"Our organization is still very interested in what's going on in the port of New Bedford and I do think it has a role to play," he said. "I don't think that it's realistic to think that any of these smaller-sized ports would attract large container cargoes. The containers will go to the larger ports. They will go to New York. They will go to Boston."

The quasi-public Massachusetts Clean Energy Center plans to name a port operator by summer, but has yet to make public the three finalists.

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Seattle CEO to cut his pay so every worker earns $70,000

SEATTLE — A Seattle CEO who announced that he's giving himself a drastic pay cut to help cover the cost of big raises for his employees didn't just make those workers happy.

He's already gained new customers, too.

"We've definitely gained a handful of customers in the last day or two," said Stefan Bennett, a customer relations manager at Gravity Payments, a credit card payment processing firm. "We're showing people you can run a good company, and you can pay people fairly, and it can be profitable."

Dan Price, chief executive of the company, stunned his 100-plus workers on Monday when he told them he was cutting his roughly $1 million salary to $70,000 and using company profits to ensure that everyone there would earn at least that much within three years.

For some workers, the increase will more than double their pay. One 21-year-old mother said she'll buy a house.

At a time of increasing anger nationally over the enormous gap between the pay of top executives and their employees, the announcement received immense attention. But corporate governance professor David Larcker of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business said it's unclear if Price's unusual gesture will start a trend.

"It's an alternative way to think about a tough problem, and I give these guys a lot of credit for laying it out there," Larcker said. "Whether this would scale to a bigger organization, it's hard to know. But it's clever, it's interesting and it's fun to think about."

Washington state already has the nation's highest minimum wage at $9.47 an hour, and earlier this month Seattle's minimum wage law went into effect. It will eventually raise base hourly pay to $15.

Labor unions and workers in the Seattle area on Wednesday joined national protests for better pay. Drivers for Uber and Lyft — the app-based car-hailing services — gathered in Seattle, while airport workers rallied at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In Seattle, police arrested 21 demonstrators who opted for civil disobedience to dramatize their point, refusing to move out of an intersection at the conclusion of their march.

Gravity's CEO launched the company from his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University when he was just 19. He's long taken a progressive approach that included adopting a policy allowing his workers to take unlimited paid vacation after their first year.

"I think this is just what everyone deserves," Price told workers in a video of Monday's announcement released by the company.

But he also acknowledged it won't be easy: The increased pay will eat into at least half the company's profits, he said, and he has no plans to simply raise rates on clients.

"It's up to us to find a way to make it work," he said.

Bennett, 28, went to college with Price and has worked for Gravity since graduation. He said he was already happy to work for a company that treats its employees and customers well in what he otherwise considers a predatory industry. For him, the raise will amount to about $10,000.

"I don't care as much about the money," he said. "But if I look at my colleagues, and what they talk about on a day-to-day basis and what their concerns are — just looking at their faces when Dan announced the pay increase, it was pretty phenomenal."

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Biogen, Danish company 
in patent spat worth billions

Biotech giant Biogen is locked in a fight with a Danish company over a crucial patent that protects a nearly $3 billion multiple sclerosis drug.

Cambridge-based Biogen is battling with Copenhagen-based Forward Pharma, and both have filed a patent for treating multiple sclerosis with daily doses of 480 mg of dimethyl fumarate. The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board declared an "interference" yesterday — signalling it will address overlapping patents filed by separate parties.

"It is essentially enormously important to have that protection," said Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School. "When you look at the price trajectory of what happens when you have drugs go off-patent, you typically get a dramatic drop in terms of price, in your ability to monetize the drug."

Forward Pharma's patent was filed in 2005. Biogen's patent was filed in 2012, and is the basis for Tecfidera, Biogen's blockbuster drug that was responsible for 
$2.9 billion in sales last year.

Still, the filing date of the patent is less important than when the actual invention was made. The PTAB will hold a hearing to determine which company invented the treatment first, and award them the patent.

Catherine Falcetti, a spokeswoman for Biogen, said the company's sales, along with its customers and patients, are not affected.

"Our ability to market it is not impacted, and patients can still get Tecfidera," Falcetti said. "We intend to aggressively defend 
this portfolio."

Forward Pharma's patent has led to the creation of its own MS drug, which is still in development.

"This is a key step in advancing our intellectual property in the U.S. covering the use of 480 mg per day of DMF in MS," said Peder Andersen, chief executive of Forward Pharma, in a statement. "We look forward to the start of the interference proceeding and additional progress with our five other pending patent applications in the U.S. and in Europe covering the 480 mg daily dose of DMF."

Lerner said the dispute will likely not reach a conclusion.

"In many of these cases, there's some sort of settlement reached," he said. "There's some sort of licensing deal and payments made."

Other industry analysts said an acquisition of Forward Pharma by Biogen or other companies is among the potential resolutions.

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Asia shares mostly lower as China GDP data disappoints

TOKYO — Shares were mostly lower in Asia on Wednesday as investors absorbed the news that China's economy grew at its slowest pace in nearly six years in the first quarter.

KEEPING SCORE: Japan's Nikkei 225 stock index fell 0.01 percent to 19,905.78, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index lost 0.1 percent to 27,547.60. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 1.1 percent to 4,089.52. South Korea's Kospi rose 0.2 percent to 2,115.08 on positive news for electronics makers, but in Australia, whose resource sector is vulnerable to fluctuations in Chinese demand, the S&P ASX200 fell 0.8 percent to 5,899.40. Shares in Taiwan, New Zealand and most of Southeast Asia were also lower.

CHINA DATA: China's economy cooled further as manufacturing and retail sales slowed in January-March, raising pressure on Beijing to keep the world's second-largest economy on track. Growth fell to 7 percent from the previous quarter's 7.3 percent, the weakest performance since growth tumbled to 6.1 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

THE QUOTE: "China remains an attractive equity market," James Griffiths of Citi Research said in a commentary Wednesday. But he added, "If the Chinese market were to double from here it would indeed be in bubble. The same is true for Asia."

ON WALL STREET: The Dow Jones average rose 59.66 points, or 0.3 percent, to 18,036.70 on Tuesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 climbed 3.41 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,095.84. Gains in share prices were capped by expectations that earnings may drop from the quarter before, sapped by such factors as labor strife at West Coast ports and the stronger dollar.

ENERGY: Oil prices rose on indications that U.S. oil production in places like North Dakota is beginning to slip due to reduced drilling activity in recent months. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 29 cents to $53.58 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It rose $1.38 to close at $53.29 a barrel on Tuesday. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, rose 39 cents to $60.20 a barrel in London.

CURRENCIES: The dollar rose to 119.60 yen from 119.45. The euro fell to $1.0627 from $1.0648.

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FAA blows off Boston flight path complaints

Residents complained at a City Council hearing yesterday of an apparent change in flight patterns out of Logan International Airport they say has planes jarring people awake before dawn in neighborhoods they hadn't flown over before, but the agency that controls flight patterns was a no-show.

The Federal Aviation Administration sent no representative to answer questions and would not comment on the complaints when contacted by the Herald.

"It's disappointing they didn't have enough respect for us," Councilor Timothy McCarthy (D-Hyde Park), who sponsored the hearing with Councilor-at-Large Michelle Wu (D-South End). "This is an important issue."

Athena Yerganian of West Roxbury said that starting last fall, she began to hear planes passing over her house as early as 5:30 a.m. and as late as midnight.

"On some days, one can hear the planes take off every minute," Yerganian said, "and on other days, the planes are so low that they sound like they will land short of the runway and land in, say, Franklin Field."

Massport, which owns and operates the airport and its runways, coordinates with the FAA, but the flight paths are the FAA's decision, said Flavio Leo, Massport's deputy director of aviation, planning and strategy.

Boston has lost $18 million in fuel taxes this year, said McCarthy, who wondered whether the loss was due to planes "cutting over our neighborhoods," due to the FAA's implementation of navigation routes that use GPS technology for runway approaches and departures. Boston also has higher rates of asthma, which could be exacerbated by pollution from the planes, he said.

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The Ticker

BRA gets bids 
on garage project

Eight development teams submitted proposals to redevelop the city-owned Winthrop Square garage in Boston's Financial District by yesterday's due date.

The groups are Trans National Properties, Lend Lease Development Inc. and the Hudson Group, the Fallon Co., Millennium Partners, Accordia Partners, Trinity Acquisitions, Lincoln Property Co. and HYM Investment Group, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

The Walsh administration in February issued a request for interest in the shuttered garage's redevelopment even after Trans National Group owner Steve Belkin — who originally planned a 1,000-foot tower at the site in 2006 — had reopened talks with the city about a scaled-down project.

Wage rally planned

Organizers expect thousands of low-wage workers and supporters to rally and march today through Boston as part of the "Fight for $15" movement.

The Wage Action Coalition of union, community, college and religious groups will kick off wage inequality protests set to start tomorrow in other cities here and abroad. The march starts at 4 p.m. on Huntington Avenue near Northeastern University and continues through downtown to Chinatown.

THE SHUFFLE

Blend Therapeutics, Inc. announced the 
appointment of Drew Fromkin as president, CEO and member of the Watertown biopharmaceutical company's board of directors. Fromkin previously served as president and CEO of Clinical Data Inc. until its acquisition by Forest Laboratories.

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Hospitals eye models to address disasters

Crisis plans that can take hospitals months to develop could be produced in seconds with the right mathematical modeling — cutting out much of the painstaking human analysis — according to Boston professors who hope to incorporate these algorithms into local protocol.

"What these models enable you to do is figure out a complex situation with a lot of interacting factors. The tools help you make the best decision," said Ozlem Ergun, an associate professor in Northeastern's Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department. "Boston is a very specific place, where almost all the big hospitals are research hospitals, so it could really benefit from this kind of thing."

According to Ergun, these systems can determine the most efficient way for hospitals to respond to incidents such as outbreaks of disease, natural disasters or tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombings, which cause an influx of patients concentrated in one area.

"If you're in a situation where many people need access to hospitals, there could be several issues — problems with transportation, congestion due to the number of people, access limitations for security reasons," she said. "There needs to be a plan for things like how to use certain EMS vehicles and where patients should be directed based on their needs."

Ergun, who is reaching out to local hospitals to team up on preparedness efforts, came to Northeastern from the Georgia Institute of Technology in September, and has worked on issues surrounding humanitarian crisis response for organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Jarrod Goentzel, founder and director of the MIT Humanitarian Response Lab, has been using these methods to help West Africa cope with the Ebola outbreak, and said the same approach could be used in Boston to create a central point among its cluster of large hospitals to house supplies needed in crisis situations.

"We have lots of hospitals here. In a panic mode, everyone is trying to procure supplies," he said. "Basic human nature is to hoard and hoard and be prepared. But the more centrally you stock things, the more risk that can cover."

Paul Biddinger, chief of emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital, said each local hospital conducts a yearly analysis using tools like FEMA flood maps, but that potential coordination among hospitals is not analyzed.

He added that predicting the frequency and severity of pandemics is tricky, and any resources that could shed light on those events "would be of use."

"Anything that will more accurately predict stressors on the system will help us know how to deal with those stressors," he said.

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Inspector Gadget: MacBook a bit pricy, but lightweight and a beauty

MacBook ($1,299 and up, 
AppleStore.com)

The latest iteration of Apple's full-size notebook computer weighs in at two pounds, is 13.1 mm thin, and has a 12-inch so-called Retina display with edge-to-edge glass.

The good: If you like Apple design, you'll love this MacBook. Available in gold, silver or space gray, it's also got a great new trackpad and a wider keyboard.

The bad: Apple's new MacBook has just one USB port. So if you plan to connect a lot of devices to your laptop, this might not be for you.

The bottom line: If you're OK with just one USB port, this gorgeous Mac's for you.

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New wrinkles part of tax returns due on Wednesday

It's that time of year again, the dreaded last-minute dash to find your W-2, receipts and tax forms in order to file by Wednesday's deadline.

For the first time, due to the Affordable Care Act, you're required to report whether you, your spouse and your children had health insurance for all of 2014.

If you didn't, you'll have to pay a penalty of either $95 per uninsured person, up to $285, or 1 percent of your modified adjusted gross income — whichever is greater, said Lindsey Buchholz, a principal tax research analyst at The Tax Institute at H&R Block.

However, you may qualify for one of more than 30 exemptions, including health insurance coverage that became effective May 1, 2014; a gap in coverage of less than three months; an eviction; a foreclosure; or the shut-off of your utilities, Buchholz said.

If you bought your health insurance through a state or federal marketplace and got help paying the premium through an advance premium tax credit, you'll have to reconcile the advance on your tax return with your actual income in 2014, she said.

"Those are the big new things this year," Buchholz said.

If you're debating whether to itemize or claim the standard deduction, she said, remember that if you own a home and work, you usually benefit by itemizing because your mortgage interest, real estate taxes and state and local taxes, added together, would be more than the standard deduction. You can also itemize charitable donations, unreimbursed business expenses and medical expenses that you paid out of pocket, Buchholz said.

If you paid student loan interest in 2014, this also may reduce your taxable income up to $2,500 or the amount you actually paid, said Ashley L. Spina, a Boston-area tax attorney at CBIZ Tofias and author of the tax blog basisandboot.com.

"Typically, a taxpayer can deduct only interest on the loans they are legally obligated to repay," Spina said. "However, in circumstances where parents have made payments on their non-dependent children's student loan interest, the taxpayer may deduct the interest paid by the parents."

If you don't have all your documents, you can file for an extension, giving you until Oct. 15, Buchholz said, but you still have to make a good-faith estimate of how much you owe and pay that when you file for an extension. Otherwise, you'll have to pay a penalty of up to 25 percent of what you owe, plus interest, she said.

"If you're not sure, it's better to file for an extension and get help than file an incorrect tax return and have to correct it later," Buchholz said. "You may have failed to itemize and paid too much tax, for example. But you'd have to know that, and know that you have to file an amended tax return, in order for the IRS to refund what you overpaid."

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Library to tackle Boston's data

A new team of librarians will take the mountains of data that the city of Boston releases to the public and make it usable and understandable for everyone, thanks to a nearly half-a-million-dollar grant.

"(The grant) is focused on taking the incredible open data resources that the city makes available and make them more useful to people," said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the city's chief information officer. "You'll have easier access to that data by working through our public libraries to get it."

The city and the Boston Public Library is hiring a team of librarians who will be charged with making data as easy to find and understand as books.

The project is being funded through a $475,000 grant from the Knight Foundation.

"Librarians are a workforce that specialize in information curation and pointing citizens toward the information when they need it," said John Bracken, vice president of media innovation for the Knight Foundation. "We were particularly taken with the possibility of leveraging the platform of the library, the physical space of the library, to accelerate the use of civic data coming out of open government."

The program will likely include training and reference materials for residents.

"This will have relevance for the individual on the street, any resident," said David Leonard, director of administration and technology for the BPL. "In some ways it's a natural evolution of our traditional reference services."

The data that is routinely released by the city includes Citizen's Connect requests, crime incident reports and food permit maps, information someone interested in moving to a new neighborhood may want to know.

Boston has published much of the city's data for more than a year, starting with an Open Data executive order from Mayor Martin J. Walsh.

But, data.cityofboston.com is overwhelming, and hard to use for people who do not have a data science background.

"Historically, open data has just been a website that we throw up, and we put the data up there and say OK, our job is done, the data is open," Franklin-Hodge said. "That's the equivalent of getting a room and just throwing a pile of books on the floor and saying here's your library."

Last month, Boston released much of its data to techies, challenging them to create apps and visualizations that explain what is happening in the city.

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