Southie condo decked out in style

With skyrocketing prices all over South Boston, this renovated one-bedroom top-floor starter condo with two private decks is on the market for just $399,000.

Unit 3 at 584 E. Seventh St., in the heart of the neighborhood's East Side, is one of three units in an 1899-built wood rowhouse gut renovated in 2011.

The building has olive-painted clapboard with white trim and bump-out bay windows, along with a bracketed covered entryway.

Cherrywood staircases lead up to Unit 3, with a main entrance on the second floor.

Up one flight is an open living/dining/kitchen space with cherrywood floors. The living area has a gas fireplace with black granite surround with built-in bookcases on either side. The sloped ceilings have recessed lighting and built-in surround-sound speakers.

A glass door from the living area leads out to a 12A-by-10-foot rear wood deck. A metal spiral staircase leads up to a 12-by-12-foot private wood roof deck with panoramic views of Dorchester Bay in one direction and downtown and Back Bay towers in the other.

The recessed lit kitchen area has 14 antique white wood cabinets, beige tumbled marble backsplash and dark brown bilevel granite counters with a breakfast bar that seats four. Bosch stainless-steel appliances include a side-by-side refrigerator, a dishwasher and a gas stove with a microwave above.

Across from the kitchen is a half bathroom with white Carrara marble floors, white subway tile walls and a pedestal sink. An adjacent closet holds a stacked Maytag washer and dryer. Between the two doors is an iPod dock that connects to surround sound throughout the unit.

The cherrywood-floored master bedroom has a sloped ceiling with contemporary light fixture and built-in speakers and a three-bay window bump-out. There's a good-size walk-in closet with built-ins. The en-suite master bathroom has Car­rara marble floors and there's a glass doored walk-in shower with Carrara marble floors and bench.

The unit has gas-fired central heating and cooling systems.

The condo does not come with an on-site parking space, which these days means a sturdy shovel to carve out a spot on East Seventh Street.

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New England farm receipts up; Vermont, Maine lead

CONCORD, N.H. — A new U.S. Department of Agriculture report shows that New England farm cash receipts for 2013 rose 4 percent over the previous year, led by top producers in Vermont and Maine.

Vermont ranked highest in cash receipts at $836 million — 10 percent higher than in 2012. Maine earned second place with receipts of $740 million — a 2 percent increase.

Connecticut ranked third at $575 million, followed by Massachusetts with $447 million in cash receipts, which marked a 6 percent drop from the previous year.

New Hampshire's receipts increased $6.5 million to $189.5 million, ahead of sixth-place Rhode Island, which had about $59 million in sales.

Milk is the top money maker in Vermont. In Maine it's potatoes.

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Taunton's last silversmith declares bankruptcy

TAUNTON, Mass. — There will soon be no more silversmiths in the Silver City.

Reed & Barton, the last and oldest silversmith company in Taunton will cease operations in the city later this year.

Chief Executive Officer Tim Riddle confirmed Thursday that the nearly 200-year-old business had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and will close by June at the latest.

Riddle tells The Taunton Daily Gazette  he blames the company's pension liability, which he pegs as high as $18 million.

Riddle says the company has a $15 million sales agreement with former competitor Lifetime Brands, but the deal does not include real estate holdings.

Reed & Barton currently has about 80 employees.

Taunton earned the nickname Silver City because of the large number of high-quality silversmiths located there in the 19th century.

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Information from: Taunton (Mass.) Daily Gazette, http://www.tauntongazette.com

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Apple might want to put iCar idea into reverse

If Apple has its way, legions of fans who once clamored and camped out for first crack at the next iDevice will turn their obsession toward something much, much more expensive: the iCar.

Not only that, if all goes according to Cupertino's plan, we'll spend the next five years discussing whether the iCar will come in silver, gold and space gray until all the suspense culminates in a raucous red-carpet unveiling by CEO Tim Cook that includes many triumphant rounds of applause and uses of the word "amazing."

Nothing illustrates the incredible hubris of Apple better than its purported plans to become an overnight automaker. Recent news reports describe the company's mad dash to rush an electric vehicle into production by 2020, entering the regulatory, capital and legal minefield — not to even mention the supply chain — that is the auto industry.

And this move comes at a time when competition could not be more fierce.

Apple's capricious foray into automobiles is made possible by the dangerous combination of $170 billion in cash and investors for whom no amount of year-over-year profit increase will ever be enough. They'd sooner see Apple run into the ground than accept the incredibly successful status quo of consumer electronics.

It seems the pressure to get into automobiles was so intense that Apple was willing to take all manner of legal risks to form its new auto division of about 200 employees. At least five of those workers come from Waltham-based A123 Systems LLC, the battery-maker that filed federal suit against Apple last week, accusing the company of illegally poaching its top scientists and engineers "to establish a battery division that is similar if not identical to A123's."

To give you an idea of the lengths that Apple was willing to go to hire top talent: it managed to lure an A123 scientist who earned $600,000 last year plus a $5,000-per-month living allowance, according to court records.

These headaches are needless, too. Apple doesn't have to manufacture vehicles to be in the auto business. Nearly every automaker on the planet would be open to licensing Apple technology. Baking an Apple operating system into already existing cars (even just the electric ones, if that's what they're going for) seems like a lot less risk and potentially more reward.

That is unless Apple's top brass has lost confidence in its current product pipeline and is in desperate need of a new direction.

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Confidence in Bay State soars

Massachusetts consumer confidence has soared to its highest level in 13 years — the latest sign, experts say, that the state's economy is improving as people find jobs and open up their wallets.

The Mass Insight Consumer Confidence Index rose sharply this quarter, with the overall score increasing nine points to 106. That marks the highest rate since April 2002 and the first time since October 2006 that the index surpassed the 100-point level.

"Consumer confidence is at its highest level in over a decade, primarily based on better economic conditions led by an increased availability of jobs," said William Guenther, chairman, CEO and founder of Mass Insight, a Boston firm that organizes public-private initiatives on competitive issues affecting the state. "After reporting quarter after quarter of 'see-saw' scores, this is the first time in two years we've seen the index consecutively increase, which may be a new trend resulting from an improving economy."

Fred Breimyer, a regional economist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, attributed the increase in consumer confidence largely to declining unemployment and sharply lower gasoline prices.

"With more people back to work and with reduced transportation and home heating costs, people have more money to spend," Breimyer said in a statement. "Furthermore, a large majority of those we surveyed indicated that now is a good time to spend, and that drives consumer confidence."

The state's unemployment rate stands at 5.5 percent, and more than 60,000 new jobs were added last year, marking the single biggest year-to-year employment growth since 2000.

"The rise in consumer confidence is attributable primarily to a better labor market for job seekers, reflected in persistently strong net job creation and an increasing number of employees voluntarily changing jobs," said Andre Mayer, senior adviser to Associated Industries of Massachusetts.

Like Breimyer, Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, attributed greater consumer confidence also to lower gas prices.

"It's been a long haul — over a decade when the consumer has not been confident — but that now has turned, and that speaks well for the rest of 2015," Hurst added. "We've had a setback because of the weather, but hopefully that will turn around in the spring."

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The Ticker

Dow, S&P finish at record highs again

The Dow and S&P 500 ended at record highs yesterday while the Nasdaq notched an eighth straight day of gains after Greek and eurozone finance ministers reached a deal to extend heavily indebted Greece's financial rescue by four months.

The Nasdaq matched an eight-session winning streak from a year ago and inched closer to its 5,132.52 all-time intraday high, reached in March 2000 just before the dot-com bubble burst.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 154.67 points, or 0.86 percent, to 18,140.44, the S&P 500 gained 12.85 points, or 0.61 percent, to 2,110.3 and the Nasdaq Composite added 31.27 points, or 0.63 percent, to 4,955.97.

For the week, the Dow was up 0.7 percent, the S&P 500 was up 0.6 percent and the Nasdaq was up 1.3 percent.

Intuit Inc was among the Nasdaq's biggest positives, rising 6.2 percent to $96.72 a day after reporting a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.

Shares of Nordstrom climbed 6 percent to $81.74 and the stock was among the S&P 500's biggest percentage gainers, following its results.

Greece, eurozone reach agreement

After weeks of recrimination and distrust, Greece and its creditors in the 19-nation eurozone reached an agreement yesterday on extending the country's rescue loans, a move that should dramatically ease concerns it was heading for the euro exit as soon as next month.

The agreement, which looked a long way off Thursday when one German official compared Athens' request for more time to the infamous Trojan Horse, will mean that Greece will avoid going bankrupt, at least over the four months of the extension. It should also mean that capital controls won't be needed and that Greek banks will have enough money to stock up their ATMs.

To get the money though, the Greek government has one more hurdle to clear. On Monday, it has to present a series of unspecified economic reform measures that are deemed acceptable by creditors and rooted in Greece's previously enacted bailout agreement — something the government had promised not to do.

Still, the Greek government will be the author of the reforms pursued and that represents a change from the past five years when Greece has relied on rescue money to avoid going bankrupt and was effectively ordered to enact a series of austerity measures.

• Rodman & Rodman P.C., a full service CPA firm based in Newton, serving small and medium-sized companies, has named Jeff Biesadecki, left, a Certified Public Accountant, as tax supervisor. In his new role, Biesadecki will oversee the accounting staff who are responsible for tax preparation and tax planning for individuals and entities.

Biesadecki was a senior tax accountant at Newburg & Co. in Waltham.

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Trucking easy going with Tundra pickup

Whether slogging through snow and mud at the work site, heading out for dinner or packing up the family for a trip, the refreshed 2014 Toyota Tundra CrewMax pickup will get you there with stylish ease.

Toyota continues to step up its game against the formidable Ford F-150, classmates Dodge Ram and the GM fleet with the Platinum edition. The revamped interior features standard heated and cooled diamond-stitched, leather-trimmed seats, JBL premium sound system, blind-spot and cross-traffic monitors, parking sensors and a moonroof. A handsome truck, its curb appeal is accented with chrome trim on the sideview mirrors, 20-inch wheels and running boards.

With New England's recent weather woes, the fittingly named Tundra was right at home. A turn of the dashboard dial engages the four-wheel drive, giving a sense of confidence and making the going very easy. The Tundra makes you feel like you're driving a smaller vehicle, so the rig handled the task of maneuvering down snow-packed, tight streets. Freewheeling in two-wheel drive on the highway, the cabin is quiet, but the traditional stiff suspension makes the ride a little bumpy at times.

The powerful 5.7-liter V8, 381-horsepower engine is standard equipment in the Platinum and is mated to a 6-speed transmission whose power competes in class but doesn't match most of the others in fuel efficiency. I feathered the accelerator to squeeze around 19 miles per gallon on the highway — it's rated at 17 mpg — but around town the Toyota is thirsty, getting only 13 mpg. A 4.6-liter 310 horsepower engine is also available for other models. Tow capacity for the Platinum edition is rated at 10,000 pounds.

The four-door crew cab is easy in and out. Three adults comfortably can sit in the back seat with plenty of leg and head room or jam it full of gear that won't fit in the 66.7-square-foot bed. There are three cab configurations for the Tundra and three optional bed lengths up to 78.7 inches. The CrewMax can seat five or six depending on seat choices but only comes with the shorter bed. The king-sized storage bin under the armrest is deep and wide. In fact it easily held two cameras and lenses with room to spare. And in some newer models a tray under the rear seat can hold more.

The large 7-inch touchscreen infotainment system was a quick learn and a snap to use, connecting your phone in two taps of the Entune screen. The upgraded JBL made listening pleasurable and toggling through stations and creating presets was quite simple. Both Bluetooth and USB connections can be used to listen to your playlist.

The MSRP on the Tundra is $44,550 and the Platinum, one of six trim levels, tested out at $49,930. The 2015 model drops the V6 engine option, but otherwise remains unchanged.

Well made with a history of reliability and high resale value, the Tundra has its own strong following. And while it fights to sway other brand loyalists to switch, it holds its head high in this iconic vehicle class.

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O'Reilly blasts 'Mother Jones' article about his reporting

NEW YORK — Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly is contesting allegations that he embellished his past as a war correspondent.

An article in Mother Jones magazine calls into question O'Reilly's accounts of his experiences as a CBS News correspondent covering the 1982 Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina.

The article, titled "Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem," attempts to paint O'Reilly with the same brush as the NBC News anchor who last week was suspended for six months for misrepresenting his experiences covering the Iraq War and is being investigated for questions that have arisen about other stories.

"It's purely a political play to divert attention from the Williams situation," O'Reilly said Thursday, adding that Mother Jones "trumped up something from 33 years ago." O'Reilly was a CBS News correspondent in 1981-82.

The Mother Jones article focuses on O'Reilly's use of the word "war zone," citing his 2001 book, "The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America," in which he wrote, "I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands."

It also points to his Fox News show, "The O'Reilly Factor," when on a 2013 broadcast O'Reilly recalled rescuing his photographer "in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falkland Islands, where my photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete." That took place in Buenos Aires during a violent demonstration following the 10-week Falklands War that killed more than 900 people.

O'Reilly said he has never claimed to have been in the Falklands during the war. Linking "war zone" with the Falklands, he said, was "shorthand."

"Everybody knows you're not there, because nobody (from the American news media) was there," O'Reilly said. He called "delusional" the article's accusation that the violence in Buenos Aires on the day the Argentines surrendered wasn't part of the Falklands War and wasn't combat.

After CBS, O'Reilly, 65, worked at ABC News before replacing David Frost as anchor of the syndicated "Inside Edition" in 1989. He joined Fox News Channel at its inception in 1996. As host of "The O'Reilly Factor," he consistently leads in the cable-news ratings.

On Friday's "Factor" he was scheduled to address the article in his Talking Points Memo, declaring its authors sought "to take the Brian Williams situation and wrap it around my neck for ideological reasons."

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Follow Frazier Moore on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier. Past stories are available at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/frazier-moore

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Online:

http://www.foxnews.com

http://www.motherjones.com

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Spacewalking astronauts turn cable guys in 1st of 3 jobs

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Two space station astronauts have stepped out on a spacewalk to perform some tricky cable work.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts floated out of their orbiting home — the International Space Station — on Saturday. It's the first of three spacewalks planned over the next week to rewire the outpost for new crew capsules.

The first docking port for the Boeing and SpaceX ferry ships will arrive in June. Those commercial capsules are to start transporting U.S. astronauts in 2017.

Wilmore and Virts have 764 feet of cable to run over the coming week. NASA considers this the most complicated cable-routing job in the 16-year history of the space station.

The second spacewalk will be Wednesday and the third next weekend. Spacesuit concerns stalled everything by a day.

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How a chance encounter brought HBO and Showtime together for Mayweather vs. Pacquiao PPV

The fighters and their teams had been trying to work out a deal for nearly six years. Negotiations heated up during the past four months. But it took a chance encounter last month at a Miami Heat game to finally secure an agreement for the long-anticipated matchup between welterweight champs Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

The bout promises to be so lucrative as a pay-per-view offering that HBO and Showtime set aside their fierce rivalry to work together on the May 2 telecast. The fight is expected to clear well over $150 million and set new PPV records, which explains why Showtime and HBO put down their dukes. The moneymaking potential is so great that CBS Corp. prexy-CEO Leslie Moonves personally got involved in the negotiations between the fighters, the promoters and with his counterparts at HBO and Time Warner.

"Really the thing that made the difference was Leslie Moonves," said Showtime Sports exec VP and general manager Stephen Espinoza. "He was personally involved from the start to the finish. He brought the parties tougher in a way that I don't know if anyone else could have. He acted as the mediator who bridged the very signifiant gaps between the fighters and the promoters and two competing networks."

Espinoza compared the situation to trying to mount a Super Bowl "where everything had to be negotiated individually, from who is televising to who is the home team to who is announcing to the rules of the game and the business arrangements."

The biggest hurdle on the TV side was the fact that Mayweather has an exclusive PPV deal with Showtime while Pacquiao is exclusive to HBO. The pay cable rivals last worked together in 2002, when they faced a similar scenario with blockbuster potential with a bout between Lennox Lewis, who was under contract to HBO, and Mike Tyson, who was in Showtime's corner.

But the other obstacles to getting Mayweather and Pacquiao to face each other in the ring were still so numerous that even when the two were both under exclusive contract to HBO several years ago, the sides could not agree on the terms for a fight. That's where the persuasive power of Moonves came in, Espinoza said.

"He had a lot of conversations directly with the fighters and promoters, acting sometimes as a mediator, sometimes as a bad cop and sometimes as a good cop," he said.

Those talks were advancing slowly but surely when Mayweather and Pacquiao happened to run into each other on Jan. 27 at a Miami Heat home game. Mayweather approached Pacquiao at halftime, which marked the first time the two had spoken in years, Espinoza said. They met again after the game for a candid conversation about what it would take to get a deal done.

"They convinced each other that they were both committed to making the fight happen," Espinoza said. "That was the final impetus to getting the deal done."

The fight will be staged in Las Vegas at a venue to be announced. Details of the broadcast and the announcing team are still being hammered out. The pricetag for the PPV is also still being worked out as HBO and Showtime begin negotiations with MVPDs. But it's a safe bet that it will fetch about a $20 premium over the $65-$75 range for Mayweather's recent events.

Both networks have committed to a marketing blitz and tapping into cross-platform resources at their respective parent companies. With a pile of cash to be made in a few hours' time, both CBS and Time Warner have every incentive to hype the long-awaited meeting.

"Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather have been the two most prominent fighters in the sport of boxing for the past decade, and fight fans around the world have been clamoring for them to face each other," said HBO Sports president Ken Hershman. "I know the fighters and their teams will be primed to excel and we plan to work closely with everyone involved to deliver the same level of performance from a broadcast perspective."

(Pictured: Floyd Mayweather during his bout against Marcos Maidana at Las Vegas' MGM Grand in September 2014)

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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