Oil prices fall as pipeline supply concerns ease

The price of oil is falling after TransCanada reaffirmed its plans to restart a pipeline this weekend that carries crude from Canada to the Midwest.

Benchmark oil dropped 47 cents Friday to $91.63 per barrel in New York.

TransCanada closed the 2,100-mile Keystone pipeline Wednesday after tests showed possible safety issues. A company spokesman says no leaks have been detected. It plans to restart the pipeline Saturday.

Oil traders largely consider the temporary closure to be a non-issue because U.S. supplies of oil are plentiful. Analysts don't expect any impact on pump prices.

AAA says the national average for gasoline fell 2 cents overnight to $3.715 per gallon. That's nearly 10 cents less than a week ago but still 24 cents more than last year at this time.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Mass. hospitals reach deal on trauma patients

Steward Health Care System will send its most seriously injured trauma patients to two Boston hospitals operated by Partners HealthCare System under a deal struck between the state's two largest health care providers.

Steward, a for-profit chain that operates 10 community hospitals, has been sending critically injured patients from its emergency rooms to five Level 1 trauma centers in Boston or to hospitals in Worcester and Providence. The patients are often victims of shootings or car crashes.

The Boston Globe reports that under the new arrangement, Steward will send most patients to Partners-owned Massachusetts General Hospital or Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Doctors from Partners will also work with Steward hospitals to set up their own trauma centers that can treat patients with less serious injuries.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Mass. casino application process begins

What promises to be a lengthy vetting process for would-be Massachusetts casino developers has officially begun.

The state's gaming commission planned on Friday to make available on its web site Phase 1 applications for developers seeking one of the three licenses for destination resort casinos permitted under the nearly one-year-old gambling law.

The applications are due back within 90 days and must be accompanied by a $400,000 fee.

The commission will review the submissions from developers to determine if they are qualified financially and have no outstanding legal or ethical issues that would disqualify them from bidding for a license.

Applicants that pass the first test will be allowed to move on to the Phase 2 application process and bid competitively for one of the regional casino licenses.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Reebok outfits America's tallest man with custom-made sneakers

Igor Vovkovinsky, the tallest man in America, has found his footing.

Yesterday in a private setting at the Rochester Athletic Club in Rochester, Minn., Vovkovinsky -- who measures 7 feet, 8.33 inches tall -- received his very own, custom-made sneakers from Canton-based Reebok.

After years of never having shoes that fit him properly, leading to multiple foot surgeries, Vovkovinsky, 30, has three pairs of Size 26 sneakers.

In early 2012, he started a website, Facebook page and Twitter account to ask for donations in order to pay for custom shoes. Reebok created them free of charge.

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Bain bus protestors blast Mitt Romney's outsourcing record

Dozens of workers from companies affiliated with Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, demonstrated in Boston yesterday, blasting Romney for vowing he'll be tough on China, the very country to which their jobs are being shipped.

In rallies outside Bain's headquarters in Copley Square and Romney's campaign headquarters in the North End, where they unfurled a 40-foot banner urging "Stop the Romney Bain Economy," employees of Sensata Technologies, which Bain bought in 2006 and still owns 51 percent of, said some of them have been forced to train the Chinese workers who will replace them before the year's end.

"(Romney) plans to run this country like a business, and right now, the most lucrative business is outsourcing," said Dot Turner, who, at 62, will have to start a second career after the Freeport, Ill., plant where she has worked for 43 years closes. "Romney would treat the United States like a business acquisition."

In an email last night, a spokeswoman for Romney, who left Bain Capital in 1999 but remains an investor in the company through his blind trust, said he "built Bain Capital by fixing broken companies and helping new ones grow. The new companies he helped launch — including Staples, Sports Authority and Bright Horizons — have created 100,000 jobs."

A Bain spokesman declined to comment.

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Bocoup to host web developer conference

Hub-based web production company Bocoup will host a two-day conference in December designed to help aspiring web developers learn everything they need to know about building modern websites and applications.

Dubbed Roost, the conference will be held Dec. 3-4 at the Courtyard Boston Downtown hotel.

Bocoup staff said over the course of the two days, attendees will learn how to write better organized code, improve web application performance and make the web development process more efficient.

Day one focuses on the fundamentals of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and jQuery. Day two targets such issues as unit testing, version control, deployment and the modern web stack.

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Hill Holliday wins 'best of show' at Hatch Awards

Local ad agency Hill Holliday was awarded "Best of Show" this week at the Ad Club's 52nd annual Hatch Awards for its involvement with a special "Mad Men" double issue of Newsweek published in late March.

"Our Mad Men issue celebrated the return of the hit show by reverting back to its look from the '60s Mad Men era, and encouraged the issue's advertisers to submit specially designed retro layouts Don Draper style," the agency said in a blog post.

Creative Directors Kevin Daley and Tim Cawley, as well as Chief Creative Officer Lance Jensen led the charge on the concept and accepted the award Tuesday night.

Yesterday, Newsweek said it will end its print publication after 80 years and shift to an all-digital format in early 2013. Its last print edition will be its Dec. 31 issue.

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Brookline school wins $10G grant for robot invention

Brookline-based Beaver Country Day School has been awarded a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant of $10,000 to create an automated robotic vehicular independence system that can carry up to 50 pounds of secured weight for wheelchair-bound individuals or those needing hands-free help to transport cargo.

The quasi-autonomous device, called JARVIS, which stands for "Just an Automated Robotic Vehicular Independence System," follows users without wires or tethers. School officials said the initial concept came from students who carry laundry, groceries and other items for a wheelchair-bound teacher at Beaver.

JARVIS can be adapted for use in airports or train stations as well.

The school is one of 16 high schools nationwide to be selected as an InvenTeam this year. InvenTeams are teams of high school students, teachers and mentors that receive the grants to invent technological solutions to real-world problems.

Jonathan Butler and Laura Nickerson, science teachers and co-teachers of the school's engineering design class, initiated the InvenTeam application process last spring and attended training at MIT in June to help prepare the final proposal.

The initial prototype will cost upward of $3,000, but InvenTeam members said they are committed to bringing the price of the unit down to under $800.

The InvenTeam will also work with NuVu, a full-time magnet innovation center for middle and high school students and a professional development program for teachers and educators, which will guide students through the development of JARVIS, which is expected to take nine months.

A prototype of JARVIS will be showcased by students at EurekaFest at MIT in June.

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BRA grants $200G for historic Roxbury home conversion

Local real estate nonprofit Historic Boston Inc. will receive $200,000 to turn the historic Alvah Kittredge House in Roxbury into market and affordable homes.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority board approved the funding yesterday.

Kittredge, a furniture maker, built the Greek revival-style house at 10 Linwood St. in 1836. The 6,400-square-foot home will be transformed into five units of housing.

"The restoration of the Alvah Kittredge House is a wonderful testament that will bring even more energy to this part of Roxbury," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said in a statement.

Historic Boston said the funding helps significantly to close a financing gap in the $4.7 million project, the cost of which has grown considerably greater because of more structural decay than had been previously discovered.

The nonprofit added it still needs to raise several hundred thousand dollars to complete the Kittredge project, yet has recently launched The Trilogy Fund, a campaign to close the financing gap for three of its current projects, including Kittredge.

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BRA board backs BU Law expansion

The Boston Redevelopment Authority has approved Boston University's $172 million expansion of its law school tower on its Commonwealth Avenue campus.

Construction of an addition to the BU Law building named for media exec Sumner Redstone, who donated $18 million to the project, will start this winter and be finished in the fall of 2015.

As part of the project, BU Law's 18-story tower, built in 1964, will be overhauled, with classrooms brought down to the lower floors, to make them more accessible to students, and offices moved higher up.

"It's this building's turn to be fully renovated," said Gary Nicksa, senior vice president for BU operations. "The original window systems ... the heating and cooling, all of it unfortunately has reached the end of its life."

Other projects approved at last night's BRA board meeting:

• the hotel portion of New Balance's $500 million New Brighton Landing project.

• the North Bennet Street School's $16 million renovation and combination of two former city-owned buildings on North Street in the North End.

• the Hamilton Co.'s 30-unit apartment building at 1085 Boylston St., near Massachusetts Avenue.

• a renovation by the Cronin Group of the Gate of Heaven parish hall in South Boston into a four-story apartment building with 24 units.

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