US cold, steady China help lift oil prices

The price of oil stayed above $100 a barrel Tuesday on expectations cold weather in the U.S. and steady Chinese growth will underpin demand.

Benchmark U.S. crude for March delivery was up 35 cents to $100.65 a barrel at 0750 GMT in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Due to the President's Day holiday, the contract's last physical settlement was Friday, when it fell 5 cents to close at $100.30.

Severe cold weather in the U.S. has been boosting energy prices. The U.S. East Coast is expected to get more snow, and the cold is extending to other states.

Optimism that China's economy is still healthy after credit growth increased in January also helped lift energy prices.

Talks begin Tuesday among Iran and six world powers on finalizing a deal to control Iran's nuclear program. The outcome could have an effect on oil prices as Iran is a major oil producer and reduction of sanctions would allow the country to export more of its crude.

Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils, edged down 13 cents to $109.05.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

— Wholesale gasoline rose 0.8 cent to $2.98 a gallon.

— Heating oil added 0.5 cent to $3.021 a gallon.

— Natural gas gained 31 cents to $5.524 per 1,000 cubic feet.

House passes drone, government surveillance bills

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The state House on Monday passed two bills that would restrict the use of drones and government surveillance in Washington state.

House Bill 2789, which was approved by an 83-15 vote, would limit the purchase and use of unmanned aircraft systems by state and local agencies.

Under the measure, state agencies and municipal governments could only obtain drones or other unmanned aircraft after getting approval from their governing body. The drones could only be used with a search warrant and in other circumstances including: emergencies with an immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury; criminal emergencies with immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury with no time to get a warrant; for military training on a base; training and testing of devices if no personal information is collected; a governor-declared state of emergency; or for an operation such as environmental or wildlife monitoring.

Agencies using drones would have to prepare annual reports available to the public that describe details of their use. Anyone who claims that a violation of the provisions has injured his or her business, person or reputation could sue the agency for damages, attorney fees and other litigation costs.

Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, said he supported the bill because technology now allows people to be watched without their knowledge.

"This calls for reasonable regulation so we don't have warrantless searches of the public, to control what might be fishing expeditions," he said.

Rep. Christopher Hurst, a former police officer, spoke against the bill, saying the technology should be allowed to develop further before restrictions are put in place that are difficult to remove.

"Although well-intended, this legislation is premature," he said.

Also Monday, House Bill 2178 passed by a vote of 92-6. It would ban the unauthorized use of drones, or other unmanned aircraft with sensing devices, above private property. Under the measure, drones, including those capable of gathering personal information such as photos, could be used on private property if landowners or tenants give permission and if the drones are labeled with the owner's contact information.

The bill also states that unmanned aircraft could be flown over public land if they don't unreasonably interfere with the rights of others or aren't otherwise prohibited by law. Violation of the rules could result in a gross misdemeanor charge.

Both bills will now head to the Senate for consideration.

Newcomer vintners shaking up Chilean wine scene

MAULE VALLEY, Chile -- Sven Bruchfeld doesn't mind if you don't like his wine, as long as some people love it.

He's part of a bold new wave of independent vintners who are challenging Chile's reputation for producing oceans of agreeable but predictable wines. Their quirky, small-batch harvests are capturing the attention of wine connoisseurs at home and abroad.

"We need wines that are polemical, that are not liked by everyone, that generate controversy and spark conversations," said Bruchfeld, a Chilean of German ancestry who is owner and chief winemaker at the Polkura winery.

The independents have broken away from Chile's industrial wine culture to lovingly squeeze out small lots of wines, usually using organic, even spiritually tinged theories of winemaking.

In Alvaro Espinoza's vineyard in the Maipo Valley south of Santiago, a horse plows along rows of grapevines in the shadow of the Andes mountains while a solar panel powers the irrigation. In the Maule Valley farther south, Pilar Miranda also farms with horses and when her wine is ready for bottling, she punches the corks in by hand.

"This new generation is much more conscious about environmental problems and more committed to healthy, sustainable agriculture ... and also for the production of wines that have a stronger connection to the Earth," said Espinoza, whose Antiyal wines regularly break into the 90s in respected ratings.

"That's why I think this new generation of winemakers and entrepreneurs is going to change Chile's image globally."

Chile has been making wine since the mid-1500s, when Spanish settlers brought the first vines to the coast-hugging nation. And it has grown into the world's No. 7 wine producer, with an output of nearly 1.3 billion liters last year. About 480 million liters of bottled wine were exported.

While major producers such as Concha y Toro also release batches of world-class wines, critics have long complained that Chilean wine overall was too industrial and fixated on volume.

"It had quality but lacked character, and there was no space for the small winemaker," said Patricio Tapia, Chile's most respected wine writer.

But in the past decade "a new generation has been born, and Espinoza was the precursor," said Tapia, author of the "Descorchados" wine guide.

The 52-year-old Espinoza who apprenticed at wineries abroad as well as in Chile was among the first to embrace the "biodynamic wine" movement that was taking root in Europe and the United States.

Based on the writings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, it forbids artificial pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers and it sees farms as living organisms affected by the cycles of the moon and planetary alignment, as well as seasons.

Like Espinoza, most of the new vintners emerged from the country's old wine industry, either working at corporate winemakers or studying enology at local universities.

But some have also come from abroad: an Italian count, a former Canadian ski coach and a Swiss lawyer are among the 18-member Chile-based Movement of Independent Vintners.

The artisanal producers have pounced on long-abandoned vines or set up shop in forgotten wine zones, while others have experimented with new combinations of grapes, regions, temperatures and terrains.

In the quest for a more interesting wine, they've experimented in extreme places: from the icy south to northern areas in the heart of the Atacama desert. The result has been a rich mosaic of styles.

They often use rustic but proven methods such as manual corking and egg-shaped concrete vats and earthenware pots for fermentation.

"For us it's about getting back to our roots to make some great juice," said Miranda, 40, who started making wines in the garage with her ski-coach Canadian husband and created the whimsically named Garage Wine Co.

The couple's mountain-grown cabernet blend and cabernet Franc and a dry-farmed, single varietal Carignan are mostly sold in boutique wine shops in San Francisco, New York and London for $20 to $30 a bottle. "I'm going to call them hipster shops," said her husband, Derek Mossman, who began the company in his garage. "We don't compete with the big players from Chile, but rather with the independent offerings from the south of France, Spain, Italy and California."

In the Colchagua Valley, Polkura focuses on syrah grapes to produce 2,000 cases a year. Its name means yellow stone in the native Mapudungun tongue and comes from the yellow granite spread in the area's clay soils. Polkura's winemakers say the decomposed granite "gives the wine minerality and elegance, while the clay provides body and structure."

Its 2008 syrah made it into the Top 100 list for both Wine Spectator and Decanter magazines. And its Block g+i won the Southern Hemisphere's best syrah in Australia's "Five Nations Wine Challenge."

Prestigious mainstream vineyards such as Lapostolle, owned by the heirs to the Grand Marnier liquor fortune, also have embraced biodynamics. Its Clos Apalta, a blend of carmenere, merlot and cabernet sauvignon, was named Wine Spectator's wine of the year for 2008.

"More people are experimenting, searching for new frontiers and new techniques," said Andrea Leon, Lapostolle's winemaker. The results "express a place of origin and a particular vision of wine that doesn't have to be the same."

For Peter Richards, author of "The Wines of Chile," "It's not an overstatement to say that the very future of Chilean wine is being decided right now."

"Chile can stay in a dependable, reliable but slightly unexciting mode, or it can choose to spread its wings and really try to discover its potential for fine wine," said Richards, one of the world's 314 certified "masters of wine."

"It's very exciting to see the beginnings of this revolution. The flame is still small but it continues to grow. It just needs more fanning."

Colo. pot aids kids with seizures, worries doctors

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The doctors were out of ideas to help 5-year-old Charlotte Figi.

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder, she had as many as 300 grand mal seizures a week, used a wheelchair, went into repeated cardiac arrest and could barely speak. As a last resort, her mother began calling medical marijuana shops.

Two years later, Charlotte is largely seizure-free and able to walk, talk and feed herself after taking oil infused with a special pot strain. Her recovery has inspired both a name for the strain of marijuana she takes that is bred not to make users high — Charlotte's Web — and an influx of families with seizure-stricken children to Colorado from states that ban the drug.

"She can walk, talk; she ate chili in the car," her mother, Paige Figi, said as her dark-haired daughter strolled through a cavernous greenhouse full of marijuana plants that will later be broken down into their anti-seizure components and mixed with olive oil so patients can consume them. "So I'll fight for whoever wants this."

Doctors warn there is no proof that Charlotte's Web is effective, or even safe.

In the frenzy to find the drug, there have been reports of non-authorized suppliers offering bogus strains of Charlotte's Web. In one case, a doctor said, parents were told they could replicate the strain by cooking marijuana in butter. Their child went into heavy seizures.

"We don't have any peer-reviewed, published literature to support it," Dr. Larry Wolk, the state health department's chief medical officer, said of Charlotte's Web.

Still, more than 100 families have relocated since Charlotte's story first began spreading last summer, according to Figi and her husband and the five brothers who grow the drug and sell it at cost through a nonprofit. The relocated families have formed a close-knit group in Colorado Springs, the law-and-order town where the dispensary that sells the drug is located. They meet for lunch, support sessions and hikes.

"It's the most hope lots of us have ever had," said Holli Brown, whose 9-year-old daughter, Sydni, began speaking in sentences and laughing since moving to Colorado from Kansas City and taking the marijuana strain.

Amy Brooks-Kayal, vice president of the American Epilepsy Society, warned that a few miraculous stories may not mean anything — epileptic seizures come and go for no apparent reason — and scientists do not know what sort of damage Charlotte's Web could be doing to young brains.

"Until we have that information, as physicians, we can't follow our first creed, which is do no harm," she said, suggesting that parents relocate so their children can get treated at one of the nation's 28 top-tier pediatric epilepsy centers rather than move to Colorado.

However, the society urges more study of pot's possibilities. The families using Charlotte's Web, as well as the brothers who grow it, say they want the drug rigorously tested, and their efforts to ensure its purity have won them praise from skeptics like Wolk.

For many, Charlotte's story was something they couldn't ignore.

Charlotte is a twin, but her sister, Chase, doesn't have Dravet's syndrome, which kills kids before they reach adulthood.

In early 2012, it seemed Charlotte would be added to that grim roster. Her vital signs flat-lined three times, leading her parents to begin preparing for her death. They even signed an order for doctors not to take heroic measures to save her life again should she go into cardiac arrest.

Her father, Matt, a former Green Beret who took a job as a contractor working in Afghanistan, started looking online for ways to help his daughter and thought they should give pot a try. But there was a danger: Marijuana's psychoactive ingredient, THC, can trigger seizures.

The drug also contains another chemical known as CBD that may have seizure-fighting properties. In October, the Food and Drug Administration approved testing a British pharmaceutical firm's marijuana-derived drug that is CBD-based and has all its THC removed.

Few dispensaries stock CBD-heavy weed that doesn't get you high. Then Paige Figi found Joel Stanley.

One of 11 siblings raised by a single mother and their grandmother in Oklahoma, Stanley and four of his brothers had found themselves in the medical marijuana business after moving to Colorado. Almost as an experiment, they bred a low-THC, high-CBD plant after hearing it could fight tumors.

Stanley went to the Figis' house with reservations about giving pot to a child.

"But she had done her homework," Stanley said of Paige Figi. "She wasn't a pot activist or a hippy, just a conservative mom."

Now, Stanley and his brothers provide the marijuana to nearly 300 patients and have a waitlist of 2,000.

The CBD is extracted by a chemist who once worked for drug giant Pfizer, mixed with olive oil so it can be ingested through the mouth or the feeding tube that many sufferers from childhood epilepsy use, then sent to a third-party lab to test its purity.

Charlotte takes the medication twice a day. "A year ago, she could only say one word," her father said. "Now she says complete sentences."

The recovery of Charlotte and other kids has inspired the Figis and others to travel the country, pushing for medical marijuana laws or statutes that would allow high-CBD, low-THC pot strains.

Donald Burger recently urged a New York state legislative panel to legalize medical marijuana while his wife, Aileen, was in the family's new rental house in Colorado Springs, giving Charlotte's Web to their daughter Elizabeth, 4. The family only relocated to Colorado after neurologists told them Elizabeth's best hope — brain surgery — could only stop some of her seizures.

"It's a very big strain being away from the rest of our family," Aileen Burger said recently while waiting for her husband to return from a trip to sell their Long Island house. "But she doesn't have to have pieces of her brain removed."

Ray Mirazabegian, an optician in Glendale, Calif., brought Charlotte's Web to his state, where medical marijuana is legal. He convinced the Stanley brothers to give him some seeds he could use to treat his 9-year-old daughter Emily, who spent her days slumped on the couch. Now, she's running, jumping and talking. Mirazabegian is cloning the Charlotte's Web seeds and has opened the California branch of the Stanleys' foundation.

Mirazabegian has begun to distribute the strain to 25 families and has a waitlist of 400. It includes, he said, families willing to move from Japan and the Philippines.

Follow Nicholas Riccardi on Twitter at http://bit.ly/1eKVMQg .

Report: On-time college graduation low in Ind.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Most full-time college students in Indiana do not graduate on time, according to a new report that looks at whether people are completing college and how long it's taking them.

The report, released Tuesday, places Indiana University in Bloomington at the top of overall completion rates at about 83 percent. Ivy Tech Community College is at the bottom with about 28 percent. But only about half of IU Bloomington students graduate on time, and less than 4 percent graduate on-time from Ivy Tech.

The report, completed with data from the state Commission for Higher Education and the National Student Clearinghouse, factors in students who transfer and graduate from another university or take longer to get a degree. Numbers reflect student data from 2007 to 2013 in community colleges and from 2005 to 2013 for other institutions.

Higher Education Commissioner Teresa Lubbers said on-time graduation should be a priority for the state. "The best policy for students and the state is, whenever possible, on-time completion," Lubbers said.

Completion rates factor into state higher education performance-based funding, which is recommended by the commission. A higher on-time completion rate means more state dollars.

Indiana colleges and universities now offer incentives to get students out the door faster. IU froze tuition rates for sophomores on track to complete their degrees, and Indiana State University will pay tuition for students who meet strict criteria but don't get their degree on time.

Traditional four-year universities, such as IU and Purdue University in West Lafayette, come out on top in terms of on-time graduation. Ivy Tech, where many students are older and work full-time jobs on top of taking classes, doesn't fare as well, President Tom Snyder said.

"Overall, the commission objectives are really important and we're striving to do that, but when you look at our performance versus four-year regional campuses, we're pretty competitive," Snyder said.

State Rep. Matt Pierce, D- Bloomington, said more emphasis should be placed on helping to keep students who already have a few years of college under their belt from dropping out instead of focusing on students who take one or two extra years to get their diploma.

Students who take extra time to deal with mental illness, a family death or a change of major end up paying the price, Pierce said. Students lose financial aid after four years, which Pierce said also compounds issues for students working part-time to pay for their education.

"There's definitely an issue there, but you have to step back and look at what's causing it," said Pierce, who also works as a professor at IU in Bloomington. "I don't think (members of the Commission for Higher Education) have a good handle on the root issue."

The increased cost to students is another reason the commission wants students to finish on time.

"The reality is for those students who are receiving financial aid, it runs out in four years," Lubbers said.

Snow in upper Midwest disrupts air travel

Travelers suffered through another difficult day Monday as winter's icy grip caused airlines to delay and cancel more flights.

By late afternoon Monday, nearly 1,200 flights in the U.S. had been canceled and an additional 3,000 had been delayed, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.

Chicago was hit hardest, as the area was caught in a storm that was expected to drop up to 8 inches of snow by Monday night before moving into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Tuesday.

Nearly 500 departures were canceled Monday at Chicago's two big airports, O'Hare and Midway, and many flights headed to the city were also scrubbed, FlightAware said. The Chicago department of aviation said most of the cancellations were proactive — announced ahead of the storm.

American Eagle, the regional affiliate of American Airlines, and Southwest, which has a big operation at Midway, had canceled more than 200 flights each. ExpressJet, which operates regional flights for bigger carriers, had dropped more than 180.

Through last week, airlines had canceled more than 75,000 domestic flights since Dec. 1, the highest total since the U.S. Department of Transportation started keeping track in the winter of 1987-1988.

No-contact advisory issued for after manure spill

MONTEREY TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Health officials have issued a no-contact advisory for water in Bear Creek and the Rabbit River following a liquid manure leak from an open-air lagoon at a western Michigan dairy farm.

The Grand Rapids Press reports (http://bit.ly/1chNaEp ) the advisory from the Allegan County Health Department covers the Rabbit River to where it enters the Kalamazoo River at New Richmond.

The department says Monday that fishing and other recreational activities should be postponed until the advisory is lifted.

The state Department of Environmental Quality says it began investigating Friday after getting calls about a possible spill. Temperatures were in the teens Monday, and the DEQ says cold weather helped lessen potential problems with the manure and bacteria.

The DEQ says the leak from a farm in Monterey Township was stopped Saturday.