Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/319437
ByKenSweet The Associated Press NEW YORK They'rethe$10 million men and women. Propelled by a soaring stock market, the median pay package for a CEO rose above eight figures for the first time last year. The head of a typical large public com- pany earned a record $10.5 million, an increase of 8.8 percent from $9.6 million in 2012, according to an Associ- atedPress/Equilarpaystudy. Last year was the fourth straight that CEO compensa- tion rose following a decline during the Great Recession. The median CEO pay pack- age climbed more than 50 percent over that stretch. A chief executive now makes about 257 times the average worker's salary, up sharply from 181 times in 2009. The best paid CEO last year led an oilfield-services company. The highest paid female CEO was Carol Mey- rowitz of discount retail gi- ant TJX, owner of TJ Maxx and Marshall's. And the head of Monster Beverage got a monster of a raise. Over the last several years, companies' boards of directors have tweaked ex- ecutive compensation to an- swer critics' calls for CEO pay to be more attuned to performance. They've cut back on stock options and cash bonuses, which were criticized for rewarding ex- ecutives even when a com- pany did poorly. Boards of directors have placed more emphasis on paying CEOs in stock instead of cash and stock options. The change became a boon for CEOs last year be- cause of a surge in stocks that drove the Standard & Poor's 500 index up 30 per- cent. The stock component of pay packages rose 17 per- cent to $4.5 million. "Companies have been happy with their CEOs' per- formance and the stock mar- ket has provided a big boost," says Gary Hewitt, director of research at GMI Ratings, a corporate governance re- search firm. "But we are still dealing with a situation where CEO compensation has spun out of control and CEOsare being paid extraor- dinary levels for their work." The highest paid CEO was Anthony Petrello of oilfield- services company Nabors Industries, who made $68.3 million in 2013. Petrello's pay ballooned as a result of a $60 million lump sum that the company paid him to buy out his old contract. Nabors Industries did not respond to calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. Petrello was one of a hand- ful of CEOs who received a one-timeboostinpaybecause boards of directors decided to renegotiate CEO contracts under pressure from share- holders. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold CEO Richard Adkersonalsoreceivedaone- time payment of $36.7 million to renegotiate his contract. His total pay, $55.3 million, made him the third-highest paid CEO last year. INCOME MedianCEOpayhits$10millionin2013 By Josh Wood The Associated Press WATFORD CITY, N.D. A rare North Dakota tornado that critically injured a 15-year- old girl and hurt eight other people at a workers' camp in the heart of the state's boom- ing oil patch packed winds that peaked at 120 mph, the National Weather Service said Tuesday. The twister touched down Monday night at a camp just south of Watford City, about 50 miles southeast of Wil- liston, and damaged or de- stroyed 15 trailers. The 15-year-old, who was from out of state and visiting an aunt and uncle, was flown to a Minot hospital. She was in an intensive-care unit with a head injury but expected to survive, McKenzie County Emergency Manager Jerry Samuelson said Tuesday. Samuelson did not release the girl's name or the com- munity in which she lives. Eight other people were treated at a Watford City hospital for less serious in- juries. The American Red Cross said eight residents spent the night at a shelter at Watford City's Civic Cen- ter and that several families were among those displaced. Tornadoes are rarely re- ported in McKenzie County, with only 14 since 1950, with no fatalities, according to weather service data. Mon- day's tornado, which hit about 7:50 p.m., was an EF-2 in strength on the 0-to-5 en- hanced Fujita or EF scale, the weather service said Tuesday afternoon. Preliminary information suggests the winds of the twister peaked at 120 mph, the weather service said. A second brief tornado pos- sibly occurred in the area based on eyewitness ac- counts, it said. National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Hamil- ton said two meteorologists and an emergency response specialist left Bismarck at daybreak Tuesday to sur- vey the damage at the camp. It was cool and rainy Tuesday morning at the site where the tornado hit, and there was little activity. Plywood was scattered along with other debris across several hundred square feet at the site. Four trailers and a couple of other prefabricated buildings were still standing. A heavily damaged truck was flipped over on the high- way and several other aban- doned vehicles were nearby. Road signs were flattened and tumbleweeds pushed up against some electrical wires. Don Dailey, who lives in a camp about 200 yards from the one that was hit, said workers got a weather ser- vice tornado alert on their cellphones about the same time they saw the funnel coming down to the ground. He and others took cover be- hind a large piece of excavat- ing equipment. Samuelson said all those injured had been inside their trailers when the tornado struck. The oil boom has brought tens of thousands of peo- ple into the area looking for work. Many live in hastily as- sembledtrailerparks,known as man camps, housing pre- fabricated structures that resemble military barracks. Some companies rent blocks of hotel rooms for employ- ees, and some workers sleep in their cars or in tents. NORTH DAKOTA DANYORGASON—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS A tornado approaches a worker's camp near Watford City, N.D., in the heart of the state's booming oil patch. At least 15 trailers in the camp were destroyed. By Dina Cappiello The Associated Press HOMER CITY, PA. Three years ago, the operators of one of the nation's dirt- iest coal-fired power plants warned of "immediate and devastating" consequences from the Obama adminis- tration's push to clean up pollution from coal. Faced with cutting sulfur dioxide pollution blowing into downwind states by 80 percent in less than a year, lawyers for EME Homer City Generation L.P. sued the Environmental Protec- tion Agency to block the rule, saying it would cause it grave harm and bring a painful spike in electricity bills. None of those dire pre- dictions came to pass. Instead, the massive western Pennsylvania power plant is expected in a few years to turn from one of the worst polluters in the country to a model for how coal-fired power plants can slash pollution. The story of the Homer City plant reflects the pre- carious position of older coal-fired plants these days, squeezed between cheap and plentiful natural gas and a string of environ- mental rules the Obama administration has tar- geted at coal, which sup- plies about 40 percent of the nation's electricity. The latest regulation, the first proposal to curb earth- warming carbon dioxide from power plants, is due next week. It will pose yet another challenge to coal- fired power plants. Dozens of coal-fueled units have already announced they would close in the face of new rules. But Homer City also shows how political and economic rhetoric some- times doesn't match real- ity. Despite claims by Re- publicans and industry critics that the Obama ad- ministration's regulations will shut down coal-fired power plants, Homer City survived — partly because it bought itself time by ty- ing up the regulation in courts. Even environmen- tal groups that applaud each coal plant closing and protested Homer City's pollution, now say the fa- cility is setting a bench- mark for air pollution con- trol that other coal plants should follow, even if it took decades. "If there is a war on coal, that plant won," said Eric Schaeffer, the executive di- rector of the Environmen- tal Integrity Project and a former enforcement official at EPA. The owners of the mas- sive western Pennsylvania power plant — which re- leases more sulfur dioxide than any other power plant in the U.S. — have commit- ted to install $750 million worth of pollution control equipment by 2016 that will make deeper cuts in sulfur than the rule it once op- posed. Last month, the Supreme Court upheld the EPA's rule in the case initiated by Homer City Generating Station. POLLUTION A er decades, dirty power plant to get clean IFRAN KHAN — LOS ANGELES TIMES Rodney Sacks, CEO of Monster Beverage, earned $6.22 million in 2013, a near seven-fold increase from 2012. NWS: Tornado hit 120 mph Teenager critically injured by twister By Jim Kuhnhenn The Associated Press WASHINGTON President Barack Obama confessed to feeling a little bit, well, unac- complished. There was the cata- pult-armed mannequin who shot three-point bas- kets, the 18-year-old can- cer researcher and the sec- ond-grade Girl Scouts from Tulsa, Oklahoma, with their Lego "flood-proof" bridge design. "I'm such an under- achiever," Obama said af- ter chatting with Eric Chen at Tuesday's annual White House Science Fair. Chen, a Harvard-bound San Diego, California, high school se- nior, won grand prizes at the 2013 Google Science Fair and the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technol- ogy for identifying new drug candidates for the treatment of influenza. It's an annual self-depre- cating routine for the Har- vard trained lawyer and 43rd president of the United States, who happily recounts his personal challenges in the fields of science, technol- ogy, engineering and math. "One year I accidentally killed some plants that were part of my experiment," he told Tuesday's White House Science Fair audience. "An- other time a bunch of mice escaped in my grandmoth- er's apartment. These ex- periments did not take me straighttotheWhiteHouse." This year, Obama drew special attention to the sci- enceandengineeringachieve- ments of girls and young women, noting that men out- number women studying and working in engineering and computer science. 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