How I learned to stop worrying and love Twitter

Is anything more uniquely American than our free-wheeling, 140-character missives?

Twitter is dead, you guys. Writers used to send pithy tweets across cyberspace, borne on the golden wings of Hermes. Now, as T.S. Eliot would say, “Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless.” Twitter is so uncool, that even if we resurrected the spirits of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and got them to tweet never-before-heard song lyrics from the grave, they would have like, 20 followers, tops. And most of them would be spambots. Do you know what else is dead? Rock and roll. When I put on the Dead Weather or Jay-Z, my parents inform me that music used to be all about free love and sharing ideas and now, “Will you turn off that crap you’re hurting my ears.” There is no cool left for me. I must survive on the vapors of Lady Gaga‘s strange perfume and the shiny white veneer of Kim Kardashian‘s teeth. But it’s okay, it’s not like I can tell the difference.

Hi. I’m a twenty-something journalist. And unlike my colleague Matt K. Lewis, I like Twitter.

SEE MORE: Introducing Vine: Twitter’s 6-second video-sharing app

Now, I can see where Matt is coming from. The popularity of Twitter used to befuddle me. When I was in college, I had a private account (rookie mistake) and only followed my friends. My feed read something like an episode of Girls, except with more substance-abuse problems. Twitter did seem kinda like high school, and, as Matt says, was more prison than vision (although to this day, I love a good nonsensical midnight Twitter ramble. And Horse E-Books.) But a couple years later, once I was a working journalist, I started following an increasingly diverse set of people. And another cool thing happened: The Arab Spring. Citizen activists in countries like Egypt, Libya, and Yemen successfully organized revolutionary protests through the social network, and all of a sudden, I stopped viewing Twitter as a place where people just talked about their hangovers. 

Since then, I have been tasked with tweeting from the official accounts of several media organizations — I’m kind of a professional tweeter. By the end of today, I (and my colleagues) will have written and sent out about 70 tweets for Mother Jones — tweets that are (hopefully) informative, spelled correctly, promote our content, match the tone of the publication, and don’t accidentally include cat gifs or naked pictures. If anything should make one despise Twitter, it’s being required to tweet all day long. But instead, it’s only made me more fond of the damn thing.

SEE MORE: 10 famous first tweets from the Pope, Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama, and more

Every day, I get to hear from people, REAL LIVE PEOPLE, who are exercising their free speech rights about something my colleagues and I wrote with our free speech rights. How cool is that? What could be more American than a bunch of strangers conversing in real time about whether the Boy Scouts can constitutionally ban gay members, that great Local Natives album that just came out, and who is really the communist here? (Okay, fine. It’s me.) 

Another point in Twitter’s favor: Go to Facebook or (God forbid) the homepages of various news organizations, and you’re never going to easily or quickly find as many live updates of Hurricane Sandy, the Sandy Hook school shooting, or the 2012 presidential election as you would on Twitter. It’s the go-to place for lightning-quick, easily searchable information. (By contrast, if you need a live update of which color mason jars you should have at your wedding someday, Pinterest has so got you covered.)  

SEE MORE: Why I love Twitter

And unlike journalists exhausted by the troll-y nature of the beast, I like the free-wheeling accessibility of Twitter. The quality of my interactions are mostly positive, probably because I tend to only follow people I would be interested in speaking with in the real world. And just like the real world, sometimes some crazy guy who smells like whiskey and is probably on PCP will try to flash me on the Metro. But that just makes it kind of exciting, right? 

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NBA union head Hunter placed on indefinite leave

NEW YORK (AP) — Billy Hunter is being placed on an indefinite leave of absence as executive director of the NBA players' association, following a report that was critical of his leadership and decision making.

The union is forming an interim executive committee and advisory committee, president Derek Fisher says in a statement released Friday.

Fisher pushed for the outside review of Hunter and the union, which found no illegal use of funds but cited Hunter for a number of poor choices and urged players to consider whether he should remain in charge during their All-Star weekend meetings.

Fisher says "immediate change is necessary."

Union attorney Ron Klempner was appointed acting executive director.

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The New Old Age: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

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Nikkei’s Best Weekly Run in 54 Years

TOKYO — The year 1959 was in many ways remarkable. America granted Alaska and Hawaii statehood, Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and Singapore gained its independence from Britain. The Barbie doll and pantyhose went on sale for the first time; Miles Davis recorded “Kind of Blue” at a New York studio.

Until Friday, 1959 was also the last time the Nikkei 225 stock index rallied for 12 straight weeks, driven by the quickening pace of Japan’s postwar economic boom. Now the index has repeated that feat. The Japanese business media have been quick to jump on the historical tidbit, trumpeting the Nikkei’s best weekly run in 54 years. The rally in 1959 actually lasted 17 weeks.

This time around, the Nikkei’s rally was motivated by the new Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Mr. Abe has galvanized markets by encouraging bold monetary measures to beat deflation, and hefty government spending to jump-start the economy. The result has been a weakening of the yen by 15 percent over the past three months, a boon for Japanese exporters, and a 25 percent surge in the stock market over the same period.

“The expectations pinned on Prime Minister Abe’s drive to tackle deflation and the strong yen are the driving force pushing stocks toward this postwar record,” the Nikkei newspaper said.

The market’s climb comes despite lackluster earnings by Japanese companies. Of the 54 companies on the Nikkei index that had posted results for the October-to-December quarter by Thursday, nearly two-thirds missed market expectations, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine, the investment research service. And for now, households have remained cool to the market buzz. Japanese household spending fell 0.7 percent in December from a year earlier in price-adjusted real terms, government data released Friday showed.

Nevertheless, Mr. Abe’s policies, dubbed “Abenomics,” are having “a positive psychological effect” on investors and corporate executives, Yasushi Hoshi, director of capital markets at the Daiwa Institute of Research, wrote in a note published Friday. “And the exchange rate and stock prices, if sustained, could themselves push up corporate earnings, leading to better corporate and consumer sentiment in a positive cycle.”

There are already signs that the weaker yen is bolstering some earnings. The video game maker Nintendo raised its profit forecast for its current financial year on Thursday even as the company reported disappointing sales of its game consoles.

Overall investor optimism is giving companies the benefit of the doubt. Honda Motor surprised investors Thursday by trimming its profit outlook, citing sluggish demand in China and Europe, but they still snapped up Honda shares early on Friday, and the stock finished the day 0.3 percent higher.

Still, there are budding concerns that Mr. Abe’s drive will bring about a dangerous bubble. “The results in the near term are an investment boom and bubble, but the longer-run consequences could be soaring inflation and fiscal crisis, followed by lengthy economic stagnation,” Ryutaro Kono, chief economist for Japan at BNP Paribas Securities, wrote in a recent report.

From a historical perspective, the Nikkei index and other asset prices remain far below the heights seen during Japan’s last economic bubble, in the late 1980s. For many global investors, the recent rally has only begun to reverse a slump in Japanese equities that has taken them to levels seen as ridiculously low. Shares on Tokyo’s broader Topix index have long traded below their book value, meaning that prices were less than what the companies would fetch if they were dissolved and their parts sold off.

Now, foreign investors are leading the charge, having poured a net ¥248.6 billion, or $2.7 billion, into Japanese stocks in the fourth week of January alone.

“We think there is latent demand because supply in this space has dwindled over the years and investors are thinking about coming back,” Patric de Gentile-Williams of Financial Risk Management, told the Hedge Funds Review on Wednesday, after making a $25 million investment in a Japanese equity fund run by Arena Capital Management. “If the new prime minister’s actions have a big effect, they might come back in a big way.”

Is Japan, then, on course for a wider recovery?

Not so fast, Yusuke Shimoda, an economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo, wrote in a note to clients this past week. Japan’s recovery could sputter, he said, if the government cannot match its asset-inflating moves with growth strategies for the real economy. “It will be critical to put a growth strategy in action that will start a self-sustained recovery,” Mr. Shimoda said.

Nevertheless, Japan forecast Monday that its economy would grow by 2.5 percent in the fiscal year that starts in April, raising an earlier projection of 1.7 percent — an impressive rate for the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and China. Impressive, that is, unless investors look back to Japan’s rate of gross domestic product growth in 1959, which was 12.1 percent.

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India Ink: Image of the Day: Jan. 31

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49ers' Culliver apologizes for anti-gay remarks

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver apologized Thursday for anti-gay comments he made to a comedian during Super Bowl media day, saying "that's not what I feel in my heart."

"I'm sorry if I offended anyone. They were very ugly comments," Culliver said during an hour-long media session. "Hopefully I learn and grow from this experience and this situation."

He said he would welcome a gay teammate to the 49ers, a reversal of his remarks to Artie Lange two days earlier during an interview at the Superdome.

"I treat everyone equal," Culliver said. "That's not how I feel."

He added that he realized his comments were especially offensive to many people in San Francisco and the Bay Area, which is home to a large gay community.

"I love San Francisco," Culliver said.

During the interview with Lange, Culliver responded to questions by saying he wouldn't welcome a gay player in the locker room. He also said the 49ers didn't have any gay players, and if they did those players should leave.

San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh met privately with Culliver to discuss the remarks.

"I reject what he said," Harbaugh said. "That's not something that reflects the way the organization feels, the way the rest of the players feel."

The coach would not discuss if Culliver would face discipline from the team, such as a fine or loss of playing time.

"He pledged to grow from it," Harbaugh said.

The interview began with Lange asking Culliver about his sexual plans with women during Super Bowl week. Lange followed up with a question about whether Culliver would consider pursuing a gay man.

"I don't do the gay guys, man. I don't do that," Culliver said during the one-minute taped interview. "Ain't got no gay people on the team. They gotta get up outta here if they do. Can't be with that sweet stuff."

Lange asked Culliver to reiterate his thoughts, to which the player said, "It's true." He added he wouldn't welcome a gay teammate — no matter how talented.

"Nah. Can't be ... in the locker room, nah," he said. "You've gotta come out 10 years later after that."

The 24-year-old Culliver, a third-round draft pick in 2011 out of South Carolina, made 47 tackles with two interceptions and a forced fumble this season while starting six games for the NFC champion Niners (13-4-1).

He had his first career postseason interception in San Francisco's 28-24 win at Atlanta for the NFC title.

The 49ers participate in the NFL's "It Gets Better" anti-bullying campaign. Three organizations working for LGBT inclusion in sports — Athlete Ally, You Can Play, and GLAAD — reacted to Culliver's remarks and later acknowledged his apology.

"Chris Culliver's comments were disrespectful, discriminatory and dangerous, particularly for the young people who look up to him," said Athlete Ally Executive Director Hudson Taylor. "His words underscore the importance of the athlete ally movement and the key role that professional athletes play in shaping an athletic climate that affirms and includes gay and lesbian players."

Calling Lange's questions "real disrespectful," Culliver said he realized he was speaking to a comedian and not a journalist.

"That was pretty much in a joking manner," the player said. "It's nothing about how I feel."

___

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Well: Myths of Weight Loss Are Plentiful, Researcher Says

If schools reinstated physical education classes, a lot of fat children would lose weight. And they might never have gotten fat in the first place if their mothers had just breast fed them when they were babies. But be warned: obese people should definitely steer clear of crash diets. And they can lose more than 50 pounds in five years simply by walking a mile a day.

Those are among the myths and unproven assumptions about obesity and weight loss that have been repeated so often and with such conviction that even scientists like David B. Allison, who directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, have fallen for some of them.

Now, he is trying to set the record straight. In an article published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues lay out seven myths and six unsubstantiated presumptions about obesity. They also list nine facts that, unfortunately, promise little in the way of quick fixes for the weight-obsessed. Example: “Trying to go on a diet or recommending that someone go on a diet does not generally work well in the long term.”

Obesity experts applauded this plain-spoken effort to dispel widespread confusion about obesity. The field, they say, has become something of a quagmire.

“In my view,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, a Rockefeller University obesity researcher, “there is more misinformation pretending to be fact in this field than in any other I can think of.”

Others agreed, saying it was about time someone tried to set the record straight.

“I feel like cheering,” said Madelyn Fernstrom, founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Weight Management Center. When it comes to obesity beliefs, she said, “We are spinning out of control.”

Steven N. Blair, an exercise and obesity researcher at the University of South Carolina, said his own students believe many of the myths. “I like to challenge my students. Can you show me the data? Too often that doesn’t come into it.”

Dr. Allison sought to establish what is known to be unequivocally true about obesity and weight loss.

His first thought was that, of course, weighing oneself daily helped control weight. He checked for the conclusive studies he knew must exist. They did not.

“My goodness, after 50-plus years of studying obesity in earnest and all the public wringing of hands, why don’t we know this answer?” Dr. Allison asked. “What’s striking is how easy it would be to check. Take a couple of thousand people and randomly assign them to weigh themselves every day or not.”

Yet it has not been done.

Instead, people often rely on weak studies that get repeated ad infinitum. It is commonly thought, for example, that people who eat breakfast are thinner. But that notion is based on studies of people who happened to eat breakfast. Researchers then asked if they were fatter or thinner than people who happened not to eat breakfast — and found an association between eating breakfast and being thinner. But such studies can be misleading because the two groups might be different in other ways that cause the breakfast eaters to be thinner. But no one has randomly assigned people to eat breakfast or not, which could cinch the argument.

So, Dr. Allison asks, why do yet another study of the association between thinness and breakfast? “Yet, I can tell you that in the last two weeks I saw an association study of breakfast eating in Islamabad and another in Inner Mongolia and another in a country I never heard of.”

“Why are we doing these?” Dr. Allison asked. “All that time and effort is essentially wasted. The question is: ‘Is it a causal association?’” To get the answer, he added, “Do the clinical trial.”

He decided to do it himself, with university research funds. A few hundred people will be recruited and will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. Some will be told to eat breakfast every day, others to skip breakfast, and the third group will be given vague advice about whether to eat it or not.

As he delved into the obesity literature, Dr. Allison began to ask himself why some myths and misconceptions are so commonplace. Often, he decided, the beliefs reflected a “reasonableness bias.” The advice sounds so reasonable it must be true. For example, the idea that people do the best on weight-loss programs if they set reasonable goals sounds so sensible.

“We all want to be reasonable,” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, when he examined weight-loss studies he found no consistent association between the ambitiousness of the goal and how much weight was lost and how long it had stayed off. This myth, though, illustrates the tricky ground weight-loss programs have to navigate when advising dieters. The problem is that on average people do not lose much – 10 percent of their weight is typical – but setting 10 percent as a goal is not necessarily the best strategy. A very few lose a lot more and some people may be inspired by the thought of a really life-changing weight loss.

“If a patient says, ‘Do you think it is reasonable for me to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ the honest answer is, ‘No. Not without surgery,’” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, “If a patient says, ‘My goal is to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ I would say, ‘Go for it.’”

Yet all this negativism bothers people, Dr. Allison conceded. When he talks about his findings to scientists, they often say: “O.K., you’ve convinced us. But what can we do? We’ve got to do something.” He replies that scientists have an ethical duty to make clear what is established and what is speculation. And while it is fine to recommend things like bike paths or weighing yourself daily, scientists must make sure they preface their advice with the caveat that these things seem sensible but have not been proven.

Among the best established methods is weight-loss surgery, which, of course, is not right for most people. But surgeons have done careful studies to show that on average people lose substanial amounts of weight and their health improves, Dr. Allison said. For dieters, the best results occur with structured programs, like ones that supply complete meals or meal replacements.

In the meantime, Dr. Allison said, it is incumbent upon scientists to change their ways. “We need to do rigorous studies,” he said. “We need to stop doing association studies after an association has clearly been demonstrated.”

“I never said we have to wait for perfect knowledge,” Dr. Allison said. But, as John Lennon said, “Just give me some truth.”

---

Here is an overview of the obesity myths looked at by the researchers and what is known to be true:

MYTHS

Small things make a big difference. Walking a mile a day can lead to a loss of more than 50 pounds in five years.

Set a realistic goal to lose a modest amount.

People who are too ambitious will get frustrated and give up.

You have to be mentally ready to diet or you will never succeed.

Slow and steady is the way to lose. If you lose weight too fast you will lose less in the long run.

Ideas not yet proven TRUE OR FALSE

Diet and exercise habits in childhood set the stage for the rest of life.

Add lots of fruits and vegetables to your diet to lose weight or not gain as much.

Yo-yo diets lead to increased death rates.

People who snack gain weight and get fat.

If you add bike paths, jogging trails, sidewalks and parks, people will not be as fat.

FACTS — GOOD EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT

Heredity is important but is not destiny.

Exercise helps with weight maintenance.

Weight loss is greater with programs that provide meals.

Some prescription drugs help with weight loss and maintenance.

Weight-loss surgery in appropriate patients can lead to long-term weight loss, less diabetes and a lower death rate.

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DealBook: Justice Dept. Seeks to Block Anheuser's Deal for Modelo

The Justice Department sued on Thursday to block the Anheuser-Busch InBev proposed $20.1 billion deal to buy control of Grupo Modelo of Mexico, arguing that the merger would significantly reduce competition in the American beer market.

The deal, announced last summer, would add Corona Extra to the company’s formidable stable of brands, including Budweiser and Stella Artois.

But the Justice Department said in its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, that allowing the merger to proceed would reduce competition in the beer industry across the country as a whole and in 26 metropolitan areas in particular. The combined company would control about 46 percent of annual sales in the country, the government said, far outpacing Anheuser-Busch InBev’s closest competitor, MillerCoors.

“If ABI fully owned and controlled Modelo, ABI would be able to increase beer prices to American consumers,” William J. Baer, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to prevent ABI from eliminating Modelo as an important competitive force in the beer industry.”

The deal is the biggest to be opposed by the Justice Department since 2011, when it sued to block the proposed $39 billion takeover by AT&T of T-Mobile USA.

The government’s move is the first significant effort to halt widespread consolidation in the beer industry in some time. Anheuser-Busch InBev itself was the product of a blockbuster merger between two of the world’s biggest brewers, and one of MillerCoors’s parents is the acquisitive SABMiller.

In its complaint, the Justice Department said Modelo had served as a low-price counterbalance to its larger competitors, resisting the price increases Anheuser-Busch InBev has promoted regularly.

In a statement, Anheuser-Busch said, “We remain confident in our position, and we intend to vigorously contest the D.O.J.’s action in federal court.”

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Prior Problems In 787 Battery Set Off Concerns Boeing Was Aware of 787 Battery Problems Before Failure

Toru Hanai/Reuters

All Nippon Airways, the biggest operator of 787s, is holding jets at Haneda airport in Tokyo.

Even before two battery failures led to the grounding of all Boeing 787 jets this month, the lithium-ion batteries used on the aircraft had experienced multiple problems that raised questions about their reliability.

Officials at All Nippon Airways, the jets’ biggest operator, said in an interview on Tuesday that it replaced 10 of the batteries in the months before fire in one plane and smoke in another led regulators around the world to ground the jets.

The airline said it told Boeing of the replacements as they occurred but was not required to report them to safety regulators because they were not considered a safety issue and no flights were canceled or delayed.

National Transportation Safety Board officials said Tuesday that their inquiry would include the replacements.

The airline also, for the first time, explained the extent of the previous problems, which underscore the volatile nature of the batteries and add to concerns over whether Boeing and other plane manufacturers will be able to use the batteries safely.

In five of the 10 replacements, All Nippon said that the main battery had showed an unexpectedly low charge. An unexpected drop in a 787’s main battery also occurred on the All Nippon flight that had to make an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16.

The airline also revealed that in three instances, the main battery had failed to start normally and had had to be replaced, along with the charger. In other cases, one battery showed an error reading and another, used to start the auxiliary power unit, failed. All of the events occurred from May to December of last year. The malfunctioning batteries, made by the Japanese manufacturer GS Yuasa, were serviced by All Nippon maintenance crew members. (The battery from the plane involved in the emergency landing was sent back to GS Yuasa.)

Japan Airlines, which operates seven 787s, said Wednesday that there had been “several cases” in which maintenance crew members needed to replace 787 batteries after irregularities, but the carrier declined to give details. The switches were not considered a safety risk and were conducted “within the scope of regular maintenance,” said Kazunori Kidosaki, a company spokesman.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators had only recently heard that there had been “numerous issues with the use of these batteries” on 787s. She said the board had asked Boeing, All Nippon and other airlines for information about the problems.

“That will absolutely be part of the investigation,” she said.

Boeing, based in Chicago, has said repeatedly that any problems with the batteries can be contained without threatening the planes and their passengers.

Boeing officials said the need to replace the batteries also suggested that safeguards were activated to prevent overheating and keep the drained batteries from being recharged. Company officials said the batteries can drain too deeply if left on without being connected to power sources.  Trying to recharge such batteries could generate excessive heat, so safety mechanisms lock out any attempts to do that.

Boeing officials said that improperly connecting a battery can also render it unusable.  And they acknowledged that some of the new batteries were not lasting as long as intended. They said that could cause airlines to replace them more frequently but did not pose a safety problem.

A GS Yuasa official, Tsutomu Nishijima, said battery exchanges were part of the normal operations of a plane but would not comment further.

The Federal Aviation Administration decided in 2007 to allow Boeing to use the lithium-ion batteries instead of older, more stable types as long as it took safety measures to prevent or contain a fire. But once Boeing put in those safeguards, it did not revisit its basic design even as more evidence surfaced of the risks involved, regulators said.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 30, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the action taken by All Nippon Airways with 10 lithium-ion batteries it replaced on Boeing 787 jets between May and December of last year. The malfunctioning batteries were sent to the airline’s maintenance department for service, not to the maker, GS Yuasa. (The battery from the plane involved in an emergency landing earlier this month was, however, sent back to GS Yuasa.)

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RIM starts glitzy BlackBerry 10 launch parties

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd on Wednesday kicked off a string of global launch parties for a long-delayed line of smartphones it says will put it on the comeback trail in a market it once dominated.

The new BlackBerry 10 phones will compete with Apple‘s iPhone and devices using Google‘s Android technology, both of which have soared above the BlackBerry in a competitive market.

They boast fast browsers, new features, smart cameras and, unlike previous BlackBerry models, enter the market primed with a large app library.

(Writing by Janet Guttsman; Editing by Frank McGurty)

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