Arnold lease hits the spot

Arnold Worldwide's announcement that it will relocate to the Millennium Tower/Burnham Building complex next year is expected to heighten interest in Downtown Crossing office and retail space in addition to jump-starting the project's construction.

The advertising agency's lease for 125,000 square feet in the former Filene's building will inject a 700-strong youthful, creative workforce that will help set the tone for the district's revitalization, observers say.

Arnold's move will prompt other "world-class" companies to look at the area, said Rosemarie Sansone, president of the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District. "They had been courted by property owners in many different locations across the city for many years," she said. "A tenant of this magnitude and this stature is very, very important and sets the tone for all of the other pieces falling into place."

Leaks of developer Millennium Partners/Boston's talks with Arnold — headquartered at 101 Huntington Ave. for 15 years — already had sparked interest in Downtown Crossing from companies seeking office space, said developer Ron Druker, a major Downtown Crossing property owner.

"It's a real boost to the area," he said. "We've been attracting interest from tenants priced out of the Innovation District because of its great success and Kendall Square. We've seen this in our buildings on Kingston Street, where we recently rented space. Some of (the tenants) are startups, some of them are established companies, architects, high-tech."

Arnold and sister agency Havas Media hope to move into the fifth through eighth floors of the 1912 Burnham building on Sept. 1, 2014.

"They do things that are really cutting-edge, and it sets the tone for a workplace that is not your father's office building," said Anthony Pangaro, principal at Millennium Partners, which took over the long-stalled project last year.

Restoration of the Burnham building, the only Boston building by legendary Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, likely will start within a month. Construction of the adjacent 625-foot Millennium Tower will overlap and begin once the Burnham building's missing outer wall is replaced, Pangaro said,

Millennium has yet to sign other leases for the project, which includes 75,000 more square feet of office space and 135,000 square feet of retail space in the Burnham building, and 95,500 square feet of retail space in Millennium Tower, which will include 450 luxury residences.

In addition to a grocer, Millennium is seeking innovative retail companies.

"The Apple store has told us we don't build stores that you can't see into anymore, so we are looking for companies that are visually interesting, that tell the story of what they do on the street, through the facade," Pangaro said. "There's a lot of interest."

Arnold Boston president Pam Hamlin would like to see businesses move in that cater to the tastes and interests of the company's young employee base.

"We're the first company that is really a creative organization that's able to move into the area to help shape what this part of Boston looks like," she said.

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Feds give up to 1 year break on mortgage payments

NEW YORK — Federal mortgage payment relief has been extended up to one year for more than 200,000 homeowners whose houses were damaged by Superstorm Sandy.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced the extension for homeowners with Federal Housing Administration-insured loans on Friday.

A previous mortgage payment extension for federally-backed home loans was set to expire on April 30. About 286,000 homeowners with FHA-insured loans were affected by the late October storm, with nearly 96,000 in New York.

Donovan said the 12-month extension was meant to help homeowners still struggling to rebuild avoid foreclosure.

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Local police grapple with response to cybercrimes

WASHINGTON — If a purse with $900 is stolen, the victim probably would call the police.

If a computer hacker steals $900 from that person's bank account, what then? Call the police? Could they even help?

Police now don't have widespread know-how to investigate cybercrimes, and they rely heavily on the expertise of the federal government, which focuses on large, often international cybercrimes.

What's missing is the first response role, typically owned by local police.

Police departments around the country are now looking to boost their expertise to respond to these cybercrimes and cyberthreats.

Officials have said cyberthreats will soon become as big as or eclipse the threat of terrorism.

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EU officials seek more private investment in jobs

DUBLIN — With many of the European Union's economies mired in stagnation, EU officials are seeking to emulate part of the U.S. model for creating growth and jobs by fostering more private investment in businesses.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said Saturday that in the United States banks account for only 25 percent of external financing for businesses. In Europe, he said, the proportion is the opposite — 70 to 75 percent of business financing comes from banks. He spoke at the conclusion of a two-day meeting of EU finance ministers in Dublin.

"There was a shared view that we must begin to take tangible action to assist in developing a more balanced financial system in which banks, institutional investors and public authorities all play a role in supporting long-term investment in growth and jobs," Noonan said.

This is important, he said, as many small and medium-sized businesses in the EU lack access to capital. Because Ireland currently holds the EU's rotating six-month presidency, Noonan chaired the meeting.

In January, unemployment across the 17 EU countries that use the euro hit a record 11.9 percent, with nearly 19 million people out of work. The unemployment rate for young people was 24.2 percent. And the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, predicts the unemployment rate will rise further this year.

The finance ministers also agreed to push for completion of a banking union that would create a single set of rules for banks in the union, a single supervisory mechanism and uniform procedures for winding down banks that fail. And they renewed their pledge to work together to fight tax evasion — a practice they said many people found particularly galling at a time when government cutbacks and tax increases are wreaking havoc with their personal finances.

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Don Melvin can be reached at https://twitter.com/Don_Melvin

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Adjunct faculty to discuss forming union in Boston

BOSTON — Adjunct faculty members from across the Boston area are planning to meet to discuss the possibility of forming a union.

Adjunct faculty are hired on a temporary basis and typically do not have the benefits of tenured faculty or those on a track to become tenured.

They argue that they're playing an increasingly important role at universities despite facing low pay, few benefits and a lack of institutional support for research projects.

They are planning to hold a symposium to discuss forming a union Saturday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston.

The symposium is being organized with the Service Employees International Union.

The union says it's already home to 15,000 unionized adjunct faculty members who have won improvements in pay, job security and access to retirement benefits.

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Medicare increase could ding some in middle class

WASHINGTON — Retired city worker Sheila Pugach lives in a modest home on a quiet street in Albuquerque, N.M., and drives an 18-year-old Subaru.

Pugach doesn't see herself as upper-income by any stretch, but President Barack Obama's budget would raise her Medicare premiums and those of other comfortably retired seniors, adding to a surcharge that already costs some 2 million beneficiaries hundreds of dollars a year each.

Due to the creeping effects of inflation, 20 million Medicare beneficiaries also would end up paying higher "income related" premiums for their outpatient and prescription coverage over time.

Obama administration officials say Obama's proposal will help improve the financial stability of Medicare by reducing taxpayer subsidies for retirees who can afford to pay a bigger share of costs. Congressional Republicans agree with the president on this one, making it highly likely the idea will become law if there's a budget deal this year.

But the way Pugach sees it, she's being penalized for prudence, dinged for saving diligently.

It was the government, she says, that pushed her into a higher income bracket where she'd have to pay additional Medicare premiums.

IRS rules require people age 70-and-a-half and older to make regular minimum withdrawals from tax-deferred retirement nest eggs like 401(k)s. That was enough to nudge her over Medicare's line.

"We were good soldiers when we were young," said Pugach, who worked as a computer systems analyst. "I was afraid of not having money for retirement and I put in as much as I could. The consequence is now I have to pay about $500 a year more in Medicare premiums."

Currently only about 1 in 20 Medicare beneficiaries pays the higher income-based premiums, which start at incomes over $85,000 for individuals and $170,000 for couples. As a reference point, the median or midpoint U.S. household income is about $53,000.

Obama's budget would change Medicare's upper-income premiums in several ways. First, it would raise the monthly amounts for those currently paying.

If the proposal already were law, Pugach would be paying about $168 a month for outpatient coverage under Medicare's Part B, instead of $146.90.

Then, the plan would create five new income brackets to squeeze more revenue from the top tiers of retirees.

But its biggest impact would come through inflation.

The administration is proposing to extend a freeze on the income brackets at which seniors are liable for the higher premiums until 1 in 4 retirees has to pay. It wouldn't be the top 5 percent anymore, but the top 25 percent.

"Over time, the higher premiums will affect people who by today's standards are considered middle-income," explained Tricia Neuman, vice president for Medicare policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "At some point, it raises questions about whether (Medicare) premiums will continue to be affordable."

Required withdrawals from retirement accounts would be the trigger for some of these retirees. For others it could be taking a part-time job.

One consequence could be political problems for Medicare. A growing group of beneficiaries might come together around a shared a sense of grievance.

"That's part of the problem with the premiums — they simply act like a higher tax based on income," said David Certner, federal policy director for AARP, the seniors lobby.

"Means testing" of Medicare benefits was introduced in 2007 under President George W. Bush in the form of higher outpatient premiums for the top-earning retirees. Obama's health care law expanded the policy and also added a surcharge for prescription coverage.

The latest proposal ramps up the reach of means testing and sets up a political confrontation between AARP and liberal groups on one side and fiscal conservatives on the other. The liberals long have argued that support for Medicare will be undermined if the program starts charging more for the well-to-do. Not only are higher-income people more likely to be politically active, but they also tend to be in better health.

Fiscal conservatives say it makes no sense for government to provide the same generous subsidies to people who can afford to pay at least some of the cost themselves. As a rule, taxpayers pay for 75 percent of Medicare's outpatient and prescription benefits. Even millionaires would still get a 10 percent subsidy on their premiums under Obama's plan. Technically, both programs are voluntary.

"The government has to understand the difference between universal opportunity and universal subsidy," said David Walker, the former head of the congressional Government Accountability Office. "This is a very modest step toward changing the government subsidy associated with Medicare's two voluntary programs."

It still doesn't sit well with Pugach. She says she's been postponing remodeling work on her 58-year-old house because she's concerned about the cost. Having a convenient utility room so she doesn't have to go out to the garage to do laundry would help with her back problems.

"They think all old people are living the life of Riley," she said.

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Egypt relaxes foreign currency rules

CAIRO — Egypt, which is in need of foreign currency, is relaxing its rules on how much cash air travelers can bring into the nation.

Egyptian airport officials say that beginning Saturday passengers will be allowed to declare more than $10,000 in foreign currency upon arrival, but still won't be allowed to leave with more than that.

Late last year, as value of the Egyptian pound declined sharply amid political turmoil, President Mohammed Morsi ordered airport authorities to ban people from entering or leaving Egypt with more than $10,000. Some Egyptians worried about the country's slumping economy had begun hoarding U.S. dollars, and several have tried to flee the country with bags of cash.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

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Ex-AP writer McArthur, who covered Vietnam, dies

Born in the Deep South and caught up in the romance of journalism at an early age, George McArthur was not one to let social taboos or politics interfere with a good story.

As a campus reporter for the local newspaper, covering civil rights and racial tensions at the University of Georgia, he was called a "communist" by the state's segregationist governor, Herman Talmadge. McArthur replied, with typical sarcasm, that he felt honored.

Later, while reporting for The Associated Press from Seoul during the Korean War, and from the Arab world and Indochina, McArthur cultivated Soviet and other communist-state reporters as friends, and the trust paid off with exclusive bits of inside information from the ongoing peace talks at Panmunjom.

In one case, McArthur recalled recently, his source made the deal in exchange for a box of condoms from the PX.

For nearly three decades, McArthur was the quintessential foreign correspondent as he reported from the boulevards of Paris to the sands of the Middle East and jungles of Vietnam, for the AP and later the Los Angeles Times. He died Friday night at age 88 in a hospice in Fairfax County, Va., of complications from a stroke 17 days earlier, his wife, Eva Kim McArthur, said.

When Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, an avowed communist, hosted American anti-war advocate Tom Hayden at his home in Cambodia, his friend McArthur was the only western reporter invited to their news conference.

"As I left," McArthur recalled years later, other reporters were standing outside, asking: "'What did he say? What did he say?' I went past them and headed for the phone."

Born July 15, 1924, in Valdosta, Ga., George A. McArthur III said he was first inspired to become a foreign correspondent at age 9, when he read a book by Richard Harding Davis, a famous globe-trotting reporter in the early 20th century.

At age 20 in October 1944, McArthur served aboard the Navy hospital ship USS Bountiful, witnessing from a distance the World War II Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.

While the Japanese military was notorious during World War II for mistreatment of enemy prisoners and otherwise ignoring the rules of war, he said the mercy ship — operating alone, and painted white with large red crosses illuminated at night to mark its noncombat status — was never attacked or threatened by the Imperial Navy.

"In our case, the Japanese respected the laws of war and left us alone," he said.

After the war, McArthur attended the University of Georgia while working for a local newspaper. He was hired by the AP in Atlanta in 1949 to cover sports and write radio news copy — a typical start for a wire service career path that could lead anywhere.

In his case, that was Korea. In 1951, McArthur was one of several youthful AP staffers who volunteered to replace the aging ex-World War II retreads first dispatched to Seoul after communist North Korea's invasion of South Korea in July, 1950.

It was a new experience for McArthur and his colleagues, who were dubbed the "boy correspondents." But he recalled the remark of a veteran United Press reporter, Bob Vermillion, that "if you can't cover war, you can't cover anything."

Rewarded after Korea with a choice of AP assignments, McArthur opted for Paris, where he spent six years, then moved to Cairo as AP's bureau chief, living in a houseboat on the Nile. In 1963, he moved from there to Manila, Philippines, again as bureau chief.

McArthur polished an elegant writing style in those years that he said was patterned after that of his boyhood hero Davis, and lived the life of a foreign correspondent and bon vivant, a heady, Hemingway-esque mix of glamor, drama and danger.

Sent to cover a Paris news conference by visiting U.S. Vice President Lyndon Johnson, McArthur took along a comely French girlfriend named Domino. "LBJ immediately spotted her, pumped her hand and rattled on for about 60 seconds before realizing she didn't speak a word of English," McArthur recalled in a 2005 interview. "Afterward, Domino asked, 'Who was that man?'"

He later survived a tense moment in Sudan when a street demonstration flared out of control. McArthur said he fled to the U.S. embassy, scrambling under the front security gate seconds before it slammed down.

In 1964, McArthur began making reporting trips from Manila to Vietnam and a year later joined the AP Saigon staff full-time. He was named bureau chief in 1968, and in late 1969 he left the AP to join the Los Angeles Times, continuing to cover the Vietnam war.

He also met, and later married, Eva Kim, a diplomatic secretary to U.S. ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and his successor, Graham Martin.

When Saigon fell to invading North Vietnamese troops on April 30, 1975, Martin and key aides were on one of the last Marine helicopters to leave the U.S. embassy roof. Martin carried the embassy's folded flag; McArthur, accompanying his wife Eva, carried the ambassador's tiny terrier, Nit Noy, on his lap, having saved it from being left behind.

In later years, McArthur and his wife lived in Washington and northern Virginia.

Edith Lederer, who is now AP's chief United Nations correspondent, first met McArthur in Vietnam. "George's courage, keen eye and story-telling skills gave readers around the world a front-row seat on major events of the 20th century," she said.

"He was a role model for many who followed, including me."

In a 2005 interview, McArthur said his career had been more rewarding than he could have imagined as a small-town boy in south Georgia.

Going on home leave from Paris, he crossed the Atlantic on the ocean liner United States, and was invited to dine at the captain's table.

"Nobody from Valdosta, Ga., dresses for dinner or eats at the captain's table," he said in the interview.

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Pyle, a former Saigon bureau chief for The Associated Press, reported from New York.

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Federal budget cuts poised to hit Mass. unemployed

BOSTON — Tens of thousands of out-of-work Massachusetts residents who have been collecting unemployment benefits for more than 26 weeks will see their federal unemployment insurance assistance cut by nearly 13 percent as the automatic federal budget cuts bite deeper into the economy, state officials announced Saturday.

The Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance said it is notifying residents who receive federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation that their benefits will start being cut the week ending May 4. The cuts will run through the rest of the financial year that ends in September.

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program benefits workers who had exhausted their state benefits.

The cuts will hit about 45,000 Massachusetts residents who currently receive the benefits. Each beneficiary now receives an average of $402 a week, but those payments will be trimmed to $351. The benefit amount for each person is calculated on individual circumstances, said Kevin Franck of the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.

"These benefit reductions will only affect long-term unemployed workers who have been collecting unemployment insurance benefits for more than 26 weeks," said Department of Unemployment Assistance Director Michelle Amante. "Claimants who are still in their first 26 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits will not be affected."

The U.S. Department of Labor mandated the cuts under a federal law that requires across-the-board cuts to all discretionary federal programs.

The cuts will effectively hit people who need the most help after spending months without a job.

Each Massachusetts resident claiming long-term unemployment insurance benefits will receive a written notice of these changes, together with information on social safety net programs that could help reduce the impact on their health or welfare caused by the federal cuts, state officials said.

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Prices at the pump continue to fall

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The price at the pump continues to fall.

According to GasBuddy.com, the average price for a gallon of gasoline is $3.53. That's down about a nickel from last week and 14 cents less than 2 weeks ago.

The cheapest place to get gas is South Carolina at $3.29 a gallon for regular unleaded, while the most expensive is Hawaii where it's $4.42.

Oil analyst Patrick DeHaan says the lowering price trend could continue since oil prices dropped $2.00 a barrel on Friday.

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