Boeing Closer to Answer on 787s, but Not to Getting Them Back in Air

Issei Kato/Reuters

Safety inspectors looked over a 787 on Friday in Japan. The plane made an emergency landing after receiving a smoke alarm.

With 787 Dreamliners grounded around the world, Boeing is scrambling to devise a technical fix that would allow the planes to fly again soon, even as investigators in the United States and Japan are trying to figure out what caused the plane’s lithium-ion batteries to overheat.

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, made it clear on Friday that a rapid outcome was unlikely, saying that 787s would not be allowed to fly until the authorities were “1,000 percent sure” they were safe.

“Those planes aren’t flying now until we have a chance to examine the batteries,” Mr. LaHood told reporters. “That seems to be where the problem is.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday took the rare step of grounding Boeing’s technologically advanced 787s after a plane in Japan made an emergency landing when one of its two lithium-ion batteries set off a smoke alarm in the cockpit. Last week at Boston’s Logan Airport, a battery ignited in a parked 787.

The last time the government grounded an entire fleet of airplanes was in 1979, after the crash of a McDonnell Douglas DC-10.

The grounding comes as the United States is going through a record stretch of safe commercial jet flying: It has been nearly four years since a fatal airline crash, with nearly three billion passengers flying in that period. The last airliner crash, near Buffalo, came after a quiet period of two and a half years, which suggests a declining crash rate.

Investigators in Japan said Friday that a possible explanation for the problems with the 787’s batteries was that they were overcharged — a hazard that has long been a concern for lithium-ion batteries. But how that could have happened to a plane that Boeing says has multiple systems to prevent such an event is still unclear.

Given the uncertainty, it will be hard for federal regulators to approve any corrective measures proposed by Boeing. To lift the grounding order, Boeing must demonstrate that any fix it puts in place would prevent similar episodes from happening.

The government’s approach, while prudent, worries industry officials who fear it does not provide a rapid exit for Boeing.

The F.A.A. typically sets a course of corrective action for airlines when it issues a safety directive. But in the case of the 787, the government’s order, called an emergency airworthiness directive, required that Boeing demonstrate that the batteries were safe but did not specify how.

While the government and the plane maker are cooperating, there are few precedents for the situation.

“Everyone wants the airplane back in the air quickly and safely,” said Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “But I don’t believe there will be a corner cut to accomplish that. It will happen when all are confident they have a good solution that will contain a fire or a leak.”

Boeing engineers, Mr. Rosenker said, are working around the clock. “I bet they have cots and food for the engineers who are working on this,” he said. “They have produced a reliable and safe aircraft and as advanced as it is, they don’t want to put airplanes in the air with the problems we have seen.”

The government approved Boeing’s use of lithium-ion batteries to power some of the plane’s systems in 2007, but special conditions were imposed on the plane maker to ensure the batteries would not overheat or ignite. Government inspectors also approved Boeing’s testing plans for the batteries and were present when they were performed.

Even so, after the episode in Boston, the federal agency said it would review the 787’s design and manufacturing with a focus on the electrical systems and batteries. The agency also said it would review the certification process.

The 787 has more electrical systems than previous generations of airplanes. These systems operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones. To run these systems, the 787 has six generators with a capacity equivalent to the power needed by 400 homes.

Nicola Clark and Christopher Drew contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the response of regulators after small cracks were found in the wings of the Airbus A380, and the year those cracks were found. Regulators required inspections, followed by fixes; they did not order the plane grounded. And the discovery was made in 2012, not two years ago.

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IHT Rendezvous: How Far Will Europeans Support France's Counter-Jihad?

LONDON — It did not require a crystal ball to foresee, as Rendezvous did in our 2013 preview, that Mali would be in the news and that France might be the first to intervene there to counter a perceived terrorist threat to Europe.

Less predictable, however, is the extent to which the French can rely on the support of their European allies now that they have decided to go it alone.

The crisis had been building for the best part of a year since mutinous soldiers staged a coup in Bamako, the Malian capital, last March, and separatist Tuareg tribesmen took the opportunity to seize the north of the country. The tribesmen were quickly pushed aside by radical Islamists, including those behind this week’s hostage-taking in neighboring Algeria.

They were poised to extend their rule this month beyond the two-thirds of the country they already control when the French stepped in at the request of the Bamako government.

As early as last April, Alain Juppé, the then French foreign minister, was warning of the “extremely grave threat” posed by the Qaeda-linked insurgents and their aim of establishing a jihadist regime in northern Mali.

In early September, António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, was telling readers of the IHT:

If unchecked, the Mali crisis threatens to create an arc of instability extending west into Mauritania and east through Niger, Chad and Sudan to the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, characterized by extended spaces where state authority is weak and pockets of territorial control are exercised by transnational criminals.

So, did the international community, and Europe in particular, react too slowly to the escalating crisis? Or has France acted precipitously in opting for a military solution to contain the threat?

David Rohde writes elsewhere on Rendezvous that regional experts believe the French had to act.

But, as French troops launched ground operations this week in support of local forces, how far are France’s European allies prepared to be sucked into a potential Malian quagmire?

Germany, Denmark and Britain are among European Union partners that have offered logistical support in Mali.

However, as David Cameron, the British prime minister, assured Parliament when he announced the offer of transport aircraft to assist the French mission, there was no question of putting British boots on the ground.

The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is being even more cautious, limiting its assistance to supplying planes to airlift African troops from the regional ECOWAS alliance.

“Under no circumstances does Germany want to become involved in a messy conflict with no clear end in sight,” Germany’s Der Spiegel commented, “particularly not in an election year.”

Germany held out against intervention in Libya in 2011, eventually spearheaded by France and Britain, siding with Russia in a crucial United Nations vote in defiance of its European allies.

Libya underlined the lack of a common foreign policy, let alone a common defense policy, among the 27 European partners who now face a new crisis in North Africa.

Facing recriminations from some in France that it was only its soldiers who were doing the fighting, European foreign ministers agreed on Thursday to speed up the dispatch of more than 200 military personnel to train Malian government forces to confront the Islamists.

But that was an option that had been on the table since October, when European Union officials said the alliance was considering such a move.

The E.U. also stressed that the trainers, due to be deployed by mid-February at the latest, would not be involved in combat operations.

Commenting on the outcome of Thursday’s meeting, Christophe Giltay of Belgium’s RTL broadcaster, said, “More and more French people are asking themselves if the Europeans have really understood the gravity of the situation.”

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer and Martin Michelot of the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States wrote this week that “the glacial pace at which decisions are taken at the national level to support France’s efforts in Mali only underscores the need for European leaders to be willing to discuss common security issues.”

Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, said on Thursday some of France’s partners were “willing to help and support France in every way and they did not rule in or rule out any aspect of that, including military support.”

But, according to the German Marshall Fund experts: “The French military is nevertheless facing the hard reality of acting on its own, with very little support from other European allies.”

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Morrisons to launch online kitchenware business

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain‘s fourth largest supermarket group Wm Morrison said on Friday it would extend its online presence in the spring with the launch of a kitchenware website in partnership with specialist Lakeland.

The joint venture will be Morrisons‘ third fully transactional website following the launch of wine website MorrisonsCellar.com in November and the purchase of baby care retailer Kiddicare.com in 2011.

“We believe the future for retailing many non-food products is online rather than in supermarkets,” said Chief Executive Dalton Philips.

Unlike the other grocers that make up Britain’s so called “big four” – market leader Tesco, Wal-Mart’s Asda and J Sainsbury – Morrisons does not have a website for the home delivery of food.

Earlier this month Morrisons posted a weak Christmas trading update that it partly attributed to its lack of an online food offer.

The firm is researching the possibility and plans to say more when it publishes full year results in March. Most analysts expect it to launch a trial this year.

(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Kate Holton)

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Hamilton: Armstrong must tell everything he knows

Tyler Hamilton recognized what he saw during Lance Armstrong's televised confession to doping.

"He's broken. He's broken," Hamilton said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. "I've never seen him even remotely like that. It doesn't please me to see that."

Hamilton rode for Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team during his first three Tour de France titles. Hamilton's public confessions to doping — first in a candid-but-halting "60 Minutes" interview in 2011, then later in a tell-all book that came out last summer — provided key evidence in the case against Armstrong.

On Thursday, Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey aired, and the cyclist admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs to fuel all seven of his Tour de France victories.

Hamilton, who said he felt a huge sense of relief after telling the truth, applauded Armstrong's decision to come clean, calling it a "big first step," but only a beginning.

"It's what he does moving forward," Hamilton said in a phone interview. "He's saying some of the right things now but the proof is in the pudding. If he just goes and hides away, people are not going to be happy. But if he does the right thing, speaks to Travis Tygart and WADA and tells everything he knows, that's going to make a big difference."

Both Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman have said Armstrong will need to offer more than a televised confession to make amends and possibly have his lifetime sports ban reduced.

While admitting to doping in his interview, Armstrong contradicted a key point of Hamilton's: That Armstrong told him he tested positive during the 2001 Tour de Suisse and conspired with International Cycling Union officials to cover it up — in exchange for a donation.

"That story wasn't true. There was no positive test, no paying off of the labs. There was no secret meeting with the lab director," Armstrong told Winfrey.

Asked about that, Hamilton told the AP: "I stand by what I said. It's all out there. I don't know if it's a legal thing, or why he said that. It doesn't really bother me that much."

Hamilton was also among numerous riders who described the immense pressure Armstrong put on them to take part in the doping. Armstrong told Winfrey nobody was forced to dope.

"Nobody took a syringe and forced it into my arm. I made that decision on my own," Hamilton said. "But you did feel the pressure. When it was all set up for my first blood-doping experience in 2000, when I flew to Spain on Lance's private jet, I don't know what would've happened to me if I'd said, 'I'll stick with EPO but no blood doping.' I assume they would've been angry about it. For me, it was a no-brainer."

Armstrong said he had reached out to some of the people he felt he owed apologies. Hamilton has not heard from him, however, and didn't sound like he was waiting by the phone.

Hamilton called the entire episode a "huge life lesson" and said Armstrong can help the sport if he's willing to do more, especially if it involves providing information about doctors, managers and other higher-ups in cycling.

"There are still a lot of bad apples in this sport," Hamilton said. "Lance Armstrong did not act alone. There are plenty of people out there who still think they got away with it. I don't think he wants to rat anybody out. But he didn't do this by himself and he didn't learn this by himself."

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Well: Your Twitter Tips for Going Vegan

In this week’s Well column, “How to Go Vegan,”, we asked you to send in your favorite tips and tricks for adopting a solely plant-based diet on Twitter. We received a range of responses, from quirky ingredient combinations that replicate a nonvegan dish to simple mantras to get you in a vegan frame of mind. Here are some of our favorites. To see the entire list of submissions, visit the hashtag, #vegantips.

Let’s start with some simple recipes that may satisfy your vegan craving:

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Add some of your favorite ingredients:

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Don’t forget to love your legumes:

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And what about some tips to keep you on the vegan path?

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And don’t forget to serve a healthy side of humor with that vegan dish:

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The Lede: Live Blog: Inside the Fed's 2007 Deliberations

On Friday the Federal Reserve released the transcripts of its discussions in 2007, the year the housing market, the financial markets, and the broader economy began to unravel. Reporters from The Times are sharing their findings on what the transcripts reveal in the blog entries and tweets below.

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Cameron to Outline a Recast European Role for Britain

Weighted down by centuries of entrenched wariness in this island nation toward the Continent — and the knowledge that a gallery of his predecessors as Conservative prime ministers saw their tenures blighted by divisions within the party over the issue — Mr. Cameron is heading for Amsterdam on Friday to set out his vision of a sharply whittled-down role for Britain in the affairs of 21st-century Europe.

The speech in the Netherlands, carefully chosen as a country with a strong historical friendship with Britain, is a watershed moment for Mr. Cameron, and for Britain. It could be a deeply jarring occasion, as well, for other European nations, which have grown increasingly impatient, angry even, with Britain’s policy during the crisis in the euro zone. Some European officials have described as blackmail its use of the crisis — one that Britain, with the pound, has largely escaped — to demand a new, “pick-and-mix” status for itself within the 27-nation European Union.

After months of delay, Mr. Cameron is expected to brush aside the warnings of the Obama administration and European leaders and call for a referendum on whether Britain should remain squarely in Europe or negotiate a more arm’s-length relationship, most likely before the next Parliament’s mandate expires in 2018. In a clamorous House of Commons on Wednesday, the prime minister set out his thinking.

“Millions of people in this country, myself included, want Britain to stay in the European Union,” he said. “But they believe that there are chances to negotiate a better relationship. Throughout Europe, countries are looking at forthcoming treaty change, and asking, ‘What can I do to maximize my national interest?’ That is what the Germans will do. That is what the Spanish will do. That is what the British should do.”

For months, Mr. Cameron has been holding off on a promise to explain just what he wants from Europe. As a reformist Conservative pressing ahead with, among other things, a plan to legalize gay marriage, he has scant common ground with the “little Englanders” in his party, the core of about 100 members who make up a third of its representation in Parliament.

But Mr. Cameron can see votes, too, in the strong anti-Europe currents that run wherever people in Britain gather.

In pubs and bars, on radio and in Parliament itself, talk of the European Union tends to center on the bloc’s real — and, in some cases, apocryphal — abuses: its highhanded, bloated bureaucracy, with nearly 1,000 featherbedded officials earning more than Mr. Cameron’s $230,000 salary as prime minister; its endless proliferation of rules on everything from the length of dog leashes to the shape of carrots; the recent claim by a former high-ranking Cameron aide that government ministers spend 40 percent of their time dealing with the mass of pettifogging European “directives,” many of them widely ignored elsewhere in Europe.

Not only has Mr. Cameron been hemmed in by deep divisions over Europe within the Conservative Party — an issue that helped unseat Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major as prime ministers — but he has also been wary of stirring a fresh wave of anger among other European leaders, particularly Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, a center-right politician and onetime ally in European councils.

Her aides have described her as frustrated with Mr. Cameron’s maneuvering and, as she is said to see it, his bid to take advantage of other European states as they struggle to save the euro and keep the most debt-laden nations, like Greece, Portugal and Spain, from dropping out of the European Union.

Concern about the reactions in Berlin and Paris prompted a last-minute rescheduling of the Amsterdam speech. Germany and France had protested that the original date, next Monday, might overshadow long-planned celebrations that day of the 50th anniversary of the treaty between them, itself a landmark in the building of postwar Europe, that sealed their reconciliation after the wounds of World War II.

Along with this, commentators say, Mr. Cameron has been recalculating the ways in which the European issue can be managed to bolster the Conservatives’ sagging prospects in a general election expected in 2015, in which polls show them lagging as much as 13 percentage points behind the opposition Labour Party. He has also been contending with heavy lobbying by American officials, including President Obama.

The Americans, diplomats say, have told Mr. Cameron squarely in private what made headlines here last week when a senior State Department official, Philip Gordon, who is assistant secretary for European affairs, spoke on the issue with British reporters. Mr. Gordon said a continued “strong British voice” in an “outward-looking” European Union was in America’s interests, and warned specifically against the referendum on Europe that is an important component in Mr. Cameron’s plans. “Referendums,” Mr. Gordon said, “have often turned countries inward.”

For all his delaying, his aides say, Mr. Cameron is ready now to outline a strategy for renegotiating Britain’s status in the European Union in a way that would keep Britain free from the centralizing forces at work. Other major European states, France and Germany in particular, see a new federal Europe with enhanced powers of fiscal oversight as essential to the long-term survival of the tottering euro.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and Stephen Castle from London.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 17, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the year that a referendum approving Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union, was held. It was 1975, not 1974.

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AT&T Offers $100 Off HSPA+ Nexus 7 for a Limited Time

The Nexus 7, made by Asus in partnership with Google, was the first really successful Android tablet that wasn’t made by a bookseller. It brought the hundreds of thousands of games and apps on Google Play (formerly the Android Market) to a wide audience, and it did so at an unheard-of price point: Only $ 199, for a device packing a Tegra 3 processor which made it much more powerful (and better for gaming) than Amazon‘s Kindle Fire.

When the Nexus 7 launched, it was Wi-Fi only and had as little as 8 GB of storage space. Google and Asus have fixed both of those problems, and from now until Feb. 14, AT&T is offering $ 100 worth of credit towards your wireless bill with the purchase of a new Nexus 7 and the signing of a two-year wireless contract.

The tablet itself

The Nexus 7 isn’t designed as a book-reader, but is more of a competitor to the iPad Mini. It lacks exclusive Amazon services like Amazon Instant Video, and many of the best iPad games and apps either aren’t available for it or aren’t available yet. It has far more games and apps for it than the Kindle, though, and can actually read Kindle books and run games and apps that you previously bought for the Kindle.

Its Tegra 3 processor allows it to play “THD”-enhanced games, which are roughly comparable in graphics quality to modern iPad or Xbox games. Finally, the model that AT&T is offering a discount on has both HSPA+ (a slower version of 4G) wireless Internet and 32 GB of storage, a combination which costs $ 559 on a similarly palm-sized iPad Mini. The Nexus 7 is only $ 299, and that’s before the $ 100 credit.

AT&T’s plans

The cheapest plan available is the $ 10 Mobile Share plan, which allows you to add the tablet to a plan that you already have. The next cheapest is AT&T’s $ 15 plan, which offers only 250 MB per month — okay for occasional email and web surfing, but completely inadequate for streaming videos regularly. Its $ 30 plan offers 3 GB of data, which still won’t stand up to constant Netflix viewing but will hold up much better than the $ 15 one.

What else is there?

The iPad and iPad Mini are also available (and much more expensive) from AT&T, as is a new Lenovo IdeaTab. It’s available for $ 199 off-contract and $ 99 on a two-year contract, but it’s not as fast or powerful as the Nexus 7, can’t play the same games, and has much less storage space.

Finally, if you like the Nexus 7 but aren’t sure you’ll still want it in two years (especially since the hardware is half a year old already), AT&T offers month-to-month wireless plans, which can be canceled at any time without paying an early termination fee. You just won’t get the $ 100 discount unless you sign a two-year contract.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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Hawaii hometown backs Te'o after girlfriend hoax

LAIE, Hawaii (AP) — People in the small Hawaii hometown of Manti Te'o are offering support for the Notre Dame linebacker, after the story of his girlfriend and her death from leukemia were revealed as a hoax.

No one answered the door Wednesday evening and no one appeared to be inside the modest, single-story wood home of Te'o's parents, Brian and Ottilia Te'o, in the small coastal town of Laie on Oahu's northern shore where Manti Te'o, an All-American and Heisman Trophy finalist, was born.

But members of the mostly Mormon community said they were dumbfounded, and didn't believe he would have knowingly perpetrated such a story. The town of about 6,000 people, roughly an hour's drive from Honolulu, is home to a small satellite campus of Hawaii's Brigham Young University,

Lokelani Kaiahua said Te'o's parents were her classmates, and she knew them to have strong family values they instilled in their children.

"I just don't see something like that being made up from him or having any part of that because they're not those kind of people," she said while sitting and talking with friends a few doors down from the Te'o family home. "Everybody's kind of like 'what is going on?'"

According to media accounts that surrounded Te'o this season, his purported girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September. But on Wednesday, the website Deadspin.com posted a lengthy story saying there was no evidence that she ever existed.

Notre Dame officials then confirmed the hoax but were insistent that Te'o was only the victim.

Te'o is a hero and role model to many children in Laie and nearby small towns like Haaula, Kaaawa and Kahuku along the two-lane highway snaking through Oahu's northeastern coast.

Students at Haaula often wear Notre Dame jerseys with his number "5'' on them, and Te'o has returned to the area to talk to students about the importance of staying in school, said school administrator Makala Paakaula, 38.

"He always keeps giving back to his community," Paakaula said.

Te'o should be lauded for uniting Notre Dame during his senior year when he could have left for the NFL, she said.

"It's amazing how he brought together the whole school to become one ohana, one family, where they all belonged, where they all had a purpose," Paakaula said.

Many people expressed anger toward whoever was behind the entire affair.

"If he got hoaxed, that's not his fault — shame on them," Paakaula said, "because he has a very trusting, open heart."

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Ask Well: Help for the Deskbound

One of the problems with office work is that many of us are using chairs that don’t fit our bodies very well or give adequate support to the back, said Jack Dennerlein, a professor at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences in Boston who specializes in ergonomics and safety. If you are experiencing back pain, you may be able to adjust your chair to increase its lumbar support. A good office chair will have an adjustable seat pan that you can slide back and forth as well as adjustable back and height features. First, sit in the chair so the lumbar region of your back, your lower back, is resting on the back support. At the same time, your feet should be resting comfortably on the ground and the back of your knees should be about three-finger widths from the edge of the chair, said Dr. Dennerlein.

Some high-end chair brands have adjustable seat pans, including the Steelcase Leap chair, which retails for between $800 and $900 and offers an adjustable seat and plenty of lumbar support.

The Steelcase Criterion chair sells anywhere from $350 to $850 online, depending on the model, and boasts seven different adjustments “to offer support through the full range of dynamic seating postures.”

The HumanScale Freedom chair is the winner of several design awards and also has an adjustable seat pan as well as “weight-sensitive recline, synchronously adjustable armrests, and dynamically positioned headrest.” ($400 to $1,400)

The Herman Miller Aeron chair is also popular because it comes in small, medium and large sizes and claims a PostureFit design that “supports the way your pelvis tilts naturally forward, so that your spine stays aligned and you avoid back pain.” ($680 to $850)

If all that sounds really wonderful and really too expensive, there may be a simpler solution to ease your back pain at work. Invest $15 to $30 in a lumbar chair pillow to make sure your back is getting the support it needs even when you are not sitting in a $900 chair.

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