Market Basket may curb expansion

Newly reinstalled CEO Arthur T. Demoulas said Market Basket could scale back its expansion plans this year as it tries to get its affairs in order after a grueling two-month battle for control over the company.

"If need be, if we have to cut back on some of our new store expansion from four or five stores to two or three stores (this year), we will do that," Demoulas said at the Market Basket in Chelsea yesterday.

Demoulas is now working to get the supermarket chain back on track after a months-long boycott and walkout cost the company millions in lost sales.

Earlier this week, the company announced that Demoulas would buy the 50.5 percent of the company he did not own from his cousin Arthur S. Demoulas for $1.5 billion — leaving the hugely popular company saddled with debt to a private equity investor.

Market Basket currently has a number of new stores in the pipeline, including one in Revere that is close to being ready to open.

That store would be the first to open, Demoulas said. Other upcoming stores are in Waltham, Littleton and Attleboro.

Demoulas was treated to a hero's welcome at the Chelsea store, with employees hugging and singing to him.

"It was awesome," said Kevin Feole, store director. "It was quite a scene, all hugs and kisses."

Demoulas thanked the workers for their support, and pledged that the company would not change.

"We try to be good to one another and help each other out and be the wind at each other's back, and you certainly saw that wind," he said.

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T’s ready for Assembly

The first new MBTA station in nearly 30 years is set to open today, and it will serve as a crucial catalyst for the new $1.5 billion Assembly Row development in Somerville, officials said.

"The T station opening tomorrow is surely a capstone moment for this project," Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone said. "It's a tremendous accomplishment."

The Orange Line station, between Sullivan and Wellington stations, will be the first new T station in 26 years. Previously, the Orange Line went straight through Somerville without stopping.

Curtatone said the 
$29 million station is how private-public partnerships should be done.

"This project should serve as a model and example of a smart investment of public tax money," he said. "It's certainly exciting, long-awaited, and it's paying off more than imagined."

For the developers, the station will be a final crucial puzzle piece for the 57-acre project that includes retail, residences and office space.

"It's one of the cornerstones of the whole concept to make the neighborhood fully function," said Russ Joyner, general manager for the Assembly Row shops. "It just opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities."

Joyner said foot traffic will pick up thanks to the station, giving the development a huge opportunity to establish Assembly Square as a retail and recreation destination.

"We have to give ourselves a chance to communicate and build on (the station)," Joyner said. "The mass transit component just gives you that much more of a critical mass."

Several marquee stores have already opened, including the Legoland Discovery Center. Legal on the Mystic opens today.

Developer Federal Realty Investment Trust plans a second phase of development.

Somerville will also be on the receiving end of the planned Green Line extension, which will add six stations after Lechmere station in Cambridge.

Curtatone said the new Orange Line station, combined with the planned Green Line extension, will be key for Somerville's future.

"Only 15 percent of Somerville's population was within half a mile of public transit," Curtatone said. "That will transform to 85 percent. That will serve as an economic catalyst."

The new station will be officially unveiled during a ribbon-cutting today.

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British migrant rights activist faces Thai trial

BANGKOK, Thailand — A British human rights activist who investigated alleged abuses at a Thai fruit processing factory went on trial Tuesday in the first of a series of criminal lawsuits filed against him by the company.

Natural Fruit Co. Ltd. is accusing activist Andy Hall of defamation in the wake of a report he helped author last year for the Finland-based watchdog group Finnwatch that detailed poor labor conditions in seafood and pineapple export companies in Thailand.

The report investigated a factory owned by Natural Fruit that employs hundreds of migrants from neighboring Myanmar, and found the company illegally confiscated passports, paid below minimum wage and overworked staff in sweltering conditions so hot that heat strokes were common. Natural Fruit disputes the accusations.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, criticized the trial, saying it would have a "chilling effect" on independent researchers probing the industry.

Natural Fruit, "has decided to take a punitive approach rather than address the problems in their factory," he said. "This is all about trying to intimidate people who are prepared to investigate human rights abuses."

Hall, 34, faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to US$10 million.

There are four criminal and civil cases pending against Hall, whose passport was confiscated by Thai authorities as a condition of bail set in June. The first, which began Tuesday, relates to defamation charges for an interview on the subject he gave to Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television.

Virat Piyapornpaiboon, the owner of Natural Fruit, told The Associated Press before the trial began that he was saddened by the allegations, which he again denied.

Hall was optimistic. "I don't believe there is any evidence ... to show that what I did was malicious or in some way against the company," he said. "I did it for the benefit of the workers, so I am confident we will win the case."

The trial comes after the United States earlier this year demoted Thailand to the lowest level in its annual rankings of governments' anti-human trafficking efforts, principally over its failures to do enough to stop abusive practices in the Thai seafood industry.

The so-called "tier 3" rankings for Thailand means the country could face U.S. sanctions.

Hall has worked in Thailand for years and is an outspoken activist on migrant issues. Millions of impoverished migrants, largely from Myanmar and Cambodia, have left their countries to work in Thailand. Some do not have legal papers, and many work low-skilled jobs for long hours at pay below their Thai counterparts. They typically lack health and social security benefits.

The trial comes after a months-long crackdown on freedom of speech that followed a May 22 coup in which the country's elected government was overthrown. Thailand's military rulers have also silenced their once-thriving political opponents, threatening them with prosecution if they disturb the public order.

Virat, Natural Fruit owner, is the brother of the secretary-general of the Democrat party, which had opposed the ousted government and is seen as allied to the coup leaders.

___

Associated Press journalists Papitchaya Boonngok and Jerry Harmer contributed to this report.

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NASA: Power grid may be at risk

Perhaps, as a tech-savvy citizen, you are worried about the financial cost of data breaches, or our increased vulnerability to terrorist hackers, or the erosion of our digital civil liberties.

Don't be.

Instead, worry about the complete collapse of our power grid.

NASA is warning that there's a 12 percent chance an extreme solar storm will hit Earth in the next decade, sending out massive shock waves that would knock out grids across the world.

The economic impact of this doomsday scenario could exceed $2 trillion — or 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

NASA first made this warning in 2009, when a study it funded detailed what might happen to our high-tech society in the event of a super solar flare — essentially the equivalent of bad space weather. An extreme geomagnetic storm would follow, melting copper windings of transformers at the heart of many power distribution centers.

But few listened. And there was very little news coverage.

Then in 2012, NASA's prediction almost came true, with Earth experiencing a close shave by a solar storm that tore into our orbit. The storm hit a solar observatory that was equipped to measure the impact, providing precious data that confirmed NASA's previous warnings of the severe consequences these storms pose.

But again, few noticed.

Recently, commemorating the two-year anniversary of the near-miss, NASA put out a press release with even more research, noting there's a 12 percent chance that such a catastrophic solar storm will actually hit Earth in the next decade, with ramifications to modern society lasting for years.

And again, no one noticed. It turns out scientists are really bad at PR. To be fair to them, society's appreciation for science is abysmal anyway.

But the truth is that this is an issue every person on the planet should care about and not dismiss as far-fetched. In fact, it's happened twice before: in a milder form in March 1986, when 6 million people in Quebec lost power for nine hours because of a small solar storm. And in 1859, a series of powerful solar storms hit Earth head-on, disabling our global telegraph system.

The problem is that now, our society is much more susceptible to bad space weather because of our reliance on power grids that are increasingly interconnected. It makes economic sense, but it also leaves us vulnerable to cascading failures.

There is no way to stop a solar storm, but there could be a way to warn us one is coming: by having sun-
orbitting satellites on the lookout for flare-ups, giving us a chance to shut down our global power grid until the storm passes. Maybe it's fitting that on Labor Day, we should call for the heroic workers at NASA to get the respect they deserve — and the funding necessary — to do just that.

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Device could quickly deliver wide-ranging medical info

A Cambridge company is attempting to create a real-world version of the famous tricorder on "Star Trek" — an instant scanning and analysis device that would be able take crucial vitals, as well as run dozens of medical tests — on one drop of blood, telling the user within minutes whether they have a cold, the flu, or something more serious like a heart abnormality.

"We have been working on developing a single device that is capable of diagnosing the majority of diseases from a single drop of blood," said Dr. Eugene Chan, CEO of DNA Medicine Institute, a Cambridge health technology company. "It's partly about global health, but it's also about general health for all of us. Everyone's got a condition where having a technology like this would be helpful."

The device, rHEALTH, is also being tested by NASA for a potentially key part of the space agency's future.

"They're funding us to develop this technology for long-duration space travel towards Mars," Chan said.

On Earth, rHEALTH — one of 10 finalists for the global $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE — could be used to help monitor and deal with disease outbreaks in remote areas, like the current Ebola outbreak.

"Any portable setting, any setting where there's a lack of health care" would fit for rHEALTH, Chan said. DMI has worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the device. Chan said consumers in developed areas also would benefit from the device.

"You want to be able to pick up someone coming down with dizziness ... and diagnose it in the first place," he said. "This will impact the majority of the population."

"The technologies being created for the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE can have a profound impact on myriad medical areas, including health monitoring, prevention, diagnosis and disease management," said Rick Valencia, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm Life, in a statement. "It will certainly be exciting to see these devices materialize as we move closer to the competition's end.

"Medicine is still stuck in the Dark Ages," he said. "The physician still holds the information, so to unchain the (information) empowers the consumers to control their whole health."

As futuristic as this may seem, a device that takes minutes to diagnose an illness from home may not be too far away.

"I would say in the next two to three years, you're going to see some really neat technologies hitting the market," Chan said. "We're going to get a lot of cool technologies that are going to let us address our own health a lot better."

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Bad weather shuts down concerts, delays flights

PHILADELPHIA — Severe thunderstorms across the Northeast on Sunday slowed operations at airports, wreaked havoc at outdoor sporting and musical events in New York and Philadelphia and sent people scurrying from a beach after three men were struck by lightning.

The men were injured at Orchard Beach on Pelham Bay in the Bronx on Sunday evening as bad storms rolled through the area, the Fire Department of New York said. The men were being treated at a hospital, and the extent of their injuries was unknown.

Torrential rain, thunder and lightning interrupted Labor Day weekend celebrations in Philadelphia, where a parkway hosting a music concert was evacuated for safety reasons. Organizers of the Made in America festival warned people to move quickly and calmly to the exits and to protected areas outside the downtown festival site until the bad weather passed.

Anne Beyens, of Scottsdale, Arizona, was among a group of five waterlogged friends who were told to leave the concert after watching deejay 3LAU and ended up at a bar a mile away. They said most of the headliners they wanted to see, including Pharrell Williams and Kings of Leon, were scheduled for later in the night so they were hoping to return.

"We knew it was going to rain," Beyens said. "We didn't know they were going to kick us out."

Besides temporarily stopping the Made in America concert, the bad weather also forced the early end to the Electric Zoo musical festival on an island in New York's East River and halted play for the first time at this year's U.S. Open tennis tournament in Queens.

Former champion Maria Sharapova took notice of the screeching weather warnings on reporters' cellphones as she answered questions about her loss to 10th-seeded Caroline Wozniacki just before the storm hit.

"Is that the flood warning? Darn it. If I was only there a little longer," she said to laughter.

Electric Zoo spokesman Stefan Friedman said "the safety and security of all attendees, artists and staff" was the primary concern as people were told to leave. The decision was made about six hours before the festival was scheduled to end on Randall's Island, where fans have to take ferries and shuttle buses.

The National Weather Service said it had reports of wind damage and flash flooding in East Orange, New Jersey, and reports of large tree branches down on Long Island. It said most of the damage was reported between 4:20 p.m. and 5:15 p.m., when the storms were intense.

More than 30 flights in and out of the New York metro area were delayed and at least one was cancelled because of the severe weather, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Storms also disrupted air travel in Philadelphia and the Baltimore-Washington region.

Flights leaving Newark Liberty in New Jersey and Washington Dulles in Virginia were held up nearly three hours, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Flights in and out of New York's Kennedy Airport and Philadelphia International Airport were delayed up to two hours.

In the Midwest, storms began sweeping across Iowa and Nebraska late Sunday with heavy rains causing some flooding and wind gusts affecting power lines and snapping tree limbs.

The National Weather Service said Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, and Dakota City, Nebraska, saw straight-line winds of 80 mph to 90 mph that caused significant damage.

The Omaha World-Herald reported that in the Omaha metro area, at least eight people were rescued Sunday evening on the Elkhorn River.

Cleveland's game at Kansas City was suspended due to rain with the Indians leading the Royals 4-2 heading into the bottom of the 10th inning. The game will resume on Sept. 22 in Cleveland.

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Keep all four tires the same size or hurt drive train

My co-worker had a flat left front tire on her 2002 Jeep Liberty. She had no spare and the service station didn't have her size. They sold her a bigger tire than the other three. I told her she would have handling issues, mileage would be affected and there would be stress on the front end, differential and transmission. There's an awkward tilt of the Jeep toward the passenger side. I told her she would be at high risk for rollover. Am I right?

You win the good Samaritan award! Assuming her Jeep is four-wheel drive, mounting a tire of significantly larger diameter is absolutely wrong. The difference in rolling diameter will generate considerable stress on driveshafts, differentials and the transfer case.

I don't think the "awkward tilt" of the vehicle would significantly increase the chance of a single-car rollover, but it certainly won't help vehicle stability. The binding of the drivetrain may cause a reduction in fuel mileage, but the larger concern is a potential failure in the drivetrain.

You did the right thing; now make sure she gets that tire replaced with one that is the same size and diameter as the other three. I'd be inclined to revisit the issue with the service station — they certainly should have known better.

I hope you can help with my 1999 Durango 5.9 SLT with 115,000 miles. It runs fine but at inconsistent times — winter or summer, newly started or running a while, under load or no load or even parked — the engine begins to misfire and loses 80 to 90 percent of its power. No gauges or warning lights indicate a problem before or after the event.

I've been able to pull over, turn the engine off then restart it again and it runs fine just like the problem never occurred. In the past nine months the frequency of this has increased and a couple weeks ago I experienced a new event. While pulling a 2-ton trailer and slowing down for a stop sign, the engine completely died in a split second. I immediately noticed the odometer did not show the typical miles numbers but did show jumbled lines and dashes. It did not start right up — it took three tries of cranking it for an extended period and then it started and ran fine.

I have repeatedly taken it in to a reputable mechanic and the local Dodge dealer for inspections and diagnostics that turn up nothing. Might you have some guidance for me?

Could Christine have morphed into a Durango? Intermittent issues can be, and often are, difficult to pinpoint even with modern on-board diagnostics built into the vehicle. Since there appear to be no DTC fault codes stored in the computer, I'd initially focus on potential mechanical causes such as a clogged/restricted catalytic converter or exhaust system. Exhaust back pressure can build until it literally chokes the engine. When the engine stalls, the back pressure is released and the engine may well restart and run fine again — for a while. A simple exhaust back pressure test with the pressure gauge screwed into the oxygen sensor port might confirm this — there should be less than roughly 2 psi of back pressure in the exhaust.

With the age of the vehicle, make sure the coil and ignition wires are in good shape and not generating any crossfire or grounding under load.

I can't explain the bizarre odometer display, but it may indicate some kind of electrical anomaly that caused the stall. The best bet for pinpointing something like this is to plug a data recorder (co-pilot) into the diagnostic link and drive the vehicle until another event occurs. Lock the event data into the recorder and have the shop or dealership download the data — it allows them to monitor what happened in real time, hopefully pinpointing the culprit. Good luck.

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 paul brand@startribune.com. Please explain the problem in detail and include a daytime phone number.

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Device opens DNA testing to masses

When Sebastian Kraves was growing up in Argentina, his grandmother gave him something transformative: "The Voyage of the Beagle," Charles Darwin's account of his voyage to the Galapagos Islands, where he made observations that led to his theory of evolution.

"I was blown away by the diversity of life on Earth and how it's all encoded by DNA," Kraves said. "But in high school, when I said I wanted to become a DNA scientist, people laughed and told me to go study something useful."

So he did. After earning his Ph.D. in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, he teamed up with Ezequiel Alvarez Saavedra, a former classmate from Argentina who obtained his Ph.D. in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and they founded Amplyus, a MassChallenge finalist that aims to make DNA technology accessible not only to scientists, but to the masses.

Alvarez Saavedra was the lead developer of their miniPCR — or polymerase chain reaction — machine, which searches for a very specific part of the genome and then makes copies of it. At 2 inches by 5 inches, it's about one-tenth the size of a traditional PCR machine and, at $799, about one-fifth to one-tenth the cost.

Clinicians in a hospital lab can use the miniPCR to test patients for increased risk of certain diseases. Health authorities can use the machine to test food for the presence of E. coli or salmonella. And students can use it to do "CSI-like" forensic testing in the classroom.

"One of those 'got-to-know' procedures is the use of PCR," said Alia Qatarneh, the research assistant at Harvard University's Life Sciences Outreach Program, which works with high school students from across New England. "Students get what PCR is in theory but rarely have the opportunity to run a PCR reaction themselves from start to finish."

"Zeke and Sebastian's miniPCR machine allows for many things," Qatarneh said. "It's incredibly affordable, allows for students to have direct, hands-on experience and takes away part of the mysterious 'black-box effect' that tends to overshadow the science of PCR."

At CampBio, the summer outreach program of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, the Amplyus team led two workshops for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, who role-played Centers for Disease Control scientists examining a claim of tainted beef. The students used the machines to determine which batches were positive for E. coli.

"Exposure to these types of hands-on experiences at such an impressionable age can spark a lifelong interest in science," said Amy Tremblay, the institute's public programs officer. "Through the interactive and cutting-edge workshop the Amplyus team was able to incorporate into CampBio, we may have done just that."

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To Market, to Market

Market Basket's 71 locations will be back to business as usual early this week, area store directors said yesterday, as a steady stream of grateful customers returning to fill their carriages said they were happy to find fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy products back in stock.

"We'll be back to normal by Tuesday," said Chelsea Market Basket store director Kevin Feole, where shelves are already 85 to 90 percent stocked. "Since everything broke, it's been nonstop."

Billerica store director Al Jussaume also expects to be fully restocked sometime this week and said foot traffic yesterday was "right on par with a regular Saturday this time of year."

"We're bouncing back quicker than any of the naysayers thought we would," Jussaume said. "You should see the hugs and kisses and thank-you's we're getting from the customers. It really is an amazing atmosphere here."

The frantic push to "right the ship" has been full steam ahead since the Market Basket saga ended last week when forced-out former CEO Arthur T. Demoulas reached a deal worth more than $1.5 billion with his rival relatives that allowed him to assume control of the beloved chain his family founded.

The chain, worth $4 billion before Arthur T.'s June 18 firing touched off a customer boycott, looked to be dying on the vine as it racked up millions in losses and shelves were left empty due to a halted supply chain — but a surge of new customers turned on to Market Basket's low prices will give the chain the push it needs to bounce back, Feole said.

"There's quite a few people" who said they didn't shop at Market Basket before, but came to check it out, he said. "I've never hugged so many people in my life, from employees to customers."

Longtime customer Juan Rodriguez, who said the Chelsea Market Basket was "like my second house," was pleased to see the business quickly recovering.

"It's not just (Arthur T. Demoulas') victory, it's ours," he said.

Mary Mulkern, who has been a loyal customer for more than 40 years, recalled when she had a cooking grill stolen from her yard and Market Basket employees assembled a new one and hand-delivered it to her home.

"You don't get that kind of service other places," she said. "That kind of stuff sticks with you."

For the last six weeks, Mulkern has been reluctantly "shopping at Shaw's and Hannaford and hating every minute of it."

"I'm feeding eight, I was spending $300-$400 a week going to other stores," which was $150 more than she would have been spending at Market Basket, she said. "You want to shop at a place that treats you like family — it feels good to be home."

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Applicants prefer to open Hub pot shops

Three of the four companies state health officials invited to apply for a medical marijuana dispensary license in counties that don't yet have a planned facility want to set up shop in Boston, according to the Department of Public Health.

JCS Holdings Inc.; Mass Medicum Corp.; and Patriot Care Corp. each submitted an application by yesterday's deadline, identifying the city as one of two proposed locations for a dispensary.

"We are a local, primarily Boston-based group, and clearly there's a need to be filled," said Dr. James Kurnick, a cancer researcher and CEO of Mass Medicum, which hopes to open a dispensary at 57 Stuart St., on the edge of Chinatown, next summer.

JCS Holdings, which is doing business as The Haven Center, has proposed locating in Allston, also in Suffolk County.

"We ... look forward to working with neighbors, community business leaders and local officials to be sure any facility we construct is an asset to the community and to all who are seeking help with chronic pain," Executive Director Christopher Taloumis said in a statement.

Both his company and Mass Medicum also identified Taunton in Bristol County as a proposed location. And Patriot Care — the only applicant officials allowed to apply for two more licenses to add to the provisional one it was awarded for a Lowell dispensary — also proposed Greenfield in Franklin County as a location. The fourth company, Coastal Compassion Inc., wants to open a facility in Fairhaven in Bristol County.

All four applicants received lower scores earlier this year than other companies that were approved for a license in their selected counties. But because the DPH deemed the four to be qualified, it invited them to resubmit an application, this time in any of the seven counties without an approved facility: Suffolk, Nantucket, Hampden, Franklin, Dukes, Bristol and Berkshire.

The four companies were allowed to apply for up to two locations but will only be selected to proceed with one after DPH's review. The department expects to complete the selection process in October.

DPH gave preliminary approval to 20 applicants earlier this year, but nearly half of them were later disqualified due to misrepresentations or other problems.

"It's been a long, convoluted process," Kurnick said.

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