Partners income up despite insurance activity losses

Partners HealthCare Systems's operating income climbed during the first quarter of fiscal year 2015, but it continues to see losses in insurance activity.

Health care provider activity brought in $67 million in operating income, and the Neighborhood Health Plan saw $7 million in operating income in the three months that ended Dec. 31.

However, the $7 million includes a premium deficiency reserve set aside in fiscal year 2014 — without that, insurance activity would have seen a loss of $20 million.

Partners, the state's largest hospital and doctors' group, reported $45 million in operating income for the first quarter of last year, including $44 million from provider activity and $1 million from insurance activity.

"Maintaining our focus on the cost-effective, efficient delivery of care, Partners' health care providers generated a strong operating margin, which enables us to reinvest in population health management programs to further improve the patient experience," said Peter K. Markell, chief financial officer and treasurer for Partners HealthCare, in a statement yesterday. "However, our insurance plan, NHP, still faces a significant challenge with respect to receiving adequate rates from the state for the care of MassHealth members."

Total operating revenue at Partners increased $201 million to $2.8 billion in the first quarter.

According to Partners' quarterly report, "total operating expenses increased $173 million (7 percent) to $2.8 billion, due to higher wages and benefits, supplies and medical insurance claims."

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Baker: Show the love during Valentine’s Week

Gov. Charlie Baker yesterday declared next week Valentine's Week, urging people to patronize small businesses that have been "especially" hard hit by record snow.

"We want to urge everyone, once the storm passes, to get out and visit your Main Street businesses, your restaurants, your small businesses, and bring some life and vitality back into our communities," Baker said at a press conference with business leaders and Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash. "If you can safely, please get out and buy your loved ones something nice, not just tomorrow, but a few more times next week. And I think, frankly, after the kind of month we've had, I think we all earned it."

The governor said his Valentine's Week proclamation was driven, in part, by the fact that it's school vacation week, and many people will have more free time or will be looking for things to do with their kids.

"Both," he said, "would lend themselves sort of to that idea."

Valentine's Day accounts for $500 million in sales in the state, said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. But up to 10 inches of snow are expected today — mostly tonight — and another 3 to 5 inches are expected tomorrow.

"We lose these sales," he said. "They're never going to come back."

Dave Andelman, president of the Restaurant and Business Alliance, said that's devastating to many of the 300,000 people in Massachusetts who work in retail and another 300,000 who work in hospitality.

"These are really hard-working people who need these wages and these gratuities to make a living," Andelman said.

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Cherokee Trailhawk chief in its class

With unmatched off-road capabilities and superior highway manners, the Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk blows away its competition with features and performance.

With a powerful 3.2-liter V6 24-valve engine, the compact sport utility vehicle accelerates quickly to pass cars on the highway with ease. A nine-speed automatic transmission smoothly changes gears as you move faster. The shift knob is leather-wrapped but the manual override seems to be counter-intuitive — move the knob up to shift down and down to shift up.

Jeep's selectable 4x4 modes allow the driver to dial in current conditions like snow, sand, mud and rock. It also has an automatic mode that lets a computer make these decisions for you. The Cherokee has a four-wheel-drive low mode for extra low-speed traction and earns its trail-rated certification in every way.

The Trailhawk will help you start an ascent on a hill automatically as well as help you control your speed on a descent. A rear axle disconnect feature only engages when necessary for improved fuel efficiency. It has a beefed-up off-road suspension and 17-inch aluminum wheels with all-
terrain tires that can take what Mother Nature dishes out.

The steering on this Jeep is stiff and responsive. Its leather-wrapped steering wheel is comfortable to grip and its mounted controls give the driver access to the phone and stereo controls as well as the on-board computer.

The electronics array is also well above average for its class. It features a premium navigation system that is designed with logic in mind. It is easy to enter a destination and it gives clear and concise directions. The Cherokee also has Sirius XM radio with traffic and travel weather alerts that are displayed on a 7-inch multi-view display. Bluetooth pairing is accomplished with ease and the rearview mirror has a microphone for hands-free conversations.

The Trailhawk also has a remote starter, keyless entry and start, rear power liftgate and a rear back-up camera.

Seating is quite comfortable with eight-way power adjustable leather-trimmed seats and adjustable lumbar support. The second row of seats is also comfortable and provides decent legroom for passengers.

The cabin feels roomy in spite of the lack of space a small SUV affords. Hidden storage areas help make this car feel roomier. There's storage accessed by a flip-up passenger cushion in the front seat. The doors have big pockets, the dashboard has a storage area and there are recesses in the deck of the cargo area in the rear.

All in all, this Jeep is head and shoulders above the other cars in its class and is worthy of its higher price tag.

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Company whips up ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ bear

If flowers and chocolate seem too blase this Valentine's Day, there's always the "Fifty Shades of Grey" Bear if S&M is your idea of romance, or if you just want to ride the tide that is taking theaters by storm.

Yes, the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. — that bastion of cute, cuddly, furry friends — now offers for $89.99 the Christian Grey Bear — named for the title character in the movie and the E.L. James trilogy on which it is based — complete with grey suit, handcuffs and mask.

"The movie was coming out, and we said let's do an adult gift bear focused on 'Fifty Shades of Grey,'" said Bill Shouldice IV, the company's president and CEO.

So last summer, Shouldice contacted James and had a sample made. She liked it, he said, with one exception: The blue eyes would have to be grey.

Vermont Teddy Bear made the change, and by yesterday, the bear was one of the company's best-selling items in recent history, Shouldice said, and was being sold on eBay for as much as $125.

Of course, it's not everyone's cup of tea.

"We're never going to make everybody happy," he said. "It was meant to be a fun, unique, adult gift. And so far, a lot of people agree with us."

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The Ticker

Connector extends sign-up deadline

The Massachusetts Health Connector is extending until Feb. 23 the deadline to complete an application and pick a health plan.

The deadline had been tomorrow, but officials pushed it off a week because heavy snowstorms have made it hard for some people to sign up for insurance.

The Feb. 23 deadline for making a payment stays in place.

Connector officials said they wanted to give people extra time, given the burden many have had as they've had to dig out from the successive storms.

The Connector's call center won't be taking calls tomorrow due to the storm, but will make return calls to consumers who have requested them. It has expanded hours through Feb. 23, including weekend hours on Saturday, Feb. 21, and Sunday, Feb. 22, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m., and on Monday, Feb. 23, from 
7 a.m.-9 p.m.

Caesars suit vs. 
panel dismissed

A Massachusetts court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Caesars Entertainment against the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. After the panel's background investigation on Caesars turned up concerns about an investor in the company, Suffolk Downs dropped the gaming giant from its resort proposal to win the single casino license for the Boston area in October 2013. Caesars was replaced by Mohegan Sun, which subsequently lost the bid to Wynn Resorts in Everett.

• Prelert, the leading provider of machine learning anomaly detection, announced that John O'Donnell has joined the company as chief financial officer.

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Hot Property: New promotions try to lure renters

Sign an apartment lease and enter a raffle to win a $5,000 gift card.

With nine new apartment complexes opening in Boston and Cambridge this year, competition for renters is heating up, and some buildings that opened within the past year or so and still haven't fully leased up are offering new promotions to entice renters.

The 328-unit Batch Yard apartment complex in Everett is offering a Willy Wonka-influenced "Golden Ticket Contest" at the former Charleston Chew factory. Renters who sign a lease between Jan. 1 and mid-March are eligible for the $5,000 drawing March 18.

"The odds of winning are good," said Danielle Bertulli, senior sales and marketing associate for the Batch Yard, which is 33 percent leased. "The raffle is just another way to get people out to our property and give them another incentive to sign on."

The raffle joins other rent concessions already in place at the Batch Yard, such as a "look and lease" incentive that offers $500 to those who sign leases within 48 hours of touring an apartment. And if the renter moves in within 30 days, one month's rent is free.

The Lumiere, a 163-unit complex in Medford that's 39 percent leased, is offering a Valentine's Day special on select apartments, says property manager Robin Boersner. If you sign a lease by Monday, you get one month of free rent if you move in by April 1. With a deposit down within 48 hours of signing, you get an extra $1,000 off. And they'll throw in a free garage space, too.

The Flats on D in South Boston is fighting this winter's doldrums by offering a chance to win $1,500 in a travel giveaway raffle to renters who sign leases this month, with a drawing March 1.

"Generally if one building is offering concessions, others do so as well," said Alissa Issom, property manager of Flats on D, which is 69 percent leased. "But we were looking to do something different."

The Flats on D, along with some other new buildings, doesn't offer free rent incentives. These rental complexes rely on pricing set by revenue management software such as YieldStar and Rainmaker LRO, which adjusts apartment prices daily based on supply and demand.

"It compares our rents along with 20 competitors and sets prices," said Issom. "It really levels the playing field."

"The software reduced the price of some two-bedrooms to the point where I thought 'really?'" said Erica Stockton, property manager at The Commons at Southfield in Weymouth. "But when those apartments rented, the price of other two bedrooms went back up."

But plenty of other buildings that use revenue management software also offer additional incentives.

The Victor, a 286-unit complex near North Station, resets apartment prices every 24 hours, but also gives a $500 American Express gift card to renters who move in within two weeks of signing a lease, in addition to two free months on any vacant apartment.

"Boston is a tough market and renters in the city are being conditioned to getting two free months on leases, which is going to make retention tough," said Hilary Behrens, community manager of The Victor, which is 93 percent leased. "If you can save up to $8,000 a year in rent with incentives, you get accustomed to moving every year."

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Boston app startup catches eye of Richard Branson

Wanderu, travel czar Richard Branson's new favorite startup, yesterday launched its free bus- and train-booking app for iPhone and iPad, with plans to debut an Android version within the next two months.

The Boston startup was among three companies invited recently to Necker, Branson's private island, to pitch to the Virgin Group founder and a panel of other judges at his Extreme Tech Challenge after being culled from more than 2,000 applicants at last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"It was an incredible experience because I look up to him. He's the king of transportation," Wanderu CEO Polina Raygorodskaya said of the man behind Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Trains and the space tourism company Virgin Galactic. "He said he's very excited about us simplifying the booking process for bus and train travel."

The app allows people to type in any city, address or point of interest and then finds them the lowest fare from among the bus and train companies that Wanderu partners with, as well as directions to the nearest station.

It also allows people to put together trips with multiple connections and saves their favorite routes and all their reservations in one place so that they can board with a confirmation number, rather than fumbling for tickets.

Since it launched a desktop version of its service in 2013, Wanderu has had 5 million users, growing by 400 percent quarter over quarter, Raygorodskaya said.

Its next stop after launching its Android app will be expanding to Mexico and other countries, she said.

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The Ticker

Facebook to let someone run account after you die

Facebook is making it easier to plan for your online afterlife.

The world's biggest online social network said yesterday that it will now let users pick someone who can manage their account after they die. Previously, the accounts were "memorialized" after death, or locked so that no one could log in.

But Facebook says its users wanted more choice. Beginning in the U.S., Facebook users can pick a "legacy contact" to post on their page after they die, respond to new friend requests and update their profile picture and cover photo. Users can also have their accounts deleted after their death, which was not possible before.

If you want someone to manage your account after you die, click on the upside-down triangle on the top right corner of your page, open "settings" and find "security." For U.S. users there will be an option to edit your legacy contact, who must be a Facebook user. But you don't have to pick someone else to manage your account. You can also check a box to permanently delete your account when you die.

Expedia to buy rival Orbitz for $1.3B

Expedia said yesterday that it is buying rival Orbitz Worldwide Inc. for about $1.3 billion. The deal adds the Orbitz brand and sites including CheapTickets and HotelClub to a lineup that already includes names such as Hotels.com, Hotwire, Trivago and Australia's Wotif.com. Expedia is also in the process of buying Travelocity.

In a conference call with analysts, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that even though big in the online segment, his company is "only a small player" in a
 $1.3 trillion travel market that includes giants such as Google and many newcomers. Expedia says its bookings account for only 4 percent of global travel spending.

The purchase of Orbitz would leap Expedia ahead of The Priceline Group Inc. in travel bookings, although Priceline would still be larger by revenue and stock market value. Besides its namesake website, Priceline owns Booking.com, Kayak and restaurant-reservation site OpenTable.

CBS profits up on Thursday football

CBS Corp., owner of the most-watched U.S. TV network, reported slightly higher-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit, helped by its Thursday night football broadcasts.

CBS won the rights to broadcast eight Thursday night NFL games during the 2014 season, giving it one of the most highly prized programs on a night coveted by advertisers.

• Burlington-based Circor International, a provider of valves and other highly engineered products for markets, including oil and gas, power generation and aerospace and defense, announced that Erik Wiik, left, will join the company as group president. Wiik currently is executive vice president and regional president of Aker Solutions North America.

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Connector still experiencing delays

The Bay State's health insurance website is improving, but remains a work in progress, with an online payment system that is causing frustration, state officials said yesterday.

Consumers continue to experience long wait times due to heavy volumes at call centers.

"There is significant work left," said Maydad Cohen, who was tapped by Gov. Deval Patrick to overhaul the website after it crashed, creating a backlog of 72,000 paper applications and daily website outages.

The online payment set-up — separate from the Connector's insurance website — has been "clunkier" and not instantaneous, Cohen said. "We've made tweaks throughout."

The final day for applying for health insurance in 2015 and picking a plan is Sunday. Feb. 23 is the deadline to pay for coverage in a Health Connector plan.

The Connector is extending the hours of availability for its call center and walk-in offices. If severe weather hits the state over the weekend, the call center will limit operations.

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New York Times media columnist David Carr dies at 58

David Carr, the iconoclastic media columnist for the New York Times, died Thursday while working at the Times' office, according a report posted late Thursday on the Times' website. He was 58.

The New York Times reported that he collapsed in The Times newsroom, where he was found shortly before 9 p.m. EST. He was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Times.

Earlier in the evening, he moderated a panel discussion about the film "Citizenfour" with its principal subject, Edward J. Snowden; the film's director, Laura Poitras; and Glenn Greenwald, a journalist.

Carr wrote the Media Equation column for the Times' Business section. He was also known to showbiz figures from his stint several years ago as the Times' award season correspondent for the Carpetbagger blog.

Carr was prominently featured in the 2011 docu "Page One: Inside the New York Times." He joined the Times in 2002. Before that, he was a contributing writer to the Atlantic Monthly and New York magazine. In the mid-1990s he was editor of Washington, D.C.'s City Paper.

Carr was candid about his past battles with drug addiction. In 2008 he published the nonfiction book "Night of the Gun," which revisited his experiences as a drug abuser and used traditional reporting techniques to fill in gaps and misperceptions from his own memory.

"His plainspoken style was sometimes blunt, and searingly honest about himself," the Times said in its story. "The effect was both folksy and sophisticated, a voice from a shrewd and well-informed skeptic."

On Monday, he wrote about the revelations that the NBC anchor Brian Williams had lied about being in a helicopter under fire in Iraq in 2003."We want our anchors to be both good at reading the news and also pretending to be in the middle of it," he said.

Carr's survivors including his wife, Jill Rooney Carr, and three daughters.

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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CBS '60 Minutes' correspondent Bob Simon dies in car crash

NEW YORK — Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon, who covered riots, Academy Award-nominated movies and wars and was held captive for more than a month in Iraq two decades ago, died in a car crash on Wednesday. He was 73.

"CBS Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley, his eyes red, announced the death in a special report.

"We have some sad news from within our CBS News family," Pelley said. "Our colleague Bob Simon was killed this evening."

"Vietnam is where he first began covering warfare, and he gave his firsthand reporting from virtually every major battlefield around the world since," Pelley said.

A town car in which Simon was a passenger hit another car stopped at a Manhattan traffic light and then slammed into metal barriers separating traffic lanes, police said. Simon and the town car's driver were taken to a hospital, where Simon was pronounced dead.

The town car driver suffered injuries to his legs and arms. The driver of the other car was uninjured. No arrests were made, said police, who continued to investigate the deadly accident.

Simon was among a handful of elite journalists to cover most major overseas conflicts and news stories since the late 1960s, CBS said. He covered stories including the Vietnam War and the Oscar-nominated movie "Selma" in a career spanning five decades.

He had been contributing to "60 Minutes" on a regular basis since 1996. He also was a correspondent for "60 Minutes II."

He was preparing a report on the Ebola virus and the search for a cure for this Sunday's "60 Minutes" broadcast. He had been working on the project with his daughter, Tanya Simon, a producer with whom he collaborated on several stories.

Anderson Cooper, who does occasional stories for "60 Minutes," was near tears talking about Simon's death. He said that when Simon presented a story "you knew it was going to be something special."

"I dreamed of being, and still hope to be, a quarter of the writer that Bob Simon is and has been," the CNN anchor said. "... Bob Simon was a legend, in my opinion."

Simon joined CBS News in 1967 as a reporter and assignment editor, covering campus unrest and inner-city riots, CBS said. He also worked in CBS' Tel Aviv bureau from 1977 to 1981 and in Washington, D.C., as its Department of State correspondent.

Simon's career in war reporting began in Vietnam, and he was on one of the last helicopters out of Saigon when the U.S. withdrew in 1975. At the outset of the Gulf War in January 1991, Simon was captured by Iraqi forces near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. CBS said he and three other members of CBS News' coverage team spent 40 days in Iraqi prisons, an experience Simon wrote about in his book "Forty Days." Simon returned to Baghdad in January 1993 to cover the American bombing of Iraq.

Simon won numerous awards, including his fourth Peabody and an Emmy for his story from Central Africa on the world's only all-black symphony in 2012. Another story about an orchestra in Paraguay, one whose poor members constructed their instruments from trash, won him his 27th Emmy, perhaps the most held by a journalist for field reporting, CBS said.

He also captured electronic journalism's highest honor, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, for "Shame of Srebrenica," a "60 Minutes II" report on genocide during the Bosnian War.

Former CBS News executive Paul Friedman, who teaches broadcast writing at Quinnipiac University, said Simon was "one of the finest reporters and writers in the business."

"He, better than most, knew how to make pictures and words work together to tell a story, which is television news at its best," Friedman said.

Simon was born May 29, 1941, in the Bronx. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1962 with a degree in history. He is survived by his wife, his daughter and his grandson.

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South Bay Center owner plans nearby mixed-use project

The owner of South Bay Center has plans for a large mixed-use project that would include a hotel, movie theater and up to 500 units of multi­family housing next to the Dorchester shopping center.

The "town center" project proposed by retail real estate developer Edens would encompass 10 acres and several new six-story buildings that also would include some 115,000 square feet of commercial/retail space, two parking garages and new internal roadways, sidewalks and open space.

The hotel would have between 150 and 200 rooms, while the cinema would be about 65,000 square feet, the Columbia, S.C., company said yesterday in a letter notifying the Boston Redevelopment Authority of its plans.

Edens, which said it will submit more detailed plans to the city within 60 days, did not return calls for comment.

The six parcels of land slated for the project are bounded by South Bay Center to the northwest and currently include a concrete plant, parking lots and vacant commercial/industrial, office and retail buildings.

Edens' plans must go through the BRA's large project review process.

"The proposed project would create a brand-new community from what is currently an under-utilized industrial area," BRA spokesman Nick Martin said. "We look forward to reviewing more detailed plans and continuing a dialogue with neighbors there. At first blush, it's an exciting proposal that would complement the adjacent South Bay Center and surrounding neighborhood."

South Bay Center opened in 1994. Edens bought it from original developer Samuels & Associates in 1998 and expanded it eight years later to include a Super Stop & Shop and two restaurants after paying $14.2 million for an adjacent eight-acre warehouse site. South Bay Center now encompasses 527,000-plus square feet, with other major retailers including Target, Home Depot, Old Navy, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Marshalls and T.J. Maxx.

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John R. Lakian hit with fraud charges

John R. Lakian, who made unsuccessful bids for the Republican nomination for Massachusetts governor in the 1980s and for U.S. Senate nearly a decade later,­ is accused of scheming to defraud investors and banks of millions of dollars, according to federal prosecutors in New York.

Lakian, 72, and Dianne W. Lamm, 54, pleaded not guilty Feb. 4 to securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities, wire and bank fraud, according to U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch. They were released on $2 million bond, pending a March 20 status conference.

The two investment managers are accused of stealing investors' money to keep for themselves and to pay for restaurant ventures, prosecutors said.

"As alleged, Lakian and Lamm preyed upon more than 100 investors, in multiple schemes, stealing their hard-earned money to use for their own purposes," Lynch said in a statement. "They similarly dis­regarded the interests of lending institutions by submitting forged documents to banks in an attempt to fraudulently secure more than $8 million in loans."

A woman who answered the phone at Lakian's Manhattan address said he was unavailable. Lamm said: "I have no comment, other than to say that (the charges) are all false."

If convicted, the two face up to 30 years in prison for the bank fraud count, 20 years for each of the securities fraud counts and 5 years for the securities and wire fraud conspiracy counts.

In 1982, Lakian lost the Republican nomination for governor following reports that he lied on his resume. He unsuccessfully sued The Boston Globe for libel. His losing streak continued in 1994, when he lost the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate to Mitt Romney.

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Challenges lie ahead for new director of Mass Health Connector

Leadership changes, a board shakeup, improved communication and a better Obamacare website are all top priorities as the new executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector tries to reform the troubled agency.

"If this were climbing Mount Everest, this would be base camp," Louis Gu­tierrez told the Herald yesterday. "There are still several major milestones to go."

Among them:

• Improve the "crucial" relationship between the connector and MassHealth — one of the key downfalls cited for the botched launch of the Obamacare site last year.

• Replace top brass, including completing the search to fill the job of Chief Operating Officer Roni Mansur, who left Jan. 31, and the position of chief financial officer, which has been vacant for several months. Although he praised the "very committed team," Gutierrez vowed: "There will be changes within the organization."

• Upgrade the website to handle complicated transactions and require fewer calls to customer support centers.

• Gutierrez said it was too early to say whether the state might try to opt out of part of Obamacare, but noted: "The federal government is allowing some leeway in terms of how states implement their programs in the next couple years, so we want to examine our options."

Gov. Charlie Baker is also shaking up the connector board, installing Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders as chairman and shifting Administration & Finance Secretary Kristen Lepore into a seat on the board reserved for the head of MassHealth or his designee. Baker will file a bill soon that will make the HHS secretary the connector board chairman.

Gutierrez left a private-sector job as the principal of the IT consulting firm Exeter Group to head the connector. He has also worked in technology roles both at the state and Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan.

"Throughout, there's this thread of wanting to apply the best there is in current technology to public purposes," said Gutierrez of his prior work. "This really is a dream role for doing that."

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Amy Pascal talks getting 'fired,' Sony hack and Angelina Jolie emails in candid interview

Six days after stepping down as co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Amy Pascal broke her silence on Wednesday at the Women in the World conference in San Francisco during a candid interview with journalist Tina Brown.

"All the women here are doing incredible things in this world. All I did was get fired," she said, according to the Recode site.

Among the topics discussed were the hacked email exchanges between herself and producer Scott Rudin, the "The Interview's" bad reviews, and the pervasive gender gap in Hollywood.

Pascal recounted the moment in November when she realized that her emails at Sony would be exposed.

"I ran this company and I had to worry about everybody who was really scared...People were really scared...But nagging in the back of my mind, I kept calling (the IT department) and being like, 'They don't have our emails, tell me they don't have our emails,'" she said. "But then they did. That was a bad moment. And you know what you write in emails."

Right off the bat, Brown asked Pascal about the racial emails about President Obama, causing the 56 year-old exec shook her head.

"It was horrible. That was horrible," Pascal said. "As a woman, what I did was control how everybody felt about themselves and about me...and there was this horrible moment when I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about whether I'd hurt people, whether I'd betrayed people."

Pascal also said, "There is nothing you can do. You can't say anything. You can't explain anything. It's just there."

As for her exchanges with Rudin on Jolie, whom he called a "minimally talented spoiled brat," she said: "Angie didn't care."

"Everybody understood because we all live in this weird thing called Hollywood," she said. "If we were all actually were nice, it wouldn't work."

When asked about underpaying Jennifer Lawrence in "American Hustle," Pascal scoffed.

"I've paid (Jennifer Lawrence) a lot more money since then, I promise you … Here's the problem: I run a business. People want to work for less money, I pay them less money...Women shouldn't be so grateful. Know what you're worth. Walk away."

Brown later said that "The Interview" was a pretty bad movie, to which Pascal replied, "You don't get to choose what you stand up for."

This past week, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced a partnership to make new Spider-Man movies with Marvel Studios, which Pascal will produce as part of her new studio deal with Sony.

"The worst thing you can do is be on the sideline," she said.

The studio also recently announced an all-female "Ghostbusters" reboot with Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy.

"It's about time we have a female action series," Pascal declared.

As for the most important thing she learned from the hacked emails? "Say exactly what you think directly to people all the time," she said. "In the moment, the first time."

When Brown countered that Hollywood stars were sensitive than most people, Pascal snickered.

"They're bottomless pits of need. You've never seen anything like it," she said. Then added sarcastically: "They are so great. They're this magical thing that no one else can be. They're filled with the need to be loved … but that's because they're magical."

The executive also had harsh words for the press when asked if she was surprised about the reaction to her emails.

"I'm not supposed to say anything about that," she said. "But I will say that I was. People found reasons that going through my trash and printing it was an ok thing to do. They found a way to justify that. And they have to live with that."

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Brian Wlliams suspended from NBC News for six months

Hoping to tamp down a controversy growing around one of its best-known on-air personalities, NBC News on Tuesday suspended Brian Williams, the most-watched evening-news anchor in the U.S., from his duties as chief anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" for six months without pay in the wake of a scandal over misleading statements he made about his time covering the Iraq War in 2003.

The furor over Williams' embellishments have engulfed NBC News since early last week, when his account of facing enemy fire while riding in a helicopter in 2003 was challenged by Iraq veterans. Williams' last broadcast took place on Friday. Lester Holt will continue as substitute anchor.

NBC News has launched an internal probe of Williams' statements about the Iraq helicopter incident as well as other reporting that has since been challenged, NBC News said in a statement released Tuesday evening.

"We have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while Brian was talking about his experiences in the field," NBC News president Deborah Turness said in a memo distributed Tuesday night.

Williams' suspension was "severe and appropriate," NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said in the statement, but he also asserted that Williams "deserves a second chance, and we are rooting for him" even though he called the anchor's actions "inexcusable."

The decision was made jointly by Turness; Pat Fili-Krushel, chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, to whom Turness reports; and Burke.

At the heart of the matter is Williams' falsification during several public appearances and on CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman" of an incident that took place on a reporting trip to Iraq. A helicopter carrying Williams and his crew never came under fire, but a Chinook copter that was more than an hour ahead of that aircraft did. Williams by his own admission conflated the two air trips and made it seem as if he were under fire. Oddly enough, on a 2003 broadcast of "Dateline," Williams reported the trip more or less accurately.

For NBCU the ramifications of his actions may be severe. Williams' newscast has been the steadfast asset in NBCUniversal's entire news portfolio. Its "Today" morning show remains in second place behind "Good Morning America" after ceding the top spot in 2012. "Meet the Press" is trying to gain traction after the ouster of one anchor, David Gregory, and the installation of another, Chuck Todd. Business-news network CNBC is struggling in daytime, so much so that the company said it will no longer do business with advertisers based on Nielsen ratings starting in the fourth quarter of this year. And MSNBC is trying to recalibrate itself in the wake of a ratings drop after thriving as a liberal-tilting news network.

Under Williams, "Nightly" has successfully fended off a challenge from ABC's "World News." With new anchor David Muir at its helm, that evening newscast has made strides in the audience most coveted by advertisers in news programming, adults 25-54. Whether "Nightly News" can fend off Muir in Williams' absence remains to be seen.

In recent days, Williams' ability to anchor the newscast was thrown into increasing degrees of doubt. News outlets began investigating any number of claims he made about past reporting exploits, including time spent covering Hurricane Katrina. Questions were raised about why NBC News had not forced Williams to stop telling the helicopter tale. And the propriety of having an anchor who lied about his own on-the-job actions telling the nation about developments in the world of politics and foreign affairs seemed skewed.

"While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian's position," Turness said in the memo.

NBC is essentially following a textbook play. When other TV-network correspondents have made serious gaffes, their networks have suspended either them or their producers, sometimes both. In some cases, the reporter must struggle to find normalcy.

Claims made in a 2004 edition of the now-defunct "60 Minutes II" newsmagazine about President George W. Bush's service in the National Guard in the 1970s turned out to be based on documents that could not be authenticated. In the aftermath of that report, CBS set up an independent investigation, which led to the firing of the segment's supervisor. Three other supervising execs were asked to resign. The report tarnished the reputation of CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who delivered the segment.

In 2013, CBS News suspended "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan and a producer, Max McClellan, after a report they delivered on an Oct. 27 broadcast of the newsmagazine that year turned out to be based largely on the accounts of a source who provided inaccurate information. CBS made its decision after having Logan deliver an apology on air, and then investigating the process behind the report.

Williams has been a near-ubiquitous presence at NBC, making appearances on everything ranging from "Saturday Night Live" to "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." For six months, at least, he will stay off the TV screen. All kinds of things can happen in half a year in the TV industry, and what happens at the end of Williams' suspension remains to be seen.

Here is Turness' full memo:

We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately. We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News.

Our review, which is being led by Richard Esposito working closely with NBCUniversal General Counsel Kim Harris, is ongoing, but I think it is important to take you through our thought process in coming to this decision.

While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian's position.

In addition, we have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while Brian was talking about his experiences in the field.

As Managing Editor and Anchor of Nightly News, Brian has a responsibility to be truthful and to uphold the high standards of the news division at all times.

Steve Burke, Pat Fili and I came to this decision together. We felt it would have been wrong to disregard the good work Brian has done and the special relationship he has forged with our viewers over 22 years. Millions of Americans have turned to him every day, and he has been an important and well-respected part of our organization.

As I'm sure you understand, this was a very hard decision. Certainly there will be those who disagree. But we believe this suspension is the appropriate and proportionate action.

This has been a difficult time. But NBC News is bigger than this moment. You work so hard and dedicate yourselves each and every day to the important work of bringing trusted, credible news to our audience. Because of you, your loyalty, your dedication, NBC News is an organization we can - and should - all be proud of. We will get through this together.

Steve Burke asked me to share the following message.

"This has been a painful period for all concerned and we appreciate your patience while we gathered the available facts. By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate. Brian's life's work is delivering the news. I know Brian loves his country, NBC News and his colleagues. He deserves a second chance and we are rooting for him. Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone's trust."

Deborah

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Edward Davis joins firm that pinpoints indoor gunshots

Former Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis has joined a Bay State tech company that is marketing technology to summon cops and pinpoint the location of gunshots in indoor shooter situations.

"Shooter Detection Systems is an extremely innovative company with excellent technology behind it," Davis said in a statement. "The Guardian Indoor Active Shooter Detection System gives law enforcement officials invaluable intelligence, and it gives innocent people inside a building that is under siege a chance to survive. I am very excited to be a part of things at SDS."

Davis, who will be a business development adviser, was the BPD commissioner from 2006 to 2013, and won national notice after the Boston Marathon bombings.

"When you think of law enforcement leaders in not only New England but across the country, the name Ed Davis instantly springs to mind. He is synonymous with policing and progressive law enforcement, and he is a true and proven leader," said SDS CEO Christian Connors.

SDS is targeting public institutions, corporations and malls with a product that operates much like the outdoor ShotSpotter system that Boston police use to quickly zero in on the location of street shooting incidents. Guardian Indoor was developed in cooperation with the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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Snow calls go through the roof

A growing number of roof collapses and more storms in the forecast have people scrambling to clear the snow off their buildings, but roofing contractors have waiting lists up to a week long, and hardware stores are selling out of do-it-yourself snow rakes.

Olympic Roofing in Topsfield was averaging one phone call every three minutes yesterday, but was only able to keep up with 15 percent of calls — and that was with the 50 temporary workers it had hired to help its 80 employees, manager George Vasiliades said.

"We tell people we'll go see their roof to assess it," Vasiliades said. "If we think there's a hazard, we'll prioritize it. But I'm booked for the next five or six days. Some people are understanding, but other people get upset."

George VanHillo of Aspen Roofing Services in Peabody said the nine people he has in the field have been working up to 12 hours a day, but it can still take three to five days for them to see someone's roof.

"I've had people tell me they'll pay five times our usual rate if we can see them today, but I just tell them all I can do is put them on the list," VanHillo said. "It wouldn't be fair to all the people ahead of them."

Many people who either can't find or can't afford a contractor have gone in search of a snow rake, determined to clear off their roof themselves, only to end up equally luckless.

In the past 1 1⁄2 weeks, Curry Ace Hardware in Hanover has quickly sold out of three shipments of rakes.

"We're getting in 60 more tomorrow, but they're already paid for," said sales associate Ian Kelly.

"We just haven't been able to keep them on our shelves. We thought we'd have enough if we ordered as many as we did last year, but we've already sold at least double what we did in all of last winter."

After selling out of its own supply of snow rakes, Monnick Supply Co. in Marlboro got in two dozen more at 7 a.m. yesterday.

By 7:45, they had all been sold.

"Snow rakes and roof melt account for at least 80 percent of the phone calls we get," said department manager Katie Henning. "Everybody's looking for them. It's incessant."

When the store tried to order more rakes, Henning said, one manufacturer said it had run out of materials to make them and wouldn't be getting in more for another six weeks.

"If this keeps up," she chuckled, "you're going to see a snow rake black market pretty soon."

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City Hall asks profs, techies how to get rid of pileups

City Hall is putting out a call to local companies and colleges for ideas on how to deal with the massive amounts of snow piling up on the streets and sidewalks of the city.

"The Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics is seeking new and innovative ways to deal with the unprecedented amount of snow Boston has received this winter. They've reached out to professors from local universities and companies in the state's innovation economy," said Bonnie McGilpin, a spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh.

The call for help comes as more than 77 inches of snow has fallen on the city. At least three communities have applied for environmental waivers to dump snow in bodies of water, but Walsh hasn't yet. He said the city's snow melters are liquefying 430 tons of snow every hour.

New Urban Mechanics is the office responsible for the City Hall Christmas Tree that changed colors based on tweets and an effort to make City Hall a more pleasant building. While the amount of snow on the ground may be unprecedented in recorded Boston history, the notion of mayors reaching out to local universities for help with the snow has a precedent.

"I am very desirous that the Institute of Technology have a competent group of engineers make an immediate study as to ways and means of removing the huge accumulation not only in Boston, but throughout the entire state, whether it be by the use of flame throwers or chemicals or otherwise," Mayor James Michael Curley wrote to MIT in 1948.

Anyone with ideas can contact New Urban Mechanics at newurbanmechanics@boston.gov.

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'The Daily Show': who will take over for Jon Stewart?

Let the comedy stampede begin. Jon Stewart's announcement of his departure from the anchor desk at Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" later this year is sure to set off a frenzy of jockeying among comedy talent to fill his considerable shoes.

There's no doubt that "Daily Show" will continue on in its current form after Stewart exits. Comedy Central execs see the half-hour faux newscast as a franchise in "The Tonight Show" vein that can run for decades. Stewart took over the show in 1999 from original host Craig Kilborn.

Comedy Central execs have been preparing for the possibility that Stewart would move on as his most recent contract wound down this year. Whoever follows him on the show will face the extremely tricky task of keeping it vital in the political and cultural arenas.

Stewart's gift has been to tackle headline-making subjects with humor but also enough bite and perspective to make the show relevant to the national conversation on everything from presidential campaigns to divisive social issues. Stewart, by many accounts, is not only is the face of the show but also the driver of many editorial decisions.

The immediate speculation about possible successors ranged from the show's existing pool of correspondents to female candidates given the lack thereof in the latenight arena.

Some speculated that "Daily Show's" husband-and-wife correspondent team Samantha Bee and Jason Jones could take over with a dual-anchor format, which would be a first for the show. The two shot a family comedy pilot for TBS, "Vacationland," late last year that they co-wrote and star in. But undoubtedly anchor slots at "Daily Show" would be hard for them to turn down if offered.

Bee has been with "Daily Show" since 2003; Jones joined the roster two years later.

Other female names mentioned included Amy Schumer, who has scored with the Comedy Central audience with her "Inside Amy Schumer" series. Amy Poehler also has ties to the cabler as an exec producer of "Broad City," and she's just wrapped her seven-season run as the star of NBC's "Parks and Recreation." Sarah Silverman could be a contender, as could "Daily Show" alum Olivia Munn.

Another current "Daily Show" player, Aasif Mandvi has been regular since 2006 and has experience as a writer and in numerous stage and film productions. Jessica Williams is a fast-rising star who signed on in 2012, but she may be seen as not having enough experience yet to take the helm of the "Daily" machine.

Sources close to the situation said that Comedy Central honchos are still far from a decision and that all options -- from existing "Daily" players and alumni to established names to newcomers -- will be considered.

Chris Hardwick is in the Comedy Central family as host of "@midnight," the pop culture quiz and chat show that follows the "Daily Show/"Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore" block. But his persona as a fan's fan might not be the right fit for the show that tackles weighty issues and non-celebrity interviews at times.

Established comedians including Joel McHale and Ricky Gervais could be in the mix as well. One name that is not on the market is John Oliver, the "Daily Show" alum who scored with his own weekly newscast-style show for HBO, "Last Week Tonight." Oliver has a long-term contract with HBO for the show, which bowed last year to generally rave reviews.

Industry insiders are also supremely curious about Stewart's next move. His longtime agent, James Dixon, just moved into the WME fold after selling his Dixon Talent banner to the agency.

Stewart signaled his interest in career moves beyond the "Daily Show" desk in 2013 when he took a hiatus from the show to direct his first movie, the indie drama "Rosewater," which was released late last year to a mixed reception and underwhelming B.O. But there's no question that Stewart will leave "Daily Show" later this year with immense clout and plenty of options.

"He's not quitting to do nothing," a top tenpercenter noted.

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Deadline passed, Revel sale to be killed Tuesday morning

CAMDEN, N.J. — The owners of Atlantic City's Revel Casino Hotel say they will cancel a deal Tuesday morning to sell it to a Florida developer.

Revel AC originally said it planned to scrap a deal to sell the shuttered casino to Glenn Straub for $95.4 million at 12:01 a.m., just after the midnight deadline for the sale had passed. But a Revel attorney told The Associated Press moments after the deadline had passed that the termination notice, in the form of a request to a bankruptcy court judge to let it cancel the deal, will be filed sometime during business hours Tuesday morning.

"We do not plan to file that until the morning," attorney Michael Viscount said. "The court is not going to read or act on any such thing at this hour."

The collapse of the Straub deal would mark the second time in the last three months a buyer has been unable to complete a purchase of the star-crossed casino, which cost $2.4 billion to build, never turned a profit, and closed on Sept. 2, 2014 after just over two years of operation. In November, Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management pulled out of a deal to buy Revel for $110 million.

"We need to come up with a Plan C really quickly," Viscount said.

Straub wants a bankruptcy court judge to approve an extension of the sale deadline to Feb. 28; a hearing on that request is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

His attorney, Stuart Moskovitz, said Revel does not have the legal right to terminate the deal and keep Straub's $10 million deposit.

"If Revel terminates this contract, it will cost them tens of millions of dollars," he told the AP "They will never get a bid at these numbers. From Day One, Revel was a disaster, in every way imaginable."

The apparent demise of the deal came after U.S. District Court Judge Jerome Simandle refused to let the proposed sale go through without taking into account the legal rights of a nightclub and restaurants at the former casino, as well as its utility provider, all of which are appealing a previous court ruling that the sale can go forward "free and clear" of their leases.

The judge issued a temporary stay on Monday, allowing the sale to proceed but saying it could not do so without taking the appellants' rights into consideration in the purchase. That left Straub unable to close on a deal, according to his lawyer.

"We can't close if we have no idea what we're closing on," Moskovitz said.

The deal had been progressing toward Monday's closing date, until a federal appeals court sided with the tenants late Friday and issued a partial stay of the sale. Monday's continuation of that stay appeared to be the last straw. The judge explicitly said that nothing in his order prevented the sale from closing, but the buyer disagreed.

Last week, the CEO of the Hard Rock franchise obtained preliminary authority to own a casino in Atlantic City, and indicated the company had spoken with Straub about a possible involvement in re-opening Revel. But Viscount said Hard Rock was never interested in buying it.

Straub had proposed re-opening Revel under a different name as a smaller casino, a water park, hotel and condominiums.

Viscount said that by keeping Straub's $10 million deposit, "there's a lot of things we can do to keep the ship afloat for a while."

Revel also kept an $11 million deposit from Brookfield when that deal fell apart.

___

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

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State vaccination exemptions up tenfold over 30 years

Religious and medical exemptions claimed by Bay State parents as a reason not to vaccinate their children against potentially deadly diseases like measles have risen nearly tenfold in the past 30 years — and the state Department of Public Health says there's little it can do to reverse the "honor system" upsurge.

"A parent or guardian writes a letter to the school. There is no verification of that honor system. The exemptions are the rights of parents under state law. That's not second-guessed," said Kevin Crans­ton, director of DPH's Bureau of Infectious Disease.

There were 120 exemptions claimed on behalf of kindergartners during the 1984-85 school year versus 1,161 in 2013-14, according to DPH immunization records. Cranston noted DPH tends "to see higher exemption rates" in more affluent cities and towns, as supported by the latest kindergarten immunization survey results indicating that schools like Waldorf, a private school in Lexington; West Tisbury, a public school on Martha's Vineyard; and Morris, a public school in Lenox, have the highest rates of parents claiming exemptions for their children.

Boston Medical Center pediatrician Dr. John G. Palfrey, a member of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics Immunization Initiative, said one step the state could take for the safety of all is to eliminate the religious exemption, which, according to DPH, parents of kindergartners turned to 837 times in the 2013-14 school year. Unlike Maine and Vermont, Massachusetts does not offer a vaccine exemption for philosophical objections, which Palfrey believes is what's usually behind the refusal absent a medical reason.

"Part of our problem is no one has seen it (measles), so they don't know they should be scared," Palfrey said. "I would suspect we're going to have some cases. My prayer is they're not in the communities that are under-immunized. ... Even for people who have had vaccines, you can still get the disease."

In addition to under-immunized kids being banned from school in the event of an outbreak, Palfrey said children with suspected cases of measles could be segregated in hospital or medical office waiting rooms to protect other patients whose immune systems are compromised.

"There's all sorts of consequences that parents need to hear — that these are real dangers, that this is not just some kind of personal whimsy," he said.

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Kind-hearted reader 
pays family’s heat bill

A Lynn woman has come to the rescue of one of the 150,000 households that has exhausted its fuel assistance due to one of the coldest winters in recent memory.

After reading about Sydney Fuller-Jones and her 13-year-old twins in Sunday's Herald, Linda Peters offered to pay the roughly $200 the Mattapan family owes for the gas that heats their apartment.

"My heart went out to this family," Peters said yesterday. "I've struggled myself, but now I'm in a position to help, and I just want to do my part."

Since Fuller-Jones' husband died in 2011, she has been the sole breadwinner in the family. Of the $1,800 in pay the 52-year-old administrative assistant takes home each month, $1,400 goes toward rent, and $400 pays for her car and insurance. The rest — food, clothes, electricity — she pays for with credit.

Although she and her children were in no imminent danger of losing their heat because of the self-imposed moratorium Massachusetts utilities have on shutting off heat during the winter to customers who demonstrate financial hardship, the growing amount she owed had put her deeper and deeper into a debt she saw no way out of — until she came home Sunday night to find two messages from Peters on her answering machine.

"It's a blessing," Fuller-Jones said. "My children and I are just so appreciative. People like (Peters) don't come at a dime a dozen."

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Liberty Mutual eyes Texas hub

Boston-based Liberty Mutual, which is reportedly looking at building a new hub for 4,000 employees in Texas, says it has no plans to relocate its Bay State staffers.

News outlets in Texas began reporting last week that the insurance giant has its sights set on building a large office complex in Plano, the same Dallas metro area where Toyota recently moved its headquarters and State Farm built an office campus. The Dallas Morning News reported Liberty Mutual's Plano development would "consolidate operations from multiple locations."

But the insurance giant yesterday denied that it's moving its local staffers elsewhere.

"Boston is where we began over 100 years ago and today is headquarters for our operations in 30 countries around the world," spokesman John Cusolito said. "We are pleased to call Boston our home and will continue to grow our workforce in the city and throughout the commonwealth."

Liberty Mutual expanded its home office campus in the Back Bay two years ago by adding a new 22-story, 
$300 million office buil-ding. The company has multimillion-dollar tax credit agreements in place with both the state and city to maintain a certain number of jobs here.

In 2010, the state granted Liberty Mutual a 
$22.5 million investment tax credit in exchange for expanding its Massachusetts workforce from 2,438 to 3,038 employees. And the city gave the company a 
$24 million tax break in exchange for a commitment to create at least 600 new jobs over 20 years.

Greg Biggs, managing director of prominent Texas commercial real estate firm JLL, told the Herald, "The market rumor is that they are looking to put a large commitment here. It's a very entrepreneurial environment and community here. Businesses come here and they feel like they're wanted by the community and by the municipalities."

Liberty Mutual has more than 5,100 employees in Massachusetts, with 2,500 in its Boston offices. The company employs more than 45,000 people in more than 900 offices worldwide.

"As a Fortune 100 company, Liberty routinely reviews our office locations and operations to ensure that we are best positioned to meet the needs of our customers and our employees," Cusolito said.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh said he hasn't heard Liberty Mutual is downsizing in Boston and "would be shocked if that were the case."

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Stock markets edge up but Greece standoff looms

BEIJING — Stocks were mostly higher on Tuesday, despite losses in Asia, as investors monitor a standoff between Greece and its creditors that threatens to shake markets.

KEEPING SCORE: France's CAC-40 rose 1.3 percent to 4,708.53 and Germany's DAX rose 1.1 percent to 10,776.79. Britain's FTSE 100 shed 0.1 percent to 6,831.49. Wall Street looked set to recover from losses Monday. Dow futures were up 0.5 percent while S&P 500 futures added 0.6 percent.

GREECE STRESS: Tensions between Athens and its European creditors mounted after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday declared an end to budget cuts and tax increases. Tsipras said he would press for a short-term loan to give the country and its creditors time to negotiate a replacement for its bailout program. Greece is a relatively small economy but investors worry that if it drops out of the euro currency, that might send shock waves through markets. After a drop on Monday, European markets seemed more hopeful on Tuesday for a deal.

THE QUOTE: "The fiscal crisis in Greece clearly poses a significant downside risk to the global economy, even if the threat of contagion has diminished somewhat since 2012," said Andrew Kenningham of Capital Economics in a report.

ASIA'S DAY: Tokyo's Nikkei 225 declined 0.3 percent to 17,652.68 while the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.5 percent to 3,141.59. Seoul's Kospi shed 0.6 percent to 1,935.86 and Sydney and Southeast Asian markets also fell. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was flat at 24,528.10.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude was down 41 cents to $52.45 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract added $1.17 on Monday to close at $52.86. The drop on Monday came as the International Energy Agency said it expected a recovery in the price of oil, but not back to the levels above $100 a barrel seen in recent years.

CURRENCIES: The dollar strengthened to 119.05 yen from Monday's 118.58 yen. The euro declined to $1.1306 from $1.1330.

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Brian Wiliams on hiatus as NBC investigates

Brian Williams' decision to temporarily step away from "NBC Nightly News" amid a swirling controversy over false comments he made about his war reporting in Iraq won't be enough to salvage his free-falling career, say media analysts, who are calling on the high-profile anchor to answer tough questions during his self-imposed hiatus.

"He could come back and recover and it could be just fine — or we may never see him again," Kelly McBride, an expert on ethics for the journalism think tank the Poynter Institute, told the Herald. "NBC is going to have to do lots of question-asking and then come out publicly and say 'this is what we know for sure and this is what is true and this is what isn't.' Then — after all that — they're going to have to decide whether they're going stand behind him or not."

Admitting that it "has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news," Williams announced yesterday that as managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" he is taking himself off the broadcast for several days. Weekend anchor Lester Holt will fill in, he said.

"Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us," Williams wrote.

NBC News refused to comment yesterday on when or whether Williams would return and who would decide his future.

"I think it is all going to depend on what he does while he is off," said Al Tompkins, the Poynter Institute's senior faculty member for broadcasting and online. "Transparency will help them an awful lot ... He's come out and said he's going to be off the air for a while. Well, what is he going to do during that 'while' that will help provide answers to the questions? And will those answers do anything to calm the waters — that's what is going to matter."

Stressing that "going into hiding never, ever helps," Tompkins said the best course of action for both Williams and NBC will be to make the findings of the network's internal investigation public.

"They've said they're going to do an internal investigation and that's fine — but that investigation is going to have to be highly public, otherwise what value is the report," Tompkins asked. "They're going to have to release their findings and own up to them."

NBC News President Deborah Turness said Friday that an internal investigation had been launched after questions arose over Williams' false on-air statements that he was in a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in 2003.

Since Williams' apology Wednesday, questions also have been raised about his claim that he saw a body or bodies in the Hurricane Katrina floodwaters that hit New Orleans in 2005.

"Having Brian Williams sitting there right now is just too problematic for the network," said Tobe Berkovitz, a media analyst and professor at Boston University. "You can be sure that everyone is burning up YouTube looking at every clip, quote and appearance that Brian Williams has ever made looking for more of these follies and no one can withstand that kind of scrutiny. Unfortunately for him, that's the microscope that he is currently under."

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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Advocates say 150,000 need more fuel assistance due to harsh winter

Advocates for the poor are calling on state officials to provide immediate aid to approximately 150,000 low-income Massachusetts households — about one-third of them seniors — who have exhausted their fuel-assistance benefits due to one of the coldest winters in recent memory.

In the Boston area alone, approximately 18,000 families have used up their federal benefits and confront stark choices: whether to pay for heat and rent, or whether to pay for food, medicine or electricity, said John Drew, president and CEO of Action for Boston Community Development.

"So many people are hurting this winter, and with weather like this, there doesn't seem to be any end in sight," Drew said. "Oil prices are down, but this has not been a normal winter. And electricity costs have gone way up."

The maximum federal fuel-assistance benefit is $1,025 for the poorest families — those with total incomes below the federal poverty level of $23,850 for a family of four.

On Jan. 21, Massachusetts received an additional $13 million in federal fuel assistance for qualifying residents, bringing the total fiscal year 2015 award to more than $144 million. But that $13 million divided among 150,000 households comes to just $86.66 per family.

That is not enough to pay for even half what Sydney Fuller-Jones says she owes for the gas that heats the Mattapan apartment where she lives with her 13-year-old twins.

Although they are in no imminent danger of losing their heat because of the self-imposed moratorium Massachusetts utilities have on shutting off heat from Nov. 15 to April 1 to customers who demonstrate financial hardship, the growing amount she owes puts her deeper and deeper into a debt she sees no way out of.

Since her husband died in 2011, Fuller-Jones has been the sole breadwinner in the family. And of the $1,800 in pay the 52-year-old administrative assistant takes home each month, $1,400 goes toward rent, and $400 pays for her car and insurance. The rest — food, clothes, electricity — she pays for with credit.

"I don't want to break down, but I just can't keep up," she said. "I have bouts of anxiety and struggle with depression. But I have to keep going for my children."

Last year, the state provided $20 million to increase benefits for heating assistance for families such as hers.

State Rep. Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill), chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, said Friday that lawmakers will determine what options they have while dealing with a 
$768 million budget deficit.

Elizabeth Guyton, Gov. Charlie Baker's press secretary, said he "understands this year's bitterly cold weather presents serious challenges for many. The administration will work with the Legislature to ensure that the necessary fuel assistance resources are available to the most vulnerable during the winter months."

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App tracking appetite gets NIH grant

Researchers at UMass Medical School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute have received a
$2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a smartphone app that will take a bite out of overeating caused by stress.

Development of the Re-lax app and a series of pilot clinical studies of 120 patients with obesity to evaluate the app's effectiveness will be led by Sherry Pagoto, associate professor in the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine at UMass Medical School, and Bengisu Tulu, associate professor at the WPI Foisie School of Business.

"The app is different from others because it brings stress into the context of diet and exercise," Pagoto said. "My clinical and research experience shows that stress is a major reason people fail to follow through with lifestyle changes, which is what inspired this work."

Relax will entail both a mobile app that will enable patients to track their daily activities, and a web-based tool clinicians will be able to use to access patient information and help plan their treatment.

In addition to usual diet and exercise tracking, Pagoto said, the app also will help patients track both their stress and stress-induced eating and give them opportunities to do brief, relaxation exercises such as mindfulness meditation.

Using barcode scanning of foods, GPS technology and patients' text inputs, Relax will track their daily activities, eating patterns, exercise, mood and stress-inducing events, and provide them with an itemized list of the foods they ate and the times of day that were most stressful, illustrating the relationship between the two,

Data will be uploaded to a cloud-based platform to give clinicians guidance about when patients are experiencing stress and emotional eating, what foods they eat at those times and how often they do relaxation exercises — all information that clinicians during traditional weight-loss counseling sessions have to spend time soliciting from patients or gleaning from records.

By using the Relax web tool, clinicians will be able to more quickly get to the core of what's causing patients' eating habits, resulting in better outcomes with fewer visits to their doctors or counselors, Tulu said.

"We think that if you can shorten the time counseling takes," she said, "the money you save can be used to reach more patients."

The three-year project will track 120 patients to determine the app's effectiveness.

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The Ticker

EPA to help towns adapt to flooding

Two Massachusetts communities have been chosen to receive help from the Environmental Protection Agency in finding ways to become more resilient to flooding.

Scituate and Newburyport were chosen to receive EPA technical assistance through the agency's "Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities" program. The projects will involve a team of EPA-led experts and will include the public in workshops.

Scituate Town Administrator Patricia Vinchesi said the town is significantly affected by coastal storms that tax its infrastructure, residents and resources. Newburyport Mayor Donna Holaday said the town has increasingly experienced severe flooding and coastal erosion during storms.

TUESDAY

• Commerce Department releases wholesale trade inventories for December.
• Labor Department releases job openings and labor turnover survey for December.

WEDNESDAY

• Treasury releases federal budget for January.

THURSDAY

• Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims.
• Commerce Department releases retail sales data for January.
• Freddie Mac releases weekly mortgage rates. L Commerce Department releases business inventories for December.
• The TJX Cos., a Framingham-based off-price retailer, announced that William H. Swanson has been elected to its board of directors. Swanson is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Raytheon Co.

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Ronan Farrow charts new course at MSNBC

The roving news correspondent worked his sources in Paris for days, with nary a chance to eat. His efforts paid off, with a couple of exclusive interviews with interesting people affected by the tragic Charlie Hebdo murders. Next he had to prepare to meet with whistleblowers in the United States who were ready to slip him damning details about the way the nation's government treats its veterans.

Was it CNN's Anderson Cooper? CBS' Scott Pelley? ABC's David Muir? No, this was Ronan Farrow.

If that name is surprising, well, MSNBC hopes it won't be going forward. Farrrow's MSNBC program, "Ronan Farrow Daily," has been dogged by cancellation rumors for months (though none of them have proven out) and that speculation that has been bolstered by the program's decidedly lackluster ratings. But MSNBC has plans for the Rhodes Scholar and former Obama foreign policy official whose youth (he is under 30) and family background (he is the son of actress Mia Farrow) have brought an extreme degree of attention to his fledgling effort in the world of cable-news.

"It's about diving in deep," says Farrow during a recent interview while reporting in Paris. His goal is to travel to places where big stories erupt, then find underreported facets, like discovering individuals whose lives have been changed by the news. He really enjoys "finding the human piece to tell the bigger story and push forward the narrative," he says.

MSNBC executives acknowledge Farrow's daytime program has not won in the viewership game, but suggest they see potential, both for TV and for grabbing attention from viewers who watch the news in new ways. Farrow has proven skilled in nabbing interviews with everyone from Mitt Romney to Angelina Jolie to Jeannette Bougrab, the partner of slain Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, who gave a heart-wrenching account of life in the days after the terrorist attack on that publication. "I worked every angle and every connection that I had and ever worked with in government, and knew through random online connections," Farrow says of his work to secure interviews while in France.

These kinds of exchanges, executives suggest, spread quickly on social media and generate digital impressions that are likely to be valuable as viewers rely on connections other than cable subscriptions to gain access to video. In 2013, according to the Pew Research Journalism Project, 82 percent of Americans said they got news on a desktop or laptop, while 54 percent said they got news on a mobile device. Pew said 35 percent reported that they get news in this way "frequently" on their desktop or laptop, and 21 percent from a mobile phone or tablet.

"We have to look beyond cable ratings," says Izzy Povich, vice president of talent and development at MSNBC, in an interview, adding , "Ronan is somebody who really can be a content provider on different platforms, and I do think that's the future of where we are headed."

Even so, viewership for "Ronan Farrow Daily" has been disappointing. In some months since the program launched, it has not been able to attract on average even 50,000 viewers between 25 and 54, the audience most desired by advertisers in news programming, according to Nielsen data. In contrast, Farrow's feed on Twitter has 272,000 followers. In December, "Ronan Farrow Daily" lured an average of 206,000 viewers overall, according to Nielsen, and 41,000 in the demo. Rival programs on Fox News Channel and CNN performed significantly better.

MSNBC's plan sprouts alongside a January unveiling of a new streaming-video hub, Shift, which offers programming and personalities not typically seen on the cable outlet. Other TV-news networks are trying similar stuff. CBS News has launched CBSN, a daily broadcast sent via streaming video that emulates something one might see on a cable network. In both cases, the media outlets are stocking the venture with new talent and contributions from staff already in place.

The anchor says he's just getting the opportunities he has craved after working hard to establish himself in a new milieu since the launch of his program last February. "It's a completely hectic, makeshift process. You are building the airplane at the same time you are flying it," he says of getting started on his own hour-long show. Even so, he's had the same aspiration since he began on MSNBC: "I want to be on the ground and connecting with people, and I want that to really be reflected on the show." Still, he acknowledges, "you can't just jump into the deep end like that. You've got to earn your stripes."

Indeed, Farrow has put a lot of focus on fundamentals, says Kathy O'Hearn, executive producer of "Ronan Farrow Daily, and a TV-news veteran who has executive-produced "This Week with George Stephanopulos" on ABC and "Topic A," an interview show built around Tina Brown, at CNBC. "He just gets better every day," she says. "The arc has been learning the mechanics of it, the judgment calls."

In recent months, Farrow has had more of an opportunity to get out of the studio. He visited Dallas to cover the recent Ebola outbreak there. He traveled to the Midwest to examine terrorist recruitment in the United States, and spent a week in the western U.S. to look at life around the U.S. border, embedding with agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

He is also trying to do work that requires more depth of reportage. In December, Farrow launched an investigative series, "Inside the V.A.," based on his follow-up of a 2009 NBC News investigative report looking at how 10,000 U.S. veterans may have been infected with viruses during routine colonoscopies due to mistakes made in cleaning and configuring equipment. He is working with NBC News' investigative unit to track what he calls "the human cost of having to grapple with dysfunctional medical care. It's a really horrible story."

Farrow's increased presence from sundry locales is part of a broader MSNBC strategy to get its anchors out from behind their desks and out to where news is breaking. The network, known for its tilt toward the liberal and progressive side of the political aisle, has seen ratings slump in recent months and has made strides to broaden the issues is tackles.

The intense spotlight that was put on his program when he first started was overwhelming, Farrow says: "That's the understatement of the year" (Some viewers may have tuned in to see if he would comment on allegations made by his sister last February in The New York Times about alleged sexual abuse by filmmaker Woody Allen, her adoptive father who is said to be Farrow's father and who denied the allegations). Viewers may not have been aware he was taking a new step in a journey that has often included interesting paths, such as a degree from Yale Law School and founding the U.S. State Department's Office of Global Youth Issues.

"If you look at my career, such as it is, I wanted to go strike out, do something totally different from the family I grew up in, to do something worthwhile that I care about, make things better, stand apart in that way," says Farrow. "The scrutiny is something out of my control. It's not the easiest thing to deal with, I'll be completely honest, but there are a lot of worse crosses to bear."

Meanwhile, MSNBC would like to see his show perform better on TV. "I'm not satisfied" with the ratings, says O'Hearn, who believes Farrow is gaining an audience and making a name for himself in other ways. "The scrutiny has been a challenge, but we are hopefully out from under that right now. The kinds of things we have been doing have had a tremendous amount of feedback. A series from "Ronan Farrow Daily" called "Transgender Society," has been nominated for an award by GLAAD, the advocacy organization for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

Farrow intends to press forward. "It's a lot of hard work getting into the nitty-gritty and talking to everyone and never sleeping and not really eating," he notes. To stand out in the modern TV-news landscape, that level of activity may be de rigueur.

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