Sustaining local seafood

The New England Aquarium has been helping Gorton's put added weight behind its familiar "Trust the Gorton's Fishermen" advertising jingle.

This is the fifth year of a sustainable seafood partnership between the aquarium and the 164-year-old Gloucester seafood company that brought us the fish stick in 1952.

"We work with them to help advance the sustainability of the seafood that they buy and sell," said Tania Taranovski, manager of the aquarium's Sustainable Seafood Programs. "We really look at things throughout the supply chain …down to the producer level, whether it's the fishermen or fish farmers."

The aquarium works with the seafood industry to promote responsible fisheries management, providing scientific advice on ocean-friendly aquaculture and wild-caught fishery operations. Clients include Ahold USA, parent company of the Stop & Shop Supermarket Co., and Darden Restaurants, whose eateries include Red Lobster and Olive Garden.

"Having the expertise of the New England Aquarium scientists behind us is invaluable," said Lisa Webb, Gorton's supply chain vice president. "The team advises us on how to ensure greater environmental accountability with our fish sources."

Taranovski started by assessing the environmental statuses of each species used in Gorton's products, including habitat impacts, fishing practices and overall health. The aquarium and company work toward the "common vision" of the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions. Formed in 2008 by 16 U.S. and Canadian conservation groups, it outlines six steps as a framework for businesses that want to work on seafood sustainability.

"It includes things like education of staff, suppliers, consumers … improving the traceability of the supply, making procurement changes in favor of sustainability," Taranovski said.

One joint project worked to improve the feed source for tilapia raised on Asian fish farms that Gorton's uses. Another involved pollock, an important species for Gorton's that's used for products such as fish sticks and breaded fish fillets. Gorton's joined an alliance to improve the Russian fishery so it could earn Marine Stewardship Council certification, which came last month.

Working with Gorton's has been rewarding, according to Taranovski. "Sure, there are things about working with business that if you're working solely on an issue from a (non-government organization's) perspective you might take a different tack," she said. "But ... they're providing livelihoods. They have contracts ... shareholder interests and pressures that a company has that you have to take into account. It requires a different approach but … working together, we feel we can make more change than working independently."

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Egypt journalist gets 6-month suspended sentence

CAIRO — An Egyptian military court released an award-winning journalist Saturday after giving him a six-month suspended sentence for endangering national security by spreading false information in his coverage of operations against Islamic militants in the Sinai Peninsula, a security official and a lawyer said.

Ahmed Abu-Draa's lawyer called the lighter sentence an attempt to defuse criticism over the 38-year-old journalist's detention while still serving as a warning against challenging the military.

Political tensions have risen sharply ahead of mass rallies planned Sunday to honor the military and rival protests by supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, a combination many fear will lead to a new round of unrest.

Already, there has been an uptick in violence ahead of the 40th anniversary of the Egyptian army's Oct. 6 crossing of the Suez Canal during the 1973 war with Israel. The war is celebrated for Egypt's initial battlefield victories over Israel, and is a national holiday traditionally celebrated with military parades, airshows and pro-military rallies.

The military-backed interim government is going forward with the celebrations, including performances planned in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the symbol of the Egyptians' uprisings against authorities since mass protests held there led to the downfall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

In a show of defiance, pro-Morsi supporters have also vowed to enter the central plaza, even though attempts to do so earlier this week were dispersed after riot police fired tear gas as clashes nationwide left four dead.

Pro-Morsi protesters, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, have been denied access to the iconic square and have faced a withering crackdown since the Islamist leader was toppled in a popularly backed military coup on July 3.

"Tahrir Square is not exclusive to those who support the coup," said Islam Tawfiq, a member of the Brotherhood's youth group. "We will enter it, God willing."

On Saturday, police fired tear gas to disperse dozens of Islamists rallying near Rabaah al-Adawiya, a square in eastern Cairo that was the site of a pro-Morsi sit-in that was violently razed by security agencies on Aug. 14, leaving hundreds dead.

Security has been beefed up around Cairo, with police and army vehicles deployed in strategic junctures on the eve of the celebrations in an attempt to prevent clashes between rival protests. The Interior Ministry, in charge of the police, warned in a statement that it would deal "firmly" with any attempts to "foil" the celebratory mood on Sunday.

Egypt's interim President Adly Mansour, in a nationally televised speech Saturday, urged people to take to the streets to celebrate the October anniversary and "support your army."

In a strongly worded statement, the presidential spokesman Ahmed el-Musalamani said those protesting the military on a national holiday "are carrying out the work of agents, not activists."

The case against Ahmed Abu-Draa, who was arrested on Sept. 4, has drawn outrage from fellow journalists and rights groups accusing the army of undermining freedom of expression and continuing to refer civilians to military tribunals, despite a campaign to stop the practice.

Colleagues said Abu-Draa's trial was an attempt to silence independent reporting from the flashpoint area, which sits on the border with Israel and the Gaza Strip. Few journalists have direct access to what is happening in Sinai because of security concerns, forcing many to rely on statement by officials.

Abu-Draa, who lives in Sinai and works as a freelancer for multiple Egyptian and foreign newspapers and television channels, had disputed the military's claims that no civilians were hit in an intensified operation against rising militant attacks in the Sinai. The military said it was only targeting homes of militants and tunnels used for smuggling goods to Gaza, but the journalist reported that civilian homes were hit and a mosque was damaged.

Abu-Draa told The Associated Press in a telephone interview after his release that he intends to return home to pursue his work, but noted the suspension runs for three years, meaning that if he commits another offense in this period, he would be punished for both

"This verdict is in itself a warning. If I do anything again, this sentence will be revived," he said, speaking from Ismailia, a Suez Canal city where he was held.

His lawyer Negad el-Borai said Abu-Draa had been held in solitary confinement in a military prison. "There is no case. He should have been set free," el-Borai said.

In addition to the suspended sentence, the journalist was fined $30 for entering a military zone without a permit. The court dropped charges of broadcasting news that undermine Egypt's reputation abroad, and filming strategic areas without a permit, according to el-Borai.

A security official said an intelligence report presented to the court had stated that Abu-Draa had acted with "good intentions." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media

An Egyptian photojournalist, Mohammed Sabry, has been facing a military tribunal since January for filming military installations in the Sinai. He has been released pending his trial.

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Co. calculates need for iPad textbooks

It took a single semester of teaching freshmen physics at Harvard three years ago to convince Zachary Wissner-Gross that lectures — and the leading online learning programs that emulate them — are often the least effective way to teach.

"They all have the same basic format," said Wissner-Gross, who earned his doctorate in physics at Harvard after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from MIT. "All of them are linear, and the students' experiences are passive, whereas the majority of my students had to have lengthy conversations and work through problems one-on-one with each other or with me during my office hours. That was when they got the most out of the material."

His friend and former MIT classmate, John Lee, a senior software engineer at Google, agreed. Together, they thought they could build a better online learning platform. So in March 2012, the two of them founded their own company, School Yourself, and the following month, they released "Trigonometry," their first interactive "textbook" for iPad.

Two more former MIT classmates, Vivek Venkatachalam and Kenny Peng, joined their team. And the four of them wrote two other textbooks, "Hands-on Pre-Calculus" and "Hands-on Calculus," using iBooks Author. As of last week, the three books had been downloaded a total of more than 13,000 times through iBooks.

Because not everyone owns an iPad, though, they wanted to reach a larger audience by releasing Web versions, ones that would be even more interractive. So last week, they launched the free test version of their online platform for early calculus at schoolyourself.org. The platform is designed to be highly personalized, allowing users to watch 30 seconds of a video and then choose to solve a problem, see more examples or ask for a hint — or go backward or forward to other sections, based on their ability.

"It's very much like choose your own adventure," said Wissner-Gross, 28. "We're putting a lot of decision-making into the hands of students. We're trying to make it as close to a one-on-one experience as possible."

The next subjects the platform will tackle — tentatively some time in 2014 — will be trigonometry, probability and statistics, and physics. But for the moment, Wissner-Gross and his teammates are focused on calculus — and gearing up for the Oct. 30 awards ceremony for this year's $1 million MassChallenge competition, where they'll face off against 127 other teams from around the world.

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Confusion over Twitter amplifies Tweeter stock

A rush to get on the Twitter IPO bandwagon could be responsible for yesterday's massive stock price jump for Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, or could have just been a savvy investment move.

Tweeter, the Canton-based electronics retailer that filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and trades under the symbol TWTRQ, saw its stock shoot up by 
1,400 percent at one point yesterday, possibly due to confusion from investors looking to get a jump on shares of Twitter, which shared details of its highly anticipated IPO on Thursday, as well as its proposed stock symbol, TWTR.

Shares of Tweeter, which started the day at 1 cent each, hit 15 cents a share, but trading was eventually halted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, citing a misunderstanding related to the "possible initial public offering of an unrelated security."

"Somebody probably got confused ahead of the Twitter IPO and either misspelled the name of the company or mistyped the ticker by adding a Q at the end," Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrerra Capital Markets in Boston told Bloomberg.

More than 14.3 million shares of Tweeter changed hands yesterday, the most since 2007.

Still, Max Wolff, senior analyst and chief economist for ZT Wealth, said the momentum could have started with one savvy investor.

"There might be people who aren't necessarily idiots who decided they could implement a very cheap and easy strategy" by counting on more confusion when real Twitter shares begin to sell, he said. Those savvy investors would then make a tidy profit if confusion leads to higher — if mistaken— demand for Tweeter. "This is actually not a bad strategy," he said.

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The Ticker

Markets gain as shutdown continues

Stocks moved higher on Wall Street yesterday, but investors remained focused on Washington, where a partial government shutdown and a fast approaching deadline on the nation's borrowing limit have weighed on markets all week.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 76.10 points, or 0.5 percent, to 15,072.58 and the Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 11.84 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,690.50. The Nasdaq composite index rose 33.41, or 0.9 percent, to 3,807.75.

Mass. Gaming Commission gets 
final slots applications

The state Gaming Commission received final slots applications yesterday from Cordish Cos., which has proposed a slots parlor in Leominster; Penn National Gaming, which hopes to add slot machines at the Plainridge harness racetrack in Plainville; and Raynham Park.

The five-member commission is scheduled to hear 90-minute presentations from each of the companies Monday. They are competing for the state's sole slots parlor license. All three passed an extensive background check conducted by the commission, and reached agreements with officials in their host communities that were later approved by voters.

The commission hopes to award the slots-only license in late December or early January.

NSA trying to crack Web privacy tool

The National Security Agency has been trying to crack the online anonymity provided by Tor, a U.S.-funded Internet tool designed to keep Internet activity private and said to be widely used by dissidents in oppressive countries, as well as by terrorists, according to the latest secret intelligence documents drawn from the cache leaked by Edward Snowden and published by the UK's Guardian newspaper.

The NSA hasn't been able to crack Tor outright, but through various means it's been able to "de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," says an internal NSA document quoted by the Guardian.

THE SHUFFLE

• Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in New England announced that Wendy Wagenbach, left, has been appointed field training manager. In this position, Wagenbach will have oversight of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage's education and career development department.
• BlumShapiro, a regional accounting, tax and business consulting firm, announced the addition of Kimberley Train as a partner in the firm's litigation services and business valuation group. Train will operate out of BlumShapiro's Boston and Quincy offices.

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State reopens oyster beds hit by bacteria

Oyster farming will resume in certain parts of southern Massachusetts today after the state reopened oyster beds that had been closed because of high levels of bacteria.

"It means everything," said Paul Hagan of Duxbury, the farm manager for Boston-based Pangea Shellfish. "Right now, I'm sitting in the middle of Duxbury Bay with my crew and we're just switching gears totally. ... We get to go back to business."

Hagan got a call out of the blue yesterday afternoon announcing the ban was lifted after about a month of uncertainty over how long oystering would be off-limits.

"They've kept us in the dark with this whole process since the day we got shut down," said Hagan. "It was frustrating, but at the same time there was nothing we could do about it. You just have to abide by the rules."

The reopened beds are in Duxbury, Edgartown, Kingston, Marshfield and Plymouth. They were closed in late August after state officials linked oysters in those locations to cases of Vibrio — a bacterial pathogen that causes cramps, nausea and "watery diarrhea," according to a press release from the state Department of Public Health.

State officials decided to reopen the beds after no new human cases were reported and after water temperatures began to cool, making it harder for the bacteria to develop.

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The Ticker

Hacking group members indicted

A federal grand jury yesterday indicted 13 members of the Internet hacking group Anonymous for allegedly carrying out cyber-attacks worldwide, including against targets that refused to process payments for WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website founded by Julian Assange.

The U.S.-based members of Anonymous are accused of zeroing in on the computers of governments, trade associations, law firms, financial institutions and other institutions that oppose the philosophy of Anonymous to make all information free for everyone, regardless of copyright laws or national security considerations.

Twitter's IPO reveals it's losing money

Twitter revealed its confidential IPO filing yesterday, clearing the way for one of largest and most hyped IPOs since Facebook.

The filing reveals that the company is still growing, but is losing money. Twitter's revenue was $253.6 million in the first half of this year, up from $122.4 million in the year-ago period. However, the company had a net loss of $69.3 million in the first half, compared to a net loss of $49.1 million in the year-ago period.

Instagram to start sponsored ads

Instagram has decided to flick on its revenue engine, announcing plans to bring sponsored images and videos into the mix.

Facebook's popular app was widely expected to make the move to launch advertisements. The company plans to launch these sponsored images and videos in the coming months.

Data of 3 million Adobe Systems customers accessed by hackers

Adobe Systems said yesterday that hackers had accessed personal data for nearly 3 million of its customers.

Brad Arkin, Adobe's chief security officer, wrote in a blog post that the hackers had removed data including encrypted credit- and debit-card numbers, but that the company does not believe any decrypted numbers were taken.

The Shuffle

 Kristen Zemeitus, left, has joined the 451 Marketing consumer public relations team as account executive. Zemeitus brings seven years of public relations experience in the food, pet, fashion apparel, footwear and sporting equipment industries.

 J. Barrett & Company announced that Realtor Ann-Marie Ciaraldi has joined the agency in its Beverly Farms office. Ciaraldi's business background includes owning her own marketing company for three years.

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Market Basket workers to protest

Market Basket employees will converge at the Waltham site of a stalled store Sunday for a protest against the grocery chain's board.

"The point of the rally is to bring attention to the board and the damage they're causing," said organizer Cindy Whelan, store manager at the Market Basket in Epping, N.H.

A June election left majority power with "A" shareholders led by Arthur S. Demoulas, a cousin of CEO Arthur T. Demoulas, whom they're trying to oust. The board's failure to make payments has put on hold stores in Waltham, Revere and Plymouth, said Scott Lang, the developer's attorney.

A board spokeswoman did not respond to Herald inquiries.

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These top-notch Hub homes will have you salivating

Just won the lottery and want to splurge on a new dream home? Here's a few of 
Boston's luxurious offerings.

The Mandarin, 776 Boylston St

Unit W12B, $13,500,000

This 5,000-square-foot home is on the 12th floor of the Mandarin Oriental building. With multiple terraces, you'll be able to sip your morning coffee or evening glass of wine outdoors while gazing at the expansive Charles River views. The interior includes three bedrooms, 2A bathrooms, an expansive living area complete with fireplace, and exquisitely finished with limestone and walnut hardwood flooring. There are two master suites as well as a separate study and media room. Are you a collector of vintage wines? Not to worry. There is an abundance of built-in wine storage and a commercial-grade kitchen with separate butler's pantry for all of your entertaining needs. With extensive storage included in the unit, two additional storage spaces will hold any extra pieces of fine art you might have. The two full garage parking spaces complete this dream residence.

This home is being offered exclusively by Megan Kopman of 
Campion and Company Fine Homes and Real 
Estate, who can be reached at MKopman
@campionre.com.

259 Marlborough St.

Unit 7, $5,500,000

Do you enjoy stepping out of your front door onto a brick sidewalk shaded by an ever-changing landscape of trees? Then this meticulously renovated penthouse duplex on the sunny side of Marlborough Street might just be for you. With a complete custom renovation this year, this home is ready for your personal belongings. The 3,310 square feet of living space includes three bedrooms and 3A bathrooms as well as one direct-access deeded parking space and a private elevator that services both levels of the unit. With an open-concept floor plan you'll have access to not only a 400-square-foot mahogany terrace complete with exceptional Back Bay skyline views, but also an additional 1,200-square-foot private roof deck with additional views of the Charles River. This wonderful home is complete with a cedar-lined walk-in closet, gas fireplace, custom built-ins, wet-bar and wine fridge.

This home is being offered by Kevin Caulfield of Coldwell Banker Residential 
Brokerage, who can be reached at Kevin.Caulfield@nemoves.com.

130 Commonwealth Ave.

$13,900,000

If you're really the entertaining type, then you're in for a treat with this magnificent home, which is one of the finest luxury offerings available in the city. Situated on one of the Back Bay's most desirable streets, the exterior of 130 Commonwealth Ave. evokes the timeless elegance of 18th century Parisian architecture. Part of the famed "Commonwealth Sisters," this single-family behemoth has 9,908 square feet of living space as well as five bedrooms, six full bathrooms, two half-bathrooms and six (yes six), parking spaces. This true mansion in the heart of Boston also boasts five fireplaces, a 2,000-bottle wine cellar, a private elevator and a magnificent chef's kitchen. The finish work in this home was executed flawlessly in recent renovations by a skilled architect and artisans whose attention to detail is absolutely stunning.

This home is being offered by William Montero of 
Gibson Sotheby's International Realty, who can be reached at William.montero@sothebysrealty.com.

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Suspended: Drug trials, public health initiatives

Each week that the tug-of-war on Capitol Hill continues, the National Institutes of Health will turn away about 200 patients, including children with cancer, from its clinical research center, while local clinical trials remain on hold.

"The longer time goes on, the more deleterious the impact will be on the research community and patients," said Dr. Anne Klibanski, chief academic officer at Partners Healthcare.

Trials that have received funding but need drug approvals could be delayed because the Food and Drug Administration effectively has been shut down.

"I feel terrible. I wanted to get this going," said Leo Finn, 48, a Buzzards Bay father of three who found out Tuesday that the clinical test of the drug his doctor had hoped might cure his liver cancer was on hold. "I want to see my kids graduate, and I want to walk my daughter down the aisle."

The shutdown impact could prevent the Centers for Disease Control from monitoring the spread of the flu this year, "something that all hospitals look to as an early warning sign," said John Erwin of the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals.

The Boston Public Health Commission could lose grants for homelessness, violence-prevention and HIV/AIDS programs

"Our public health commission spends about $41,000 a day in federal grants," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. "If they cease coming, we won't be able to serve the people we have in the city of Boston who need health care the most."

Jordan Graham and the Cape Cod Times contributed to this report.

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