The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • B7

The Boston Globe Business B7 Bay State Banner hits Globe in front-page retort FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2014 MELVIN B. MILLER Trip Rannpr'c -frm nrlpr r. puDiisner, ana eaitor, aia not respond to interview requests. clined to be interviewed for the Jan. 12 Globe article.

The Banner's financial statements showed liabilities to Miller declined from 2008 to 2012, to less than $160,000 from about $369,000. The Globe reported that the Banner "cut its obligations to Miller substantially, although it's unclear how they were reduced." The Banner said in its letter those liabilities were "improperly classified as personal because of the publisher's guarantee of repayment. Therefore, it was entirely appropriate to transfer it to the corporate By Edward Mason GLOBE CORRESPONDENT In an unsigned open letter published this week, the Bay State Banner said the Globe "impugned the integrity" of the weekly newspaper by revealing details of its default on a pair of loans from an arm of the Boston Redevelopment Authority and raising questions about the black-owned publication's finances in the broader context of the newspaper industry's struggles. "Now it seems the Globe intends to be the first to write the Banner's obituary with the strategy of defaming the publisher to ensure that the Banner's demise ensues," the Banner said in the letter. Using documents obtained under the state public records law, the Globe detailed the his tory of the loans and the Banner's finances in an article published Jan.

12. Melvin B. Miller, the Banner's founder, publisher, and editor, did not respond to several requests for interviews and hung up on a reporter when he was finally reached prior to the story's publication. He did not respond to interview requests Wednesday and Thursday regarding the Banner's open letter. The Banner owes the city more than $280,000, including interest, on the two-year loans it received in 2009.

To repay the debt, Miller is selling a second home used to secure the loans. The BRA expects the loans will be paid and is working on a new payment plan while the house is on the mar-ket, according to a BRA spokeswoman. Founded in 1965, the Banner has a wide reach in Boston's African-American community, claiming to have more than 180,000 weekly print and online readers. The newspaper said in the open letter published Jan. 22 that it sought loans totaling $200,000 after it "encountered financial difficulties with the onslaught of the recession and changing technological aspects of our industry." The Banner's annual financial statements, supplied to the Boston Local Development Corp.

as a condition of the loan, show the paper lost more than $400,000 between 2009 and 2012 before earning about $40,000 last year. The Banner's advertising revenues dropped 17 percent to about $900,000 it typically needs. The Banner said in its letter that the BRA "was able to recommend a favorable decision faster than normal" in part because the paper hired Boston-based Next Street Financial LLC to "analyze the problem and prepare a plan for recovery." Next Street also was supposed to secure private financing to recapitalize the Banner and repay the loans, Next Street's president, Ronald Walker II, said in the loan application. That financing never materialized. Walker also de Ariad reportedly a takeover target Troubled drug firm's shares lifted by rumors By Robert Weisman GLOBE STAFF Shares of Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc.

jumped more than 12 percent on takeover fever Thursday after a British news website reported several global pharmaceutical giants had made overtures to the troubled Cambridge maker of a potent leukemia drug. Ariad relaunched its drug, called Iclusig, last week after regulators pressed the company to halt US sales in October amid mounting safety concerns. Under an agreement with the Food and Drug Administration, chief executive Harvey Berger said the treatment would initially be sold to a smaller subset of leukemia patients for whom no other drugs are effective. But eventually, Berger told investors at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the company plans to "rebuild the confidence in Iclusig" through clinical studies aimed at using it to treat a broader group of leukemia patients and people suffering from other diseases.

The website of the Mail, quoting unidentified "dealers who heard whispers from across the pond," reported Thursday that at least three international drug makers Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. as well as the British giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC, and Ire ASSOCIATED PRESSFILE In January 1984, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and president John Sculley debuted the new Macintosh desktop computer. 30 years on, Mac still game-changer Making waves in 2013 from $1.1 million in 2009, according to those statements. The Banner says the article incorrectly implied that the city's operating budget was used to "finance the black press." The Boston Local Development Corp. is a nonprofit administered by the BRA.

Its programs are supported partly by public funds, according to the nonprofit's tax returns. The loans were approved in 19 days, faster than the 30 to 60 days the Boston Local Development website says ASSOCIATED PRESS that we knew," he said. "None of us had any clue what its potential would be." In fact despite its radical interface, Mac sales were lukewarm. For years, it was mostly a niche product for publishers, educators and graphics artists. Corporate users stuck with IBM Corp.

and its various clones, especially as Microsoft's Windows operating system grew to look like Mac's software. The Mac's user-friendly approach to computing is now a fundamental part of all consumer electronics. The Mac was the first successful computer to incorporate a graphical user interface and a mouse, rather than require people to type in commands. Here's a look at some of the most notable Macs, starting from the beginning: 1984 The Mac is introduced The first Mac (left) had a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive at a time when a 5.25-inch drive was the standard. The Mac used the smaller drive for practical reasons: The larger floppies weren't reliable.

But it paved the way for computers to get even smaller. Edward Mason can be reached at EdwardEdwardMason.net. Find on him on Twitter EBMason. land's Shire PLC, whose chief executive is based in Lexington had made "friendly approaches" to Ariad's board. Lilly was prepared to pay $20 a share to gain control of Ariad, the report said.

Ariad's stock vaulted 81 cents to $7.52 a share, a gain of 12.07 percent on the Nasdaq exchange Thursday, a day when the broader financial markets retreated on economic jitters. Representatives from Ariad and its reported suitors would not discuss the market frenzy or the Mail's report, citing longstanding company policies. "We don't comment on rumors and speculation," said Ariad spokeswoman Liza Heapes. "It is our policy at Lilly not to comment on market rumors or deal speculation," said Mark Taylor, a spokesman for Eli Lilly Shire and GlaxoSmithKline similarly declined to talk about whether they were interested in Ariad. Once seen as a rising star among Massachusetts biotechs, Ariad lost more than $2.5 billion in market value and was forced to lay off 160 employees last fall after it pulled Iclusig from the market.

Its executives have also been reassessing a plan to move into two buildings in a new corporate and research campus under construction in Kendall Square. Robert Weisman can be reached at robert.weismanglobe.com. Follow him on Twitter GlobeRobW. Neiman Marcus Group, which also owns Bergdorf Goodman, said it would notify all customers who shopped in those stores between January 2013 and January 2014 and for whom the company has a mailing or e-mail address. They will offer one free year of credit monitoring to those shoppers.

The company was first told that there may have been a breach in mid-December. The company informed federal law enforcement, and a forensic investigation found evidence of the breach Jan. 1, Neiman said. The week before Christmas, Target announced that 40 million of its customers had had their credit and debit card information compromised. Those customers shopped in its stores between Nov.

27 and Dec. 15. Then in January, Target said that another batch of data, personal information such as addresses and phone numbers, had been compromised leaving a group of 70 million of its customers exposed. Malware installed on point-of-sale systems snatched customer data off the cards' magnetic strip. Neiman said it had no knowledge of a connection between the two attacks.

Social security numbers, PIN data, and birth dates were not compromised, the company said. 1989 Apple's first laptop The Macintosh Portable came out in 1989. The machine itself wasn't noteworthy, but it would lead Apple on a path of making devices for use on the go culminating with the iPhones and iPads that represent the bulk of Apple business today. 4k. 1998 The first iMac Do computers have to look boring? Not according to Steve Jobs, the Apple cofounder who returned from exile to lead the company in 1997.

PCs at the time were typically housed in uniform, beige boxes. The first iMacs looked more like TVs and came in a variety of colors over the years. At one point, Jobs even teased consumers to collect all five. Later iMacs would sport other notable designs, including ones shaped like a sunflower. The iMacs were also famous for ditching floppy drives in favor of CDs and incorporating USB ports now standard in computers.

Data breach at Neiman affected 1.1 million cards 1999 Wireless Internet The iBook G3 in was among the first laptops to come with a Wi-Fi card. It was so new that Jobs used a hula-hoop on stage to show just like a magician that he was surfing the Web without any wires. 2000 Artful design The Power Mac G4 Cube in was praised for its design, even though it didn't sell well. The entire computer fit into a cube measuring 7 inches on each side. A crystal-clear casing made the Cube slightly larger, but it also made the device memorable.

It's now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Computer was a harbinger of devices to come By Anick Jesdanun ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK Look around. Many of the gadgets you see drew inspiration from the original Mac computer. Computers at the time typically required people to type in commands. Once the Mac came out 30 years ago Friday, people could instead navigate with a graphical user interface.

Available options were organized into menus. People clicked icons to run programs and dragged and dropped files to move them. The Mac introduced real-world metaphors such as using a trash can to delete files. It brought us fonts and other tools once limited to professional printers. Most importantly, it made computing and publishing easy enough for everyday people to learn and use.

Apple sparked a revolution in computing with the Mac. In turn, that sparked a revolution in publishing as people began creating fancy newsletters, brochures, and other publications from their desktops. These concepts are so fundamental today that it's hard to imagine a time when they existed only in research labs primarily Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and his team got much of its inspiration from PARC, which they visited while designing the Mac. The Mac has had "incredible influence on pretty much everybody's lives all over the world since computers are now so ubiquitous," said Brad Myers, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

"Pretty much all consumer electronics are adopting all of the same kinds of interactions." Apple didn't invent these tools, nor was the Mac the first to use them. Xerox Corp. sold its own mouse-based Star computer, and Apple's Lisa beat the Mac by months. It's impossible 2008 Light computing Apple's MacBook Air was notable for being thin and light. In introducing the device, Jobs stuffed one into a standard-size manila office envelope.

Apple pulled this off by eliminating the CD drive and the Ethernet port, figuring that people could download files from the Internet over Wi-Fi. Later Airs and MacBook Pros would stay thin and light by also ditching the traditional, spinning hard drive in favor of solid-state memory, the kind used in phones and tablets. By Elizabeth A. Harris, Nicole Perlroth, and Nathaniel Popper NEW YORK TIMES The theft of consumer data from Neiman Marcus appears far deeper than had been disclosed originally, with the company now saying that hackers invaded the luxury retailer's systems for several months in a breach that involved at least 1 1 million credit and debit cards. In a statement posted on its website Wednesday night, Neiman Marcus said that malware had been installed in its system and had pulled payment data off cards used from July 16 to Oct.

30. MasterCard, Visa, and Discover have told the company that about 2,400 cards used at Neiman Marcus and its Last Call outlet stores have since been used fraudulently. Federal investigators, including the Secret Service and the FBI, have been trying to determine whether the extensive security breach at Target and the one at Neiman's are related. Investigators and security experts have described a loose band of hackers from Eastern Europe as the likeliest suspects in the Target theft. Security experts working with the authorities have said that the hackers were eyeing several major retailers as potential targets.

2013 More power Last month marked the debut of Apple's newest Mac. Aimed at professionals, the Mac Pro has more computer power than most consumers would need, squeezed into a black, cylinder-shaped case that is about one-eighth the volume of the previous, boxy model. The original Mac had 128 kilobytes of memory. The Pro starts at 12 gigabytes, or more than 90,000 times as much. to say what would have happened if those machines hadn't flopped with consumers or whether others would have come along if the Mac hadn't.

But the Mac prevailed and thus influenced generations of gadgets that followed. With the Mac came "the dawn of the notion of we can waste computing power to make it easier for people," said Jim Morris, who worked on the Xerox Alto before joining Carnegie Mellon by the time the Mac came out. "The Macintosh was not a business machine." Tim Bajarin, a Creative Strategies analyst who has followed Apple for more than three decades, says he was baffled when he saw the Mac's unveiling at an Apple shareholders meeting in 1984. "This really was a complete departure from the computing.