Mass. couple promote new craft beer business model

BELMONT, Mass. — Kate Baker and Suzanne Schalow founded Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont in 2010, and today, at any given time, its 1,500 square feet of retail space are filled with more than 1,000 beers from 350 breweries. Beers are organized by region, from Worcester to the West Coast, with an emphasis on local brews. Employees have jobs like Head Beer Geek, Ambassador of Fine Ales and Lagers, and Hoptologist and wear hooded sweat shirts emblazoned with the words "Beer Geek."

"People take two steps in the door and they don't know how to proceed," says Brian Shaw, who opened a Craft Beer Cellar in Newton Centre recently, joining franchises in Winchester, Westford, and Braintree. "People say, 'Oh my God, I didn't know there was this much beer.'?"

Is there ever. And now Baker and Schalow are betting their model can work elsewhere as they expand to New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as Florida, St. Louis, and maybe Seattle. Their goal is to make people think about whether to buy a Pretty Things Jack D'Or or a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale as carefully as they would wrestle between a cabernet or a merlot.

It is a risky quest. Despite craft beer's popularity boom, creating a national franchise of specialty beer stores has not been done. One reason could be that craft beers accounted for only 10 percent of the dollars in total beer sales in the United States in 2012.

Craft Beer Cellar stores carry flavorful ales and lagers that are brewed to traditional standards and can be hard to find.

Baker and Schalow prefer to focus on other numbers, like the 2,403 brewers that operated in the United States in 2012, the most since the 1880s, according to the Brewers Association. Schalow and Baker hope to capitalize on this explosion by packing each small, service-oriented store with carefully curated beer while leaving out nips, cigarettes, and jugs of wine.

"Beer store is still not a 'category' in the world," says Schalow. "No one has done this. No one has put everything on the line and said, 'I can teach people about great beer.'?"

Schalow and Baker, partners in life as well as business, met in 2002 when Schalow, then a manager at Cambridge Common restaurant, hired Baker. The first beer Baker consumed in front of Schalow was a Budweiser.

"I almost fell over," Schalow says.

Around that time, Schalow wanted to take Blue Moon, a MillerCoors product, off the bar's tap list. When ownership said no, she challenged her staff to "sell the heck" out of something else, and Magic Hat's Circus Boy, a craft beer, eventually replaced Blue Moon.

Baker and Schalow married in 2010, and the couple decided that year to leave the restaurant and open the beer store.

"When I told her craft beer store, she was a lot supportive and a little skeptical," says Schalow. "I told her, 'If we make it amazing, they will come, it doesn't matter where it is.'?"

The pair have scoured the region looking for craft beer from hard-to-find brewers. Stores carry multiple styles from brewers like Northampton's Brewmaster Jack, Everett's Night Shift Brewing, and Plymouth's Mayflower Brewing, as well as beers from Belgium, Italy, and France.

"It's all about building and cultivating the relationships," says Baker. "And it could be with a distributor, or a bartender, or a homebrewer who has visions of creating their brewery."

"They're really in tune with the culture of craft beer," says Mark Vasconcelos, craft brand manager for Burke Distributing, a Massachusetts company that delivers 37 craft brands to stores around the state, in addition to larger brands like Coors Light. "They're proactive in letting us know if there's something that's going to be in demand by the consumers."

Carrying 350 beer brands is not without challenges. "Beer is the least marked up drinkable thing," Baker says. "There's a reason why no one has done this before."

A big reason is that light beer, in particular, remains hugely popular.

"We celebrate the beer renaissance currently taking place, and we are proud to offer beer drinkers a portfolio of great beers for every drinking occasion," Karina Diehl, a spokeswoman for MillerCoors, said in a statement. "Light beer is the largest segment in the American beer industry for a reason."

John Libonati and Chris Schutte own Social Wines in South Boston, which carries only premium beer, but also wine and spirits. They acknowledge the higher markups on wine make it easier to not carry the big-name beers.

"The growth of the craft beer market right now isn't being fueled by people who only want beer," says Jeff Wharton, co-founder of DrinkCraftbeer.com. "I think the world is ready for more liquor stores with a craft beer ethos."

Craft beer, by definition, means small, independently owned, and brewed to traditional standards; it accounted for 6.5 percent of the volume of all beer sold in 2012, according to the Brewers Association. Schalow knows craft beer is not yet on everyone's radar.

"We're the crazy hippies with the headbands, screaming and shouting and carrying the torches," she says.

To better reach the masses, the store has tried to engage potential customers through social media. Lee Movic, who runs Craft Beer Cellar's social media accounts, positions himself as an advocate for craft beer, not just the store. Movic attends events, even for competing stores, pushing craft. He tweets about those events, new beer arrivals, and generally positive messages like, "Good morning, beer geeks. We hope you have a great day today."

He is luring new customers the only way he knows how. "Everyone loves great customer service," he says, "so we start with that."

Franchising was not always the plan, says Baker. The pair spent "close to 50 hours" scouting store locations in St. Louis before hiring a real estate developer to help. They admittedly don't know the Brandon, Fla., market as they know Belmont. Selecting new franchise sites and owners has taken them away from their base.

"The first couple months were humbly painful," says Schalow. She says the store's regular customers weren't used to seeing them less.

Movic says the store's brand is intrinsically linked to Baker and Schalow. "But it is already becoming much more than that," he adds.

Despite early challenges, the owners — with a staff of about 30 people and growing — remain devoted to spreading their motto of "Don't drink crap beer." Schalow talks in great detail about educating her staff and the public ("If you can't buy good beer from me, just buy good beer," she says), and several staffers eagerly share their "a-ha" moments of talking dazed and confused customers "down from that scary place" and converting them into regulars.

Shaw, the Newton Centre store owner, says business has been brisk since the opening on Oct. 30. Kay Lorenz, one of the owners of the Braintree Craft Beer Cellar, says she has "been welcomed with open arms" by neighboring retailers. On a day in late November, a new 20-something employee introduced himself to Schalow on his first day.

"This is so much fun," he says, his voice rising in pitch with excitement. "I just love working here!"

Schalow smiles. "You'll fit right in."

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‘First look’ gives homebuyers an edge over investors

WASHINGTON — An important resource for first-time and other homebuyers who find themselves in unfair competition with deep-pocket investors bearing cash just got better: The two biggest players in the mortgage market, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are now giving non-investor shoppers 20-day exclusive rights to bid on and buy new listings they are selling.

During the 20-day "first look" period, investors will be excluded from submitting bids. To qualify, non-investor buyers will need to commit to make the home their principal residence for at least a year. The idea, according to Fannie and Freddie officials, is to encourage greater owner-occupancy, stabilize neighborhoods that have seen significant numbers of foreclosures and generally help out shoppers who find it difficult to outbid all-cash investors.

All-cash purchases of homes hit a high mark last month, according to a new report from RealtyTrac, a housing data firm. A stunning 42 percent of all residential sales nationwide went to buyers who paid cash — the highest rate since RealtyTrac began measuring the phenomenon in early 2011, and nearly double what it was as recently as May.

First-time buyers looking for affordably priced homes have been hit especially hard by the profusion of investors waving cash at sellers. They locate a home that fits their budget, make an offer with a mortgage contingency and then lose the sale to an investor who has no financing requirements. A mortgage contingency ties the contract to the ability of the bidder to obtain a loan, which slows the process and often makes the offer less attractive to the seller.

Fannie and Freddie have large inventories of previously foreclosed homes for sale — byproducts of the economic woes of 2008-10. As of last week, Fannie had roughly 35,000 houses listed for sale around the country through its "HomePath" (HomePath.com) program. Freddie Mac had 13,000 active listings in its "HomeSteps" (HomeSteps.com) program. Buyers can access the listings online by state, city and price range, then submit offers through a participating realty agent.

In California, for example, Fannie had 2,136 properties listed, many below $200,000. Current listings range from a $139,000, two-bedroom single-family house in Big Bear City to a $700,000 three-bedroom home in South San Francisco. In Washington state, Fannie had nearly 1,900 listings. Shoppers in Virginia had 742 houses to choose from. Freddie also has active listings in every state through HomeSteps, ranging from a three-bedroom single-family home in Key Largo, Fla., for $485,000 to a $99,900 condo in Silver Spring, Md.

Both companies offer mortgage deals on some, but not all, properties. Freddie's financing includes features such as 5 percent down payments, no required appraisals, and no mortgage insurance. Freddie also provides up to $500 toward new purchasers' home warranty policies.

Fannie's financing deals start at 5 percent down with no mortgage insurance or appraisal costs. HomePath listings that need some fix-up may also be eligible for "renovation mortgages," where the loan amount includes funds for the purchase itself plus the estimated money needed for improvements.

Here's the deal on "first look" exclusions of investors from bidding. On all homes listed on or after Dec. 17 (Freddie) and Jan. 2 (Fannie), owner-occupant buyers will get a shot at viewing houses and submitting bids with no competition from investors for 20 days after listing. Currently the exclusion is for the first 15 days.

If Fannie or Freddie receives acceptable offers from owner-occupant bidders, they will sign contracts to sell without seeing any competing bids from investors. Chris Bowden, Freddie Mac's senior vice president for HomeSteps, said the extra time for exclusive bidding could be "especially important for buyers in markets where home inventories are shrinking."

So if you or someone you know is thinking of a home purchase, check out HomeSteps and HomePath listings online. If you qualify and keep your eye on the clock, you just may get a chance to buy a new home with mortgage terms you can afford — without worrying about fat-cat investors muscling in and outbidding you with cash.

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Market Basket’s CEO blasts board’s website

Market Basket CEO Arthur T. Demoulas has taken the grocery chain's contentious board to task over alleged inaccuracies on a website that it's using to communicate with workers.

In a letter to chairman Keith Cowan that Demoulas shared with employees, he stated his opposition to the "unprecedented" website and highlighted information on it that he said is significantly "wrong." He also asked the board to shut down the site.

"I am completely opposed to the board having a website," Demoulas said in the letter to Cowan. "Any company should speak to its associates, its customers and the public through its CEO. I urge you to promptly either close the website or, at a minimum, fix the site and eliminate the half-truths and inaccuracies."

Demoulas said the site takes the position of so-called "A" directors aligned with his rival, Arthur S. 
Demoulas, who waged an earlier campaign to remove his cousin from the CEO's post and rein in his duties amid a long-running family feud.

The board, meanwhile, has made only one of Demoulas' recommended changes to the site's "frequently asked questions" page, but updated others. It acknowledged that it's hired an executive search firm to "assure that both corporate succession planning and the identification and development of additional executive talent is an integral part of long-term planning ... The search firm is not looking for a new president."

The board has no intention to take down the site, according to a board spokeswoman. "The board has made it clear why it created the website, and the board will continue to use this vehicle to provide factual information to the company's stakeholders," she said.

A spokeswoman for 
Arthur T. Demoulas said he declined comment. In his letter to employees, Demoulas said he was forwarding the Cowan letter to "set the record straight."

"It is important that when the company decides to communicate with its associates, it do so truthfully," he said in the letter.

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Briar Group card breach investigated

An investigation of a new credit card security breach at the Briar Group will include ensuring the Boston restaurant chain complied with security measures outlined in a settlement with the state Attorney General's office after a 2009 data breach.

As part of its probe of reports that thieves had stolen and used the credit card information of Seaport District workers and visitors, the Attorney General's office said it had urged the Briar Group to determine if its payment system had been illegally accessed.

"We continue to work with the Briar Group and will review the findings of its internal investigation now that a breach has been determined in its systems," Christopher Loh, a spokesman for Attorney General Martha Coakley, said in a statement. "Data breaches are a serious concern, and we expect the Briar Group to assist consumers impacted by this breach."

The Briar Group, whose 10 restaurants and bars include Ned Devine's, Harp and Anthem, as well as M.J. O'Connor's and City Bar in the Seaport District, said that hackers had gained access to its customers' credit card information.

The company has not pinpointed the exact dates of the latest breach, but believes it occurred from sometime in October to early November. It also couldn't confirm yesterday how many customers were affected. A Briar Group spokeswoman said it was in compliance with both the settlement agreement and payment card industry data security standards.

"We feel confident that, based on the information we know to date, that it's no longer possible for the person who originally infiltrated this system to continue taking data," spokeswoman Diana Pisciotta said.

In 2011, the Briar Group agreed to pay $110,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Coakley for its failure to secure customers' personal information during the 2009 security breach. A malicious software code had been installed on its point-of-sales computer system that April and was not removed until December. The judgment required the Briar Group to comply with Massachusetts data security regulations and the PCI standards, and to set up and maintain an enhanced computer network security system.

"We've put in completely new security systems and are working regularly with a company called McGladrey, who updates our system on a very regular basis," Pisciotta said.

McGladrey started investigating a possible breach in mid-November and installed additional security safeguards at that time, said Pisciotta, who had no information to share about the source of the breach and how it occurred.

The company is not offering free credit monitoring for affected customers.

The breach follows a massive one announced Dec. 19 by Target Corp. in which hackers got access to up to 40 million customer credit and debit cards from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15.

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In governor's races, Democrats eye wage increase

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Republican governors running for re-election next year are looking to capitalize on distaste for Washington gridlock and President Barack Obama's dropping public approval amid the bumpy rollout of his signature health care law — and Democratic challengers may need to respond with a popular cause.

A minimum wage increase could be the answer.

Democrats vying to challenge a slew of Republican governors, particularly those seeking re-election in states that Obama won last year, are talking up an increase as their campaigns get off the ground 11 months before the election.

Polls say it's publicly popular, it revives the message of economic inequality that Obama wielded effectively last year, and it comes wrapped in a broader jobs and economic message that touches on the top priority of many voting Americans.

In Pennsylvania, championing a minimum wage increase is already popular among the big field of Democrats vying to challenge the re-election bid of Gov. Tom Corbett.

Now, Katie McGinty, a onetime environmental policy adviser to the Clinton White House and Corbett's Democratic predecessor, is distinguishing herself by telling audiences and potential donors that she was the first Democrat in the Pennsylvania field to make it an issue.

"This is core for me," McGinty said. "I think it is fundamentally true across the centuries that one of the things that can really bring a nation down is the increasing chasm in terms of income."

Thus far, the Republicans whom Democrats view as most vulnerable aren't changing their minds and supporting it.

In addition to Corbett, the Democrats' list of most vulnerable includes Maine's Paul LePage, Michigan's Rick Snyder and Wisconsin's Scott Walker. Florida's Rick Scott and Ohio's John Kasich might be insulated because their states' laws boost minimum wage with inflation and Iowa's Terry Branstad, New Mexico's Susanna Martinez and Nevada's Brian Sandoval aren't viewed as sufficiently endangered.

All of those governors won a first term in the national Republican sweep of 2010, and most have had strong Republican representation in their legislatures to support them.

But LePage was tasked with facing a Democrat-controlled legislature, and in July he vetoed a bill to incrementally raise the state's minimum wage.

For his likely Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, increasing the minimum wage is an issue the onetime paper mill worker from northern Maine discusses often, said campaign adviser David Farmer.

"He is closely aligned with working- and middle-class families," Farmer said. "He's not a millionaire."

Still, it would not be unheard of for a Republican to advocate a minimum wage increase. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who leads the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Governors Association, and New Mexico's Martinez each vetoed their legislature's minimum wage bill, but not without making a counteroffer of a more modest increase.

Republican governors are focused on lightening tax and regulatory burdens for businesses to improve wages, said Jon Thompson, a spokesman for the Republican Governors Association. But he also seemed to acknowledge the occasional political necessity for Republicans to embrace a minimum wage increase.

"It's complicated because there are some states that a minimum wage increase could be more helpful and useful than other states," Thompson said in an email.

For Democrats, campaign advisers and strategists say there's no mandate from national party leaders to wield the issue as a weapon next year. But there's no denying it's popular and salient to the political battlefield, said Danny Kanner, spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association.

"The defining issue in every single one of these races is who is fighting for the middle class," he said.

Democrats are pairing their advocacy of a minimum wage increase with criticism of cuts to corporate tax rates, public pensions or education aid that Republican governors pushed through. They also contend that it'll revive the economy by flushing more money into the hands of consumers who spend it and reduce reliance on food stamps or other government programs for the poor.

If vulnerable Republicans aren't budging on the issue, neither are the big-business groups that tend to back them. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns that small employers will have the hardest time absorbing higher labor costs, while the National Federation of Independent Business warned of job losses.

"We're not going to waver," said NFIB spokeswoman Jean Card. "It's the kind of thing that sounds good, but rarely are polling questions backed up with the kind of economic downside that's inevitable."

For Democrats, Obama got the ball rolling on the issue by calling for an increase in his February budget speech, and union-organized demonstrations in front of profitable mega-chains such as Wal-Mart and McDonald's have kept it in the public eye.

And it's not only a popular issue with the labor unions that often provide money and volunteers to help power Democrats' campaigns — the public warmly embraces it, too.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey this month found that more than six in 10 voting-age adults said they would support an increase of the federal minimum wage from $7.25, where it was last raised in 2009, to $10.10 an hour. Support to raise it to $12.50 fell to about four in 10 and fewer than three in 10 supported an increase to $15 an hour. A CBS News poll in November found that just one in four would like the federal minimum wage to remain at $7.25.

Some Democrats may nevertheless approach the issue with caution.

Mary Burke, who is expected to win the Democratic nomination to challenge Wisconsin's Walker, said she supports legislation there to increase the minimum wage by a relatively modest 35 cents an hour to $7.60.

Beyond that, the former state commerce secretary and daughter of Trek Bicycle's founder said a gradual and fair increase in the minimum wage could avoid economic harm. While she wasn't prepared to say what that is, the subject will be prominent in her campaign, Burke said.

"This race is going to be about jobs and people being able to support themselves," Burke said, "and that is an important way we can help more people move toward economic independence."

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Report: NSA intercepts computer deliveries

LONDON — A German magazine has lifted the lid on the operations of the National Security Agency's hacker unit, revealing how American spies intercepted computer deliveries, exploited hardware vulnerabilities, and even hijacked Microsoft's bug report system to spy on their targets.

Der Spiegel's revelations relate to a division of the NSA known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, which is painted as an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets.

Citing internal NSA documents, the magazine said Sunday that TAO's mission was "Getting the ungettable," and quoted an official as saying that TAO had won "some of the most significant intelligence our country has ever seen."

Der Spiegel has published a series of NSA stories based on documents leaked by former intelligence worker Edward Snowden.

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Worker abuse by diplomats a problem, advocates say

NEW YORK — The arrest of an Indian consular official in New York accused of forcing her maid to toil for little pay has highlighted a problem advocates say is all too common — workers for foreign governments who bring along the baggage of human trafficking to the U.S.

Anti-trafficking lawyer Dana Sussman says the claims of abuse are made against international workers of all levels. She is representing the housekeeper.

The most recent case has caused tension between the U.S. and India. The country's deputy consul general in New York was arrested on charges accusing her of lying on a visa form by stating she paid her housekeeper $4,500 a month, but actually paid her less than $3 per hour.

She has denied the charges.

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Pitfalls abound as legal pot sales begin

DENVER — Colorado and Washington state are launching the world's first legal recreational marijuana markets in 2014. Though pot has been sold for three decades at coffee shops in the Netherlands, the two states are the first to regulate and allow a full industry.

Being first to allow growing it, processing it and selling it doesn't come without risks. The states face plenty, from a potential crackdown over a drug that's still illegal under federal law to threats to public health.

A look at some of the pitfalls the two states will want to avoid as Big Weed tries to go mainstream:

YOUTH USE: The U.S. Department of Justice has told the states it won't interfere with state marijuana laws as long as they keep the drug away from those without permission to use it. Top of that list: children. Neither state will allow people under 21 to buy pot.

HEALTH: Some doctors warn that increased marijuana use will result in more emergency-room visits. There's not enough data to show if that is happening, though some hospitals have reported spikes in child admissions for pot overdoses. With no Food and Drug Administration oversight, the two states are producing their own product-safety standards to make sure pot is as potent as labeled and doesn't contain harmful molds or other contaminants.

SMUGGLING: The states have also been told they must keep legal pot out of other states and off federal property. That's no small task in Western states with huge swaths of federal property, such as parks and ski areas. The states will allow visitors to buy pot, but also warn them about where they can and can't take it.

CRIME: Legalization opponents say residency requirements won't prevent criminal cartels from setting up straw-man growing operations. The states also have tracking systems to make sure what is grown ends up sold legally. Colorado, however, also allows people to grow pot at home, making it impossible to keep track of where it is coming from and where it's going.

DRIVING: The states set up marijuana analogies to drunk-driving laws, setting driver blood limits for pot's psychoactive chemical, THC. The laws are new, and it's too soon to say whether legal pot has made highways more dangerous in Colorado and Washington. Both states report seeing more positive driving-high tests, but it's not clear whether that's because of increased driver use or increased testing.

TAXES: Nobody knows how and at what level to tax marijuana. Too low, and the states won't be able to afford intense regulatory supervision of the industry. Too high, and pot users may stay in the black market.

DEMAND: Guessing marijuana demand is a tricky proposition. Colorado growers warn that early demand could lead to sky-high prices and shortages, with state production caps still uncertain. In Washington, regulators are taking a new look at supply needs after a recently released study produced a demand estimate that far outstripped earlier guesses.

BANKING: Marijuana legalization hasn't taken away one black-market aspect for the drug in Colorado and Washington: Cash runs the business. Financial services as simple as checking accounts and credit cards are off-limits because of federal guidance to financial institutions. Colorado officials say they're optimistic the U.S. Treasury Department will loosen those rules next year, but it's unclear what that would look like.

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Federal health market surpasses 1 million signups

HONOLULU — A December surge propelled health care sign-ups through the government's rehabilitated website past the 1 million mark, the Obama administration said Sunday, reflecting new vigor for the problem-plagued federal insurance exchange.

Of the more than 1.1 million people now enrolled, nearly 1 million signed up in December, with the majority coming days before a pre-Christmas deadline for coverage to start in January. Compare that to a paltry 27,000 in October —the website's first, error-prone month — or 137,000 in November.

The figures tell only part of the story. The administration has yet to provide a December update on the 14 states running their own exchanges, as the new online insurance markets are called. While California, New York, Washington, Kentucky and Connecticut have performed well, some are struggling.

Still, the end-of-year spike suggests that with HealthCare.Gov now functioning better, the federal market serving 36 states may be starting to pull its weight. The windfall comes at a critical moment for President Barack Obama's sweeping health care law, which becomes "real" for many Americans on Jan. 1 as coverage through the exchanges and key patient protections kick in.

"We experienced a welcome surge in enrollment as millions of Americans seek access to affordable health care coverage," Marilyn Tavenner, the head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a blog post.

The fledgling insurance markets are still likely to fall short of the administration's own targets for 2013. That's a concern because Obama needs millions of mostly younger, healthy Americans to sign up to keep costs low for everyone. Officials had projected more than 3.3 million overall would be enrolled through federal and state exchanges by the end of the year.

Tavenner said fixes to the website, which underwent a major overhaul to address widespread outages and glitches, contributed to December's figures. But the problems haven't totally disappeared. Thousands of people wound up waiting on hold for telephone help on Christmas Eve for a multitude of reasons, including technical difficulties.

"We have been a little bit behind the curve," acknowledged Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, whose state has the highest proportion of uninsured residents. Nonetheless, the strong December sign-ups send a message. "The Affordable Care Act is something that's good for the country," said Castro.

"Obamacare is a reality," conceded one of the law's opponents, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who as House oversight committee chair has been investigating the rollout problems. However, he predicted it will only pile on costs.

"The fact that people well into the middle class are going to get subsidies is going to cause them to look at healthcare...sort of in a Third World way of do we get subsidies from the government for our milk, for our gasoline and, oh, by the way, for our healthcare," said Issa.

For consumers who successfully selected one of the new insurance plans by Dec. 24, coverage should start on New Year's Day. That's provided they pay their first month's premium by the due date, extended until Jan. 10 in most cases.

But insurers have complained that another set of technical problems, largely hidden from consumers, has resulted in the government passing along inaccurate data on enrollees. With a flood of signups that must be processed in just days, it remains unclear whether last-minute enrollees will encounter a seamless experience if they try to use their new benefits come Jan. 1.

The White House says the error rate has been significantly reduced, but the political fallout from website woes could pale in comparison to the heat that Obama might take if Americans who signed up and paid their premiums arrive at the pharmacy or the emergency room and find there's no record of their coverage.

Officials are also working to prevent gaps in coverage for at least 4.7 million Americans whose individual policies were canceled this fall because they fell short of the law's requirements. The administration has said that even if those individuals don't sign up for new plans, they won't face the law's tax penalty for remaining uninsured.

The new enrollment figures were released Sunday while Obama was vacationing in Hawaii. Although the president has spent most of his time relaxing with friends and family, he stepped into work mode late Friday for an update from aides on his signature domestic policy achievement. The White House said Obama told his team to focus on minimizing disruptions for those switching plans.

A few states offering their own updates have also posted encouraging totals, including New York, where more than 200,000 have enrolled either through the state exchange or through Medicaid, a government program expanded under Obama's health law to cover more people. In California, a tally released Friday showed nearly 430,000 have enrolled through the exchange so far.

A key indicator of whether state-run markets are keeping pace with the federal exchange will come next month, when the administration releases full December figures. Overall, the goal is to sign up 7 million people before the first-year open enrollment period closes at the end of March.

Castro and Issa spoke on NBC's "Meet The Press."

___

Reach Josh Lederman at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

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'14 starts ominously for NJ casinos as gov watches

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The new year is a crucial one for Atlantic City's future, and 2014 won't start auspiciously.

This is the fourth year of a five-year grace period New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has given the seaside gambling resort to turn around its struggling fortunes before considering expanding casinos to other parts of the state — something casino executives fear will decimate the already wobbly market.

And it will begin with the closing of one of the city's 12 casinos, the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel, which is shutting its doors on Jan. 13, the victim of a takedown in bankruptcy court. Two national gambling companies with casinos in Atlantic City, Tropicana Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment, are paying a combined $23.4 million for the business, and the right to strip it for parts and close it down.

Tropicana is taking the slot machines, table games and customer lists, while Caesars is getting the property and its 801-room hotel. Neither has any desire to operate the casino in the now diminished Atlantic City market.

In remarks made the day before the Atlantic Club closing was announced, Christie said 2014 is time for Atlantic City to start putting up measurable results.

"It's obviously a critical year because we need to begin to see progress in Atlantic City or we're going to start considering alternatives," he said. That means considering the once-unthinkable: allowing casinos at the Meadowlands sports complex in northern New Jersey and possibly elsewhere in the state. Currently, state law restricts casino gambling to Atlantic City, along the state's southern coast.

"It's a year when we have to show some significant results," Christie said.

The state legislature wants to approve a commission to study the impact of gambling at the Meadowlands.

"Frankly, New Jersey's gaming industry in Atlantic City is at a crossroads," Tony Rodio, president of the Tropicana Casino and Resort and head of the Casino Association of New Jersey, wrote in a letter to state lawmakers earlier this month opposing the gambling expansion study.

He cited private investment in nongambling attractions like the Steel Pier amusement park, the Margaritaville restaurant and entertainment complex, and the downtown outlet shops; a five-year, $150 million casino-funded advertising and "Do AC" re-branding campaign; and the state-run tourism district focusing additional police and sanitation efforts along the Boardwalk, beach, shopping and marina areas. That progress will be jeopardized if investors think cheaper, convenience-based casinos will pop up in other places.

Many casino workers and outside observers fear the Atlantic Club closing could be the first of several in a resort that analysts have long said has too many casinos to support in a shrinking Northeast gambling market. Wayne Schaffel, a former Atlantic City casino publicist in the 1980s, sees more of the same on the horizon, particularly with rival companies preying on weaker competitors.

"It is very likely that this same strategy will be used to take out Trump Plaza, perhaps the Golden Nugget and maybe even the Showboat," he said. "It will undoubtedly shore up the balance sheets for the remaining 8 to 11 properties, but it will also take out anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 rooms. At the end of the day, the winners will be the few remaining casino companies. The losers will be the thousands of employees who lose their jobs; the state, which will suffer from ever lower revenue and taxes, and Atlantic City itself."

And the $2.4 billion Revel Casino Hotel could be sold or make a second bankruptcy filing this year.

This will be the first full year of Internet gambling in New Jersey, which the state launched in late November to provide another source of revenue for the casinos. The big question is whether it brings in new money or just diverts it away from spending at the brick-and-mortar casinos. Nearly 110,000 online gambling accounts have been created in New Jersey thus far; the first Internet gambling revenue report will be issued in two weeks.

The state should also decide this year whether to try to take its thus-far unsuccessful effort to overturn a federal ban on sports betting to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Liza Cartmell, head of the Atlantic City Alliance which markets the resort, said Christie should grant a one-year extension of his deadline for an Atlantic City turnaround, noting that the lingering effects of Superstorm Sandy in Oct. 2012 set back tourism in Atlantic City and much of the Jersey shore by more than a year. She also said continuing investment in non-casino attractions proves the resort has a future.

"There are people who believe this island, this magical place, is a gem," she said. "It's very rough but it's continuing to be polished. It just needs some time."

___

Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

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Fannie, Freddie hiking mortgage loan fees

Buying a home will be more costly next year for many people thanks to planned fee increases.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will hike the guarantee fees on government-backed mortgage loans — fees that typically are passed along to borrowers and will result in higher mortgage rates.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced the policy change Dec. 9 as part of an effort to decrease the government-owned mortgage finance companies' presence in the U.S. mortgage market and bring private capital back into the mix.

"Any increased fees impact people's ability to obtain home ownership," said Brenda Clement, executive director of the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association, a nonprofit umbrella group for affordable housing and community development in Massachusetts. "The housing market has come back slowly, particularly for people at the low-income levels, and anything that increases fees or increases the complexity of buying a home is always problematic."

On Monday, Fannie and Freddie, which currently back about two-thirds of new U.S. mortgages, said fees will rise sharply for many borrowers who don't make down payments of at least
20 percent and don't have high enough credit scores — a large share of homebuyers.

The fee increases are especially hard to swallow in Massachusetts, a higher-
value area in terms of real estate and housing costs in general, said Peter Ruffini, incoming president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and regional vice president at Jack Conway Realtors in Norwell. "Whenever we hear news like this, oftentimes it impacts us to a greater extent," he said.

Interest rates already are expected to creep into the 
5 percent to 5.5 percent range, absent the fee increases, Ruffini noted. "Things like this affect a first-time homebuyer's ability to get into the market," Ruffini said. "It decreased their purchasing power, and it's tough to get a loan right now anyway."

Making mortgages more expensive, especially while interest rates already are rising, may inhibit the recovery and have unintended consequences, said David Abromowitz, a Boston attorney who specializes in affordable housing. "Raising the guaranty fees now won't make the housing system safer, as lenders are already screening out borrowers without high credit scores and strong, documented income," said Abromowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington, D.C., public policy think tank. "But it will make home-buying more costly, while rents are also shooting up — with the consumer losing out either way."

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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Tech startups create virtual farmers market

SAN FRANCISCO — If you want locally grown, organic cauliflower but can't make it to the farmers market you might be in luck.

A new crop of tech startups has begun to change the way people buy local groceries, creating new opportunities for small farmers and food makers.

An emerging online service called Good Eggs is among those using technology to bolster the market for locally produced foods that backers say are better for consumer health, farmworkers, livestock and the environment.

The San Francisco-based company offers more varieties of fruits, vegetables and artisan foods than many supermarkets and delivers them to customers at home or at work. Selection, however, is limited to what can be produced locally.

Good Eggs operates in four U.S. regions and plans to expand in an increasingly competitive market.

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Weak US card security made Target a juicy target

NEW YORK — The U.S. is the juiciest target for hackers hunting credit card information. And experts say incidents like the recent data theft at Target's stores will get worse before they get better.

That's in part because U.S. credit and debit cards rely on an easy-to-copy magnetic strip on the back of the card, which stores account information using the same technology as cassette tapes.

"We are using 20th century cards against 21st century hackers," says Mallory Duncan, general counsel at the National Retail Federation. "The thieves have moved on but the cards have not."

In most countries outside the U.S., people carry cards that use digital chips to hold account information. The chip generates a unique code every time it's used. That makes the cards more difficult for criminals to replicate. So difficult that they generally don't bother.

"The U.S. is the top victim location for card counterfeit attacks like this," says Jason Oxman, chief executive of the Electronic Transactions Association.

The breach that exposed the credit card and debit card information of as many as 40 million Target customers who swiped their cards between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15 is still under investigation. It's unclear how the breach occurred and what data, exactly, criminals have. Although security experts say no security system is fail-safe, there are several measures stores, banks and credit card companies can take to protect against these attacks.

Companies haven't enhanced security so far because it can be expensive. And while global credit and debit card fraud hit a record $11.27 billion last year, those costs accounted for just 5.2 cents of every $100 in transactions, according to the Nilson Report, which tracks global payments.

Another problem: retailers, banks and credit card companies each want someone else to foot most of the bill. Card companies want stores to pay to better protect their internal systems. Stores want cards companies to issue more sophisticated cards. Banks want to preserve the profits they get from older processing systems.

Card payment systems work much the way they have for decades. The magnetic strip on the back of a credit or debit card contains the cardholder's name, account number, the card's expiration date and one of two security codes. When the card is swiped at a store, an electronic conversation is begun between two banks. The store's bank, which pays the store right away for the item the customer bought, needs to make sure the customer's bank approves the transaction and will pay the store's bank. On average, the conversation takes 1.4 seconds.

During that time the customer's information flows through the network and is recorded, sometimes only briefly, on computers within the system controlled by payment processing companies. Retailers can store card numbers and expiration dates, but they are prohibited from storing more sensitive data such as the security codes printed on the backs of cards or other personal identification numbers.

Hackers been known to snag account information as it passes through the network or pilfer it from databases where it's stored. Target says there is no indication that the three or four-digit security codes on the back of customer credit cards were stolen. That would make it hard to use stolen account information to buy from most internet retail sites. But because the magnetic strips on cards in the U.S. are so easy to generate, thieves can simply reproduce them and issue fraudulent cards that look and feel like the real thing.

"That's where the real value to the fraudsters is," says Chris Bucolo, senior manager of security consulting at ControlScan, which helps merchants comply with card processing security standards.

Once thieves capture the card information, they check the type of account, balances and credit limits, and sell replicas on the Internet. A simple card with a low balance and limited customer information can go for $3. A no-limit "black" card with the security number printed on the back of the card can go for $1,000, according to Al Pascual, a senior analyst at Javelin Strategy and Research, a security risk and fraud consulting firm.

To be sure, thieves can nab and sell card data from networks processing cards with digital chips, too, but they wouldn't be able to create fraudulent cards.

Credit card companies in the U.S. have a plan to replace magnetic strips with digital chips by the fall of 2015. But retailers worry the card companies won't go far enough. They want cards to have a chip, but they also want each transaction to require a personal identification number, or PIN, instead of a signature.

"Everyone knows that the signature is a useless authentication device," Duncan says.

Duncan, who represents retailers, says banks want to preserve the higher profits they can get when a signature is needed because there are fewer signature processing networks, and less price competition. The higher profits outweigh the cost of fraud, Duncan says.

"Compared to the tens of millions of transactions that are taking place every day, even the fraud that they have to pay for is small compared to the profit they are making from using less secure cards."

Even so, there are a few things retailers can do, too, to better protect customer data. The most vulnerable point in the transaction network, security experts say, is usually the merchant.

"Financial institutions are more used to having high levels of protection," says Pascual. "Retailers are still getting up to speed."

The simple, square, card swiping machines that consumers are used to seeing at most checkout counters are hard to infiltrate because they are completely separate from the Internet. But as retailers switch to faster, Internet-based payment systems they may expose customer data to hackers.

Retailers need to build robust firewalls around those systems to guard against attack, security experts say. They could also take further steps to protect customer data by using encryption, technology which scrambles the data so it looks like gibberish to anyone who accesses it unlawfully. These technologies can be expensive to install and maintain, however.

Thankfully, individual customers are not on the hook for fraudulent charges that result from security breaches. But these kinds of attacks do raise costs —and, likely, fees for all customers.

"Part of the cost in the system is for fraud protection," Oxman says. "It costs money, and someone's going to pay for it eventually."

Jonathan Fahey can be reached at http://twitter.com/JonathanFahey .

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Raul Castro issues stern warning to entrepreneurs

HAVANA — President Raul Castro issued a stern warning to entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of Cuba's economic reform, telling parliament on Saturday that "those pressuring us to move faster are moving us toward failure."

Castro has legalized small-scale, private businesses in nearly 200 fields since 2010, but has issued tighter regulations on businesses seen as going too far or competing excessively with state enterprises. In recent months, the government has banned the resale of imported hardware and clothing and cracked down on unlicensed private videogame and movie salons.

Castro threw his full weight behind such measures in an address to the biannual meeting of the communist legislature, saying "every step we take must be accompanied by the establishment of a sense of order."

"Inadequate controls by government institutions in the face of illegal activities by private businesspeople weren't resolved in a timely fashion, creating an environment of impunity and stimulating the accelerated growth of activities that were never authorized for certain occupations," Castro said.

He told lawmakers that Cuba wants better relations with the U.S. but will never give in to demands for changes to Cuba's government and economy, saying "we don't demand that the U.S. change its political or social system and we don't accept negotiations over ours."

"If we really want to move our bilateral relations forward, we'll have to learn to respect our differences," Castro said. "If not, we're ready to take another 55 years in the same situation."

Cuba blames a half-century-old U.S. embargo for strangling its economy but Castro's government has also acknowledged that it must reform the state-run economy with a gradual opening to private enterprise. Many Cubans have enthusiastically seized opportunities to make more money with their own businesses, but new entrepreneurs and outside experts alike complain that the government has been sending mixed messages about its openness to private enterprise.

The conflicting signals were apparent in Cuba's handling of the dozens of private home cinemas and video game salons that sprung up around the country this year, drawing crowds of young people willing to spend a few dollars for access to the latest home entertainment technology imported, purportedly for private use, by Cubans returning from the U.S., Canada or other countries.

The government denounced the cinemas as spreading uncultured drivel to the young, and ordered them closed last month for stretching the boundaries on the kinds of private businesses allowed under reforms instituted by Castro. Then came the backlash, with entrepreneurs bemoaning thousands of dollars in lost investment and moviegoers saying they were exasperated by heavy-handedness toward a harmless diversion. The official reaction was swift, and unprecedented.

An article in the Communist Party newspaper Granma on last month acknowledged there was wide disapproval of the ban, and hinted it was being rethought. The same Granma article also offered a full-throated defense of the ban on the reselling of imported hardware and clothes.

Castro appeared to justify all of the recent moves to clamp down on private enterprise.

"We're not ignorant of the fact that those pressuring to move faster are moving us toward failure, toward disunity, and are damaging the people's confidence and support for the construction of socialism and the independence and sovereignty of Cuba."

Several Cubans interviewed on the streets of Havana said they generally approved of Castro's speech but wanted more details on economic reforms, and a softer line toward the U.S.

"I would have liked to know exactly what pace of reform we're going to follow," said Daniel Mora, a 72-year-old retired state worker. "And he told the United States that we're ready for another 55 years of blockade, but I'm not ready for that. I'm 72 and I'd like to see the light at the end of the tunnel before I die."

Castro praised the Cold War ties between Cuba and South Africa's anti-apartheid movement but did not mention his handshake with President Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela's funeral this month.

He lamented that growth would come in at 2.7 percent for 2013, nearly a full percentage below the predicted 3.6 percent. He said growth for 2014 was expected to be 2.2 percent.

It is nearly impossible to know on the true size of Cuba's economy because Cuba uses two currencies, a convertible peso for tourists that's pegged to the U.S. dollar and a Cuban peso worth about 4 cents, and the government doesn't clearly distinguish between them in economic statistics.

___

Anne-Marie Garcia contributed to this report.

____

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein

Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ARodriguezAP

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Space suit issue prompts delay of second spacewalk

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronauts removed an old space station pump Saturday, sailing through the first of a series of urgent repair spacewalks to revive a crippled cooling line.

The two Americans on the crew, Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins, successfully pulled out the ammonia pump with a bad valve __ well ahead of schedule. That task had been planned for the next spacewalk, originally scheduled for Monday but now delayed until Tuesday, Christmas Eve, because of the need for a suit swap.

"An early Christmas," observed Mission Control as Mastracchio tugged the refrigerator-size pump away from its nesting spot.

If Mastracchio and Hopkins keep up the quick work, two spacewalks may be enough to complete the installation of a spare pump and a third spacewalk will not be needed as originally anticipated.

Several hours after Saturday's spacewalk ended, Mission Control bumped spacewalk 2 to Tuesday to give Mastracchio enough time to prepare a spare suit. His original suit was compromised when he inadvertently turned on a water switch in the air lock at the end of Saturday's excursion. NASA officials said Saturday night that it's unclear whether a third spacewalk will be needed and when it might occur, if required. A third spacewalk had been slated for Christmas Day before the latest turn of events. NASA requires a day off between spacewalks for astronaut rest.

The space station breakdown 10 days earlier left one of two identical cooling loops too cold and forced the astronauts to turn off all nonessential equipment inside the orbiting lab, bringing scientific research to a near-halt and leaving the station in a vulnerable state.

Mission Control wanted to keep the spacewalkers out even longer Saturday to get even further ahead, but a cold and uncomfortable Mastracchio requested to go back. The spacewalk ended after 5½ hours, an hour short on time but satisfyingly long on content.

Earlier, Mastracchio managed to unhook all the ammonia fluid and electrical lines on the pump with relative ease, occasionally releasing a flurry of frozen ammonia flakes that brushed against his suit. A small O-ring floated away, but he managed to retrieve it.

"I got it, I got it, I got it. Barely," Mastracchio said as he stretched out his hand.

"Don't let that go, that's a stocking stuffer," Mission Control replied.

"Don't tell my wife," Mastracchio said, chuckling, as he put it in a small pouch for trash.

Mastracchio, a seven-time spacewalker, and Hopkins, making his first, wore extra safety gear as they worked outside. NASA wanted to prevent a recurrence of the helmet flooding that nearly drowned an Italian astronaut last summer, so Saturday's spacewalkers had snorkels in their suits and water-absorbent pads in their helmets.

To everyone's relief, the spacewalkers remained dry while outside. But midway through the excursion, Mastracchio's toes were so cold that he had to crank up the heat in his boots. Mission Control worried aloud whether it was wise to extend the spacewalk to get ahead, given Mastracchio's discomfort.

Not quite two hours later, Mastracchio had enough as he clutched the old pump. When Mission Control suggested even more get-ahead chores, he replied, "I'd like to stow this old module and kind of clean up and call it a day." He said a couple of things were bothering him, not just temperature, and declined to elaborate when asked by Mission Control what was wrong.

Flight controllers obliged him. Once the old pump was secured to a temporary location, the spacewalkers started gathering up their tools to go in.

Adding to the excitement 260 miles (418 kilometers) up, a smoke alarm went off in the space station as the astronauts toiled outside. It was quickly found to be a false alarm.

The pump replacement is a huge undertaking attempted only once before, back in 2010 on this very unit. The two astronauts who tackled the job three years ago were in Mission Control, offering guidance. Mastracchio promised to bring back a wire tie installed on the pump by the previous spacewalkers. "Oh, awesome, thanks Rick," replied the astronaut in Mission Control who put it on.

The 780-pound (354-kilogram) pump is about the size of a double-door refrigerator and extremely cumbersome to handle, with plumbing full of toxic ammonia. Any traces of ammonia on the spacesuits were dissipated before the astronauts went back inside, to avoid further contamination.

NASA's plan initially called for the pump to be disconnected in the first spacewalk, pulled out on the second spacewalk and a fresh spare put in, and then all the hookups of the new pump completed in the third outing.

In the days following the Dec. 11 breakdown, flight controllers attempted in vain to fix the bad valve through remote commanding. Then they tried using a different valve to regulate the temperature of the overly cold loop, with some success. But last Tuesday, NASA decided the situation was severe enough to press ahead with the spacewalks. Although the astronauts were safe and comfortable, NASA did not want to risk another failure and a potential loss of the entire cooling system, needed to radiate the heat generated by on-board equipment.

NASA delayed a delivery mission from Wallops Island, Virginia, to accommodate the spacewalks. That flight by the private firm Orbital Sciences Corp., which should have occurred this past week, is now targeted for Jan. 7.

Until Saturday, U.S. spacewalks had been on hold since July, when an Italian astronaut's helmet was flooded with water from the cooling system of his suit. Luca Parmitano barely got back inside alive.

Engineers traced the problem to a device in the suit that turned out to be contaminated — how and why, no one yet knows.

For Saturday's spacewalk, Hopkins wore Parmitano's suit, albeit with newly installed and thoroughly tested components.

Just in case, NASA had Mastracchio and Hopkins build snorkels out of plastic tubing from their suits, before going out. The snorkels will be used in case water starts building up in their helmets. They also put absorbent pads in their helmets; the pads were launched from Earth following the July scare. None of the precautions were needed, in the end.

Besides the two Americans, three Russian and one Japanese astronaut are living on the space station, all men.

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Machinists to vote again on Boeing 777X offer

SEATTLE — National leaders of the Machinists union are scheduling a vote on a proposed contract between Boeing and Puget Sound machinists, despite objections from local union officials who have already rejected the company's latest offer.

The lead negotiator for the union's national headquarters, Rich Michalski, told The Seattle Times in a phone interview that a vote is set for Jan. 3, the newspaper reported Saturday.

The contract would secure work on Boeing new 777X airplane at a time when 22 states are vying for those jobs. The company says it expects to pick a location early next year.

The local union, District 751, said on its website Saturday that there's no stopping the vote and urged members to reject the contract.

"Despite objections from District 751 leadership, the International has insisted on a vote on January 3rd to ensure you spend your holidays studying and debating a concessionary proposal that is largely unchanged from the one you rejected by a 2-to-1 margin on Nov. 13," the statement said.

"We're adamantly recommending that our members reject the offer," local union spokesman Bryan Corliss said Saturday. "The timing will make it hard to get members information to make a decision."

National union spokesman Frank Larkin said Saturday the vote is being scheduled to respond to members who have been calling for one and in keeping with a long union tradition that members have the final say.

He added: "It's obviously a controversial proposal. There is a range of opinions. The vote will be by secret ballot and the members will have the last word."

Local leaders of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers have faced pressure in recent days for declining to put Boeing's last offer to a vote.

"The terms of Boeing's enhanced contract offer to the IAM on December 12 stand," Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said in a statement Saturday. "If ratified by the membership, Boeing would honor that contract."

Boeing has gotten proposals from 22 states covering 54 locations that all want to build the plane. Boeing says it is narrowing the list down and is telling each location its status in the process. Boeing isn't releasing the list publicly.

State officials in North Carolina said Boeing told them Friday that sites in Charlotte, Greensboro and Kinston were out of the running.

The 777X is expected to bring thousands of well-paying jobs to wherever it is assembled.

Boeing began looking for a new location to build the successor to its popular 777 after union workers in Washington state rejected a deal that would have kept the work there.

The latest round of contract talks collapsed earlier this month when local Machinists officials said they could not recommend Boeing's latest proposal to members.

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Truck owner unsure about block heater, synthetic oil

I have a 2006 Ford F-150 with the 5.4 V8 engine. The truck has only 32,000 miles on it. When the oil is changed, sometimes it is somewhat milky. I know this is most likely from cold morning starts coupled with a 2-mile drive to work. The engine barely has time to warm up. My question is the use of a block heater overnight when it is extremely cold. Will the heat from the block heater cause engine condensation? The heater makes a huge difference in ease of start-up and the engine warms quicker. Should I not be using the block heater? I started using synthetic oil as well.

Entirely appropriate question with the recent spell of frigid temperatures across much of the country. I'm a firm believer in engine block heaters in areas where temperatures drop to zero or below. The benefits of easier cranking, faster starting, lower stress on the starter motor, battery and engine and faster lubrication to critical components far outweigh any — well, I can't think of any downsides!

Condensation inside the crankcase is going to occur during cold weather starts when moisture in the air inside the engine is rapidly heated upon start-up. The only way to eliminate this moisture is to drive the fully warmed up vehicle long enough to evaporate and expel the moisture through the PCV system. In addition, more frequent oil changes during cold weather can be a useful tool in removing moisture and fuel contamination from the oil.

Does using a block heater contribute to higher levels of moisture contamination? I don't know for sure, but the fact that a block heater slowly warms up the engine, coolant (and to some extent the oil) and maintains that temperature would likely contribute little if any additional condensation.

Thus, I think your use of synthetic oil and a block heater is a very solid game plan for winter.

I have a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan. If it sits three to four days without starting, the battery is dead. I have taken it to the dealer several times and they cannot find anything wrong with the charging system. Their report states "tested for excessive IOD and it is at 14ma and well within spec. Saw the IOD jump to 3M randomly for just a second but never above the max spec of allowable draw." They advised to "pull the IOD fuse" when planning on not starting the vehicle for a few days at a time. They also told me that this was normal, which I find difficult to believe.

This is not normal. Your first test should be to disconnect the battery while the vehicle is parked, then after three or four days reconnect it and see if the vehicle will start. If not, the battery is not holding a charge and needs replacement. This could easily be the issue.

If it does start after three to four days, there must be some type of parasitic current draw that's draining the battery. Current drawn with the ignition off should not exceed roughly 50ma (.05 amperes). This level of parasitic current will not kill a good battery in a few days.

The "IOD" fuse in your vehicle controls ignition-off power to those circuits with KAMs — keep-alive memories. Removing this fuse will only stop current flow to those components but won't stop a parasitic draw from some other source.

To find a parasitic draw, disconnect the negative battery cable and connect an ammeter or 12-volt taillamp bulb in series between the cable and negative terminal. If the bulb glows and/or the ammeter reads a significant parasitic loss, pull each and every fuse and relay, one at a time. Hopefully the current flow will stop when you find the circuit drawing current.

A small lamp, such as the glovebox light, or a stuck electrical relay would be likely culprits in a dead battery after several days.

Paul Brand, author of "How to Repair Your Car," is an automotive troubleshooter, driving instructor and former race-car driver. Readers may write to him at: Star Tribune, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn., 55488 or via email at paulbrand@startribune.com. Please explain the problem in detail and include a daytime phone number. Because of the volume of mail, we cannot provide personal replies.

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Cool Deal fills FIFA cup

A Plymouth company will help hydrate soccer fans across the globe under a licensing deal with the Federation Internationale de Football Association.

Cool Gear International will produce FIFA-themed, reusable chillers, tumblers and its signature coolgearcans to mark the 2014 FIFA World Cup that will be hosted by Brazil from June 12 to July 13.

"We've done some really fun stuff for the World Cup," Cool Gear founder and CEO Donna Roth said. "It's an exciting deal for us because it's hitting a different market for us — sports — but still is viable for (the mass market) as well."

Cool Gear pursued the FIFA contract because it recently broke into the sporting goods market, and it has strong distributors in Brazil and key countries around the world, according to Roth.

"We developed a line of products that was more geared to the sporting goods industries — higher scale bottles, with a little more bells and whistles," she said.

In addition to World Cup venues, the collectable products will be sold in North America, elsewhere in Brazil, Europe, Colombia, Africa and South Korea. They'll be available locally at Dick's Sporting Goods this month and at www.coolgearinc.com.

Roth, who categorized Cool Gear as a mid-middle market company, declined to reveal the value of the FIFA deal or privately held Cool Gear's annual revenue. Mid-middle market companies' revenue range from $50 million to 
$500 million.

"It will be a nice piece to add," Roth said of the FIFA deal. "The time frame is short. We'll get a big hit this first and second quarter, and then it will be over."

The FIFA deal — along with a three-year agreement signed with Coca-Cola in October — is part of a move by Cool Gear to get back into licensing.

Its predecessor company, Fun Designs, was heavily into licensing in the 1990s and had deals with companies including Disney, Warner Bros. and Nickelodeon. But at the same time, it was developing its Cool Gear brand, and when licensing royalties "went through the roof," it decided to concentrate on its own brand and renamed the company.

All of Cool Gear's products are proprietary, and it has more than 150 patents for them. Introduced this summer, its coolgearcan is a double-wall insulated, BPA-free plastic beverage holder that looks like a 12-ounce can, but is 
reusable and has a spill-proof slider lid.

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Health plan sticker shock ahead for some buyers

CHICAGO — As a key enrollment deadline hits Monday, many people without health insurance have been sizing up policies on the new government health care marketplace and making what seems like a logical choice: They're picking the cheapest one.

Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they're on the hook for most of the initial cost.

The prospect of sticker shock after Jan. 1, when those who sign up for policies now can begin getting coverage, is seen as a looming problem for a new national system that has been plagued by trouble since the new marketplaces went online in the states in October.

For those without insurance — about 15 percent of the population— "the lesson is it's important to understand the total cost of ownership of a plan," said Matt Eyles, a vice president of Avalere Health, a market analysis firm. "You just don't want to look only at the premium."

Counselors who have been helping people choose policies say many are focused only on the upfront cost, not what the insurance companies agree to pay.

"I am so deeply clueless about all of this," acknowledged one new buyer, Adrienne Matzen, 29, an actor in Chicago who's mostly been without insurance since she turned 21. Though she needs regular care for asthma and a thyroid condition, she says she's looking for a low monthly premium because she makes less than $20,000 a year.

Hospitals are worried that those who rack up uncovered medical bills next year won't be able to pay them, perpetuating one of the problems the new health care system is supposed to solve.

The new federal and state health insurance exchanges offer policies ranked as bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The bronze options have the lowest monthly premiums but high deductibles — the amount the policyholder must pay before the insurer picks up any of the cost of medical care.

On average, a bronze plan's deductible is more than $4,300, according to an analysis of marketplace plans in 19 states by Avalere Health. A consumer who upgrades to a silver plan could reduce the deductible to about $2,500. A top-of-the-line platinum plan has the lowest average deductible: $167.

Comprehensive data on premiums isn't available, but in one example, a 30-year-old in Chicago would pay an average of $222 per month for a bronze plan, $279 for a silver or $338 for a platinum.

The complexities of insurance are eye-glazing even for those who have it. Only 14 percent of American adults with insurance understand deductibles, according to one recent study.

The danger of a wrong snap judgment is great for those under financial pressure — especially those with modest incomes who make too much to qualify for the government subsidies available under the new health care system. Subsidies aren't available for individuals making more than $45,960.

Most of the uninsured make less than that, but many still pick the cheapest plans.

"Price rules," said John Foley, a Legal Aid counselor in Palm Beach, Fla., who has been helping people enroll.

Some applicants see the catch.

"The real big surprise was how much out-of-pocket would be required for our family," said David Winebrenner, 46, a financial adviser in Lebanon, Ky., whose deductible topped $12,000 for a family of six for a silver plan he was considering. The monthly premium: $1,400.

While the health law makes many preventive services free — such as vaccines, blood pressure screening and mammograms — most medical care is paid out of pocket until the deductible level is reached. Some of the new plans offer limited coverage for certain services before a patient has met the annual deductible. These services can include primary care, some prescription drugs and routine care for common chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

It's unclear how many plans provide this feature, and it may not be easy for consumers to tell.

Lynn Quincy of Consumers Union, a public policy group, suggests that consumers narrow their options to five plans, then go to each insurer's website to read the benefits summary. It spells out who pays what for two common situations: having a baby and managing Type 2 diabetes.

To be sure, the new health law did away with the whopping deductibles in plans previously offered to people without employer-provided coverage. Out-of-pocket costs are now capped at $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for a family.

But some people who have been paying their own medical bills, or leaving them unpaid at the hospital, seem surprised that health insurance doesn't cover more of the costs.

"They previously had no insurance coverage at all and so they might not be happy," said Cynthia Rahming, an enrollment counselor in Houston.

Fearing the sticker shock, Loyola University Health System in Chicago is offering payment plans to spread the out-of-pocket costs.

Some who had private insurance policies that were canceled may find that keeping the same deductibles may mean higher premiums.

In California, Diane Agnone complained in an online post on her state's health marketplace. "How is this affordable? I am a healthy 62-year-old single woman and these new premiums will cost me over $200 more per month than my existing plan."

The new insurance system requires policies to cover more services than some consumers had chosen to buy in the past.

"It's all a matter of having a budget and it only goes so far," said Agnone, an executive with a nonprofit charity based in Fairfield, which is about halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. "There is no winning in this."

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Associated Press writers Michael Blood in Los Angeles, Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston, Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Roger Alford in Frankfort, Ky., contributed to this report.

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To clean up coal, Obama pushes more oil production

DE KALB, Miss. — America's newest, most expensive coal-fired power plant is hailed as one of the cleanest on the planet, thanks to government-backed technology that removes carbon dioxide and keeps it out of the atmosphere.

But once the carbon is stripped away, it will be used to do something that is not so green at all.

It will extract oil.

When President Barack Obama first endorsed this "carbon-capture" technology, the idea was that it would fight global warming by sparing the atmosphere from more greenhouse gases. It makes coal plants cleaner by burying deep underground the carbon dioxide that typically is pumped out of smokestacks.

But that green vision proved too expensive and complicated. So the administration accepted a trade-off.

To help the environment, the government allows power companies to sell the carbon dioxide to oil companies, which pump it into old oil fields to force more crude to the surface. A side benefit is that the carbon gets permanently stuck underground.

The program shows the ingenuity of the oil industry, which is using government green-energy money to subsidize oil production. But it also showcases the environmental trade-offs Obama is willing to make, but rarely talks about, in his fight against global warming.

Companies have been injecting carbon dioxide into old oil fields for decades. But the tactic hasn't been seen as a pollution-control strategy until recently.

Obama has spent more than $1 billion on carbon-capture projects tied to oil fields and has pledged billions more for clean coal. Recently, the administration said it wanted to require all new coal-fired power plants to capture carbon dioxide. Four power plants in the U.S. and Canada planning to do so intend to sell their carbon waste for oil recovery.

Just last week former Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced he was joining the board of a company developing carbon capture technology.

The unlikely marriage of coal burners and oil producers hits a political sweet spot.

It silences critics who say the administration is killing coal and discouraging oil production. It appeases environmentalists who want Obama to get tougher on coal, the largest source of carbon dioxide.

It also allows Obama to make headway on a second-term push to tackle climate change, even though energy analysts predict that few coal plants will be built in the face of low natural gas prices and Environmental Protection Agency rules that require no controls on carbon for new natural gas plants.

"By using captured man-made carbon dioxide, we can increase domestic oil production, promote economic development, create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and drive innovation," Judi Greenwald told Congress in July, months before she was hired as deputy director of the Energy Department's climate, environment and energy efficiency office.

Before joining the Energy Department, Greenwald headed the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative, a consortium of coal producers, power companies and state and environmental officials promoting the process.

But the environmental benefits of this so-called enhanced oil recovery aren't as certain as the administration advertises.

"Enhanced oil recovery just undermines the entire logic of it," said Kyle Ash of Greenpeace, one of the few environmental groups critical of the process. "They can't have it both ways, but they want to really, really bad."

That has become a theme in some of Obama's green-energy policies. To promote new, cleaner technologies, the administration has allowed companies to do things it otherwise would oppose as harmful to the environment.

For wind power, the government has shielded companies from prosecution for killing protected birds with giant turbines.

For corn-based ethanol, the administration underestimated the environmental effects of millions of new acres of corn farming. The government even failed to conduct required air and water quality studies to document its toll on the environment.

The administration wants to make similar concessions to make carbon-capture technology a success.

The EPA last week exempted carbon dioxide injection from strict hazardous waste laws. It classified the wells used to inject the gas underground for oil production in a category that offers less protection for drinking water.

Oil companies using carbon to get oil also aren't subject now to the tougher reporting and monitoring requirements that experts say are necessary to ensure the carbon stays underground, and they're fighting an EPA proposal that would require them to be if the carbon comes from power plants covered by the new federal rules.

"It amounts to looking the other way," said George Peridas, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports using carbon for oil extraction. The group believes it replaces dirtier oil or oil produced in more environmentally sensitive places and reduces carbon in the atmosphere.

The administration also did not evaluate the global warming emissions associated with the oil production when it proposed requiring power plants to capture carbon.

A 2009 peer-reviewed paper found that for every ton of carbon dioxide injected underground into an oil field, four times more carbon dioxide is released when the oil produced is burned.

"There is no form of energy that is free of impacts. It is always about trade-offs and someone will always be unhappy," the paper's author, Paulina Jaramillo, the assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an interview.

Administration officials counter by saying the oil was going to be extracted anyway, so the policy should only be seen as reducing carbon dioxide from coal plants.

The administration also promotes the benefits for energy security. Every barrel of oil produced here will mean one less produced abroad.

"We are taking carbon dioxide that would have gone to the atmosphere in coal plants, storing it and displacing imported oil with domestic oil," said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, asking a question posed by The Associated Press on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program in September.

In Mississippi, where Southern Company's Kemper County power plant eventually will supply two oil producers with carbon dioxide, Denbury Resources Inc. says it would not be able to produce oil there otherwise.

Denbury is already using carbon dioxide trapped beneath a salt dome near Jackson to produce oil in the state. But it can use more carbon dioxide than nature can provide. That's where the power plant comes in.

The federal support for Kemper lowers the cost of installing the carbon capture equipment, and ultimately, the cost of carbon dioxide for the oil producer.

The company has entered into a long-term contract with Southern for carbon dioxide. It will permit Denbury to recover a total of between 3.5 million and 4.2 million barrels of oil, a tiny fraction of the 91 million barrels of oil the world consumed daily last month. But for the oil companies, it still means millions of dollars more in revenue.

The nearly $5-billion project received $270 million from the Energy Department, prior to the Obama administration, and $279 million more in federal tax credits.

A member of Mississippi's Public Service Commission, Brandon Presley, bristled over what he described as pressure from Washington to approve the project, which already has meant a 15 percent increase in utility bills for Mississippi Power customers.

Secretary Chu wrote Presley a letter in May 2010 that said without the Kemper County project, the U.S. government might not be able to use the technology anywhere. The commission approved it over Presley's objection.

"The (Energy Department) is knee deep in this," Presley said. "I don't think you'll find anywhere in the country where you've found more heavy-handedness by the federal government or by elected officials than what went on here to try and get this passed."

In an interview with the AP, Chu said pairing oil production with pollution reduction is an imperfect method for "developing the capture and ramping up the technologies."

"It's not one for one," he said. "You are not sequestering all the carbon dioxide."

While Kemper is the first, it's not the only one.

The Energy Department has provided $1.1 billion to six projects that capture carbon and sell it to oil companies. Four of those projects are power plants.

The EPA recently highlighted two of those projects, with a combined $858 million in federal money, as a way to reduce power plant emissions. Both plan on selling the carbon dioxide to oil companies.

"We sold the carbon dioxide immediately," said Laura Miller, a spokeswoman for Summit Power's Texas Clean Energy Project, which is still working on getting the financing needed to break ground on the 400-megawatt power plant in West Texas. "The projects that are still alive are the ones that are selling the carbon dioxide."

Despite billions in federal aid, coal projects that simply stored carbon dioxide failed to take off.

In 2010, a plan for a $1.8 billion power plant in Illinois was replaced with a scaled-back project after it couldn't secure private financing. In July 2011, American Electric Power, shelved a project in West Virginia that had received $334 million in late 2009, in part because a Democrat-controlled Congress failed to enact legislation, backed by the administration, that would have created a marketplace for carbon dioxide.

Oil recovery provided a market for carbon dioxide in the absence of federal legislation or regulations that put a price on it. For power plant operators, it could help offset the cost of the technology to capture it.

But the marriage was rocky from the start.

Oil companies want to use the least amount of carbon dioxide possible to extract oil, not exactly what is desired in a strategy to reduce pollution. Oil producers, no stranger to federal regulations, don't want to deal with any more rules, such as strict and costly monitoring and reporting requirements aimed at verifying that the carbon doesn't escape.

On the coal side, it takes more energy, and thus more coal and more carbon dioxide pollution, to run the equipment needed to capture carbon and compress it to be sent down a pipeline to an oil field.

It's the other environmental effects that have local environmentalists concerned.

There still is a 31,000-acre surface mine, and the other pollutants that power plants emit that could sully the air locally. Southern Co. was recently cited by the state for discharges from its reservoir on site, which the company blames on excessive rainfall and the fact that equipment that draws water from the reservoir for use in the plant was not ready.

"If you add up all the environmental costs, this is not going to be green," said Stan Flint, a Jackson-based consultant who works with environmental groups.

In June, the Energy Department and California Energy Commission raised serious environmental concerns about a California-based carbon capture-enhanced oil recovery project funded by the Obama administration and recognized by the EPA when it released its power plant standards.

In a preliminary environmental evaluation, state and federal officials found the Hydrogen Energy California Project would fail to comply with laws and standards in eight out of 16 environmental areas evaluated. The concerns included whether the project would comply with state landfill rules and its impacts on the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, a protected species.

Other studies have looked at the association between carbon dioxide injection and earthquakes. A peer-reviewed study published in November linked for the first time earthquakes in Texas to the injection of carbon dioxide in oil fields.

Another potential risk is blowouts. Many oil fields that are ideal candidates for carbon dioxide injection have many old and abandoned wells that may or may not be plugged properly.

Denbury Resources has had a series of uncontrolled blowouts in recent years, as the pressure created by injecting carbon dioxide tests the cement plugs in long-shuttered wells. The largest, and one that was responsible for one of the largest environmental fines in Mississippi in the past decade, occurred in 2011 at the Tinsley Field, one of several old oil fields that will receive carbon from Southern Co.'s power plant.

The company paid $662,500 for a blowout that vented carbon dioxide, oil and drilling mud for 37 days. So much carbon dioxide came out that it settled in some hollows, suffocating deer and other animals, Mississippi officials said. The company ultimately drilled a new well to plug the old one, and removed 27,000 tons of drilling mud and contaminated soil and 32,000 barrels of liquids from the site.

The company still claims it's green because of the carbon it is storing as part of its oil production process.

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Follow Dina Cappiello on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dinacappiello

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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

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AP-GfK poll: Health law seen as eroding coverage

WASHINGTON — Americans who already have health insurance are blaming President Barack Obama's health care overhaul for their rising premiums and deductibles, and overall 3 in 4 say the rollout of coverage for the uninsured has gone poorly.

An Associated Press-GfK poll finds that health care remains politically charged going into next year's congressional elections. Keeping the refurbished HealthCare.gov website running smoothly is just one of Obama's challenges, maybe not the biggest.

The poll found a striking level of unease about the law among people who have health insurance and aren't looking for government help. Those are the 85 percent of Americans who the White House says don't have to be worried about the president's historic push to expand coverage for the uninsured.

In the survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage say their policies will be changing next year — mostly for the worse. Nearly 4 in 5 (77 percent) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law's passage.

Sixty-nine percent say their premiums will be going up, while 59 percent say annual deductibles or copayments are increasing.

Only 21 percent of those with private coverage said their plan is expanding to cover more types of medical care, though coverage of preventive care at no charge to the patient has been required by the law for the past couple of years.

Fourteen percent said coverage for spouses is being restricted or eliminated, and 11 percent said their plan is being discontinued.

"Rightly or wrongly, people with private insurance looking at next year are really worried about what is going to happen," said Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who tracks public opinion on health care issues. "The website is not the whole story."

Employers trying to control their health insurance bills have been shifting costs to workers for years, but now those changes are blamed increasingly on "Obamacare" instead of the economy or insurance companies.

Political leanings seemed to affect perceptions of eroding coverage, with larger majorities of Republicans and independents saying their coverage will be affected.

The White House had hoped that the Oct. 1 launch of open enrollment season for the uninsured would become a teaching moment, a showcase of the president's philosophy that government can help smooth out the rough edges of life in the modern economy for working people.

Instead, the dysfunctional website became a parable for Republicans and others skeptical of government.

At the same time, a cresting wave of cancellation notices hit millions who buy their policy directly from an insurer. That undercut one of Obama's central promises — that you can keep the coverage you have if you like it. The White House never clearly communicated the many caveats to that promise.

Disapproval of Obama's handling of health care topped 60 percent in the poll.

With the website working better and enrollments picking up, Democrats are hoping negative impressions will quickly fade in the rearview mirror. The poll found that Democrats still have an edge over Republicans, by 32 percent to 22 percent, when it comes to whom the public trusts to handle health care.

But other potential bumps are just ahead for Obama's law.

It is unclear whether everyone who wants and needs coverage by Jan. 1 will be able to get it through the new online insurance markets. Some people who have to switch plans because their policies were cancelled may find that their new insurance covers different drugs, or that they have to look for other doctors.

In the poll, taken just after the revamped federal website was unveiled, 11 percent of Americans said they or someone in their household had tried to sign up for health insurance in the new marketplaces.

Sixty-two percent of those said they or the person in their household ran into problems. About one-fourth of all who tried managed to enroll. Half said they were not able to buy insurance, and the remaining quarter said they weren't sure.

Phyllis Dessel, 63, of Reading, Pa., believes she is finally enrolled after 50 attempts online. The retired social worker, a political independent, currently has her own private insurance.

When Dessel described her experience, she jokingly asked, "Do you mind if I cry?"

Thanks to tax credits available under the law, she was able to save about $100 a month on her coverage. But she had to switch carriers because a plan with her current insurer cost more than she was willing to pay. She hasn't gotten an invoice yet from her new insurance company.

The premiums were "not at all" what she expected, said Dessel. "They were much, much higher."

A supporter of Obama's overhaul, she believes changes are needed to make the coverage more affordable.

"I think with a lot of amendments or updates, it could be very, very helpful and beneficial," said Dessel. "I know a lot of people who don't have insurance. My hairdresser, my plumber don't have insurance and they're not going to get it if it's not affordable."

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted Dec. 5-9 and involved online interviews with 1,367 adults. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for all respondents.

The survey was conducted using KnowledgePanel, a probability-based Internet panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Respondents to the survey were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods, and were later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided with the ability to access the Internet at no cost to them.

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AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and Associated Press writer Stacy A. Anderson contributed to this report.

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Online:

AP-GfK Poll: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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Chamber lists priorities for next Boston mayor

BOSTON — Boston business leaders are out with a list of priorities for the city's incoming mayor.

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce unveiled a "growth agenda" that outlines four key initiatives the group hopes Mayor-elect Martin Walsh will focus on after taking office on Jan. 6.

The chamber is calling for Walsh to work with business and government leaders throughout Greater Boston on infrastructure improvements including the expansion of South Station, upgrades to the Port of Boston and new international connections from Logan International Airport.

The report also asks Walsh to work toward lowering of the city's commercial property tax rate, a streamlining the permitting process and relaxing the current cap on charter schools in Boston.

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How the AP-GfK poll was conducted

The Associated Press-GfK poll on the health care overhaul was conducted by GfK Public Affairs and Corporate Communications Dec. 5-9. It is based on online interviews of 1,367 adults who are members of GfK's nationally representative KnowledgePanel.

The original sample was drawn from a panel of respondents recruited via phone or mail survey methods. GfK provides Internet access to panel recruits who don't already have it. With a probability basis and coverage of people who otherwise couldn't access the Internet, online surveys using KnowledgePanel are nationally representative.

Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.

As is done routinely in surveys, results were weighted, or adjusted, to ensure that responses accurately reflect the population's makeup by factors such as age, sex, race, education and phone usage.

No more than 1 time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 3.5 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all adults in the U.S. were polled.

There are other sources of potential error in polls, including the wording and order of questions.

The questions and results are available at http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com .

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RV users help Amazon keep up with holiday rush

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. — Twinkling lights, decorated trees and bustling campgrounds. Those are signs of the Christmas season in Campbellsville, Ky., where the Amazon.com distribution center recruits an armada of RV owners as seasonal workers to help fill holiday orders.

They're dubbed the "CamperForce" by the world's largest online retailer. The hundreds of temporary workers are assigned packing, sorting and collection duties at Amazon facilities in Kentucky, Kansas and Nevada, roles meant to keep orders flowing during the yuletide rush.

Swarms of workers take up temporary residence in campgrounds. For many, it's another short-term stint on a nonstop journey. It's a lifestyle and mindset for the retirees, empty nesters and younger parents who shuck traditions of home and work to roam from campsite to campsite, job to job.

The stints last about three months.

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Michelin recalls 1.2 million tires in US

WASHINGTON — Tire-maker Michelin says it is recalling about 1.2 million tires sold in the U.S. because an increasing number are experiencing tread loss or rapid air loss.

The tires are commonly used for pickup trucks, heavy-duty vans, small RVs and commercial light trucks. The Greenville, S.C-based company says no deaths or injuries have been reported because of the tires.

The tires, known as Michelin LTX M/S tires, were manufactured between January 2010 and June 2012. They were sold as original equipment on some vehicles and as new replacement tires.

The company says that fewer than 200 of the tires have been returned by customers. Owners can have them replaced at Michelin stores for no charge.

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China bans shellfish imports from US West Coast

SEATTLE — China has suspended imports of shellfish from the U.S. West Coast, cutting off one of the biggest export markets for Northwest companies.

KUOW public radio reports (http://bit.ly/1fe35To) that the Chinese government imposed the ban after discovering that recent shipments of geoduck clams from Northwest waters had high levels of arsenic and a toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

The Chinese government says the ban that started last week will continue indefinitely.

Clams, oysters and all other two-shelled bivalves harvested off Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Northern California are affected.

The U.S. exported $68 million worth of geoduck clams last year — most of which came from Puget Sound. Nearly 90 percent of those geoduck exports went to China.

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Information from: KUOW-FM, http://www.kuow.org/

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