Enchanted Village opens Saturday at Jordan's Furniture in Avon

The iconic animated Enchanted Village kicks off its 2012 season at Jordan's Furniture in Avon this Saturday and is free to the public.

The old-fashioned, Victorian-era 8,000-square-foot display went from Jordan Marsh to its new home of Jordan's Furniture in 2009 after being bought at auction that year by Eliot Tatelman, president and CEO of Jordan's Furniture.

The family staple includes Santa Claus, a reindeer game, a holiday song laser light show, and a Polar Express 4D The Ride attraction.

Jordan Marsh initially commissioned a Bavarian toymaker to create the Village in order to attract customers to its Downtown Crossing store, where it remained until the mid-1970s. The attraction came back for brief periods in the ensuing decades.

The Enchanted Village at Jordan's Furniture in Avon will stay open through December during regular store hours. Tickets to Polar Express 4D The Ride and to the laser light show LITE are available on-site at the MOM Theater.

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Warren Buffett's firm will close suburban DC newspaper

OMAHA, Neb. — Warren Buffett's company is planning to close a small Virginia newspaper that it bought from Media General earlier this year.

The 10,000-circulation Manassas (Va.) News & Messenger, which began publishing in 1869, has been struggling to compete in the Washington D.C. suburbs. It will print its last issue on Dec. 30.

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. says it has no plans to close any of its other newspapers.

The Manassas closing will eliminate 33 jobs. An additional 72 corporate positions that Berkshire acquired with the Media General deal will be eliminated.

The Omaha World-Herald reported the closure on Wednesday. Officials at Berkshire's newspaper unit, which is run by the World-Herald, did not immediately respond to a message.

Buffett did not immediately respond to a message sent to his assistant Wednesday.

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Liberal group outlines substantial Medicare cuts

WASHINGTON — Trying to prevent a raid on health care programs in upcoming budget talks, a think tank close to the White House on Wednesday released a plan for significant savings, mostly from Medicare.

Medicaid and the new health care law are largely spared from cuts in the blueprint from the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. Instead, it targets Medicare service providers, from the pharmaceutical industry to hospitals and nursing homes. Higher-income Medicare recipients also would face increased monthly premiums for outpatient and prescription coverage.

After taxes, health care costs are probably the thorniest issue facing policymakers looking for a way to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, an economically toxic combination of tax increases and spending cuts looming Jan. 1 if compromise fails.

Rising health care costs are the most stubborn element of the nation's long-term budget woes. At the same time, a recent report for the government estimated that the U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year, about 30 cents of every medical dollar.

The center's proposal is notable because the organization serves as a kind of idea factory for President Barack Obama's administration, akin to the conservative Heritage Foundation during Ronald Reagan's presidency. The plan calls on Obama to draw the line against broader cuts and premium increases in budget talks with Republicans.

"This isn't a floor. This is a ceiling," said Neera Tanden, president of the center and formerly a senior White House official who worked on Obama's health care overhaul. "The idea was to provide ideas in the debate that would not punish the middle class and low-income seniors."

Congressional Republicans call the approach wishful thinking. They argue that all health care programs, including Medicaid for the poor and Obama's law covering the uninsured, must be on the table. They say any plan that walls off big portions of government health care spending is simply not credible.

Tanden suggests Republicans recheck the election results. Voters, she said, knew that Republican Mitt Romney wanted to repeal the health care law, privatize Medicare and give Medicaid over to the states — and they chose Obama. "This election was not a coin toss," she said. "We did not come out equal."

The center's plan rejects raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67, a concession that Obama quietly offered during failed budget negotiations last year. Instead it focuses on squeezing Medicare service providers, a strategy the plan's authors say will make the entire health care system more efficient without risking quality.

Drugmakers would take the biggest hit, accounting for $160 billion, or about 40 percent of the proposed 10-year savings. Nearly all of that would come from requiring pharmaceutical companies to pay rebates on drugs provided to low-income Medicare beneficiaries.

Hospitals account for an additional $61 billion in cuts, or 16 percent of the total. Medical device manufacturers and insurance companies would be on the hook for about $20 billion apiece. Nursing homes are targeted for $16 billion in reductions.

The plan has two main proposals affecting Medicare beneficiaries.

It would revamp deductibles and cost-sharing in traditional Medicare so that upper middle-class and wealthy seniors pay at least their first $500 in medical costs in any given year, with exceptions for prevention and care for chronic disease. At the same time, it would protect beneficiaries with catastrophic costs by limiting total cost-sharing.

Although this proposal would not save the government any money, some seniors would pay more and others less.

Among seniors with Medigap insurance that covers medical costs from the first dollar, the well-to-do would have to pay the first $500 out of pocket.

But all Medicare beneficiaries would benefit from better protection against catastrophic costs. Overall, the idea behind the proposal is to discourage people from going to the doctor when they don't have to.

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HBS survey shows concerns about U.S. competitiveness

A new Harvard Business School survey has revealed serious concern about America's competitiveness trajectory, yet shows wide agreement between liberals and conservatives on the policy imperatives that Congress and President Obama should advance following the election.

A total of 58 percent of alumni business leader respondents expect a decline in U.S. competitiveness over the next three eyars, with U.S. firms less able to compete in the global economy, less able to pay workers good wages and benefits, or both.

Yet pessimism about the trajectory of U.S. competitiveness eased somewhat from a prior 2011 survey, though opinions diverged along ideological lines -- pessimism among strongly liberal business leaders who responded in both years declined from 72 percent in 2011 to 53 percent in 2012, while it fell only slightly among strongly conservative business leaders, from 71 percent in 2011 to 65 percent in 2012.

The survey, conducted in September, polled 6,836 HBS alumni, many in top management positions, and 1,025 members of the general public. This is the second annual survey on U.S. competitiveness.

Respondents in both surveys were asked to assess the state and trajectory of 17 elements that drive national competitiveness. Key findings included:

• Business leaders and the general public identified America's political system, tax code, K-12 education system, macroeconomic policy, regulatory environment and legal framework as weaknesses that were continuing to deteriorate relative to other economies.

• Business leaders saw entrepreneurship, quality of management, innovation, property rights protection and capital markets as American strengths that were improving. Members of the general public also saw these elements as strengths, but mostly on the decline.

• Between 2011 and 2012, business leaders remained stubbornly pessimistic about the complexity of the tax code, the K-12 education system and the regulatory environment even as their views of most elements of the business environment brightened somewhat.

The survey also provided a consensus roadmap for lawmakers to restore competitiveness, with business leaders across the political spectrum showing strong support for several policy directions, including a compromise for a sustainable federal budget, corporate tax reform and easing of high-skill immigration; responsible extraction of newly-accessible energy supplies and more aggressive pursuit of a level playing field in the international trading system; and greater infrastructure investment and selective streamlining of regulations.

The survey also found wide support among business leaders and the general public for a federal budget compromise involving both revenue increases and spending cuts.

The research is part of the HBS U.S. Competitiveness Project, a multi-year effort co-chaired by HBS professors Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin to assess structural challenges to the U.S. economy and identify ways that business, labor, government and academic leaders can work together to address those challenges.

"All sides agree that the United States faces existential competitiveness challenges. All sides agree on the basic direction that federal policies need to take. Yet, until now, no progress has been made in Washington. This failure to act is severely damaging America's competitiveness," Porter said. "With the election behind us, the president and the new Congress must act now to restore the United States as a highly productive and efficient business location for firms and workers."

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In latest intrusion, Facebook creates relationship profile

The nicest thing you can do for your spouse or significant other right now is to dump them. On Facebook.

The latest sputtering strategy from the post-IPO social network is to treat couples like people. Now not only do users have a profile page, so does their relationship. Want to see what yours looks like? Go to Facebook.com/us. No, you cannot delete the profile for your relationship. There's no opt-out provision. It's there whether you want it or not. An automatic catalog of all your interactions with your plus-one — wall posts, mutual friends and even mutual likes.

The issue is not that Facebook has made these relationship pages possible, it's that they're involuntary, marking the latest intrusion by a network that is increasingly hostile toward personal boundaries. Although users are allegedly able to edit these profiles, I found it impossible to change the cover photo of my husband and me arbitrarily chosen for the relationship page.

Let's set aside for a second the "ick" factor. I dislike cheesiness and detest Valentine's Day. I find these pages equally icky, but such things are a matter of personal taste.

But there's a bigger issue. An estimated 20 percent of Facebook users are between the ages of 13 and 18. Is there any worse message to send to teens than one that says their crushes are so important that we must curate the details online? Now every LOL and OMG and exhibitionist photo shared between hormonal flights of fancy will be showcased to the public (unless by some chance they happen to employ tight privacy settings). It's yet another outlet for teen jealousy, bullying and distractions. Becoming "Facebook official" just got even more complicated.

That's not to say that oversharing is limited to teens. I have an old friend whose on-again, off-again relationship status with his baby momma would seem theatrical to Kim Kardashian. What's more, each time their relationship status changes, people feel the need to offer their pearls of wisdom. And that often will prompt responses, ranging from angry to faux relief, from the principals involved. Now, their kid can one day grow up to view this tawdry back-and-forth immortalized on the Web. Thanks, Facebook.

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FDA chief seeks new powers to police pharmacies

WASHINGTON — The country's top medical regulator is preparing to tell Congress that new laws are needed to police large specialty pharmacies like the one at the center of a deadly meningitis outbreak.

Testimony released ahead of the first congressional hearing on the incident shows that Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg will ask lawmakers to give her agency more authority and funding to oversee compounding pharmacies. Hamburg is one of four witnesses called to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee will also hear from a Massachusetts health official, the owner of the Framingham, Mass.-based pharmacy tied to the outbreak and the widow of a patient killed by the company's product.

About 440 people have been sickened by contaminated steroid shots distributed by New England Compounding Center, and more than 32 deaths have been reported since the outbreak began in September. Compounding pharmacies have been linked to occasional safety problems for decades, but the current outbreak of fungal meningitis is the deadliest case in modern U.S. history, according to industry experts.

That has put the NECC at the center of congressional scrutiny as lawmakers consider tighter regulation of compounding pharmacies, which have long operated in a legal gray area between state and federal laws.

"FDA's authority over compounding pharmacies is limited by law and is not suited to effectively regulate the evolving compounding industry," Hamburg said, in a statement released ahead of the hearing. "We need a clear path forward that is proactive and preventive."

Compounding pharmacies traditionally fill special orders placed by doctors for individual patients, turning out a small number of customized formulas each week. They are typically overseen by state pharmacy boards, though the FDA occasionally steps in when major problems arise. Some pharmacies have grown into much larger businesses in the last 20 years, supplying bulk orders of medicines to hospitals that need a steady supply of drugs on hand.

NECC shipped more than 17,000 single-dose vials of the steroid linked to the outbreak, which were given to an estimated 14,000 patients in 23 states.

Hamburg says Congress should put in place a two-tier system in which traditional compounding pharmacies continue to be regulated at the state level, but larger pharmacies would be subject to FDA oversight.

Pharmacies that ship bulk product or produce complex drugs would have to register with the FDA and undergo regular inspections, similar to pharmaceutical manufacturers. These non-traditional compounding pharmacies would also have to meet the more stringent manufacturing standards required of pharmaceutical companies.

"In light of growing evidence of threats to the public health, the administration urges Congress to strengthen standards for non-traditional compounding," Hamburg states in her testimony.

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Stocks slide after gloomy report on retail sales

NEW YORK — Stocks indexes are lower in light trading on Wall Street at midday.

Strong earnings from Abercrombie & Fitch are being offset by a gloomy report on retail spending from the government.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 55 points at 12,701 at noon Wednesday.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped four points to 1,370 and the Nasdaq composite was down three points at 2,881.

Abercrombie & Fitch, maker of clothing for teenagers, was among the standout stocks, jumping 27 percent after reporting that its net income soared in the most recent quarter.

The strong results were tempered by a report from the Commerce Department saying that Americans cut back on spending in October.

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Facebook jumps on biggest lock-up expiration day

NEW YORK — Facebook's stock is up more than 7 percent despite expectations that it would fall because more than 850 million additional shares in the company are being freed up for sale.

Shares of Facebook Inc. are up $1.48, or 7.5 percent, at $21.34. Facebook went public in May at $38 in a much-hyped initial public offering of stock that turned out to be a letdown for investors. Its stock price hasn't hit $38 since.

Wednesday marked the expiration of Facebook's biggest lock-up period, which is a time following an IPO that prevents insiders from selling stock. In all, 773 million shares became eligible for sale, along with 31 million restricted stock units. And about 48 million shares held by former Facebook employees also became eligible for sale, bringing the total to 852 million. These shares would be on top of what's already been available for trading, increasing the supply and potentially lowering the overall price.

Lock-ups are common after initial public stock offerings and are designed to prevent a stock from experiencing the kind of volatility that might occur if too many shareholders decide to sell all at once.

The previous lock-up expired on Oct. 29, when U.S. stock markets were closed because of Superstorm Sandy. Facebook's stock fell nearly 4 percent two days later, when the stock market reopened.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali believes a potential increase in the capital gains tax on Jan. 1, when Bush-era tax cuts would expire unless Congress acts, could pressure Facebook's stock. That said, he called the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social media company a "long-term winner."

Facebook's stock saw its biggest one-day gain on Oct. 24, the day after the company reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter results and detailed for the first time how much money it made from mobile ads. The stock, which added 19 percent that day, closed at $23.23. Even with Wednesday's gain, it is still 8 percent below that price.

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Questions about Elmo young fans won't be asking

NEW YORK — First, Big Bird became an unwitting player in a presidential debate that argued for clipping his wings.

Then came word that the actor who plays Elmo would take a leave of absence amid an allegation that he had had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy — an accusation that was withdrawn the next day.

The happy band of Muppets on "Sesame Street" has faced the sort of hot spotlight you might expect for the rowdies of "Jersey Shore." Too often, it seems, the show has confronted hairpin detours through the mean streets of politics and scandal.

But the show's producers can take solace in one simple fact: Their target audience remains blissfully unaware that, even on "Sesame Street," everything's not always A-OK. And despite the innate curiosity of children, there are many questions NOT being asked this week by Elmo's most devoted fans.

For instance, kids won't be asking this question, even as their elders raise it: "What made someone accuse Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash of having sex with him when he was under-age, then recant his accusation a day later?"

Elmo's youngest devotees would instead more likely wonder, "Who is Kevin Clash?"

By now, every grownup who didn't know his name already is acquainted with Clash's longtime role in voicing and animating Elmo. And after the tide of media coverage earlier this week, he is recognized as a 52-year-old man who, for the first time, publicly acknowledged he is gay. Clash also swiftly denied that his accuser was under-age when they had their relationship. Sesame Workshop, which produces "Sesame Street," said its own investigation bore out his claim that the relationship had been between consenting adults.

Clash had gone on voluntary leave from the show when, Tuesday afternoon, the former lover, now in his twenties, withdrew his charge.

Neither Sesame Workshop nor Clash has said when he might return to the show. But presumably he could be back soon, with his young fans none the wiser.

Until then, their charming fantasy can be preserved that Elmo isn't really a puppet but a living, breathing little red monster. That's because in recent months Sesame Workshop, with Clash's participation, has been working to identify a backup puppeteer for Elmo. Just as a successor is being sought for Jerry Nelson, who died in August after decades as the man behind Count von Count. Just as an understudy sometimes climbs into the feathered suit of 78-year-old Caroll Spinney, who has played Big Bird for more than 40 years.

And just as all the creations of Jim Henson survived his sudden and untimely death nearly a quarter-century ago.

As fleeting as childhood — that's how enduring Muppet heroes aim to be. Despite the personal artistry involved, a Muppet character is meant to transcend the human factor. Or, as the Sesame Workshop statement noted on Monday, "Elmo is bigger than any one person."

Now here's one more question kids won't bother to ask: "Can Kevin Clash continue to star as a Muppet 3-year-old now that the world knows he is gay?"

The only reasonable answer to this non-question would be, Why not? "Sesame Street" is a tolerant place, just as are, increasingly, the real-life streets this show prepares its young audience for.

Muppets have even been drawn into the gay rights movement. Remember, an online petition not long ago called for the marriage of Muppet flat-mates Bert and Ernie.

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Reynolds subsidiary funding cigarette recycling

RICHMOND, Va. — A subsidiary of the nation's second-largest cigarette maker Reynolds American Inc. is funding a national recycling program to reward do-gooders for cleaning up tobacco waste and turn cigarette butts into pellets used to make items such as plastic shipping pallets, railroad ties and park benches.

New Mexico-based Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co., the maker of Natural American Spirit cigarettes, is teaming up with TerraCycle Inc. for the program. It aims to snuff out one of the most littered items in the U.S. that yields about 135 million pounds of cigarette butts annually and get tossed on roadways, thrown in the trash or put in public ashtrays.

"You don't have to walk or drive very far to see that smokers often discard cigarette waste in ways that litter the environment," Santa Fe's head of sales and marketing, Cressida Lozano, said in a statement. The cost of the company's sponsorship that will be officially announced Thursday was not disclosed.

Through the Cigarette Waste Brigade program, organizations as well as people over the age of 18 can collect cigarette waste and send them to TerraCycle through a prepaid shipping label. Once received, participants will get credits that can be donated to various charities and causes. They'll receive about $1 per pound of litter, which equals about 1,000 cigarette butts.

TerraCycle, based in Trenton, N.J., will then recycle the filters into pellets used to make a number of items, including ashtrays. The paper and tobacco also will be composted. The company took nearly two years to develop the process to recycle cigarette butts, which are comprised of paper, tobacco, ash, and a filter made from cellulose acetate.

TerraCycle CEO and founder Tom Szaky said the program provides a solution for the filters that are properly disposed of in an ashtray or can, but still end up in a landfill.

Szaky said that the company is committed to "recycling waste that others deem worthless or unsavory." Recycling cigarette litter will promote the idea that "everything can and should be recycled," he said.

Cigarette waste accounted for 38 percent of all U.S. roadway litter, according to a 2009 study done by Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit community action and education organization.

The study also found that cigarette butts were the most common litter item collected at sites including retail areas, storm drains, loading docks, construction sites and recreational areas.

Additionally, more than 1 million cigarettes or cigarette butts — enough to fill nearly 58,000 packs — were removed from American beaches and inland waterways in 2011 as part of the Ocean Conservancy's annual one-day International Coastal Cleanup. Cigarette litter represented about 31 percent of the total debris collected, making it the most-found item as part of those efforts.

"Trash is really too valuable to toss, so we need to find alternative ways to up cycle and change trash and repurpose it," said Nicholas Mallos, a marine debris specialist with group.

In 2003, Keep America Beautiful launched a cigarette litter prevention program, and it has grown to include more than 800 programs in 49 states and Washington, D.C. It was developed with funding from the nation's largest cigarette maker Philip Morris USA, which is owned by Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc. The program also has received additional funding from Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Reynolds American, maker of Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes.

The new cigarette program builds on other recycling efforts by TerraCycle, which encourages consumers to collect difficult-to-recycle materials through programs funded by companies within specific industries. For example, Frito Lay Inc. funds a program to recycle used chip bags and Kraft Foods Inc. sponsors a program to collect plastic containers from dairy products.

___

Online:

TerraCycle: http://www.terracycle.com

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