Patrick Dempsey out of Tully's Coffee venture

SEATTLE — Actor Patrick Dempsey and his business partner in the venture that acquired Tully's Coffee out of bankruptcy have dissolved their partnership.

In a joint statement late Friday, the "Grey's Anatomy" star and California lawyer Michael Avenatti said their legal dispute has been fully resolved.

Court documents filed Aug. 20 in Dempsey's King County Superior Court lawsuit against Avenatti said the lawyer initially was the sole owner of Global Baristas LLC. The documents say Dempsey joined Global Baristas a short time later. The ownership group prevailed against other bidders including Starbucks in an auction of more than 40 Puget Sound-area Tully's stores.

Dubbed "McDreamy" on the TV hospital drama, Dempsey was the public face of the successful bid. He said Friday he was "happy to have been a part of the effort that brought awareness to the Tully's brand."

Avenatti spokeswoman Suzy Quinn says the lawyer, "with other investors and the Tully's management team," will continue operating the stores.

A report on the dispute was first carried in The Seattle Times.

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Lexus ES300h is total package

Although the Lexus ES300h and its brand mate the Toyota Camry Hybrid roll from the same engineers, it's remarkable how refreshingly different they are.

I had a chance to compare the two when my personal car was in the shop and the Toyota was the rental provided.

The Lexus is everything a Lexus should be — elegant, quiet, polished, well-appointed and technically advanced. The Camry is a good car in its own right but when the checklists were compared, and if you can swing the sticker price, I'd opt for the Lexus at every turn.

The cost-conscience shopper will get great value in the loaded $36,000 Camry Hybrid XLE but I'd dig deep and get the upscale Lexus sedan even with its higher base of $38,850. The level of craftsmanship and refinement in the Lexus is what separates the cars. We tested out at $46,070 with the bulk of the extra cost in the $2,625 navigation and backup camera package.

Let's start by sliding into the comfortable 10-way adjustable leather seats and grasping the bamboo and leather-trimmed steering wheel, all part of the $1,370 Luxury Package. A quick press of the start button begins the experience of driving this hybrid. If the steering wheel doesn't telescope to your preset and the infotainment screen doesn't illuminate, the car isn't running. It's so quiet in fact, I walked away from the car and wondered why the doors would not lock, only to realize that I had forgotten to shut the car off.

The soft touch leather, well-fitted plastic and bamboo trim extend through the cabin and the gentle curves create a comforting but not claustrophobic cabin. Lexus luxury extends to the passengers, too, as rear legroom and personal climate control make all very comfortable.

The ride is confident and secure and a quick turn of the console-mounted knob lets you select the best mode to drive in: ECO, Normal and Sport. Sport sets the steering response and acceleration to very aggressive and quick but decreases gas mileage. Normal is more passive yet with good engine response and ECO softens all for high mileage. I averaged more than 35 mpg while flipping through the modes, which was slightly less than the estimates but personal driving habits will influence final mileage.

Powered by a gasoline/electric motor that has been featured in Toyotas since the Prius was introduced and mated to a very smooth electronically controlled continuously variable transmission, the 200 total horsepower made acceleration response immediate and powerful.

The sweeping, ever-so-slightly aggressive lines are accented by feline-like projector bulb headlights and wraparound taillights. The spacious trunk accommodates plenty of luggage, so with excellent gas mileage, personal space and top-notch luxury, head for the highways. Lexus safety features are prominent and range from Smartstop Technology and parking assist to blind spot monitoring.

There are many fine hybrids on the market now, but if you desire an elegant car with an eye to the environment the Lexus is a great choice.

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Robot joins workforce

"Made in China" was for years the calling card of outsourced labor, but manufacturing is slowly coming back to the United States, and one Boston company wants to help drive its resurgence.

"Our long-term model for outsourcing labor is broken," Rodney Brooks, founder, chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics, said yesterday at the company's Fort Point headquarters.

"I see lots of innovation happening, but getting to manufacturing is difficult" for small companies, Brooks said. "I think there's a revolution coming in manufacturing."

Brooks and Rethink Robotics hope their American-made Baxter robot, a two-armed, humanoid machine that even gets a confused look on its "face" when it needs something, can help do just that.

"There's a fair amount of pride people take in American manufacturing," said Rethink Robotics CEO Scott Eckert. "There's a growing understanding of the importance of manufacturing in the economy."

Brian Gilmore, executive vice president at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said more local manufacturing has and will continue to connect two of the state's key industries, tech and manufacturing.

"Obviously any kind of manufacturing taking place here is a good thing," he said. "We have the skilled workforce that not only can design these machines but build them."

One of Baxter's strengths is its ease of use — Rethink Robotics said someone with a high school education can train it — and its versatility.

Designed to work alongside humans, Baxter excels at automating the most mundane manufacturing tasks, such as sorting, picking up and placing, and inserting, the company said. Though they are vital to factories, automating those jobs allows employees who work next to Baxter to concentrate on higher functioning — and higher paying — jobs. Rethink Robotics said Baxter is designed to work with people, instead of replacing them.

Small companies that are innovating often are forced to scale up quickly to meet increasing demand, Brooks said, and Baxter is a cost-efficient way to automate production.

There's a growing movement to boost U.S. manufacturing with giants such as Apple and Google marketing new products that are made here. Wal-Mart this week hosted a two-day summit with the specific goal of bringing more manufacturing back to the United States.

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Nasdaq outage practically business as usual

Officials are looking into what caused the Nasdaq to come to a standstill for three hours yesterday, the latest in a growing list of snafus to hit financial markets.

The stock exchange sent out an alert shortly after noon, saying it was stopping trading because of problems with its system for disseminating prices. Trading resumed at 3:25 p.m. and ended for the day shortly afterward with the index up 38 points, or 1 percent, at 3,638.71 — "an orderly market, given the circumstances," a State Street spokeswoman said.

Still, Brett Ginter, managing director of financial services at Burlington-based Collaborative Consulting, called the outage a "big red flag for the exchanges."

"Trading more and more is being done by machines. It's a necessary evil," Ginter said. "Hundreds of orders are being pushed through the exchange in microseconds ... For the Nasdaq to go down for three hours is inexcusable."

Nasdaq said that it planned to investigate.

The last two weeks of August are slow for trading, so the outage was "almost certainly" not volume-related, said Max Wolff, chief economist and strategist for ZT Wealth in New York.

"None of these things are good for rebuilding the public's appetite for or confidence in equities," he said.

Last year, BATS Global Markets tried to go public on its own exchange, but had to back out after a computer error sent the stock price plunging. Facebook's public offering last spring also was error-riddled, as technical problems kept many investors from knowing if their trades had gone through. And in April, the Chicago Board Options Exchange shut down for a morning because of a software problem.

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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Another show of support set for Market Basket CEO

Market Basket employees are gearing up for another show of support for CEO Arthur T. Demoulas, as the grocery chain's board was set to meet again today in Boston and consider the hiring of an executive search firm.

The board has been silent since its nearly 13-hour, July 18 meeting during which Demoulas' firing was on the agenda but never addressed, while hundreds of his employees and other supporters waited outside.

Director Arthur S. Demoulas, a cousin of the CEO who has been seeking his ouster — another chapter in a long-running family feud over the Tewksbury-based chain of 72 stores — did not return Herald calls or emails for comment.

The agenda for today's meeting at the Harvard Club includes several items likely to be contentious for the divided board, which is said to have a new majority in Arthur S. Demoulas' camp. They include a report on hiring Spencer Stuart, an executive search consulting firm. It's unclear if the board plans to engage the company to find a new Market Basket CEO.

The board's public relations firm, Kekst & Co., did not respond to Herald calls, and a spokeswoman for CEO Arthur T. Demoulas declined comment.

Changes to Market Basket's employee profit-sharing plan's trustees and administration also will be on the table. Other agenda items include discussions of a payout of "excess cash" to shareholders, an ongoing dividend payout policy and instructing the CEO and CFO to obtain loan proposals for the currently debt-free company.

A review of the independence of the board's directors also is on the agenda. A 1999 court ruling mandated that the board include three independent members.

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Is Zuckerberg’s Internet mission too self-serving?

Granting Internet access to the 5 billion people worldwide who currently lack it is a moral imperative, but Mark Zuckerberg is not the right person for the job.

The Facebook CEO and founder gained gushing praise when he announced the formation of a business coalition to bring mobile Internet access to underdeveloped areas earlier this week. Zuckerberg posted a lengthy position paper late Tuesday declaring Internet access a fundamental human right as he announced the partnership, dubbed Internet.org, with Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and the chipmaker Qualcomm. The group will focus on researching ways to make data cheaper and bring mobile technology to underserved parts of the world.

The problem is that Zuckerberg wants to be Bill Gates both during and after Microsoft. He wants to run the most powerful social networking platform on Earth and simultaneously become the world's foremost humanitarian. But he can't do both at once. Not credibly, at least. His position paper makes this all too clear. In it, Zuckerberg admits that Facebook has nearly reached its saturation point in the Western world, noting that fact was what sparked this quest. There are too few customers left. If he wants more, he has to create them.

The most eyebrow-raising part of Zuckerberg's white paper is a hypothetical he poses. He posits, without evidence, that if you asked people who have grown up in an undeveloped area whether they want a data plan, they won't know what a data plan is. But, he says, if you ask those same people whether they want Facebook access, "they're more likely to say yes."

He's not so much advocating for pure Internet access as he is saying that Facebook is to be the Internet. He undercuts his entire argument with these hints of indoctrination.

Zuckerberg's plan currently focuses on the mobile space. Think smartphones and tablets. It's no coincidence that this same area is where Facebook is most focused.

Zuckerberg is a noted philanthropist, as anyone worth $16 billion should be. He doesn't have bad intentions. But he suffers from a conflict of interest, and a bit of cluelessness. He has no idea what it took, for instance, for the One Laptop Per Child program to distribute Motorola Xoom tablets to 20 children in a remote village of Ethiopia. The day that Mark Zuckerberg travels from village to village and mudhut to mudhut interviewing parents and children with a translator, as OLPC did for weeks, is the day he'll start to be a real player in one of the most important humanitarian causes of our time.

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Danvers grocery awaits OK on alcohol

A Stop & Shop in Danvers may soon be selling beer and wine, the latest grocery store to take advantage of a change in state law that allows more supermarkets to carry alcohol.

The Route 1 grocery store's application was cleared by the town's Board of Selectmen earlier this month and must still be approved by the state's Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.

A spokeswoman for Stop & Shop said it hopes to know for sure by September.

It would be the fourth Stop & Shop location to sell alcohol in the Bay State — joining branches in Hingham, Quincy and Malden — and the first attempt by the Quincy-based company to add more alcohol licenses since a change in state law went into effect in 2012.

Under the new law, grocery stores can increase the number of locations selling booze from three to five. In 2016, that number will grow to seven.

By 2020, grocery stores will be able to stock alcohol at up to nine locations.

A spokesman for Shaw's and Star Market couldn't say whether the supermarket has any current plans filed to add liquor licenses beyond the three locations in Cambridge, Franklin and at the Prudential in Boston, where it already sells alcohol.

A spokesman for Market Basket did not return a call seeking comment.

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Framingham’s TJX surges, lifts outlook

TJX — the corporate owner of the T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods chains — continues to impress investors with high earnings, showing its off-price big-brand "treasure hunt" stores remain popular amid an uneven retail climate, while the company prepares to launch web sales.

The Framingham company beat Wall Street estimates with earnings that jumped 13.9 percent to $479.5 million for the quarter ended Aug. 3, on sales that rose 8 percent to $6.4 billion.

The TJX Companies, Inc., has a markedly different operating model than most retailers, according to Stifel Nicolaus analyst Richard Jaffe. "They're selling nationally recognized brands at discounted prices," he said. "(Consumers) have to apply some energy in looking through the assortments, but they know that they will find good things at low prices, and that is very different from ... any other department store or specialty store."

TJX saw increased customer traffic and higher checkout receipts, with strong results in clothing and home goods.

"It is great to see a strong performance continue over such strong year-over-year comparisons," CEO Carol Meyrowitz said.

TJX narrowed the window for its T.J. Maxx e-commerce website launch, saying it will begin controlled test sales by late fall.

Meyrowitz isn't concerned about translating the "treasure hunt" experience to online, where customers, as in stores, may not always find items in the right color or size. "I believe it can," she said. "T.J. Maxx is a very well-known brand."

TJX shares hit a 52-week high of $54.41 yesterday, closing at $54.24, up 6.88 percent. The better-than-expected results, combined with a "solid start" to the current quarter, prompted the company to raise its outlook for the entire year.

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Cigna’s counseling rule draws fire

With the genetic testing business booming, national health insurer Cigna Corp. is telling its customers to get insurer-approved counseling before it will pay for certain tests, a move that has critics questioning the insurer's motives.

"If the counseling is used as a tool to help consumers better direct their care, it will add tremendous value to empower patients," Joshua Archambault, the Pioneer Institute's Director of Health Care Policy, told the Herald about Cigna's new rule.

Starting Sept. 16, Cigna customers who want their insurer to pay for tests that will tell if they are at risk of breast, ovarian and colorectal cancers, or the heart condition Long QT, must first meet with a Cigna-
approved counselor.

"If the counseling is solely utilized as a cost-containment measure, patients are likely to be unhappy as the future of medicine will involve individualized care based on one's genetic makeup," Archambault warned.

Cigna says it adopted the policy because these tests, which can cost up to $4,000 each, are often requested and often misunderstood.

The tests "have a lot of implications for patients and their families, and they are hard to understand. It's a new field," said David Finley, Cigna's national medical officer for enterprise affordability and policy.

Dr. Aubrey Milunsky, founder of the Center for Human Genetics in Cambridge, said it's always smart to get counseling before a genetic test.

But Milunsky recommends people who may be at risk for devastating diseases sit down with a medical doctor who specializes in genetics because the evolving field is so complex.

"People are finally beginning to realize the power of DNA, and how precise a test it is," he said.

As a result, he's troubled that Cigna wants its customers to either meet with a pre-selected counselor or speak by telephone with someone from InformedDNA, a private Florida firm.

"In our business, telephone counseling is a no-no," Milunsky said.

Herald wire services contributed to this story.

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‘University 
Pages’ aim to help with college hunt

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, branched into academia and targeted a teen audience yesterday with University Pages, a first step in a plan to win members as young as 13 who are already thinking about college and careers.

The social network launched pages for its first 200 schools — including Boston University, Boston College, Harvard, MIT, Babson, Bentley, Brandeis, Tufts, Northeastern, Wellesley and Hult International School of Business — with an ultimate goal of 23,000 universities worldwide, said Crystal Braswell, a LinkedIn spokeswoman.

The pages let alumni connect with former classmates while current students can get regular updates about campus news and activities. But Braswell said University Pages is especially aimed at younger students deciding where to apply to college, and is designed to help them explore universities worldwide, check out notable alumni and get a head start on building a network to guide them in their choice of schools and majors.

"Students are the fastest-growing demographic on LinkedIn," she said in an email. "Today, we have more than 30 million students and recent graduates on LinkedIn. University Pages are designed to help students — both teenagers and university/college age — make smart, informed decisions about their educational and professional future."

To facilitate that, LinkedIn, beginning Sept. 12, will lower the minimum age for members from 18 to 14 in the U.S. and 13 internationally. High school students will be able to create profiles just as older members do, except instead of their alma mater and work history, they'll be able to tout courses they've taken, test scores, extracurricular activities and volunteer work, Braswell said.

Kristy N. Kime, BU's associate director of alumni online engagement, said, "LinkedIn's University pages will open a new door connecting not only alumni, but current students and prospective students who are considering attending Boston University. We are very excited about where this will go."

Lowering the sign-up age is a wise move for the social network, whose membership has been heavily male and older, said Todd Van Hoosear, owner of Fresh Ground, a Cambridge social-media consulting firm. "Linked­In's missing out on a lot of advertising dollars. It's got to appeal to a younger audience."

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