Suggestions sought for new Logan routes

The state's largest employer group is urging businesses to weigh in on the next international destinations that Massport should target for nonstop flights from Boston.

With direct Boston-
Beijing service set to begin in June, the Logan International Airport operator is soliciting business leaders' help in convincing airlines to start additional routes.

"The employer feedback really does make a difference," said Christopher Geehern, spokesman for Associated Industries of Massachusetts. "When Japan Airlines instituted the direct flights between Boston and Tokyo, they actually started that route before establishing routes in other larger cities because of the clear demand expressed by the business community in Massachusetts."

In addition to the 2012 Tokyo service launch, a prior Massport survey led to direct Boston air service to Panama City that started in July. Massport also signed deals for direct Dubai and Istanbul flights to start next year.

"Massport has relied on the political, business and civic communities to help land five new international routes in the last two years, and we continue to engage those groups to help us determine potential routes that will be most beneficial to growing the regional economy," Massport spokesman Richard Walsh said. "It is no secret that Israel, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Brazil are among the new nonstop destinations that have generated significant interest."

Mexico City and Milan also are at the top of businesses' list, Geehern said.

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China investigates vaccine maker after baby deaths

BEIJING — China has sent health experts to investigate a drug maker to see if the deaths of several babies in recent weeks were related to vaccines they received in a government immunization program.

State broadcaster China Central Television said Tuesday that a team of government investigators had been sent to Biokangtai, a drug maker based in the southern city of Shenzhen.

The company's hepatitis B vaccines have come under scrutiny since authorities suspended their use for liver disease after the first deaths of babies were reported.

Provincial and national health authorities have separately reported that since November about a half-dozen babies died shortly after they received hepatitis B vaccines made by Biokangtai.

One case has been ruled out as being caused by the vaccine while the others were still being investigated.

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World markets rise on eased China credit worry

SEOUL, South Korea — World markets extended gains Tuesday on eased concerns about a cash crunch in China and continued optimism over the U.S. economy. Trading volumes remained light a day ahead of Christmas.

Asian stocks advanced amid a drop in the Chinese interest rate charged on loans from one bank to another.

A spike in rates on Chinese bank-to-bank lending earlier this week stirred anxiety among investors that the cash shortage could force banks to restrain commercial lending and pressure the world's second-largest economy. After the People's Bank of China took another measure of injecting 29 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) on Tuesday, the rate banks pay each other for an overnight loan had eased to a 4.1 percent. The rate for a one-week loan dropped to 6.2 percent.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index inched up 0.1 percent to 15,889.33, after surpassing the 16,000 level for the first time in six years in the morning session. China's Shanghai Composite added 0.2 percent to 2,092.91. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index gained 1.1 percent to 23,179.55. In Hong Kong, stocks of China Mobile Ltd. rose 0.5 percent boosted by its deal to sell iPhones in China.

South Korea's benchmark Kospi gained 0.2 percent to 2,001.59. Shares in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand also rose.

In early trading in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 index was up 1.1 percent to 6,678.61, while France's CAC 40 edged up 0.2 percent to 4,222.80. The German stock market was closed.

U.S. stocks appeared set for a modest gain with Dow futures up 0.03 percent. The broader S&P 500 index futures stayed unmoved.

Stock markets enjoyed a strong run over the past few days as investors cheered data showing that the U.S. economic recovery is gaining strength. Positive economic figures on the world's largest economy helped ease concerns about the impact on emerging markets from the Federal Reserve's scaling back of its stimulus programs.

A batch of upbeat reports on the U.S. economy strengthened optimism one day before Christmas.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said the Washington-based institution would raise its 2014 U.S. growth forecast from the current estimate of 2.5 percent, citing more certainty in 2014. Her remarks came after Friday data showed the U.S. grew at an annualized rate of 4.1 percent in the third quarter of the year, up from the previous estimate of 3.6 percent.

In data released Monday, the U.S. Commerce Department said consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in November, supporting the view that American consumers may be making a comeback.

Stock markets have largely held their own despite tensions in China's credit markets. Chinese banks turned to money markets in recent weeks for extra cash found less than usual, setting off a bidding war that pushed up interest rates.

Analysts said the main reason why interbank lending rates have gone up is that Chinese banks are building up their cash reserves in order to meet tighter regulatory requirements. The increase has also come as the Fed has ended months of speculation and begun "tapering" its stimulus.

For now, most analysts don't think it's a major cause for concern but developments in China's credit matters will be monitored carefully over the coming days and weeks.

In the currency markets, the euro was 0.2 percent weaker at $1.3676 while the dollar inched up 0.1 percent to 104.25 yen. In the oil markets, a barrel of benchmark crude was 41 cents lower at $98.91.

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AP writer Toby Sterling contributed to this story from Amsterdam

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Analysts: Economy is on track

Boston, Massachusetts and the country are well-positioned for continued economic success in 2014, experts say, though we might not see the type of growth that came unexpectedly in 2013.

"Boston is in a great position because the economic engine of Boston is very dynamic at the moment," said Hub advertising giant Jack Connors.

Connors said the region's strengths in heath care, biotech and academia will serve Greater Boston's economy well in the coming year and beyond.

"I'm feeling very bullish about 2014 and 2015 and 2016 for the Greater Boston area," Connors said.

Connors said Mayor-elect Martin J. Walsh should be able to build on Mayor Thomas M. Menino's economic success.

"If he surrounds himself with the right people, and he's committed to the same kind of goodness, he is going to be very successful," Connors said.

Statewide, the year is coming to a close on a somewhat sour note, as the state unemployment rate rose above the national rate for the first time in six years. Still, the state should see slow, continued growth next year.

"I would think we'd probably parallel the U.S. in 2014," said Elliot Winer, a former chief economist for the state.

Winer said he expects to see the state add between 5,000 and 10,000 jobs a month.

"I'm not expecting to see a huge, dramatic upturn," Winer said.

He said the state's traditional industries — including health care — have shown strong growth, but other sectors have not.

"The other industries are basically flat," Winer said.

Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Joanne Goldstein told the Herald last week the state is still in a good economic position.

"The economy is going in the right direction," Goldstein said. "We continue to be optimistic."

Nationally, numbers released Friday showed the economy grew at its fastest rate since 2011 in the third quarter of 2013, and several indices hit record highs at the closing bell Friday evening.

Still, economists do not expect that growth rate to continue next year.

"We are going to do well this coming year," said Christine Armstrong, senior vice president at Morgan Stanley. "2014 is not going to be as fabulous in our opinion as 2013 was, but there are still so many attractive things going on."

Armstrong said the biggest concerns through 2013 — Syria, Israel, the government shutdown — have ended up not wreaking havoc on the economy and stock market the way some initially feared they might.

"2014 will hopefully be a good year. We have taken those concerns off the table," Armstrong said.

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What did we learn in `13?

'Tis the season for regret and recriminations. Let's not let this year pass without taking stock of social media's epic fails — and the lessons we can carry into 2014:

5) While having a private conversation in public, you could be live-tweeted. This lesson comes to us care of the guy who chronicled every detail of his neighbor's awful breakup, which he overheard on their Brooklyn roof deck and broadcast to thousands of followers under the apt hashtag #Roofbreakup. The sad duo had clearly learned nothing from retired Gen. Michael Hayden. The former National Security Agency head also had his entire confidential conversation — this one with a journalist — live-tweeted by a fellow passenger, a former MoveOn.org activist sitting behind him on an Acela train.

4) When in doubt, hire a qualified social media manager. This lesson comes to us care of beloved Boston-based restaurant delivery service Foodler, which posted a picture on Facebook of a mouse with a meat cleaver strapped to his back in a "name that caption" contest. Animal-loving customers were not amused. Martha Stewart's penchant for tweeting awful-looking food photos — making even the tastiest holiday ham look hellacious — shows that even a domestic diva could use some professional help. For City Councilor-elect Michelle Wu, it was her husband's angry tweet — amid a controversy over her support for a conservative city council prez — that she didn't need her progressive base. All epic fails that could've been avoided with a social media manager.

3) Viral does not equal true. From TV producer Elan Gale's made-up airplane fight with rude fellow passenger "Diane" to the far-fetched tale that one of the Boston Marathon bombers was a missing Brown student, 2013 was a banner year for Internet falsehoods. Reporters at sites like Buzzfeed fell for them. Let's be more discerning in 2014.

2) Make sure your password isn't "password." Having a generic password is like asking to be hacked, if the throngs of Facebook and Twitter users who had their accounts compromised are any indication. I suspect that this is why someone was able to briefly turn Burger King's Twitter account into a pro-McDonald's sideshow in February.

1) Ignore crowdsourced "investigations." In another marathon-related gaffe, several self-appointed Internet sleuths saw fit to post pictures of the crowd taken prior to the attacks and speculate irresponsibly about which people in the pictures were the bombers. Well-intentioned, but wrongheaded and dangerously damaging for the innocent spectators who were racially profiled and saw their pictures circulated as potential suspects with no evidence. It was social media at its worst. It shouldn't ever happen again.

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To clean up coal, Obama pushes more oil production

DE KALB, Miss. — America's newest, most expensive coal-fired power plant is hailed as one of the cleanest on the planet, thanks to government-backed technology that removes carbon dioxide and keeps it out of the atmosphere.

But once the carbon is stripped away, it will be used to do something that is not so green at all.

It will extract oil.

When President Barack Obama first endorsed this "carbon-capture" technology, the idea was that it would fight global warming by sparing the atmosphere from more greenhouse gases. It makes coal plants cleaner by burying deep underground the carbon dioxide that typically is pumped out of smokestacks.

But that green vision proved too expensive and complicated. So the administration accepted a trade-off.

To help the environment, the government allows power companies to sell the carbon dioxide to oil companies, which pump it into old oil fields to force more crude to the surface. A side benefit is that the carbon gets permanently stuck underground.

The program shows the ingenuity of the oil industry, which is using government green-energy money to subsidize oil production. But it also showcases the environmental trade-offs Obama is willing to make, but rarely talks about, in his fight against global warming.

Companies have been injecting carbon dioxide into old oil fields for decades. But the tactic hasn't been seen as a pollution-control strategy until recently.

Obama has spent more than $1 billion on carbon-capture projects tied to oil fields and has pledged billions more for clean coal. Recently, the administration said it wanted to require all new coal-fired power plants to capture carbon dioxide. Four power plants in the U.S. and Canada planning to do so intend to sell their carbon waste for oil recovery.

Just last week, former Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced he was joining the board of a company developing carbon capture technology.

The unlikely marriage of coal burners and oil producers hits a political sweet spot.

It silences critics who say the administration is killing coal and discouraging oil production. It appeases environmentalists who want Obama to get tougher on coal, the largest source of carbon dioxide.

It also allows Obama to make headway on a second-term push to tackle climate change, even though energy analysts predict that few coal plants will be built in the face of low natural gas prices and Environmental Protection Agency rules that require no controls on carbon for new natural gas plants.

"By using captured man-made carbon dioxide, we can increase domestic oil production, promote economic development, create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and drive innovation," Judi Greenwald told Congress in July, months before she was hired as deputy director of the Energy Department's climate, environment and energy efficiency office.

Before joining the Energy Department, Greenwald headed the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative, a consortium of coal producers, power companies and state and environmental officials promoting the process.

But the environmental benefits of this so-called enhanced oil recovery aren't as certain as the administration advertises.

"Enhanced oil recovery just undermines the entire logic of it," said Kyle Ash of Greenpeace, one of the few environmental groups critical of the process. "They can't have it both ways, but they want to really, really bad."

That has become a theme in some of Obama's green-energy policies. To promote new, cleaner technologies, the administration has allowed companies to do things it otherwise would oppose as harmful to the environment.

For wind power, the government has shielded companies from prosecution for killing protected birds with giant turbines.

For corn-based ethanol, the administration underestimated the environmental effects of millions of new acres of corn farming. The government even failed to conduct required air and water quality studies to document its toll on the environment.

The administration wants to make similar concessions to make carbon-capture technology a success.

The EPA last week exempted carbon dioxide injection from strict hazardous waste laws. It classified the wells used to inject the gas underground for oil production in a category that offers less protection for drinking water.

Oil companies using carbon to get oil also aren't subject now to the tougher reporting and monitoring requirements that experts say are necessary to ensure the carbon stays underground, and they're fighting an EPA proposal that would require them to be if the carbon comes from power plants covered by the new federal rules.

"It amounts to looking the other way," said George Peridas, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports using carbon for oil extraction. The group believes it replaces dirtier oil or oil produced in more environmentally sensitive places and reduces carbon in the atmosphere.

The administration also did not evaluate the global warming emissions associated with the oil production when it proposed requiring power plants to capture carbon.

A 2009 peer-reviewed paper found that for every ton of carbon dioxide injected underground into an oil field, four times more carbon dioxide is released when the oil produced is burned.

"There is no form of energy that is free of impacts. It is always about trade-offs and someone will always be unhappy," the paper's author, Paulina Jaramillo, the assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an interview.

Administration officials counter by saying the oil was going to be extracted anyway, so the policy should only be seen as reducing carbon dioxide from coal plants.

The administration also promotes the benefits for energy security. Every barrel of oil produced here will mean one less produced abroad.

"We are taking carbon dioxide that would have gone to the atmosphere in coal plants, storing it and displacing imported oil with domestic oil," said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, asking a question posed by The Associated Press on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program in September.

In Mississippi, where Southern Company's Kemper County power plant eventually will supply two oil producers with carbon dioxide, Denbury Resources Inc. says it would not be able to produce oil there otherwise.

Denbury is already using carbon dioxide trapped beneath a salt dome near Jackson to produce oil in the state. But it can use more carbon dioxide than nature can provide. That's where the power plant comes in.

The federal support for Kemper lowers the cost of installing the carbon capture equipment, and ultimately, the cost of carbon dioxide for the oil producer.

The company has entered into a long-term contract with Southern for carbon dioxide. It will permit Denbury to recover a total of between 3.5 million and 4.2 million barrels of oil, a tiny fraction of the 91 million barrels of oil the world consumed daily last month. But for the oil companies, it still means millions of dollars more in revenue.

The nearly $5-billion project received $270 million from the Energy Department, prior to the Obama administration, and $279 million more in federal tax credits.

A member of Mississippi's Public Service Commission, Brandon Presley, bristled over what he described as pressure from Washington to approve the project, which already has meant a 15 percent increase in utility bills for Mississippi Power customers.

Secretary Chu wrote Presley a letter in May 2010 that said without the Kemper County project, the U.S. government might not be able to use the technology anywhere. The commission approved it over Presley's objection.

"The (Energy Department) is knee deep in this," Presley said. "I don't think you'll find anywhere in the country where you've found more heavy-handedness by the federal government or by elected officials than what went on here to try and get this passed."

In an interview with the AP, Chu said pairing oil production with pollution reduction is an imperfect method for "developing the capture and ramping up the technologies."

"It's not one for one," he said. "You are not sequestering all the carbon dioxide."

While Kemper is the first, it's not the only one.

The Energy Department has provided $1.1 billion to six projects that capture carbon and sell it to oil companies. Four of those projects are power plants.

The EPA recently highlighted two of those projects, with a combined $858 million in federal money, as a way to reduce power plant emissions. Both plan on selling the carbon dioxide to oil companies.

"We sold the carbon dioxide immediately," said Laura Miller, a spokeswoman for Summit Power's Texas Clean Energy Project, which is still working on getting the financing needed to break ground on the 400-megawatt power plant in West Texas. "The projects that are still alive are the ones that are selling the carbon dioxide."

Despite billions in federal aid, coal projects that simply stored carbon dioxide failed to take off.

In 2010, a plan for a $1.8 billion power plant in Illinois was replaced with a scaled-back project after it couldn't secure private financing. In July 2011, American Electric Power, shelved a project in West Virginia that had received $334 million in late 2009, in part because a Democrat-controlled Congress failed to enact legislation, backed by the administration, that would have created a marketplace for carbon dioxide.

Oil recovery provided a market for carbon dioxide in the absence of federal legislation or regulations that put a price on it. For power plant operators, it could help offset the cost of the technology to capture it.

But the marriage was rocky from the start.

Oil companies want to use the least amount of carbon dioxide possible to extract oil, not exactly what is desired in a strategy to reduce pollution. Oil producers, no stranger to federal regulations, don't want to deal with any more rules, such as strict and costly monitoring and reporting requirements aimed at verifying that the carbon doesn't escape.

On the coal side, it takes more energy, and thus more coal and more carbon dioxide pollution, to run the equipment needed to capture carbon and compress it to be sent down a pipeline to an oil field.

It's the other environmental effects that have local environmentalists concerned.

There still is a 31,000-acre surface mine, and the other pollutants that power plants emit that could sully the air locally. Southern Co. was recently cited by the state for discharges from its reservoir on site, which the company blames on excessive rainfall and the fact that equipment that draws water from the reservoir for use in the plant was not ready.

"If you add up all the environmental costs, this is not going to be green," said Stan Flint, a Jackson-based consultant who works with environmental groups.

In June, the Energy Department and California Energy Commission raised serious environmental concerns about a California-based carbon capture-enhanced oil recovery project funded by the Obama administration and recognized by the EPA when it released its power plant standards.

In a preliminary environmental evaluation, state and federal officials found the Hydrogen Energy California Project would fail to comply with laws and standards in eight out of 16 environmental areas evaluated. The concerns included whether the project would comply with state landfill rules and its impacts on the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, a protected species.

Other studies have looked at the association between carbon dioxide injection and earthquakes. A peer-reviewed study published in November linked for the first time earthquakes in Texas to the injection of carbon dioxide in oil fields.

Another potential risk is blowouts. Many oil fields that are ideal candidates for carbon dioxide injection have many old and abandoned wells that may or may not be plugged properly.

Denbury Resources has had a series of uncontrolled blowouts in recent years, as the pressure created by injecting carbon dioxide tests the cement plugs in long-shuttered wells. The largest, and one that was responsible for one of the largest environmental fines in Mississippi in the past decade, occurred in 2011 at the Tinsley Field, one of several old oil fields that will receive carbon from Southern Co.'s power plant.

The company paid $662,500 for a blowout that vented carbon dioxide, oil and drilling mud for 37 days. So much carbon dioxide came out that it settled in some hollows, suffocating deer and other animals, Mississippi officials said. The company ultimately drilled a new well to plug the old one, and removed 27,000 tons of drilling mud and contaminated soil and 32,000 barrels of liquids from the site.

The company still claims it's green because of the carbon it is storing as part of its oil production process.

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Follow Dina Cappiello on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dinacappiello

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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

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Truck owner unsure about block heater, synthetic oil

I have a 2006 Ford F-150 with the 5.4 V8 engine. The truck has only 32,000 miles on it. When the oil is changed, sometimes it is somewhat milky. I know this is most likely from cold morning starts coupled with a 2-mile drive to work. The engine barely has time to warm up. My question is the use of a block heater overnight when it is extremely cold. Will the heat from the block heater cause engine condensation? The heater makes a huge difference in ease of start-up and the engine warms quicker. Should I not be using the block heater? I started using synthetic oil as well.

Entirely appropriate question with the recent spell of frigid temperatures across much of the country. I'm a firm believer in engine block heaters in areas where temperatures drop to zero or below. The benefits of easier cranking, faster starting, lower stress on the starter motor, battery and engine and faster lubrication to critical components far outweigh any — well, I can't think of any downsides!

Condensation inside the crankcase is going to occur during cold weather starts when moisture in the air inside the engine is rapidly heated upon start-up. The only way to eliminate this moisture is to drive the fully warmed up vehicle long enough to evaporate and expel the moisture through the PCV system. In addition, more frequent oil changes during cold weather can be a useful tool in removing moisture and fuel contamination from the oil.

Does using a block heater contribute to higher levels of moisture contamination? I don't know for sure, but the fact that a block heater slowly warms up the engine, coolant (and to some extent the oil) and maintains that temperature would likely contribute little if any additional condensation.

Thus, I think your use of synthetic oil and a block heater is a very solid game plan for winter.

I have a 2007 Dodge Grand Caravan. If it sits three to four days without starting, the battery is dead. I have taken it to the dealer several times and they cannot find anything wrong with the charging system. Their report states "tested for excessive IOD and it is at 14ma and well within spec. Saw the IOD jump to 3M randomly for just a second but never above the max spec of allowable draw." They advised to "pull the IOD fuse" when planning on not starting the vehicle for a few days at a time. They also told me that this was normal, which I find difficult to believe.

This is not normal. Your first test should be to disconnect the battery while the vehicle is parked, then after three or four days reconnect it and see if the vehicle will start. If not, the battery is not holding a charge and needs replacement. This could easily be the issue.

If it does start after three to four days, there must be some type of parasitic current draw that's draining the battery. Current drawn with the ignition off should not exceed roughly 50ma (.05 amperes). This level of parasitic current will not kill a good battery in a few days.

The "IOD" fuse in your vehicle controls ignition-off power to those circuits with KAMs — keep-alive memories. Removing this fuse will only stop current flow to those components but won't stop a parasitic draw from some other source.

To find a parasitic draw, disconnect the negative battery cable and connect an ammeter or 12-volt taillamp bulb in series between the cable and negative terminal. If the bulb glows and/or the ammeter reads a significant parasitic loss, pull each and every fuse and relay, one at a time. Hopefully the current flow will stop when you find the circuit drawing current.

A small lamp, such as the glovebox light, or a stuck electrical relay would be likely culprits in a dead battery after several days.

Paul Brand, author of "How to Repair Your Car," is an automotive troubleshooter, driving instructor and former race-car driver. Readers may write to him at: Star Tribune, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn., 55488 or via email at paulbrand@startribune.com. Please explain the problem in detail and include a daytime phone number. Because of the volume of mail, we cannot provide personal replies.

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Fannie, Freddie hiking mortgage loan fees

Buying a home will be more costly next year for many people thanks to planned fee increases.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will hike the guarantee fees on government-backed mortgage loans — fees that typically are passed along to borrowers and will result in higher mortgage rates.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced the policy change Dec. 9 as part of an effort to decrease the government-owned mortgage finance companies' presence in the U.S. mortgage market and bring private capital back into the mix.

"Any increased fees impact people's ability to obtain home ownership," said Brenda Clement, executive director of the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association, a nonprofit umbrella group for affordable housing and community development in Massachusetts. "The housing market has come back slowly, particularly for people at the low-income levels, and anything that increases fees or increases the complexity of buying a home is always problematic."

On Monday, Fannie and Freddie, which currently back about two-thirds of new U.S. mortgages, said fees will rise sharply for many borrowers who don't make down payments of at least
20 percent and don't have high enough credit scores — a large share of homebuyers.

The fee increases are especially hard to swallow in Massachusetts, a higher-
value area in terms of real estate and housing costs in general, said Peter Ruffini, incoming president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and regional vice president at Jack Conway Realtors in Norwell. "Whenever we hear news like this, oftentimes it impacts us to a greater extent," he said.

Interest rates already are expected to creep into the 
5 percent to 5.5 percent range, absent the fee increases, Ruffini noted. "Things like this affect a first-time homebuyer's ability to get into the market," Ruffini said. "It decreased their purchasing power, and it's tough to get a loan right now anyway."

Making mortgages more expensive, especially while interest rates already are rising, may inhibit the recovery and have unintended consequences, said David Abromowitz, a Boston attorney who specializes in affordable housing. "Raising the guaranty fees now won't make the housing system safer, as lenders are already screening out borrowers without high credit scores and strong, documented income," said Abromowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington, D.C., public policy think tank. "But it will make home-buying more costly, while rents are also shooting up — with the consumer losing out either way."

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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Cool Deal fills FIFA cup

A Plymouth company will help hydrate soccer fans across the globe under a licensing deal with the Federation Internationale de Football Association.

Cool Gear International will produce FIFA-themed, reusable chillers, tumblers and its signature coolgearcans to mark the 2014 FIFA World Cup that will be hosted by Brazil from June 12 to July 13.

"We've done some really fun stuff for the World Cup," Cool Gear founder and CEO Donna Roth said. "It's an exciting deal for us because it's hitting a different market for us — sports — but still is viable for (the mass market) as well."

Cool Gear pursued the FIFA contract because it recently broke into the sporting goods market, and it has strong distributors in Brazil and key countries around the world, according to Roth.

"We developed a line of products that was more geared to the sporting goods industries — higher scale bottles, with a little more bells and whistles," she said.

In addition to World Cup venues, the collectable products will be sold in North America, elsewhere in Brazil, Europe, Colombia, Africa and South Korea. They'll be available locally at Dick's Sporting Goods this month and at www.coolgearinc.com.

Roth, who categorized Cool Gear as a mid-middle market company, declined to reveal the value of the FIFA deal or privately held Cool Gear's annual revenue. Mid-middle market companies' revenue range from $50 million to 
$500 million.

"It will be a nice piece to add," Roth said of the FIFA deal. "The time frame is short. We'll get a big hit this first and second quarter, and then it will be over."

The FIFA deal — along with a three-year agreement signed with Coca-Cola in October — is part of a move by Cool Gear to get back into licensing.

Its predecessor company, Fun Designs, was heavily into licensing in the 1990s and had deals with companies including Disney, Warner Bros. and Nickelodeon. But at the same time, it was developing its Cool Gear brand, and when licensing royalties "went through the roof," it decided to concentrate on its own brand and renamed the company.

All of Cool Gear's products are proprietary, and it has more than 150 patents for them. Introduced this summer, its coolgearcan is a double-wall insulated, BPA-free plastic beverage holder that looks like a 12-ounce can, but is 
reusable and has a spill-proof slider lid.

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Boston OKs new farming rules

Boston officials are hoping to open up new opportunities for urban farmers by debuting city land-use regulations that make clear businesses growing fresh produce for inner city consumers are not only accepted, but welcomed.

Outgoing Mayor Thomas M. Menino this week announced the Boston Zoning Commission approved new zoning rules, after a three-year push to raise urban agriculture to a commercial level. The effort brought together city agencies and companies that had pioneered farming in the city.

"Growing food within our city limits means better access to food and economic empowerment, all while cultivating a sense of neighborhood unity and greening our city," Menino said, indicating he will sign the new rules into law.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority worked with the mayor's office in 2010 to launch two pilot "micro-farms" on city-owned land in Mattapan that helped shape the new zoning rules.

Jessie Banhazl, owner of Green City Growers, a Somerville firm that builds horticulture projects in city spaces, said Boston ordinances did not discourage city farming but neither did they regulate it, leaving urban farmers worried about how they would weather opposition from neighbors.

"I think, because of the visibility the ordinances bring to urban agriculture, it will make people more confident to take this on as a career choice," Banhazl said. "I think there's no limit to what will be possible."

There are other communities ahead of Boston, she said, but the new regulations put the Hub at the forefront of big cities in the country pushing commercial agriculture in urban patches and on rooftops.

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