Nobel prizewinner, IVF pioneer Robert Edwards dead

LONDON — Robert Edwards, a Nobel prizewinner from Britain whose pioneering in vitro fertilization research led to the first test tube baby and has since brought millions of people into the world, died Wednesday at age 87.

The University of Cambridge, where he was a professor, said Edwards passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home just outside Cambridge.

Together with Dr. Patrick Steptoe, Edwards developed in vitro fertilization, or IVF, which resulted in the birth in 1978 of the world's first test tube baby, Louise Brown. At the time, the two were accused of playing God and interfering with nature.

Since then, the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology estimates that about 5 million babies have been born using the technique, which creates embryos in the laboratory before transferring them into a woman. Experts say about 350,000 babies are born by IVF every year, mostly to people with infertility problems, single people and gay and lesbian couples.

"(Edwards) was an extraordinary scientist," said Dr. Peter Braude, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Kings College London, who was at Cambridge when Edwards and Steptoe were developing IVF.

"There was such hysteria around the kind of work he was doing," Braude said, noting that Edwards stopped his research for two years after he published details on how he had created embryos in the laboratory. "He wanted to work out what the right thing to do was, whether he should continue or whether he was out on a limb," Braude said.

Braude said that Edwards collected donor eggs from women in Oldham, where Steptoe worked. Edwards then put the eggs into test tubes which he strapped to his legs to keep them warm before catching the train to Cambridge, where he would attempt to fertilize them in the laboratory.

After Brown was born, Braude recalled a celebration at Cambridge, where scientists toasted Edwards and Steptoe's achievement by drinking champagne out of plastic cups.

Braude said public opinion has evolved considerably since then.

"I think people now understand that (Edwards) only had the best motivation," he said. "There are few biologists that have done something so practical and made a huge difference for the entire world."

In 2010, Edwards was awarded the Nobel prize in medicine or physiology for the development of IVF. Steptoe had already passed away; the Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously. The Roman Catholic Church denounced the award, arguing that human life should only begin through intercourse and not artificially. The Vatican said Edwards "bore a moral responsibility for all subsequent developments in assisted reproduction technology and for all abuses made possible by IVF."

In 2011, Edwards was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II "for services to human reproductive biology."

Other scientists called Edwards a visionary who forever changed the lives of people helped by IVF and the medical community.

"(Edwards') inspirational work in the early 60s led to a breakthrough that has enhanced the lives of millions of people worldwide," said Mike Macnamee, chief executive of the IVF clinic that Edwards and Steptoe co-founded, in a statement. "It was a privilege to work with him and his passing is a great loss to us all."

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Fidelity’s O’Hanley calls for more retirement savings

Congressional and financial leaders need to act now to address the nation's "inadequate" retirement savings system to stave off threats to America's economic strength, competitiveness and future prosperity, a top Fidelity Investments executive said today.

Addressing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's 7th Annual Capital Markets Summit in Washington, D.C., Ronald P. O'Hanley, president of Fidelity's asset management and corporate services department, said leaders need to make "significant reforms" to the U.S. retirement savings system to best avoid the "serious crisis" of ever-increasing numbers of Americans heading toward retirement with little hope of keeping their standard of living over the course of a retirement that could last 30 or more years.

"If tens of millions of Americans reach retirement with insufficient savings, the impact on our citizens, our economy and our national security could be catastrophic, and not something we could solve for most retirees after the fact," O'Hanley said.

Many key retirement savings risks that used to be assumed by employers under the old defined benefit system, such as savings adequacy, longevity, asset allocation and investment management, have now been shifted to the individual, who typically is not well-equipped to make investment decisions of such magnitude, O'Hanley added.

While more than $19 trillion is now invested in total U.S. retirement assets, representing 36 percent of all U.S. household assets, Fidelity research shows that nearly four in 10 retiree households do not have sufficient income to cover their monthly expenses, O'Hanley said.

Other challenges include 35 percent of all working Americans having no access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan. As people are living longer, plan sponsors are moving to close their defined benefit pension plans or limit coverage as a result of rising pension liabilities, O'Hanley said.

Financial literacy is also an issue, as well as proposals such as Simpson-Bowles that have lumped the "tax deferral" element of retirement savings in the same bucket as the "tax breaks" of home mortgage deduction and employer-sponsored health insurance, and propose to cap or even eliminate them all in the name of deficit reduction, further challenging retirement savings, O'Hanley said.

Even though the Pension Protection Act should be considered "one of the greatest achievements of the past decade," O'Hanley proposed that three extensions be required — the increase of the default savings rate to at least 6 percent; requiring auto-increase programs to be part of plan design, unless employees choose to opt out of participating; and Congress mandating these auto features, along with a participant opt-out, in all new plans.

In terms of the 35 percent of private sector workers who either don't have access to a workplace plan or are not enrolled in one, leaders also need to "simplify and streamline the savings vehicles that exist today to make them easier to use and more cost-effective for employers to offer," O'Hanely said.

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LogMeIn opens new headquarters in Boston’s Innovation District

Boston-based cloud software company LogMeIn Inc. said this week it has opened the doors on its new worldwide headquarters at 320 Summer St. in the Hub's Innovation District.

The 100,000-square-foot facility, a 1904 brick-and-beam warehouse that underwent a multi-million dollar renovation, will house the company's 250-plus local employees, with space to accommodate an expected doubling of the company's local workforce over the next three to five years, officials said.

"LogMeIn continues to be one of Massachusetts' great technology success stories, and I know they'll instantly become a signature tenant in the Innovation District," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino in a statement. "The company's leadership in the mobile and cloud computing space, combined with the vibrancy of the Innovation District, makes for a winning strategy as we work together to attract the best and brightest to Boston."

LogMeIn said its products range from mobile, Web and computer apps used by tens of millions of people to work from virtually anywhere on virtually any device to professional-grade remote IT solutions used by businesses to manage and support PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads and Android devices.

The company added it employs 600 people worldwide, and also has offices in Australia, India, Ireland, Hungary, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

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TripAdvisor acquires New York-based Jetsetter.com

TripAdvisor said it has acquired Jetsetter.com, a New York-based members-only private sale site for hotel bookings.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The Jetsetter brand will continue to operate out of New York City and will be incorporated into Smarter Travel Media, officials said.

"Jetsetter is an outstanding brand and I am absolutely delighted to welcome the Jetsetter team to the TripAdvisor family," said Steve Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of TripAdvisor Inc. "With Jetsetter and our own SniqueAway brand, we now have two leading travel private sale sites under one roof. We are excited by the opportunities this provides to continually help drive amazing value for our travelers staying at some of the world's most highly-rated hotels."

Jetsetter was launched by Gilt Groupe in April 2010.

Last month, TripAdvisor acquired Tiny Post, an acclaimed app that lets users write over photos and turn them into stories, for an undisclosed amount. Tiny Post employees will be based in TripAdvisor's Palo Alto, Calif. office.

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Minutes show Fed backs stimulus through midyear

WASHINGTON — A majority of Federal Reserve policymakers want to continue extraordinary bond purchases to help boost the economy at least through the middle of the year, according to minutes from the Fed's last meeting released Wednesday.

But many members indicated they want to slow and eventually end the program soon after that, as long as the job market and economy show sustained improvement. The Fed's purchases of about $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds are intended to lower long-term interest rates and support more borrowing and spending.

The minutes of the Fed's March 19-20 meeting were released at 9 a.m. EDT — five hours earlier than planned — after the Fed inadvertently sent them a day earlier to congressional staffers and lobbyists.

"One gets the sense that many Fed policymakers are anxious to start paring back the size of the ... purchases as soon as the data allow," Dana Saporta, an economist at Credit Suisse, said in a note to clients.

Still, a weak employment report released Friday is likely to make policymakers even more supportive of keeping the measures in place for the foreseeable future.

The report showed employers added just 88,000 net jobs last month. That was the fewest in nine months and much lower than the average of 220,000 jobs a month created from November through February.

The unemployment rate dropped to a four-year low of 7.6 percent last month. However, the rate fell only because more people stopped looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed.

In its statement after the last meeting, the Fed said the economy had strengthened but still needed its efforts to help lower high unemployment. In addition to continuing the bond purchases, the Fed stuck by its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent.

The minutes indicated that many of the Fed's members want to see sustained improvement in the job market — from a wide range of economic indicators — before making any decision to reduce the pace of purchases.

Stocks rose sharply after the minutes were released. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose to 1,585 in late-morning trading — above its all-time high of 1,576.09 set in October 2007. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 130 points to 14,804.

The early release of the minutes led the Fed to notify financial regulators. A Fed spokesman said that officials have contacted the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Fed has also asked its inspector general to investigate its procedures for releasing the minutes.

"At this time we do not know if there was any trading related to the early distribution," the spokesman said. "Every indication at this time is that the early distribution of the minutes was entirely accidental."

John Nester, a spokesman for the SEC, declined to comment on the release of the minutes, beyond saying that the Fed contacted the SEC staff.

The report showed a wide array of opinions and criteria for when to end the bond purchases, which have boosted the Fed's balance sheet to $3.2 trillion.

A few members want to end "relatively soon" the bond-purchase program, which is intended to lower long-term interest rates and encourage more borrowing and spending.

Those members say the costs likely outweigh the benefits. A few others saw the risks as increasing quickly and said the purchases would likely need to be reduced "before long."

Many members said an improved job market could lead them to slow purchases within a few months, and a few said economic conditions would likely justify continuing the program until late this year.

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Lithuania taxman uses Google Maps to find dodgers

VILNIUS, Lithuania — As soon as Google Maps Street View was rolled out in Lithuania earlier this year, tax authorities were ready.

Sitting in the comfort of their own offices, inspectors used the free Internet program for a virtual cruise around the streets of some of the Baltic country's big cities, uncovering dozens of alleged tax violations involving housing construction and property sales.

They identified 100 homeowners and 30 construction companies as suspected tax dodgers thanks to Street View, finding homes where they shouldn't be and other suspicious activity, Darius Buta, spokesman for the State Tax Inspectorate, said Wednesday.

"Our inspectors track these buildings on the Internet, and if a violation seems obvious, they visit the sites. This saves lots of time and resources," Buta said.

Lithuanian officials said they were unaware of any other country where revenue collectors had used Google's Street View, saying they didn't draw on anyone else's experience. Still, tax authorities across the world are turning to high-resolution maps, online databases, and social media in a bid to catch out cheats.

In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service has said it would be cross-referencing information from taxpayers' Facebook and Twitter accounts if their returns threw up any red flags.

In Britain, tax officials have revealed they are using Web crawling software to trawl auction websites for undeclared sales, while in Greece authorities have been using satellite imagery to locate undeclared swimming pools in wealthy neighborhoods.

Among the tax cheats caught in Lithuania were a couple in Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city, who didn't register the sale of buildings and avoided 240,000 litas ($91,000) in taxes, said Vaimaira Jakiene, the coordinator of the new program.

Another couple declared a sale of land but didn't mention a new house built on the property that was sold via a separate deal, said Jakienie. They are looking at a tax bill of 130,000 ($50,000), she added.

Tax officials said they planned to use Street View to take a peek at properties purchased from dubious construction companies over the past two years.

Google has had scrapes with European governments over Street View, with the Germans and French in particular concerned that the company's practice of deploying camera-mounted cars and bicycles to collect images and information for the application intrudes on privacy.

But the Lithuanian revenue agency dismissed any claims that its new approach violated privacy rights.

"We conducted precise legal consultations. There are no rights violations," Buta said, added that tax authorities also discussed privacy and security concerns with Google officials in Lithuania.

Human rights advocates in the Baltic state seemed to agree.

"We do not see violations here since inspectors use the Google application only to look at suspicious places — then they visit them," said Karolis Liutkevicius, a lawyer at the Human Rights Monitoring Institute in Vilnius. "If they were using it as the sole tool, then it could possibly be qualified as a violation. But in this case it's just using a modern resource."

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Associated Press writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report from London.

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Pancreatic cancer research grants worth $5M awarded

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and the American Association for Cancer Research awarded 14 grants totaling more than $5 million today to scientists throughout the country to support their research in the field of pancreatic cancer, including three Massachusetts cancer researchers.

The Bay State grant recipients include:

•  Costas Lyssiotis of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will receive $600,000 to further evaluate the dependence of pancreatic cancer cells on the nutrients glucose and glutamine to develop innovative targeted therapies that selectively eliminate diseased cells.
•  Dr. Andrew Aguirre of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute will receive $45,000. Through a technology project called "Project Achilles," which seeks to discover the "Achilles heel" vulnerability of pancreatic cancer cells that have K-Ras mutation, Aguirre and colleagues hope to establish the translational potential of therapeutic gene silencing in human pancreatic cancer.
•  Yves Boucher of Massachusetts General Hospital will receive $200,000. He proposes to attack desmoplasia, or growth of fibrous connective tissue that surrounds pancreatic tumors, by two approaches. Boucher will test whether a medicine designed to treat high blood pressure could open up some of the blood vessels around the tumor in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer. Also, a cell type known as macrophages may be able to chew up some of the desmoplastic tissue.

This year's total funding level represents the largest annual disbursement since the PCAN introduced the program in 2003, officials said. To date, the organization has awarded 94 research grants to researchers at institutions around the country totaling nearly $18 million.

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Brown Rudnick expands, merges with California-based law firm

Hub-based law firm Brown Rudnick LLP said it is expanding to the West Coast by combining with Rus Miliband & Smith, a commercial litigation firm based in Irvine, Calif.

With an Orange County office, Brown Rudnick will have a major presence in the Southern California metropolitan area and add to the firm's global footprint, which also includes offices in Dublin, London, New York and Washington, D.C.

Rus Miliband & Smith represents clients in complex commercial, business and real estate litigation, and in corporate reorganization, debt restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings. officials said.

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Billions in foreclosure settlement checks in the mail

Payments to 4.2 million borrowers involved in the foreclosure crisis are scheduled to begin Friday following an agreement reached by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board with 13 mortgage servicers, officials said.

The agreement, which was reached earlier this year, provides $3.6 billion in cash payments to borrowers whose homes were in any stage of the foreclosure process in 2009 or 2010 and whose mortgages were serviced by one of the following companies, their affiliates or subsidiaries: Aurora, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, Morgan Stanley, PNC, Sovereign, SunTrust, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.

The payments will range from $300 to $125,000. For borrowers whose mortgages were serviced by 11 of the 13 servicers, excluding Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, checks will be sent in several waves beginning with 1.4 million checks on Friday. The final wave is expected in mid-July, officials said.

More than 90 percent of the total payments to borrowers at those 11 servicers are expected to have been sent by the end of April. Information about payments to borrowers whose mortgages were serviced by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will be announced in the near future, officials said.

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Quincy Medical Center nurses will hold one-day strike tomorrow

Registered nurses at Quincy Medical Center, which is owned by Cerberus-backed Steward Health Care System, will conduct a one-day strike tomorrow starting at 6 a.m. to protest what they allege to be dangerous staffing conditions at their hospital.

The strike will be the first nurses' strike at a Greater Boston hospital in more than 25 years and it has been sanctioned by the most overwhelming nurses strike vote in Massachusetts history, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association and National Nurses United.

RNs said they submitted more than 150 official written reports of unsafe staffing incidents to management in the last 14 months. Tensions reached a breaking point in February when the hospital owner shut down a 40-bed nursing unit, nurses added.

"We feel that we have a duty to our patients, our practice and to each other to take action. We also consider it to be our duty to the future of this hospital that we love," said Paula Ryan, a nurse at the hospital and chairwoman of the MNA local bargaining unit. "This is our hospital and we want it to succeed. But when you find yourself to be in a hole, the first step is to stop digging. We are at the point where we have to stay 'stop.' "

Earlier this week Christopher Murphy, spokesman for the Steward Health Care System, said the one-day strike was part of "a standard negotiating playbook," and negotiations are ongoing.

"No patient will be negatively impacted or has been negatively impacted. The quality at Quincy Medical Center has increased dramatically and continues to increase," he said. "This hospital is in excellent shape. Any patient who uses QMC should be very comfortable that they will get excellent care."

Murphy added the hospital unit in question was "flexed down" because of low patient volume and that the hospital "can staff it and use it again at any time if volume increases."

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