A look at pension problems, solutions in US cities

CHARLESTON, W.Va.: Bigger and bigger pension costs were draining the city's general fund until a new law helped the city to set aside more assets for future benefits. The city also created a new plan providing less generous benefits for new police and fire employees.

CHICAGO: The city's four pension funds were 36 percent funded as of Dec. 31, 2012, and had an unfunded liability of $19.5 billion. The city estimates that without changes, its required contribution to the funds will grow from $479.5 million in 2013 to $1.087 billion in 2015 and to $1.26 billion by 2020. Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants state lawmakers to suspend cost-of-living increases, increase employee pension contributions and give employees the option of a 401(k)-style plan.

NEW YORK: Changes to the pension system mean new workers will contribute a greater amount toward their own pension, and many workers will no longer be able to use overtime hours in the calculations of pension amounts.

OMAHA, Neb.: The city has nearly $800 million in unfunded pension liabilities, mostly because of shortfalls in the police and fire fund. New contracts will require increased pension contributions from police and firefighters and promise fewer benefits to new hires. The city hopes to fully fund its pension system by 2055.

PHILADELPHIA: The city's unfunded pension liability was $5 billion as of March — and the amount it must set aside each year has doubled in the last decade. The city has proposed creating a new hybrid plan that combines a pension with a new 401(k)-type plan for new non-uniformed employees.

PORTLAND, Ore.: A big chunk of Portland's pension system is supported by a dedicated property tax. This unusual arrangement ensures that the retirement system doesn't strain the city's day-to-day revenues.

PROVIDENCE, R.I.: With the city on the brink of bankruptcy, the mayor negotiated concessions with unions and retirees to reduce its unfunded liability of more than $900 million by nearly $180 million.

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Lew warns of dangers if borrowing limit not raised

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says it will be "dangerous" and "reckless" for Congress to pass an October deadline without raising the government's borrowing limit.

Lew said Sunday that on Oct. 17 the government will lose the capacity to borrow because he will have exhausted all the extraordinary measures he has been using since May to free up room for more borrowing. He said the government has never before lost its borrowing ability.

In a CNN interview, Lew said that the government will have about $30 billion of cash on hand, but he said this was not a "responsible amount of cash to run the government on."

He called on Congress to raise the $16.7 trillion borrowing limit before the deadline to avoid damage to the government's credit standing.

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Morocco's unemployed march to demand jobs

RABAT, Morocco — Some 2,000 jobless Moroccans marched through the capital Sunday, demanding the government sort out the nation's unemployment by giving them jobs in public sector.

Like the rest of North Africa, youth unemployment, especially among university graduates, is a persistent social woe that successive governments have been unable to tackle.

Though the official unemployment rate is only 9 percent in this North African country, it is nearly double for university graduates, and 30 percent for those under 34.

For the past several years, there have been nearly daily protests in the capital by groups of unemployed university graduates asking for public sector jobs.

"The solution for unemployment is to create government jobs, especially for those with university degrees," said Jawad Karoom, who graduated with a degree in nuclear physics in 2012.

Most of the marchers, who came from all across the country, dismissed the idea of getting a job in the private sector.

"The private sector is not well organized and there are no guarantees for wages or good benefits — the public sector guarantees dignity," said Youssef Ben Ibrahim, who holds a Master's degree in French literature and has been unemployed since his graduation two years ago.

Past governments have appeased the unemployed graduates by handing out a certain number of government jobs every year, but the Islamist-led government currently in power said government bureaucracy was swollen with useless jobs and the practice is over.

Protesters also denounced the government practice of insisting on exams to determine the skill level of job applicants.

The government has been under increasing pressure over a faltering economy and efforts to cut expensive fuel subsidies.

Moroccan university education, which is free, has also been criticized for not preparing graduates for the job market.

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Local fight rages in Maine over tar sands oil

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — A proposed ordinance designed to block tar sands oil from being transported to South Portland has set off a fiery debate over what impact it will have on the community and the city's bustling waterfront.

Opponents of the thick, gooey oil derived from tar sands in Canada fear a 236-mile underground pipeline that transports crude oil from South Portland to Montreal could be used in reverse to send tar sands oil from Canada through Maine.

They say the proposed ordinance, which will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot, is the only way to ensure the oil doesn't flow into the city, harming the environment and residents' health. Their concerns mirror those against Canada's Keystone XL pipeline that would carry tar sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico.

But critics of the local proposal say it is too broadly written and its passage will stifle future development of existing tank farms, distribution centers and other petroleum facilities that line South Portland's waterfront.

"You're taking a potential impact of hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs and millions of dollars in investment in the community," said Chris Bowring, former South Portland mayor and city councilor, who has joined opposition to the proposed ordinance.

South Portland's oil terminals are some of the largest on the East Coast; the port brings in millions of barrels of refined products, such as heating oil and diesel fuels.

Protect South Portland, the group behind the proposal, says Portland Pipe Line Corporation hopes to use the pipeline to transport tar sands oil and build nearby smoke stacks. While the company made that proposal in 2008, it says no such project is in the works now.

The anti-tar sands group, which gathered more than 3,000 signatures to get the ordinance on the ballot in the community of 25,000 residents, says the oil is dirtier than most other heavy crudes refined in the United States and riskier to transport. It also contains harmful chemicals and releases greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change, the group says.

"The long-term effects cause cancer, create lung disease ... It would totally change our way of life," said Cathy Chapman of Protect South Portland, which has the support of Mayor Tom Blake.

She sees the oil company's fierce opposition to the proposal as evidence that it has its eye on transporting tar sands.

Several Maine communities have passed symbolic resolutions opposing the oil, but Protect South Portland says the only way to make sure no tar sands plan moves forward is by passing the ordinance.

The city can't regulate pipelines, and the proposed ordinance doesn't mention tar sands. Instead, it seeks to ban the expansion and enlargement of any existing petroleum storage tanks or distribution facilities in South Portland's shipyard district and other areas, a move that would be necessary to reverse the pipeline and pump tar sands into the city.

But opponents say that language would also prevent existing petroleum-based companies from doing routine maintenance and upgrades and would eventually cause them to shut down.

"What they don't say is that it's also going to put a lot of other businesses out of business," said Jim Merrill, spokesman for Portland Pipe Line. "I think a lot of people out there signed this (petition) thinking it was one thing and are now waking up to the realization that this is something far different."

Natalie West, a former lawyer who helped craft the anti-tar sands ordinance, said the proposal is narrowly crafted to ensure that it blocks tar sands oil without having any significant impact on existing businesses.

"There's nothing in the language of the ordinance that will hurt business as it exists now," said Carol Masterson, a member of Protect South Portland.

Efforts by both sides to convince voters are now in full swing.

Anti-tar sands organizers have rented an office space to serve as headquarters and are putting up signs and knocking on doors to get votes. Chapman says their group is relying almost entirely on donations and volunteer hours from environmental groups, like the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Meanwhile, opponents of the ordinance have hired several media consultants and lawyers. They are garnering support from businesses along the waterfront and running advertisements, and they recently produced a report on the detrimental economic impact the ordinance could have, including the loss of 5,600 jobs and $250 million less in annual earnings over the next 10 years.

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Follow Alanna Durkin on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aedurkin

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Sloppy Silicon Valley techies find their style

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Silicon Valley has had a men's fashion problem dating back to its founders.

From their inception, tech companies went out of their way to be different. There would be no more top-down management, cubicles or business suits.

Thus leather sandals, elastic-waist jeans and old T-shirts became ubiquitous, and brilliant innovations took place in the dumpiest outfits.

But that's changing as a younger generation of engineers and designers have arrived in clothes that coordinate — even if they aren't wearing suits.

"There's definitely a shift happening here, and the age of the Silicon Valley culture has something to do with it," said image professional Joseph Rosenfeld.

"As a generation," he said, young professionals "tend to care more about style than engineers of the past."

The market has responded to this new attitude among the region's rising nerds, geeks and hackers with new online men's stores, personal style consultants and an array of high-end shops at Northern California's biggest mall. They're catering to the emerging members of a creative industry who, nonetheless, are seeking something of a uniform.

"They'll typically wear designer denim and a great button-up shirt by day, and throw on a sport coat at night to go to a cigar or wine bar," said Westfield Valley Fair mall general manager Matt Ehrie. "Silicon Valley's dressy attire would be casual Friday in most other parts of the country."

Josh Meyer, 30, a products manager at a leading high-tech firm, recognizes the generation gap. He said higher-level managers who have been in the industry for decades often wear baggy khakis and faded baseball shirts "like they're going to a barbeque," while millennials such as himself like to wear button-up dress shirts "high-quality denim jeans with a roll at the bottom, nice shoes or possibly boots."

"I can pick out techies just walking down the street by these outfits," he said.

The focus on men's fashion has emerged in a sector where 3 of 4 workers are males. And it's come late by comparison as women in technology have long faced style challenges.

Many have worked to strike a casual, professional and creative balance, even as blogs and news stories regularly focus on the image of female high-tech executives — from the extraordinarily stylish Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, featured in last month's Vogue, to Facebook's uber-chic COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Meanwhile, when men are similarly featured attention often shifts to casual attire — from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's famous hoodie to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs' black turtleneck.

"As much as we want to think there isn't a boys club, the Silicon Valley still feels very much run by men and there's a difference in expectations," says San Mateo-based image consultant Marina Sarmiento Feehan. "Women who rise to the top tend to be judged more, both by men and other women, and in order to succeed they do have to dress better."

With the nation's highest concentration of high-tech workers, accounting for almost a third of the jobs in the region, demographics show a younger, more affluent population than national averages. Newcomers tend to have the desire and the money to dress well, but they don't always have the time, so the men's fashion industry has responded by streamlining the process.

Erik Schnakenberg, founder and CEO of a new online men's store, Buck Mason, said his company focuses on "guys who want to look great, who are aware of style, and who are not going to spend their days in Bloomingdale's trying to find the newest piece. Tech guys are at the top of that list."

Buck Mason client Peter Dering is a firsthand example. When Dering launched his online startup Peek Design, which innovates and builds camera accessories, he worked marathon hours and had no time to shop. Still, he had both a personal and professional interest in looking sharp as he was raising $1.5 million and trying to hire top talent.

"You've got a lot of folks who think that their style doesn't matter because they sit behind a desk all day, but the fact of the matter is that it does make a difference," said Dering, noting that people who want to be taken seriously should dress appropriately.

Buck Mason sells American-made clothes in packages of matching neutral outfits, enough to dress a software engineer for a week with no fashion faux pas, and targets it's advertising online. The Silicon Valley is the company's top region for sales, Schnakenberg said.

Also working to accommodate techies, one of the country's best-performing malls, Westfield Valley Fair, has opened high-end men's stores this year, including Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Burberry and Louis Vuitton. The shops are grouped together with a separate outside entrance so shoppers don't have to fight past teens clogging the food court. And until now, such stores were mostly an hour away in San Francisco.

The change in the Silicon Valley men's fashion culture has made things interesting for image professionals such as Rosenfeld. For 13 years he was mostly a loner advising area professionals, but in recent months competitors have popped up, including ties + tees, a pair of Silicon Valley personal image consultants whose pitch includes, "The 90s called. They want their drab khakis back."

Still, Rosenfeld welcomes the new focus on fashion. "Birkenstocks with white socks was hideous back then, and it hasn't gotten any better," he said. "It's time to up the ante."

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5 achievements that haven't won a Nobel Prize

STOCKHOLM — The announcements of this year's Nobel Prize winners will start Monday with the medicine award and continue with physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics. The secretive award committees never give away any hints in advance of who could win, but here's a look at five big scientific breakthroughs that haven't yet received a Nobel prize.

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THE HIGGS PARTICLE

Scientists had searched for the elusive "God particle" for decades when its existence was finally confirmed at the European particle physics laboratory CERN in July last year. Nobel prizes tend to go to ideas that stand the test of time and last year's breakthrough was too recent to be considered for the 2012 award. Belgian physicist Francoise Englert and British scientist Peter Higgs both theorized about the existence of the particle in the 1960s although Englert was reportedly first. There are also a handful of people at CERN that have contributed to the discovery, including Italian scientist Fabiola Gianotti, German Rolf Heuer, Brit Tejinder Virdee and American Joseph Incandela. A Nobel prize can be split between a maximum of three people and are often shared between theorists and those conducting the practical experiments, according to Ulrika Bjorksten, who heads a science program at Radio Sweden.

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THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT

The effort to decode the human DNA constitutes one of the largest scientific endeavors in history. Headed by Eric S. Lander, Craig Venter and Francis Collins, the project was completed in 2003 and revealed in intimate detail just what makes up a human being. It has helped scientists understand a vast range of mystery diseases that had baffled doctors for years. However, despite its size and importance it lacks some of the key characteristics of a Nobel Prize winner. The Nobel committee likes to award original scientific ideas or radical approaches and give the prizes to individuals rather than projects. When the project started, some genomes had already been successfully mapped so it didn't break any new ground. Also, in 2002, three scientists who made early contributions to gene research won the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology so the Nobel committee may feel it has already covered the area.

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THE COCHLEAR IMPLANT

The revolutionary hearing aid has helped hundreds of thousands of deaf people to experience a sense of sound and to understand speech. The implant helps those who are deaf because of damage to sensory hair cells in the inner ear, by providing electronic stimulation of the auditory nerve. Radio Sweden science reporter Annika Ostman says the technology is exciting because it has been developed to a large extent in close collaboration with the deaf people it serves. The inventor of the first, basic version of the implant, William F. House, passed away in 2012 and Nobel Prizes aren't awarded posthumously. However, Australian Graeme Clark, Austrian Ingeborg Hochmair and American Blake S. Wilson, have also contributed to developing the implant.

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MEMBRANE FUSION

The discovery of membrane fusion shows the means by which proteins and other materials are transported within and between cells. It is a process that cells use to organize their activities and avert the chaos that would erupt if all of their contents were blended together. This breakthrough discovery has helped explain processes as varied as the release of insulin into the blood, communication between nerve cells and the way viruses infect cells. Americans James Rothman and Randy Schekman won the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for this finding in 2002 — an award often seen as a precursor of a Nobel Prize.

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PROTEIN FOLDING

Protein folding inside cells is a vital process that gives molecules' their unique characteristics and disruption of this process can lead to disease and allergies. The Nobel Committee likes underdogs that ignore traditionalist skeptics to break new ground, which is exactly what the two scientists Arthur Horwich and Ulrich Hartl did with protein folding. By discovering that a special apparatus spurs the protein folding by harnessing the energy of a small molecule they toppled traditional notions of how the process works and established new principles. This previously unexplored area has great potential for basic biology and biomedicine.

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Some anti-drilling activists change tactics, tone

PITTSBURGH — For years, activists have warned that fracking can have disastrous consequences — ruined water and air, sickened people and animals, a ceaseless parade of truck traffic.

Now some critics are doing what was once unthinkable: working with the industry. Some are even signing lucrative gas leases and speaking about the environmental benefits of gas.

Some activists say that with drilling in full swing in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, it's no longer realistic to push for a ban or moratorium. Instead, they say, it's better to push the industry to minimize the negative impacts of drilling.

One recently formed citizens group, for example, seeks to persuade energy companies to use advanced technologies to limit air emissions.

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Rubinkam reported from northeastern Pennsylvania.

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2 storm-delayed cruise ships head to New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — Carnival Cruise Lines says two cruise ships delayed by the storm system Karen should get to New Orleans within 30 minutes of each other Sunday — a day earlier than previously expected.

The storm, which dissipated Sunday, delayed arrival by a day for the Carnival Elation and less than half a day for the Carnival Conquest.

The company says the Conquest is expected to reach New Orleans at 1:30 p.m., and the Elation at 2 p.m.

Carnival says passengers may leave Sunday or stay on the ships until Monday morning.

The company says both ships will leave Monday on shortened cruises. The Elation's will be cut from five to three days, and the Conquest's from seven to six. Carnival says those passengers will get partial refunds.

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Spaniards protest gas storage plant after quakes

MADRID — Thousands of Spaniards on Sunday protested the presence of an underground gas storage plant over growing fears it is triggering minor earthquakes in the area.

Initial police estimates said some 3,000 people had gathered to carry banners along the seaside promenade of the coastal town of Les Cases d'Alcanar, 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of Madrid, calling for the offshore plant to be closed or dismantled. But protest organizers said 6,000 people marched, chanting, "We don't want it. We live off fishing and tourism."

Spain's Geographical Institute has measured a sharp increase in temblors — 139 in the 10 days up to Saturday — since operators began pumping gas into the facility. Some earthquakes have exceeded magnitude 4.0. The first alarms were set off on Sept. 13 after 300 quakes were detected.

"Some weeks after we began to inject gas, the earthquakes began," said Recaredo del Potro, president of Escal-U.G.S., the company in charge of the project.

Injections stopped on Sept. 16, Del Potro said in a TV interview by state broadcaster TVE, and the government banned further injections two weeks ago.

However, the institute has continued to detect tremors, and on Thursday the regional prosecutor's office opened an investigation into the plant and flew inspectors to a platform atop the storage facility to determine if pumping had indeed been halted. Press reports said they had.

Jose Manuel Soria, Spain's industry minister, said Thursday that there appeared to be a direct link between the quakes and injections of gas into rocks that form part of the underwater storage system, which was intended to serve the eastern Valencia region as a supply of fuel gas that is used to generate electricity and for domestic heating and cooking.

The project is estimated to have cost some 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion), with half of the funds provided by a consortium of nine banks and the remainder by the European Investment Bank, TVE said.

The tremors are occurring just off the coast of Castellon city and Les Cases d'Alcanar, an area Spain's College of Geologists said is not known for such seismic activity.

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BP trial to focus on scientists' spill estimates

NEW ORLEANS — When BP used a capping stack to seal its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico, the device didn't just shut the source of the nation's worst offshore oil spill. Its pressure gauge also provided scientists with crucial data about the rate that crude that was spewing from the well when engineers finally killed it in July 2010.

Experts for BP and the federal government used the pressure gauge data in calculating how much how much oil spilled into the Gulf during the 87 days it took to plug the well. But each side will provide a federal judge with very different estimates when the second phase of a trial resumes Monday for litigation spawned by the spill.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is scheduled to hear three weeks of testimony from dueling experts to help him calculate how much oil spilled into the Gulf — a key factor in determining how much more money BP and its contractors owe for their roles in the deadly disaster.

Justice Department attorneys will try to persuade Barbier that the pressure gauge on the capping stack provided the best set of data about the flow of oil from the well.

"The pressure data, collection rates, and geometry of the capping stack are by far the most accurate and reliable sources of information on flow rate, and were recognized as such by all parties at the time," they wrote in a pretrial filing.

BP, however, says the government's experts ignored other important data. Company lawyers say its experts used a "proven methodology" that doesn't require "simplistic and unverified assumptions about flow conditions."

"In contrast, the United States' experts employ unproven methods that require significant assumptions and extrapolations in lieu of, and even directly inconsistent with, the available data and other evidence," company attorneys wrote.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was working at the site of BP's Macondo well off the Louisiana coast when the well blew out April 20, 2010. The explosion on the rig killed 11 workers and set off a massive fire. The rig sank less than two days later to the bottom, about a mile below the Gulf surface.

The Justice Department's experts estimate 4.2 million barrels, or 176 million gallons, spilled into the Gulf after the blowout. BP has urged Barbier to use an estimate of 2.45 million barrels, or nearly 103 million gallons, in calculating any Clean Water Act fines. Both sides agree that 810,000 barrels, or 34 million gallons, escaped the well but were captured before the crude could pollute the Gulf.

Under the Clean Water Act, a polluter can be forced to pay a maximum of either $1,100 or $4,300 per barrel of spilled oil. The higher maximum applies if the company is found grossly negligent, as the government argues BP should be. But penalties can be assessed at amounts lower than those caps.

Using the government's figures, a maximum penalty if the company is found grossly negligent could total $18 billion. Using the company's figures, that maximum penalty would be around $10.5 billion.

For the trial's first phase, Barbier heard eight weeks of testimony about the causes of the April 2010 well blowout.

Barbier divided the trial's second phase into two parts. For the first segment, he heard four days of testimony last week about BP's efforts to cap the well. He set aside 12 days of testimony for the second segment, which will consist almost exclusively of technical testimony by experts.

Government experts believe the oil was flowing from the well at a higher rate shortly after the blowout than it was when the well was sealed with the capping stack.

"Basic principles of oil production hold that reservoir pressure depletes and flow rates wane over time," Justice Department attorneys wrote.

BP's experts concluded that flow rates increased over time, due in part to the erosion of steel rams on the rig's blowout preventer. Martin Blunt, a BP expert who is a professor of petroleum engineering at Imperial College in London, also took other factors into consideration, including the "compressibility" of the rocks in the reservoir BP was drilling.

"In assessing the data, Dr. Blunt uses a conservative lens," BP attorneys wrote. "Dr. Blunt accounts for fundamental geological facts and principles of physics acknowledged by United States experts but omitted in their flow calculations."

Calculating the rate that oil was flowing from the well has been a contentious issue from the beginning of the disaster.

Marcia McNutt, who was director of the U.S. Geological Survey at the time of the blowout, led the government's Flow Rate Technical Group and frequently interacted with BP officials while its engineers scrambled to seal the well. In videotaped testimony shown to Barbier last week, McNutt said it didn't appear that anyone from the government was inside BP's "circle of trust" when it came to sharing data about a procedure called "top kill" that failed to seal the well.

McNutt also said it took longer for her team of scientists to arrive at a flow-rate estimate because they got poor data from BP.

"Did you feel that BP was not a willing partner when it came to flow rate?" a lawyer for Deepwater Horizon rig owner Transocean Ltd. asked McNutt.

"There was this tenseness," McNutt said. "It was almost kind of a chill in the room when flow-rate issues came up."

Timothy Crone, a professor of marine geophysics at Columbia University, was the lead researcher on what was billed in September 2010 as the first independent, peer-reviewed study of the leak's volume. Crone and a colleague analyzed underwater video to arrive at an estimate that closely mirrors the federal government's current calculation of how much oil escaped the well.

Crone said he is surprised the topic is still being debating three years later.

"The majority of scientists who worked on the problem are in agreement," he said. "I can understand why BP wants to make it a question again, but in my opinion it's not."

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