Dreamliner probe widens after excess battery voltage ruled out

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. safety investigators on Sunday ruled out excess voltage as the cause of a battery fire this month on a Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner jet operated by Japan Airlines Co (JAL) and said they were expanding the probe to look at the battery's charger and the jet's auxiliary power unit.

Last week, governments across the world grounded the Dreamliner while Boeing halted deliveries after a problem with a lithium-ion battery on a second 787 plane, flown by All Nippon Airways Co (ANA), forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing in western Japan.

A growing number of investigators and Boeing executives are working around the clock to determine what caused the two incidents which the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says released flammable chemicals and could have sparked a fire in the plane's electrical compartment.

There are still no clear answers about the root cause of the battery failures, but the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's statement eliminated one possible answer that had been raised by Japanese investigators.

It also underscored the complexity of investigating a battery system that includes manufacturers across the world, and may point to a design problem with the battery that could take longer to fix than swapping out a faulty batch of batteries.

"Examination of the flight recorder data from the JAL B-787 airplane indicates that the APU (auxiliary power unit) battery did not exceed its designed voltage of 32 volts," the NTSB said in a statement issued early Sunday.

On Friday, a Japanese safety official had told reporters that excessive electricity may have overheated the battery in the ANA-owned Dreamliner that was forced to make the emergency landing at Japan's Takamatsu airport last week.

"The NTSB wanted to set the record straight," said one source familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

U.S. investigators have already examined the lithium-ion battery that powered the APU, where the battery fire started in the JAL plane, as well as several other components removed from the airplane, including wire bundles and battery management circuit boards, the NTSB statement said.

On Tuesday, investigators will convene in Tucson, Arizona to test and examine the charger for the battery, and download non-volatile memory from the APU controller, with similar tests planned at the Phoenix facility where the APUs are built. Other components have been sent for download or examination to Boeing's Seattle facility and manufacturer facilities in Japan.

Securaplane Technologies Inc, a unit of Britain's Meggitt Plc that makes the charger, said it will fully support the U.S. investigation.

Officials with United Technologies Corp, which builds the plane's auxiliary power unit and is the main supplier of electrical systems on the 787, said they would also cooperate with the investigation.

The NTSB's decision to travel to Securaplane's facility sparked fresh questions about the safety of the lithium-ion batteries that remain at the heart of the investigation.

While the 787 is the most aggressive user of lithium-ion battery technology in commercial aviation, the industry at large is testing it, and the FAA has approved its use in several different planes, each governed by "special conditions."

"Lithium-ion batteries are significantly more susceptible to internal failures that can result in self-sustaining increases in temperature and pressure," the FAA said in 2006, when it allowed Airbus to use lithium batteries for the emerging lighting system on its A380.

Securaplane, which first began working on the charger in 2004, suffered millions of dollars of damages in November 2006 after a lithium-ion battery used in testing exploded and sparked a fire that burned an administrative building to the ground.

Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said an investigation into the 2006 fire was later determined to have been caused by an improper test set-up, not the battery design. He declined comment on the current 787 investigations.

After the fire, a former Securaplane employee named Michael Leon sued the company, alleging that he was fired for raising security concerns about charger and discrepancies between their assembly documents and the finished chargers.

Leon's suit was later dismissed.

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Man shot on 22nd floor of Loop hotel

Photo: Palmer House (January 20, 2013)

Staff report

5:48 a.m. CST, January 20, 2013

A 25-year-old man was shot in the leg early this morning during a party on the 22nd floor of a hotel in the Loop, police said.

The shooting happened about 2:15 a.m. at the Palmer House, a hotel in the 0-100 block of East Monroe Street, Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said.

The man was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in good condition.

Police said no suspects were in custody and that the man was not cooperating fully with detectives.

Everyone involved knew each other, according to police.

Hotel staff declined to comment and referred all questions to a company spokesman.

At least 4 other people have been shot since about 10 p.m. Saturday.

Check back for more information.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking

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Hundreds attend NYC memorial for Internet activist Aaron Swartz

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Supporters of Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old Internet activist who committed suicide last week, gathered in New York to remember the computer prodigy on Saturday, with some calling for changes in the criminal justice system they blame for his death.

Swartz, who at 14 helped create an early version of the Web feed system RSS and believed the fruits of academic research and other information should be freely available to all, was found dead a week ago in his Brooklyn apartment.

The city’s chief medical examiner ruled the death a suicide by hanging.

He had been facing trial on federal charges he used the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

Swartz, who had also worked on the popular website Reddit, had faced a maximum sentence of 31 years in prison and fines of up to $ 1 million.

“He told me about the 4.5 million downloads of scholarly articles, and my first thought was why isn’t MIT celebrating this?” Edward Tufte, an emeritus professor of computer science at Yale University and a friend of Swartz, said to applause from the crowd gathered in The Cooper Union’s Great Hall in Manhattan.

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Swartz’s partner, criticized what she described as MIT’s “indifference” to the saga, saying the school could have acted to end his prosecution.

The president of MIT said this week the school was investigating its role in Swartz’s case. JSTOR has said in a statement it settled any dispute with Swartz in 2011 and praised his “important contributions to the development of the Internet.”

CALL FOR CHANGE

At the memorial, attended by hundreds of friends and supporters, the strongest criticisms were reserved for prosecutors in the office of Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts.

Roy Singham, the chairman of ThoughtWorks, a software consultancy firm where Swartz worked, called the case against Swartz “an abuse of state power” intended to intimidate Swartz. He called for the reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act under which Swartz was prosecuted.

Swartz’s partner said it all became too much for him to bear.

“He was so scared and so frustrated and more than anything so weary I just don’t think he could take it another day,” Stinebrickner-Kauffman said, adding the pair had discussed getting married after the trial.

Ortiz has defended her office’s actions, saying prosecutors “took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably.”

She said they offered Swartz a deal to plead guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud and computer fraud and spend six months at a low-security facility.

Swartz was remembered as a precocious talent who began addressing technology conferences as a teenager and whose quirks included being loath to wash his dishes and preferring bland foods like crackers and white rice.

Many speakers said he was by far the smartest and most intellectually curious person they had known, and called on those in attendance to continue his work of trying to widen the public’s access to information and communication channels.

Stinebrickner-Kauffman said Swartz disliked grand ceremonies and would have been uncomfortable with some aspects of his own memorial.

“But memorial services are for the living,” she said, repeating it several times like a mantra, “and last Friday he forfeited his right to decide that.”

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Xavier Briand)

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Chuck Workman interviews directors David Lynch, Mike Leigh for “What is Cinema?”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Oscar winner Chuck Workman has begun work on a new documentary titled “What is Cinema?” for Cohen Media Group. Seeking to explore the art of filmmaking, Workman has interviewed directors David Lynch and Mike Leigh, and will interview several filmmakers at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which began Thursday.

Workman, who won an Oscar for his 1986 short “Precious Images,” took the title for this new documentary from a seminal book by legendary French film theorist Andre Bazin.

Bazin co-founded French film magazine Cahiers du cinema and had a major influence on French New Wave filmmakers including Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

“Cinema is something we all grew up with and we think we know it. Or we don’t think about it much, just sit down and enjoy the film. But it changes daily, and this is an attempt to chronicle where it is today and where it will be, or should be, tomorrow,” Workman said in a statement.

Many may know Workman’s work without realizing it. He makes many of the montages seen during the Oscar telecasts, including the In Memoriam section. He has also made documentaries including “The Visionaries” and “Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol.”

Workman and Cohen may also collaborate on a pair of other documentaries about giants of American cinema. Both “What is Cinema?” and those prospective films fit right in at Cohen, which distributes independent and foreign films. Its upcoming releases include Rachid Bouchareb’s “Just Like a Woman” and Francois Ozon’s “In the House.”

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richter’s house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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Problem Solver: Motorists get tickets while feeding meter

As is often the case in life, timing is everything.

For Anthony Latronica, it was also expensive.

On Nov. 3, the West Town resident parked his car on North Avenue near Wells Street and walked to the nearest parking meter to pay.

His wife put her credit card into the pay box but could not get the device to work.

According to phone records, she called Chicago Parking Meters LLC at 7:47 p.m. but had trouble getting through. She hung up and called again at 7:48 p.m., and a representative walked her through the procedure. Phone records show the call lasted three minutes.

The parking receipt printed out at 7:51 p.m., and Latronica went to put it on his dashboard. But in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago parking, minutes can make a big difference.

In fact, Latronica was too late.

By the time he walked the half-block to his car, Latronica had already been ticketed for an expired meter, the citation time stamped at 7:49 p.m. — two minutes after his wife called Chicago Parking Meters to complain about the pay box.

Stunned, Latronica grabbed the ticket and tracked down the ticker writer.

"He told me that he did see us standing at the meter and he would cancel the ticket," Latronica said.

That didn't happen. Several weeks later, Latronica received a citation in the mail, telling him he could either contest the ticket or pay $60.

Latronica chose to contest.

He sent in an explanation of what happened, a copy of his credit card statement and a copy of the meter receipt.

In early January, he received the ruling: guilty.

Upset, Latronica called the Department of Administrative Hearings and asked how, given his circumstances, the ticket could be upheld? After all, he was in the process of getting a parking receipt when he received the ticket. It wasn't as if he could get the meter receipt before he parked the car.

He was told that since the receipt printed two minutes after the ticket was issued, he could have run back and paid for parking after receiving the citation.

Unable to make any headway with the city, Latronica emailed What's Your Problem?

He said what irked him the most was the fact that he did nothing wrong and still got dinged. To appeal the administrative law officer's ruling would cost more money, he said.

"It is probably not worth the time, money and effort to bring a suit, but it really bothers me that this can be happening every day across the city and citizens are just denied when they contest it," Latronica said.

In fact, his experience is not an isolated incident. The same week that Latronica emailed about his situation, another reader, Holly Mair, wrote in describing a similar experience.

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2 shot to death in separate attacks on South, West sides

Two men were shot to death in separate attacks within about 15 minutes of each other, one in Austin and one in Back of the Yards, authorities said.

About 9:15 p.m., a man was shot to death inside a Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, 5500 W. North Ave.

The man, who witnesses said was about 21 years old, was inside a business when he was shot from outside by someone who fled on foot, said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Amina Greer. He was unresponsive on the scene, she said.

Three workers inside were cleaning up inside as police examined shell casings outside about 10 p.m. Someone fired at least four times from outside the restaurant, piercing a window and striking the man, police said.

An employee who was inside making up an order at the time of the shooting said the gunfire did not sound like shots but instead like someone hitting a table with a hammer.

Just 15 minutes later, a man in his 20s was found shot to death on a sidewalk about 9:30 p.m. in the 5400 block of South Laflin Street, Greer said. He suffered a gunshot wound to the face and was dead on the scene, she said.

Police found him in a gangway next to a house with vacant brick buildings on each side.

About 11:35 p.m., a male was shot in the leg in the 4400 block of South Washtenaw Avenue, Greer said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition.

Someone shot two teens in the 8400 block of South Constance Avenue about 9:45 p.m., Greer said. A 15-year-old was shot in the chest and taken to Comer Children's Hospital in critical condition and a 16-year-old was grazed in the back and taken to Jackson Park Hospital in good condition.

Earlier, two men were shot in the Englewood neighborhood tonight. The shooting took place about 7:30 p.m. on the 7300 block of South Racine Avenue, and left one man wounded in the back and the other in the foot, police said.

The Chicago Fire Department said the men were taken to hospitals from nearby locations where they were found by emergency personnel.

A 20-year-old man with a wound to the back was taken from 74th and Racine in serious condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, and an 18-year-old man with a wound to the foot was taken from 74th and Aberdeen Street to St. Bernard Hospital, where his condition was stabilized, according to Fire Media reports.

No further details were immediately available.

pnickeas@tribune.com
Twitter: @peternickeas

lford@tribune.com
Twitter: @ltaford

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Samsung updates Galaxy Note 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 2 to Jelly Bean

Owners of the Galaxy Note 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 2 will be happy to learn that Samsung (005930) has begun to update their tablets to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The company announced its plans earlier this week, revealing that the Note’s update includes “dramatic improvements to the multitasking and S Pen features,” while the Tab 2 will bring the company’s Premium Suite of features and productivity apps to the device. The addition of Jelly Bean will also give the tablets access to Google Now, Google’s (GOOG) personal assistant feature, and improved performance with Project Butter. The update is available now for Wi-Fi models of the Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy Tab 7 and Galaxy Tab 10.1.

[More from BGR: Nintendo’s Wii U problems turn into a crisis]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Barbra Streisand to receive Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Barbra Streisand will add the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award to her roster of honors, in recognition of her achievement as a director, writer, producer and film star, the group said on Friday.

Streisand, who shot to fame in the 1960s on Broadway and as a major recording star, will receive the honor at the 40th Annual Chaplin Award gala in New York on April 22 which will feature celebrity guests and a host of film and interview clips.

“The Board is very excited to have Barbra Streisand as the next recipient of The Chaplin Award,” Ann Tenenbaum, The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s board chairman, said in a news release.

“She is an artist whose long career of incomparable achievements is most powerfully expressed by the fact that her acclaimed ‘Yentl’ was such a milestone film.”

The group cited Streisand as the first American woman artist to receive credit as writer, director, producer and star of a major feature film.

It also noted she is the only artist to receive an Academy Award, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Directors Guild of America award, Golden Globe, National Medal of Arts and Peabody Awards, France’s Legion d’honneur and the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also the first female film director to receive a Kennedy Center honor.

“We welcome her to the list of masterful directors who have been prior recipients of the Chaplin Award Tribute,” added Tenenbaum, referring to luminaries such as Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and Martin Scorsese.

Stars ranging from Bette Davis and Elizabeth Taylor to last year’s recipient, Catherine Deneuve, have received the award, which was renamed for its first recipient Charles Chaplin, who returned to the United States from exile to accept the commendation in 1972.

Streisand, 70, starred in such hits as “The Way We Were” and “Funny Girl,” for which she won an Oscar, and went on to direct films including “The Prince of Tides” and “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”

More recently she has returned to screen acting, in “Meet the Fockers” with Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, and “The Guilt Trip,” a Christmas 2012 release co-starring Seth Rogen.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency of urinary incontinence,” Dr. Hylton V. Joffe, director of the F.D.A.’s reproductive and urologic products division, said in a statement. “Today’s approval provides an important additional treatment option for patients with overactive bladder, a condition that affects an estimated 33 million men and women in the United States.”

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