Today in Globe Business

Larger stimulus projects will wait

Private developments in Massachusetts might have to wait as long as two years to receive federal stimulus funding, a delay that could stall the recovery of the state's business climate, a top economic aide to Governor Deval Patrick said yesterday.

Gregory Bialecki, secretary of housing and economic development, said a large chunk of federal money will instead have to be spent on smaller jobs, such as paving roads and painting bridges, instead of private projects that could create thousands of jobs. The reason is that because smaller jobs can be started quickly, allowing Massachusetts to comply with the "use it or lose it" provisions of the federal stimulus plan, which require state governments to spend hundreds of millions of dollars within a few months of receiving it

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A drug's journey from idea to reality

TIVERTON, R.I. - Anthony Cincotta hit bottom a little over a decade ago.

The biotechnology start-up he had cofounded and built into a publicly traded company was spiraling out of his control. His older brother, Manny, an inspiration and business partner, was fighting leukemia that would soon take his life. And the FDA had just shot down the diabetes drug he'd been working on for two decades.

But Cincotta wouldn't give up on the dream he'd been pursuing since he was a 21-year-old graduate student, working on Syrian hamsters. Intrigued by how the animals slip from their lean summer condition into a fat, nearly prediabetic state before their winter hibernation, he had found a way to tinker with their brain chemistry and effectively reset their metabolism. Cincotta was certain that he had discovered something big, and he wondered: Could he do the same thing in people?

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CVS is called a leader in pricing violations

CVS Caremark Corp. last year had a 67 percent increase in the number of state violations for allegedly overcharging customers, the largest of any retailer in Massachusetts, according to a report to be released today.

Consumer advocates and organizers from Change to Win, a coalition of American labor unions, plan to unveil the analysis - compiled from inspection reports from the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation - and call upon lawmakers to do more to strengthen pricing protections.

At CVS, the total number of alleged pricing accuracy violations, such as items missing price stickers and inaccurate signs on shelves, declined to 2,094 last year, from 2,560 in 2007.

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MassMutual unit is told to return funds from Madoff

The trustee in the bankruptcy case of swindler Bernard L. Madoff has told a hedge fund business owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. to return money that it received from Madoff over the past six years.

Responding to a Boston Globe inquiry, bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard confirmed that he had sent a so-called clawback letter to Tremont Group Holdings Inc.

Tremont is among more than 225 former Madoff investors who have received such letters from Picard, on the grounds that the money belonged to other investors, because Madoff never generated any real investment profits. Picard wants to recoup the disbursed funds to have more money to repay investors for their losses. He has threatened to sue anyone who doesn't return the funds.

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TECH LAB: New systems make backing up files nearly automatic

Smart computer users always back up their files. Now any idiot can do it, thanks to new backup systems that make the process almost entirely automatic.

Regular readers already know about Carbonite, a Boston firm that will back up an unlimited amount of data over the Internet for about $55 a year. Because the stuff's stored at a remote data center, the backup is safe, even if the house burns down.

But online backup has one major flaw: It's very slow. Even with a broadband Internet connection, it can take three or four days to recover all of your backed-up files. So it makes sense to have a local backup, as well, like an external hard drive that plugs into the computer's USB port. It's not as secure, but it's exactly what you need for recovering lost files fast.

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