New AG: Casinos should follow consumer laws

Attorney General Maura Healey yesterday made a series of recommendations to the state Gaming Commission, including re-examining part of its proposed gambling regulations that would allow casinos to seek exceptions from the rules.

"We believe that no casino should be allowed to deviate from important consumer protection regulations and that any other variance should be sought subject to a full and transparent public process," she said.

On her first full day as the state's chief law enforcement officer yesterday, Healey testified before the commission, which also reviewed new renderings of Wynn Resorts' planned Everett casino, a curved, 629-room tower with bronze-colored glass that Commissioner Enrique Zuniga called "iconic."

Citing "significant ambiguity" over whether existing law prohibits the placement of ATMs in casinos, Healey also urged the commissioners to explore the issue through a "standalone public process" and, should they conclude that the law does allow ATMs in casinos, to consider a "wide range of protections," including requiring that the machines be placed a certain distance from the casino floor, prohibiting credit card cash advances and capping withdrawals.

Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby said the state Division of Banks interpreted the law as allowing ATMs inside casinos, provided they are not in the "gaming area." Proposed regulations restrict ATMs from being closer than 15 feet to the area. But Crosby said the commission may reconsider that, given all the comments it has received.

Healey also urged the commission to add to its proposed prohibition on placing a lien on a homeowner's primary residence to collect outstanding gambling debt, and explicitly ban casinos from selling consumers' gambling debt.

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The Ticker

City workers can speak freely on Olympic bid

Boston city workers are free to criticize the Hub's bid for the 2024 Olympics on their own time, the U.S. Olympic Committee said in a letter yesterday.

"None of the USOC, the Boston 2024 partnership, or the City of Boston have any intention under these agreements to restrict the personal rights of expression of any of their employees," USOC general counsel Christopher Cleary wrote.

The restriction only applies to employees in connection with performance of their duties in connection with Boston's bid, he said.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh has said the joinder agreement he signed with the USOC was "boilerplate language," and he reiterated in an email to city workers yesterday that they could speak freely.

"No employees will face any consequences for contributing their thoughts — positive or negative — and I look forward to hearing from all of you," he wrote.

DreamWorks to cut 500 jobs

DreamWorks Animation said yesterday it is reducing the number of films it produces each year from three to two and cutting 500 jobs as it tries to improve its profitability.

The company, known for animated movies such as "Shrek" and "Kung Fu Panda," said it is narrowing its focus to one original film and one sequel each year.

• Citizens Financial Group announced that Tom Gamache has been named Northeast division sales manager for the retail loan officer channel of the home lending solutions group, the bank's consumer lending business.

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Belmont Colonial an energy star

Talk about a makeover.

A 1927-built Dutch Colonial near Belmont High School wasn't just gut renovated — it was deep energy retrofitted.

Deep energy retrofits, defined as renovations that cut energy costs more than 50 percent, turn drafty houses into super-efficient homes.

The just-completed three-bedroom 2,700-square-foot single family at 158 Concord Ave. — on the market for $1,265,000 — looks like any number of contemporary makeovers. The living spaces have an open feel and there's a stylish kitchen with white cabinets, gray-and-white granite counters and Jenn-Air appliances, along with an adjacent sunroom dining area. The master bedroom suite has two closets with built-in storage, and an en-suite master bathroom features a glassed-in steam shower and a marble-topped double-sink vanity.

"A house doesn't have to look different to be green," said Leland DiMeco, the listing broker of the Belmont house and co-founder of Boston Green Realty, which specializes in selling energy-efficient properties. "And the price of deep retrofits is in the ballpark of a traditionally built high-end home."

But there are major differences in the way this house was reconstructed. Super-insulated walls are up to 16-inches thick, tilt-and-turn windows are triple-paned, and doors to the outside are nearly three inches thick. The roof and wall insulation exceeds the building code by 100 percent.

This retrofitted home will use 75 percent less energy than a traditional home.

And the air quality in the retrofitted house is more healthy than that in conventional homes, Butler said, with outside air brought into each room through ventilator fans, while stale air is exhausted. Indoor air runs through a heat exchanger to raise the temperature.

"The house has been rebuilt like a refrigerator," DiMeco said. "Once it reaches a certain temperature it's hard for that temperature to drop."

A wall-mounted heat pump unit takes care of the first floor and a small ducted heating/cooling system serves the top two floors.

"People wrongly think that deep energy retrofits are hugely expensive to do compared to a traditional gut renovation, " said contractor Brian Butler of Savilonis Construction, who has done more than a dozen DER projects. "But with the incentive rebates, it only costs about 6 percent more."

Developer Sachi Sato, who lives next door to 158 Concord Ave., bought the property from an elderly couple for $590,000 in 2013, and teamed up with her business partner Sayo Okada at SA2 Studios, which specializes in sustainable design and development.

"After we made the calculations, a deep energy retrofit made economic sense for this house because so much needed to be redone inside and out," said Sato, who tapped into utility National Grid's Deep Energy Retrofit incentive program, which provided $14,000 in rebates.

Sato estimates total construction costs at over $400,000, including the master bath addition and an all-new roof, and plumbing, electrical and heating/ventilation and tankless water heating systems.

"We're trying to get more builders to understand the benefits of doing deep energy retrofits," said DiMeco. "These properties not only cut energy costs significantly, but they are much healthier places to live."

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Measles outbreak casts spotlight on anti-vaccine movement

LOS ANGELES — A major measles outbreak traced to Disneyland has brought criticism down on the small but vocal movement among parents to opt out of vaccinations for their children.

In a rash of cases that public health officials are rushing to contain, at least 70 people in six states and Mexico have fallen ill since mid-December, most of them from California. The vast majority of those who got sick had not gotten the measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, vaccine.

While still a scourge in many corners of the world, measles has been all but eradicated in the U.S. since 2000 because of vaccinations. But the virus has made a comeback in recent years, in part because of people obtaining personal belief exemptions from rules that say children must get their shots to enroll in school.

Others have delayed getting their children vaccinated because they still believe now-discredited research linking the measles vaccine to autism.

"Some people are just incredibly selfish" by skipping shots, said Dr. James Cherry, a pediatric disease expert at the University of California, Los Angeles.

As cases mount, several newspapers have criticized the anti-vaccine movement.

Measles "is a disease that has been beaten by modern medicine. That makes it all the more frustrating that anti-science stubbornness has proven, in the case of the Disneyland-related measles, that when it comes to contagious diseases, it's a small world after all," the Los Angeles Times said in an editorial last week.

Barbara Loe Fisher, director of the National Vaccine Information Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit that favors letting parents decide whether to vaccinate, said, "I don't think it's wise or responsible to blame" unvaccinated people for the Disney outbreak. She noted that a small number of those stricken had been fully vaccinated.

Health authorities believe the outbreak was triggered by a measles-stricken visitor to one of the Disney parks who brought the virus from abroad last month.

As one of the world's biggest tourist destinations, Disney was a perfect spot for the virus to spread, with large numbers of babies too young to be vaccinated and lots of visitors from countries that do not require measles shots. The disease has since spread beyond Disneyland.

The infected ranged from 7 months to 70 years old, including five Disneyland workers.

"It's tragic to see measles making a resurgence," said Deanne Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Health Care Agency. "When our immunity falls, it creates a problem for the whole community."

While all states require certain vaccinations for schoolchildren, parents in certain states such as California can opt out if they sign a personal belief waiver.

In the past five years, the percentage of kindergartners in California who are up to date on all vaccinations has held pretty steady from 90.7 percent in the 2010-11 school year to 90.4 percent in 2014-15. But there are some wealthy communities in Los Angeles and Orange counties and in Northern California with double-digit vaccination exemption rates.

To control this latest outbreak, those who are not vaccinated were warned this week to stay away from Disney theme parks. Disney employees who have no proof of immunization and may have come into contact with sick colleagues were placed on paid leave until they are given the medical all-clear.

At Huntington Beach High School in Orange County, two dozen unvaccinated students were ordered home until the three-week incubation period is up.

More than 30 babies in Northern California's Alameda County have been placed in home isolation after possible exposure.

"I'm terribly upset that someone has made a choice that not only affects their child but other people's children," said Jennifer Simon, whose 6-month-old daughter, Livia, was isolated after it was learned she may have been exposed to measles during a visit to the doctor's office.

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Contact Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Deere to lay off more than 1,000 workers in Iowa, Illinois

Deere will lay off about 910 workers indefinitely from factories mostly in Iowa and sideline another 500 employees in Illinois until late summer, as the agricultural equipment maker continues its adjustment to demand for its products.

The Moline, Illinois, company also said Friday that it is adding 220 jobs at construction and forestry factories in Iowa. It plans to fill nearly all those positions with workers were laid off at agricultural equipment factories last year.

The latest indefinite layoffs will be centered on sites that build agricultural equipment, a core element of its business. They include 565 workers from three Waterloo, Iowa, locations; another 300 from the Des Moines Works in Ankeny, Iowa; and 45 from the Harvester Works in East Moline, Illinois.

Employees laid off until summer work at the company's seeding and cylinder factory in Moline. That location is going on an extended inventory adjustment shutdown. The company said it typically goes through a seasonal inventory adjustment around this time of year.

The layoffs will begin in early February, and most will be effective in late March.

Deere & Co. said last August that it would lay off a total of more than 1,000 workers, with those reductions coming from an Iowa tractor factory and four Midwest factories that make harvesting and other agricultural equipment.

The world's biggest farm equipment maker said last fall that it expected its farm equipment sales and profits to fall in the new fiscal year. Falling commodity prices and lower farm income have hurt companies like Deere, which employs about 29,000 people in the United States and Canada and around 60,000 globally.

Company shares dropped $1.11, or 1.2 percent, to $88.40 in morning trading Friday, while broader indexes also slumped.

Deere stock fell 3 percent last year to close at 88.47, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 11.4 percent.

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Elizabeth Warren would use drug co. fines for NIH funds

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to file a bill next week to help fund basic medical research by targeting drug companies accused of breaking the law, but the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council has a problem with the proposed funding mechanism.

"We appreciate Sen. Warren's commitment to increased NIH funding, but believe the mechanism proposed ... is flawed and is not likely to provide the increase in dollars Sen. Warren is anticipating," CEO Robert Coughlin said.

Under Warren's bill, drug companies involved in government settlements over alleged wrongdoing would have to pay 1 percent of annual profits for their drugs that relied on taxpayer-funded government research. Those penalties, which would run for five years, would go to National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration research.

"This isn't a tax," Warren said. "It is simply a condition of settling to avoid a trial in a major case of wrongdoing. If a company never breaks the law, it will never pay the fee."

Budget cuts have choked off support for research that could lead to breakthrough treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's and other conditions that affect millions, according to Warren.

Coughlin said the drug industry has supported a number of initiatives aimed at boosting NIH funding. "We look forward to the continued dialogue on increasing NIH funding for critical medical research and working with Sen. Warren and the entire Massachusetts delegation to find an appropriate solution," he said.

Massachusetts organizations received $2.4 billion-plus in fiscal 2014 — 10 percent of NIH funding and second only to California.

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Uber has 10,000 Boston-area drivers

Nearly 10,000 Uber drivers are cruising the streets of Boston and surrounding communities, dwarfing the number of licensed cabs and underscoring the importance of Uber in the region's transportation system, as well as the need for ride-sharing regulations, experts and officials said.

"Ten thousand people is more than many of us had ever thought, or had imagined," said City Councilor Tito Jackson. "Uber is actually even more of a substantial provider of rides than any of us knew, and this will be very helpful in terms of the types of policy that we form on this."

Uber released the data for the first time yesterday in a 27-page report outlining the number of drivers, earnings and demographics in 20 markets nationwide.

The 10,000 drivers that span the company's Boston market, which includes communities such as Framingham, Brockton and Andover, made at least one trip last month, Uber said. Boston Uber drivers make about $20 per hour, which does not include expenses such as gas and insurance, according to the report.

Uber said the number of drivers in Boston has doubled in less than a year.

In comparison, there are 1,825 licensed taxis in Boston, with roughly 3,000 licensed taxi drivers. In Cambridge, there are only 257 licensed taxis.

Taxi companies have been at odds with ride-sharing companies such as Uber, saying they have a competitive advantage since they don't have to follow the same rules.

"They have saturated the market, they've been able to underprice and pretty much run a business without any oversight or regulation," said Donna Blythe-Shaw, a spokeswoman for the Boston Taxi Drivers Association. "It throws in the face of city regulators and the state that there's an industry that has been running wild with no oversight and putting people out of work."

Boston's 10,000 drivers make the Hub the sixth largest Uber city in the country. The largest, Los Angeles, has more than 20,000 drivers, Uber said.

"It does have some impact on a potential for the need for regulation, but I don't think that the size of the number given, the fact that it's over a metropolitan area, I don't think that it means Uber should be shut down," said Janice Griffith, a law professor at Suffolk University. "What it does say is that a number of people have decided that they would prefer, or at least are willing to engage in, ride-sharing."

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Hands-on with Microsoft's hologram device

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft didn't use skydivers or stunt cyclists to introduce what it hopes will be the next big leap in computing technology. Instead, with its new HoloLens headset, the company is offering real-world examples to show how you might use three-dimensional digital images — or holograms — in daily life.

And that might be what it takes to get people to buy a computer they wear on their face.

I got a brief peek at what wearing the HoloLens could be like in different scenarios: performing a simple home repair, pretending to be a scientist studying the surface of Mars and exploring a colorful, animated game that added new dimensions to an unremarkable room.

Microsoft unveiled HoloLens at its headquarters this week, on the same day the company touted its upcoming Windows 10 software release. What I saw of the device seems unfinished, but it shows potential.

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A CROWDED FIELD:

Some of the world's biggest tech companies are working on wearable devices that aim to create realistic, three-dimensional representations of alien worlds or imaginary creatures.

Google's computerized eyewear, Glass, isn't technically a virtual-reality device, but it shows the challenges of winning consumer acceptance. Google introduced Glass in 2012 with a Vegas-style stunt that included mountain bikes and skydivers landing on the roof of a convention center. Last week, it suspended consumer sales after many people balked at the notion of wearing a digital camera and Internet-connected device on their head.

Meanwhile, Google has invested in a secretive start-up, Magic Leap, that's working on virtual reality. Samsung and Oculus VR — which Facebook bought for $2 billion last year — are developing gaming headsets that essentially block the wearer's view and replace it with an imaginary world. Smaller companies have developed headsets for industrial or business uses.

Microsoft's HoloLens was built by engineers who created the Kinect motion-sensing system for Xbox games. It projects a realistic image on a screen in front of your eyes, but the screen is transparent, so you can still see what's in front of you. The holograms respond to gestures and spoken commands, detected by cameras and other sensors in the device.

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WALKING ON MARS:

The most striking demonstration involved a project in which Microsoft partnered with scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They've created a vividly realistic, three-dimensional landscape by knitting together photographs and data collected by NASA's Curiosity rover.

When I moved my head, the landscape shifted as if I was actually walking on the planet. I peered under a rock outcropping. I was joined by a digital avatar, playing the part of a JPL scientist. We spoke and used hand gestures to place digital markers on different rocks, in an exercise simulating how scientists might use the system to direct the rover's exploration.

A more whimsical demonstration involved the Microsoft-owned "Minecraft" game. In a small living room, the HoloLens projected three-dimensional structures and animated creatures on an actual coffee table. I summoned imaginary tools and blasted a simulated hole in the room's actual wall — and was surprised to see cartoon bats fly out.

But another exercise brought home how useful the gadget might be. I was guided through the process of installing an electric light switch. I saw a woman who showed me a series of sketches and talked me through each step. She was working in real time in another room, drawing sketches on a tablet computer and using Skype to talk with me. I could see the sketches, super-imposed over an actual wall outlet and protruding wires, while her face appeared to one side.

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WHAT'S THE POTENTIAL?

Microsoft engineer Alex Kipman said the company has built programming tools so outside developers can use Windows 10 to create more holographic apps. Kipman called HoloLens "the next step" in moving "beyond today's digital borders." Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said virtual reality will be the next major wave in computing and communications.

Microsoft executives talked about other uses — from helping a surgeon learn a new operating technique to designing objects for 3-D printers. I could also see applications in the kitchen, classrooms and retail shops.

But it's not yet clear when HoloLens will be out, or how much it will cost. While executives showed off a sleek prototype, they used a heavier, clunkier version for up-close demonstrations. It had cumbersome straps, wires and extra gear stowed in a pouch around the wearer's neck.

Still, if Microsoft can produce a working product at a reasonable price, it might help move computing to another level.

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Berkshire Partners, New Balance buying Rockport

BOSTON — Private equity firm Berkshire Partners and athletic shoe maker New Balance are buying The Rockport Co. from the Adidas Group.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Rockport, based in Canton, Massachusetts, sells men's and women's shoes and boots.

As part of the deal, New Balance affiliate Drydock Footwear LLC will join with The Rockport Co. to create The Rockport Group. Drydock's brands include Cobb Hill, Aravon and Dunham.

The Rockport Group will become a new stand-alone company. Drydock founder and President Bob Infantino will serve as CEO of The Rockport Group once the acquisition is complete.

The deal is targeted to close later this year.

Berkshire Partners and New Balance are both based in Boston.

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Ford to take $800M 4Q charge due to Venezuela currency woes

DETROIT — Ford says it will take an $800 million charge in the fourth quarter because of exchange rate problems between the Venezuelan bolivar and the U.S. dollar.

The company says the charge will cut fourth-quarter net income by $700 million, after deferred tax benefits. But the automaker still expects a full-year pretax profit of $6 billion when it reports 2014 earnings Thursday.

In October, Ford cut its full-year pretax profit forecast to $6 billion. That's down from $8.6 billion in 2013.

Ford says in a regulatory filing that the company can no longer exchange bolivars to dollars due to Venezuelan currency exchange controls. The company says the controls have limited auto parts availability and have cut into normal production. But Ford says it will continue operations there for the foreseeable future. The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker has had operations in Venezuela for 53 years.

The company's filing says its financial results in the future won't include its Venezuelan operations. Ford plans to record cash and recognize income from the country when it is paid for parts. Ford says it will work with Venezuelan government agencies "to ensure they understand our Venezuelan operations' business needs and potential production opportunities."

In a note to investors, Citi analyst Itay Michaeli questioned whether General Motors would make a similar move. A GM spokesman would not comment on the matter.

Ford's move to a cost method of accounting in Venezuela eliminates currency volatility that hurt Ford's results last year, Michaeli wrote. "Since automaker stocks and volatility clearly don't mix well, we view this accounting move as a positive," he wrote.

Ford shares slipped 8 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $14.95 in midday trading Friday. They have traded in a range of $13.26 to $18.12 in the past year.

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