Today in Globe Business

Weymouth contractor may be witness in campaign fraud case

The owner of a Weymouth construction company appears to be the key witness federal prosecutors used to charge a former executive of Boston developer WinnCompanies this week with making illegal campaign contributions to politicians in order to advance the company’s business interests, according to a Globe analysis of campaign financial records.

The witness is not named in the document federal prosecutors used Tuesday to charge Martin Raffol, onetime executive vice president of the residential arm of WinnCompanies, with hiding the true source of contributions he solicited from vendors that worked for the company and whom he allegedly reimbursed in secret. The WinnCompanies donor is identified only as Contractor 1.

But the contributions prosecutors attributed to Contractor 1 and his spouse match those of Michael A. Travers, who operates Nightingale Construction Co., and his wife, Margaret M. Travers.
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Stocks charge ahead on manufacturing data

NEW YORK — Manufacturing reports that showed growth in the United States and China helped propel stocks yesterday, providing an upbeat start to a new month.

Markets were higher in Asia and Europe after reports showed manufacturing activity picked up slightly in China in August after several months of slender declines. Investors on Wall Street took notice, and the market charged ahead more than 200 points shortly after the open. It never looked back after the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing survey of hundreds of companies showed surprising growth. Previous regional surveys had appeared weak.

Anthony Chan, chief economist for JPMorgan, said the economic reports gave the markets the momentum they needed to sustain gains through the markets’ close, just ahead of the much anticipated national jobs report tomorrow.
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TECH LAB: Fastest wireless in town - for what it's worth

At last, 4G has come to Boston, and I feel like a man who’s gotten a shirt for Christmas. I’m grateful, of course, but I was expecting something a bit more exciting.

The 4G name is the generic label for high-speed data networks being built by the nation’s cellphone companies. We’ve learned to love the current 3G system, with its ability to let us watch video snippets and read news headlines on our phones. But 4G is designed to handle data two to three times faster, making it possible to look at higher-quality video streams or play demanding multiplayer video games.

This week, Sprint Nextel Corp. launched 4G in Boston. Is the new network faster than standard 3G? Sort of. I tried it on a pair of 4G-compatible phones, and on a nifty little mobile hotspot, a device that lets multiple gadgets share a single 4G connection. According to the online testing service Ookla, I got some amazing bursts of speed — as high as 10 million bits per second, dramatically faster than the usual 1.5 million bits 3G delivers. But in a more mundane challenge — downloading a really big file — the 4G network was something of a letdown.
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Brokerage, ex-manager still sparring

Oppenheimer & Co. warned its former Boston office manager and his lawyer in an e-mail not to give documents relating to the Wall Street brokerage to federal regulators. If they did, a lawyer for the firm wrote, “You do so at your peril.’’

The e-mail threat is the latest salvo in a bitter fight between James Dever and his former employer over the confidentiality of records in his legal ordeal with Oppenheimer. Dever says he needs the records to clear his name and alleges they show wrongdoing at the firm.

In all, four lawyers, including Oppenheimer’s deputy general counsel, weighed in last Friday to say Dever should not give the documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission.