USTelecom files suit against government's new Internet rules

NEW YORK — A legal fight against the Federal Communications Commission's new Internet traffic rules has begun.

The rules were voted on in February and uphold the principle of net neutrality — that online content be allowed to load at the same speed. They forbid paid fast lanes favoring some content and say broadband providers can't slow Web traffic or block content.

The rules were published Monday in the government's Federal Register and would go into effect on June 12 if a court doesn't block them. Litigation could drag on for years.

The United States Telecom Association, an industry group that represents companies including AT&T and Verizon, said Monday that it has filed suit to block the rules in the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia. The suit asks for a review of the FCC's rules on the grounds that they violate federal law and are arbitrary. The suit also says the FCC didn't follow the proper procedure for creating the rules.

Internet service providers have said they support net neutrality. But the FCC put those rules in place by regulating Internet access as a telecommunications service, like the telephone is.

Some broadband providers don't like the stricter oversight that comes with that. Now the FCC will be able to investigate complaints from consumers and Internet companies such as Netflix about "unjust or unreasonable" behavior by broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T.

Internet service providers say they are worried that aspects of the new rules are unclear — what practices would the FCC deem unfair? An AT&T executive has said that the FCC's new rules mean "a period of uncertainty that will damage broadband investment in the United States."

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Massachusetts gas prices inch up a penny

BOSTON — A gallon of gas in Massachusetts has inched up a penny in the past week, but remains a nickel below the national average.

AAA Northeast reports Monday that the average price of a gallon of self-serve, regular is up to $2.34.

The current price is still 7 cents lower per gallon than a month ago and $1.19 lower than at this time last year.

AAA found self-serve, regular selling for as low as $2.13 per gallon and as high as $2.59.

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CBS news political director John Dickerson named anchor of 'Face the Nation'

CBS News has tapped its political director John Dickerson to succeed Bob Schieffer as anchor of "Face the Nation."

Schieffer announced the appointment at the close of Sunday's telecast. Dickerson is the son of Nancy Dickerson, the first female correspondent to work in CBS News' Washington bureau and an associate producer on "Face the Nation" at its inception in 1954.

Dickerson will take over the anchor desk on the Sunday morning public affairs show from Schieffer this summer, just in time to rev up for the 2016 presidential race. Schieffer confirmed his plan to retire after a 46-year career with CBS News.

"John is first and foremost a reporter -- and that's what he'll be as anchor of 'Face the Nation'," said CBS News president David Rhodes. "His work in the studio will always be informed by what he's learned in Iowa, in New Hampshire, on Capitol Hill--anywhere there's news. He has earned the respect of newsmakers across the political spectrum. With all our correspondents John will present comprehensive coverage on all our platforms."

Dickerson has been a regular on "Face the Nation" in recent years. Calling him "my friend," Schieffer noted he has made 83 appearances on the show "and he sure has the right bloodlines."

A Washington native, Dickerson joined CBS News in 2009 as an on-air political analyst. He's been political director since 2011. Before CBS, Dickerson was a reporter for Time magazine and Slate.

"I'm thrilled," Dickerson said. "I have watched Bob my whole professional life not just as a viewer but as a daily reporter who also covered the Hill. I'm honored to carry on his tradition on 'Face the Nation.' "

Dickerson is also the author of a book about his mother's pioneering role in TV news, "On Her Trail." Nancy Dickerson died in 1997.

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

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CBS political director John Dickerson new Sunday show host

NEW YORK — CBS News moved swiftly Sunday after Bob Schieffer's retirement announcement to name the network's political director, John Dickerson, as the new moderator of "Face the Nation."

Dickerson, a former Time magazine and Slate writer who has been with CBS since 2009, will begin his new role early this summer.

Schieffer, who made the announcement on Sunday's show, noted that Dickerson "sure has the right bloodlines" for the assignment. Dickerson's mother, Nancy, was the first female correspondent in the CBS News Washington bureau.

Schieffer, the 78-year-old chief Washington correspondent of CBS News, announced Wednesday that he would be leaving the job early this summer. Schieffer has been with CBS News since 1969 and "Face the Nation" moderator since 1991.

Dickerson's reporting ability, and the fact that he spends his weeks immersed in political coverage, made him a natural for the job, CBS News President David Rhodes said Sunday. The Washington-based Sunday morning public affairs shows are hotly competitive, with "Face" often beating NBC's "Meet the Press" and ABC's "This Week" in the ratings.

While "Face" has updated its look recently and Dickerson is expected to be more active in social media than Schieffer, Rhodes isn't calling for major changes in the show.

"You want to change things that aren't working," Rhodes said. "The things that are working you want to continue with."

It was important for CBS to establish its new Sunday host quickly with the 2016 presidential campaign starting in earnest, Rhodes said. CBS made the announcement on the same day Hillary Clinton was expected to declare her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

While one of Dickerson's competitors, George Stephanopoulos at ABC, also works as host of the weekday "Good Morning America," CBS chose not to split its duties. Norah O'Donnell was considered a contender to replace Schieffer but CBS wants her to concentrate on hosting the network's weekday morning show.

Dickerson's other competitor is another rookie and political junkie, Chuck Todd, who replaced David Gregory last fall as "Meet the Press" moderator

John Dickerson said he's "honored and excited" by the new job.

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Booting Up: Storage costs cloud police cam issue

Police body cameras are controversial, in demand — and a monumental technological undertaking that should be left to cloud computing experts.

Pressure on police departments to deploy body cameras is boiling over as outrage intensifies over the deadly police shooting in South Carolina in which a North Charleston officer shot and killed an unarmed black man as he ran away earlier this month. A video of the April 4 shooting was filmed by a bystander showing a far different version of events than cops officially reported, renewing calls for video as a requirement.

In contrast, the move by Boston police and prosecutors to release security video of a gunfight that left a police officer wounded and the suspect dead has been widely praised — and renewed calls for body cams here.

Only in recent years has cloud computing made it feasible to start thinking about saving and maintaining the deluge of video data from police-worn cameras. Cloud computing allows anyone to store reams of data on far-flung servers managed by companies like Amazon and Microsoft.

Because most cloud storage platforms don't meet the FBI's security policy standards, many departments have forgone the cloud thus far. But the drawbacks of local storage are numerous, requiring police departments to hire IT personnel for maintenance and security.

Police departments thinking of investing in body cameras should expect to encounter cyberattacks. Locally stored police data is already a huge target of hackers, with departments regularly fending off malicious cyberattacks.

By contrast, cloud computing centers are incredibly secure — in fact they're arguably some of the most secure facilities on the planet, with their locations often kept secret. Armed guards and retinal scans are the norm.

Storing that data is more expensive than purchasing the actual cameras. According to the Police Executive Research Foundation, the cost of data storage can reach $2 million per year for a department. A typical urban police department should expect data from its body-worn cameras to accumulate several terabytes of data per month. Oakland police, with 600 body cameras, report that their servers are crammed with a whopping seven terabytes of data per month. Think of that as about 1,500 feature-length films.

In Fort Collins, Colo., for example, cops discard footage after seven days if there is no citizen contact. Other departments keep everything. In Albuquerque, non-evidentiary video is retained for a year. In Oakland, that data is stored for five years.

Microsoft recently piloted the first FBI-compatible data storage program for police video, a program using its Azure cloud storage system with VIEVU, a Seattle-based maker of wearable police cameras, likely opening the door for many police departments to start storing data in the cloud. As a result, police departments should be able to keep and manage data longer and for a lower cost, putting to rest arguments that cop body cameras are too financially burdensome and not feasible for small departments. Storing all that data is only going to get easier.

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Hospitals eye models to address disasters

Crisis plans that can take hospitals months to develop could be produced in seconds with the right mathematical modeling — cutting out much of the painstaking human analysis — according to Boston professors who hope to incorporate these algorithms into local protocol.

"What these models enable you to do is figure out a complex situation with a lot of interacting factors. The tools help you make the best decision," said Ozlem Ergun, an associate professor in Northeastern's Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department. "Boston is a very specific place, where almost all the big hospitals are research hospitals, so it could really benefit from this kind of thing."

According to Ergun, these systems can determine the most efficient way for hospitals to respond to incidents such as outbreaks of disease, natural disasters or tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombings, which cause an influx of patients concentrated in one area.

"If you're in a situation where many people need access to hospitals, there could be several issues — problems with transportation, congestion due to the number of people, access limitations for security reasons," she said. "There needs to be a plan for things like how to use certain EMS vehicles and where patients should be directed based on their needs."

Ergun, who is reaching out to local hospitals to team up on preparedness efforts, came to Northeastern from the Georgia Institute of Technology in September, and has worked on issues surrounding humanitarian crisis response for organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Jarrod Goentzel, founder and director of the MIT Humanitarian Response Lab, has been using these methods to help West Africa cope with the Ebola outbreak, and said the same approach could be used in Boston to create a central point among its cluster of large hospitals to house supplies needed in crisis situations.

"We have lots of hospitals here. In a panic mode, everyone is trying to procure supplies," he said. "Basic human nature is to hoard and hoard and be prepared. But the more centrally you stock things, the more risk that can cover."

Paul Biddinger, chief of emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital, said each local hospital conducts a yearly analysis using tools like FEMA flood maps, but that potential coordination among hospitals is not analyzed.

He added that predicting the frequency and severity of pandemics is tricky, and any resources that could shed light on those events "would be of use."

"Anything that will more accurately predict stressors on the system will help us know how to deal with those stressors," he said.

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Inspector Gadget: MacBook a bit pricy, but lightweight and a beauty

MacBook ($1,299 and up, 
AppleStore.com)

The latest iteration of Apple's full-size notebook computer weighs in at two pounds, is 13.1 mm thin, and has a 12-inch so-called Retina display with edge-to-edge glass.

The good: If you like Apple design, you'll love this MacBook. Available in gold, silver or space gray, it's also got a great new trackpad and a wider keyboard.

The bad: Apple's new MacBook has just one USB port. So if you plan to connect a lot of devices to your laptop, this might not be for you.

The bottom line: If you're OK with just one USB port, this gorgeous Mac's for you.

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Activists call for stricter checks of ride-hailing drivers

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Chapter of the National Organization for Women is urging ride-hailing services like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar to come up with tougher background checks for their drivers.

Mass NOW spokeswoman Katie Prisco-Buxbaum said the companies have a responsibility to address safety concerns of women and other riders following reports of sexual and physical violence in the Boston area.

Prisco-Buxbaum said that while no screening is perfect, the companies should begin using the more rigorous methods like fingerprinting or other identification measures for drivers.

In February, Boston police charged an Uber driver with sexually assaulting a 30-year-woman. In December, an Uber driver from Boston was accused of driving a woman to a secluded location where he beat and sexually assaulted her.

The state is weighing new regulations for ride-hailing services.

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Stocks mostly rise as weak China data boosts stimulus hopes

BEIJING — World stocks mostly rose on Monday, with China's index closing at a seven-year high, as a run of weak indicators boosted hopes for stimulus in the world's second-largest economy.

KEEPING SCORE: Germany's DAX was flat at 12,372.99 and France's CAC 40 was up 0.1 percent to 5,243.32. Britain's FTSE 100 was down 0.5 percent. A broader measure of European shares, the Stoxx 600, was at record highs, edging up 0.1 percent from the record close set on Friday. On Wall Street, futures for the Standard & Poor's 500 and Down were both down 0.1 percent.

CHINA'S STIMULUS HOPES: Markets were boosted by expectations that a sharper-than-forecast contraction in March trade increased chances that Beijing will launch additional stimulus to spur slowing growth. Imports fell 12.7 percent from a year earlier and exports declined 15 percent. That added to signs that growth in the first three months of the year, due to be reported Wednesday, might decline further from the previous quarter's 7.3 percent.

THE QUOTE: "The elephant in the room is whether China's deterioration has endured," following softer industrial output and other data in January and February, Mizuho Bank said in a report. "The silver lining is that a softer outcome under disinflationary conditions will allow more stimulus to propel a revival in growth."

ASIA'S DAY: The Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.2 percent to 4,121.71 points, closing above 4,100 for the first time since March 11, 2008. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 2.7 percent to 28,016.34 and Seoul's Kospi rose 0.5 percent to 2,098.92. India's Sensex added 0.3 percent to 28,876.49 and Sydney's S&P ASX 200 edged up 0.1 percent to 5,960.30. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 was unchanged at 19,905.46 after briefly passing 20,000 last week.

CURRENCY: The dollar rose across the board as it continued to benefit from expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates as quickly as early expected. It rose to 120.69 yen from Friday's 120.18 yen. The euro fell to $1.0530 from the previous session's $1.0586.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude rose 61 cents to $52.25 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained 85 cents on Friday to close at $51.64.

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US stock market gains in midday trading

NEW YORK — Stocks are moving slightly higher in midday trading as investors look ahead to a busy week for corporate earnings.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 30 points, or 0.2 percent, to 18,086 as of 11:45 am. Eastern time.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose three points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,105. The Nasdaq composite increased 25 points, or 0.5 percent, to 5,021.

JetBlue Airways surged 6 percent after the airline reported a big increase in passengers last month.

The market is coming off a second weekly gain in a row. It hasn't had a three-week winning streak since late February.

Bond prices didn't move much. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note held steady at 1.95 percent.

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