Massachusetts energy company plans Groveton plant

CONCORD, N.H. — A proposal to convert part of a shuttered North Country paper mill into a transfer station for natural gas could create more than 80 jobs and cut the town of Groveton's tax bills in half.

Clear Energy of Marlborough, Mass., an energy development company, made a pitch to the town last month to use 8 acres on the former Wausau paper plant to convert natural gas into liquefied natural gas that would then be trucked to consumers in southern New England. If approved, the project could bring $1.7 million a year in taxes and double the current tax base in the rural town north of White Mountain National Forest.

"It's huge," said Benoit Lamontagne, the North Country regional specialist for the state's Division of Resources and Economic Development. "Eighty-four jobs is huge. Two jobs are great up here. We knock ourselves out to make these kinds of job opportunities happen."

The plant would use gas supplied by the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System pipeline, which has a meter in Groveton, and each day would produce up to 300,000 gallons of liquefied natural gas, a cleaner-burning and relatively safe fuel. From there, tanker trucks would haul the gas to industrial users in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

A spokeswoman for the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System confirmed the supplier is working with Clear Energy.

"Clear Energy is one of several interested parties we are working with to increase capacity on the PNGTS pipeline system to bring additional, diverse natural gas supply options to the underserved markets in New England and Atlantic Canada," Gretchen Dewailly Krueger said.

Evan Coleman, a spokesman for Clear Energy, did not return calls seeking comment this week. He has told local officials that 40 jobs would be created at the plant while 44 others would come from an increase in truckers hauling the liquefied natural gas.

The natural gas power plant would supply the energy needs of the facility and be able to sell fuel to the regional power grid during heavy demand periods. The facility would include three truck loading terminals and 1.8 million gallons of storage.

Clear Energy was formed about a year and a half ago and has been looking for a site to construct such a facility. It's already marketing itself, promising on its website to get gas flowing to a business site in as few as 90 days.

Coleman told local officials his company will design and permit the facility and then hand it over to a larger entity. He hopes to have it up and running by next year.

Approvals in the economically stressed town shouldn't be a problem. Wausau once had about 700 employees, but the final 300 disappeared in 2007 when the plant closed. That came right after the nearby Ethan Allen plant closed its doors, taking 800 jobs with it.

"The town has pretty much wrapped its arms around it," said Jim Tierney, a selectman in the town.

"What it comes down to is this is a $100 million plant that's going to be built," Tierney said, noting that a recent revaluation put the town's tax base at $111 million. "A facility coming in and it's almost going to double the grand list, which would close to cut peoples' taxes in half."

The paper plant, by comparison, was once valued at $23 million but was down to $3.5 million at the last assessment, Tierney said.

The state has some incentive programs to help lure the plant. Lamontagne said the company is eligible for a $750 tax credit a year for five years for every job that pays more than 1.5 times the minimum wage. The lowest paid employees are expected to earn $19 an hour, more than double the current minimum wage.

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Controversy marks Newsweek's comeback

NEW YORK — A mystery man. A splashy reveal. A media frenzy. Newsweek staked its return from the dead on a story it knew would get attention. A cover story claiming it had uncovered "the face behind bitcoin," the world's most popular digital currency.

It got plenty of attention, all right.

Twenty-four hours after identifying bitcoin's creator as a 64-year-old former defense contractor employee living in Los Angeles, the controversy over whether or not Newsweek had outed the right man was so furious that Newsweek reporter Leah McGrath Goodman made the rounds on Bloomberg TV and CBS Morning News to defend her reporting against Dorian Nakamoto's denials that he is the father of bitcoin. The magazine issued a statement standing by the story and said it had to hire a security detail for Goodman because of threats made against her.

In the comments section under Newsweek's statement backing the piece many people suggested the magazine had jumped the gun by publishing the story before it was fully reported out. Newsweek said Goodman's research was conducted under the same high standards that have guided Newsweek for more than 80 years, and that it expected the story, like any major news revelation, to spark controversy. Saying he was prepared for the "s---storm," Newsweek editor in chief Jim Impoco told digital network Mashable on Friday that he remains confident in the story as reported and didn't see a need to frame the article more skeptically.

"Go large or go home. This is Newsweek," Impoco told Mashable. "We are raising the dead here. And you know what? People are aware of it now."

Newsweek had been struggling for years when The Washington Post Co. sold it in 2010 for $1 to stereo equipment magnate Sidney Harman. Before he died the following year, Harman married Newsweek to IAC/InterActiveCorp's The Daily Beast website, with Tina Brown as editor, in a move intended to help widen its online audience. The plan failed, and Newsweek canceled its print edition at the end of 2012. The online magazine was sold to IBT, which owns Web publications including International Business Times, Medical Daily and Latin Times, last August for an undisclosed sum. This week it launched its comeback in print.

Since its inception, bitcoin's creator has been known only as "Satoshi Nakamoto," which many observers have believed to be a pseudonym for one or more people. In its debut cover story Thursday, Newsweek detailed its search for the mysterious Nakamoto. It claimed it found Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto living in Temple City, Calif. Born in Japan but raised in the U.S., the engineer had worked on missile systems for the U.S. Navy and Air Force, and was employed by the Federal Aviation Administration starting around 1999, but was laid off following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"Somebody founded bitcoin," Impoco told The Associated Press on Friday. "It's the most influential crypto-currency out there. A lot of people tried to find him and we think we found him."

The Newsweek story begins with a conversation about bitcoin between Nakamoto and Goodman on the front steps of his Los Angeles County home, in the presence of two sheriff's deputies that Nakamoto had called after finding Goodman sitting on his front porch. It quotes Nakamoto as saying, "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it."

The two L.A. County sheriff's deputies confirmed Friday that they were present for the brief conversation and that the quotes as published by Newsweek are accurate. But Nakamoto, in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, said that Goodman misunderstood him. He said he was referring to no longer being involved in engineering, not in bitcoin.

On CBS This Morning on Friday, Goodman fought back, saying that's not what happened and that he definitely acknowledged bitcoin.

Goodman told Bloomberg TV that the detail she reported was "100 percent correct, all the research was true and the story and all the backup research." But she went on to say that forensic research isn't about supporting what you think is true.

"You are eliminating candidates. We cannot eliminate this man at all. And in my confrontation with him he confirmed his involvement," she said. Pressed as to whether Nakamoto actually told her that he created bitcoin, Goodman admitted that he did not, only that he said he was no longer involved. The police shut down the conversation after that, she said.

What's left is a mystery: Goodman may be right, and may have scored an important scoop. Or she may not have. Newsweek's credibility, and longevity, may hinge on the outcome.

Controversy is a risky strategy but in a harsh publishing world for general interest magazines, it may be the best approach for long-term survival, said David Renard, author of "The Last Magazine" and partner in the research firm mediaIDEAS.

"In the industry these days any attention, whether good or bad, gets more faces looking at your product," Renard said.

"They needed to make a splash. If it should blow up on them, then they're reborn under a bad star, with what would be a terrible start," said Ken Doctor, a media analyst for consulting company Outsell. "If the story holds, it's wonderful for them because they need a lot of attention."

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Reporter Tami Abdollah contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

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Obama: It's time to give America a raise

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says he's hearing from business owners across the country who are voluntarily paying their workers more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says those actions show that change comes to Washington, not from it.

Congressional Republicans are resisting Obama's pleas to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Obama recorded the address in Washington before leaving Friday for a weekend in Florida.

In the Republican address, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman says Obama's proposed 2015 budget taxes too much and spends too much.

Portman says Senate Republicans have a plan to spark economic recovery by getting government out of the way.

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Online:

Obama address: http://whitehouse.gov

Republican address: www.youtube.com/user/gopweeklyaddress

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China's February exports down 18 percent

BEIJING — China's exports plunged by an unexpectedly large 18 percent in February, possibly denting hopes trade will help drive the slowing economy while communist leaders push ambitious promised reforms.

Exports declined to $114.1 billion while imports rose a stronger-than-expected 10.1 percent to $137.1 billion, customs data showed Saturday.

Weakness in key European and U.S. export markets could raise the risk of politically dangerous job losses in trade-reliant industries that employ millions of workers at a time when communist leaders want to focus on restructuring China's economy.

China's official 2014 economic growth target of 7.5 percent, announced this week by Premier Li Keqiang, assumes trade also will grow by 7.5 percent. But customs data show combined imports and exports so far this year have shrunk by 4.8 percent.

The ruling Communist Party is trying to reduce reliance on trade and investment to drive growth by promoting domestic consumption and giving market forces a "decisive role" in the economy. A surge in job losses could force them to shore up growth with a stimulus based on state-led investment, setting back their reform effort.

China's trade data can be distorted by the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls at different times in January and February each year. But even grouping together the first two months of this year still showed exports fell 1.6 percent from a year earlier, while imports rose 10.1 percent.

This year's data also were expected to be unusually weak because during the comparison period in 2013 exporters were believed to be inflating sales figures as an excuse to evade currency controls and bring extra money into China for investment.

Despite that, the decline in February trade far exceeded forecasters' expectations of a contraction in low single digits. They also expected imports to grow by a similar small margin.

The official economic growth target looks unusually ambitious after last year's expansion rate fell to a two-decade low of 7.7 percent. Manufacturing weakened in February and an HSBC Corp. survey showed employers cut jobs at the fastest rate in five years.

The finance minister said this week that growth as low as 7.2 percent would be acceptable and Beijing's priority is creating jobs. Plans call for creation of 11 million jobs but the minister said as many as 13 million might be possible.

China's global trade balance swung to a deficit of $23 billion. The country often runs a trade deficit for one or months early in the year as factories restock following the Lunar New Year shutdown.

The surplus with the 27-nation European Union, China's biggest trading partner, narrowed by 22 percent to $4.1 billion. China's trade surplus with the United States narrowed by 36 percent to $7 billion.

A plunge in global demand in mid-2013 prompted Beijing to launch a mini-stimulus based on higher spending on railway construction and other public works. Growth accelerated but quickly faded once the government spending ended.

Since then, Chinese leaders have said there is little that additional stimulus can do to spur growth and improvements will have to come from longer-term reforms.

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Still no price on fix for botched Health Connector site

Beleaguered Health Connector officials continue to chip away at the massive backlog of Bay Staters' applications for health insurance, but still won't say how much taxpayers will have to shell out to fix the state's entire Obamacare fiasco.

"We are working really hard to pull that together," said Sarah Iselin, the state's new temporary Obamacare czar, during a weekly conference call with reporters. "It's a complicated picture, but we'll begin reporting on that next week at the connector meeting."

Despite repeated inquiries from the Herald, state officials have said they don't yet know how much it's costing to place 62,000 Bay Staters on temporary insurance.

The good news for the Health Connector is that the total backlog of applications — once a staggering 72,000 — is now down to 43,000.

"That's a decrease of 40 percent in about three weeks," said Iselin.

She said the state is seeing an increasing interest in insurance, receiving about 2,000 applications a day, half on paper, the other half electronically.

It used to take staffers two hours to enroll each paper application — that figure is now down to 33 minutes.

Chaos and confusion have dogged the state Health Connector's woeful 
$69 million website since it launched on Oct. 1, frustrating users who have struggled to sign up for health insurance by key deadlines.

Adding insult to injury, the Herald reported this week that many Bay Staters are seeing astounding spikes in their health insurance premiums — some soaring as much as nearly $11,000 a year.

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Microsoft warns XP users the end is near

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft is preparing its customers for the end of technical support and security updates for its XP operating system.

As of April 8, Microsoft says it will retire its old, dependable operating system, which first shipped in 2001.

Greg Sullivan, Microsoft's director of Windows, says "We can't continue to support it forever."

Sullivan says it's a standard industry practice to retire operating systems in the constantly evolving tech world. He points to Apple's recent decision to end support for its Snow Leopard operating system, which shipped in 2009.

XP users are being asked to go to AmIRunningXP.com for information on how to upgrade their systems.

Microsoft is encouraging its customers to upgrade to its Windows 8 operating system, which has received mixed reviews.

Sound: Upcoming

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4 nations urge US gas exports amid Ukraine crisis

WASHINGTON — Four Central European nations are urging the United States to boost natural gas exports to Europe as a hedge against the possibility that Russia could cut off its supply of gas to Ukraine.

Ambassadors from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic made their appeal Friday in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. A similar letter was expected to be sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The letter from the four nations, known as the Visegrad Group, asks for Congress to support speedier approval of natural gas exports, noting that the "presence of U.S. natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe."

The ambassadors warn that the unrest in Ukraine has brought back Cold War memories and that energy security threatens the region's residents on a daily basis.

"Gas-to-gas competition in our region is a vital aspect of national security and a key U.S. interest in the region," the ambassadors wrote in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Ukraine is heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, and previous disputes between Ukraine and Russia have led to gas supply cuts. Russian state gas company Gazprom has increased the pressure on Ukraine's new government, which now owes $1.89 billion for Russian natural gas, by warning that if Ukraine doesn't pay off its debt, there could be a repeat of 2009, when Russia cut off supplies to Europe because of a pricing dispute with Ukraine.

Recent advancements have made it possible for gas that normally flows through Ukraine to the EU to instead flow the other direction, so that nations like Poland and Hungary can supply gas to Ukraine if Russia were to cut off its supply. But with gas supplies limited, the region is still vulnerable unless the U.S. makes it easier to import American natural gas, the ambassadors argued.

Boehner and Republicans have been urging the Obama administration to clear the way for more exports amid a natural gas boom in the U.S. The Energy Department has only approved six export licenses in recent years out of about two dozen pending.

"The ability to turn the tables and put the Russian leader in check lies right beneath our feet, in the form of vast supplies of natural energy," Boehner wrote this week in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal.

The White House has argued that Russia's dependence on gas revenues makes it unlikely that the country will cut off supplies to Europe despite the ongoing crisis in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, where the Russian military has intervened in what the U.S. regards as a violation of international law.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday that because Europe has had a relatively mild winter, gas supplies are at or above normal levels. He said even if the U.S. did approve more export licenses, it would take until the end of 2015 for gas to be delivered.

"Proposals to try to respond to the situation in Ukraine that are related to our policy on exporting natural gas would not have an immediate effect," Earnest said.

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Reach Josh Lederman at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

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Cape Cod residents: Shutter Pilgrim nuclear plant

BOSTON — Residents from across Cape Cod are planning to converge on the Statehouse to call on Gov. Deval Patrick to help shut down the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth.

Activists are tying their visit Monday to the eve of the third anniversary of the meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan.

Residents say they want Patrick to press the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to shutter the plant. The commission voted in 2012 to relicense Pilgrim through 2032.

The plant's operators say the facility is safe and secure, adding that it produces 10 percent of Massachusetts' electrical needs.

Patrick said last year that it was not clear to him that Massachusetts needs Pilgrim to meet all of the state's electricity needs.

Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is set to close this year

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Patrick to celebrate Boston-Dubai nonstop service

BOSTON — Gov. Deval Patrick is preparing to join operators of Boston's Logan International Airport when the Middle East's biggest airline launches nonstop service to its home airport in the desert city of Dubai.

Emirates Airline is set to launch the daily service between Boston and Dubai on Monday afternoon.

Patrick is scheduled to welcome passengers from the first Emirates' flight to Boston, making the New England city the eighth U.S. destination for the Gulf Arab carrier.

The Emirates flights will operate on 266-passenger Boeing 777-200LR planes with three classes of service. Flight 237 will depart Dubai daily at 9:45 a.m. and arrive at Boston at 3:15 p.m. Flight 238 will depart Boston at 10:55 p.m. and arrive in Dubai at 7:10 p.m. the next day.

The flights offer travelers from Boston alternative access to East Africa, India and Southeast Asia.

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Portsmouth Naval Shipyard meant $414M in payroll

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — The latest statistics show the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard contributed more than $400 million in civilian payroll during 2013.

The Portsmouth Herald (http://bit.ly/1fTHI7E ) reports the shipyard hired 161 new workers during the year and has done more than $250 million in construction projects over the past two years.

The information was released Friday as part of the Seacoast Shipyard Association's annual economic impact report.

The payroll of $414 million was a decrease of about $7 million from 2012, a drop that was blamed on across-the-board federal spending cuts.

Military members working at the shipyard in 2013, mostly crew members of submarines at the yard for overhaul, were paid $41 million.

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