Recipes for Health: Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

If you did a lot of cooking over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays you may have some celery hearts lingering in your refrigerator. You needed a few branches for a stew, a stock, or a soup, so you bought a whole bunch, and here it is weeks later and the rest of the celery is wilting in the produce drawer.

This doesn’t have to happen if you think of this vegetable as something more than an aromatic. I’m a big fan of celery, both raw and cooked, as the main ingredient or as one of several featured ingredients in a dish. You can do the traditional thing with raw celery and dice it up and add it to a potato, tuna or egg salad, or you can make a celery salad, slicing the branches as thin as you can get them and tossing them with herbs, radishes, oil and vinegar, and blue cheese. If you are cooking with celery, don’t stop at one branch when you make soup. The celery contributes a wonderful herbal flavor dimension. It retains its texture for a long time when you cook it, so I used it as the main vegetable in a risotto and loved the way it stood up to the creamy rice.

You always see celery listed as an ingredient in tonic juices and blender drinks. It has long been used in Chinese medicine to help control high blood pressure, which makes sense because it contains phytochemicals called phthalides that reduce stress hormones and work to relax the muscle walls in arteries, increasing blood flow. The vegetable is an excellent source of Vitamins K and C, and a very good source of potassium, folate, dietary fiber, molybdenum, manganese, and Vitamin B6. Another bonus attribute – it is very low in calories. However, it is on the high side as far as sodium goes.

Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

I make minestrones like this all the time, but I hadn’t made a version with this much celery in it until I made this one, and I loved the dimension of flavor it contributes to the mix.

1 cup lentils, rinsed

1 onion, halved

A bouquet garni made with 2 sprigs each thyme and parsley, a bay leaf, and a Parmesan rind

1 1/2 quarts water

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 medium carrot, diced

3 celery stalks, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste

1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with liquid

Pinch of sugar

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Very thinly sliced celery, from the inner heart, for garnish

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving

1. Combine the lentils, 1/2 onion and the bouquet garni with 1 quart water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, add salt to taste, cover and simmer 30 minutes.

2. Chop the remaining onion. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat and add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes, and add the garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir together until fragrant, about 1 minute, and add the canned tomatoes with their liquid and the sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant.

3. Add the lentils with their broth, the tomato paste, salt to taste, an additional 2 cups water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. Season to taste with freshly ground pepper, stir in the parsley and serve, garnishing each bowl with thinly sliced celery heart if you want some crunch, and passing the Parmesan at the table.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6 (4 if there are teen-agers in your house)

Advance preparation: This will keep for three or four days in the refrigerator. It may require thinning out. It’s even better the day after you make it. I have a teenage son and he just about polished off the leftovers – which should have served 3 – the day after I tested the recipe.

Variation: Shortly before serving add 2 cups baby spinach and simmer just until wilted.

Nutritional information per serving (4 servings): 276 calories; 4 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 49 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams dietary fiber; 392 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 17 grams protein

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 184 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 32 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook: In Euro Zone, Signs of Progress and Fears of Complacency

PARIS – This may be the year that Europe stops being the ticking time bomb of the global economy.

Ireland is on track to leave international bailout limbo by summer. Talk of Greece leaving the euro is off the table. And financial speculators have generally stopped betting the euro zone will blow up.

But even as the sense of emergency fades, Europe is potentially facing a starker problem.

For three years, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and a phalanx of policy makers have been working to shore up the euro’s foundations to prevent the currency union from unraveling. As they gather with academics, executives and various experts this week at the World Economic Forum, which opens Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, the biggest concern is that leaders might become less vigilant now that the heat is off, ushering in a raft of new troubles that could dog the euro for years to come.

“The risk is that complacency takes hold because there is no more urgency in the crisis, and that everything that has been done up until now will be deemed sufficient,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. If that happens, he warned, “Europe will turn into the next Japan, and become a permanently depressed or stagnating economic area.”

Ms. Merkel might be forgiven for feeling a sense of vindication. Her deliberate approach to crisis management and refusal to get too far ahead of German public opinion has often frustrated her euro zone peers and foreign allies. And yet, the strategy seems to have worked — so far, at least. Ms. Merkel, who is to speak at Davos on Thursday, and other European leaders have generally done just enough to contain the crisis without alienating taxpayers.

Much of the credit for the current calm in Europe goes to Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. He appeased financial markets with his promise last summer to do whatever it took to preserve the euro, including buying the government bonds of Spain if necessary to keep a lid on the country’s borrowing costs.

The effect of Mr. Draghi’s promise has been evident: financial markets have stopped driving the borrowing costs of Spain and Italy toward the danger levels that led Ireland, Greece and Portugal to reach for international financial lifelines. Today, few people fear that Europe’s southern countries will break away from the euro union.

Other dire prospects, like Germany and other Northern European countries fleeing the euro union to avoid getting caught in a quagmire, have also dropped off the watch list. If anything, the focus of anxiety is the fiscal situation in the United States, where gridlock in Washington has become just as debilitating for the country’s finances as the euro policy paralysis was for European politicians.

“Some European policy makers who visited the United States recently were delighted to see that because of the fiscal cliff, Europe wasn’t on every channel,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University. “There is an ecstasy over the fact that they won’t blow apart tomorrow.”

Still, Mr. Rogoff added, Europe must revive economic growth to fully address its problems. “And even if they do, that’s not a long-term solution,” he said. “They need to integrate more fully, or they will fall apart.”

Europe’s political leaders have taken important steps to improve spending discipline among euro members, to provide a financial backstop for troubled euro zone countries and to consolidate supervision of banks. Despite many imperfections, the measures seem to have been enough to convince investors that officials are slowly constructing a more resilient currency union.

“European countries have shown their resolve in making the euro a success and reaffirmed the deep political commitment to work together toward a stronger union,” Vítor Constâncio, the vice president of the European Central Bank, told an audience in Beijing on Jan. 12.

But leaders have yet to address some serious flaws in the structure of the euro zone. For example, they have not solved the problem of how to wind down terminally ill banks without sticking taxpayers with the bill. And they are far away from a deposit insurance fund for Europe, which means the risk of bank runs remains.

“In order to define a turning point, you need a lot of factors besides the stabilization of financial markets,” Mr. Draghi said this month.

But coming events could undermine confidence. Germany will hold national elections in September, which could make Ms. Merkel even more cautious than usual and stall euro zone decision making. Already, her main rivals pulled off an upset in regional elections this weekend in Lower Saxony.

Italian elections are also looming. Mario Monti, the prime minister who has restored Italy’s international credibility and is to speak at Davos on Wednesday, faces a public that is grumpy about a rollback of job protections and other policy overhauls. Silvio Berlusconi, a former Italian prime minister who presided over years of economic standstill, is attempting a populist comeback.

In France, President François Hollande’s pledge to bring the deficit down to 3 percent of gross domestic product this year to adhere to the rules governing euro membership may be challenged if France’s military engagement in Mali and the surrounding region turns into a drawn-out affair.

Across the channel, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who is scheduled to speak at Davos on Thursday morning, has sounded warnings that the country might leave the European Union if changes in its administration are not made. “The danger is that Europe will fail and that the British people will drift toward the exit,” according to prepared text of a speech Mr. Cameron postponed delivering last week because of developments in the hostage crisis in Algeria.

In the meantime, the severe effects of prolonged austerity in several European countries are leaving deep social scars. Tax increases and steep spending cuts have ground many European citizens deeper than ever into hardship, prompting millions to demonstrate in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Recessionary economies in those countries are expected to get worse before they improve.

In Greece, where austerity has hit the hardest, people are burning trash and wood this winter for lack of money to pay electricity bills, and the government’s efforts to enact structural overhauls needed to turn the economy around and attract foreign investors continue to lag.

And then there is Germany, which itself is being tugged into a slowdown as its cash-poor southern neighbors continue to refrain from buying Audis and other high-priced German goods.

Unemployment in the euro zone continues to climb: the jobless rate in the 17 countries of the bloc hit a record 11.8 percent in November. Youth unemployment has surpassed 50 percent in Spain and Greece, a stratosphere of despair. Thousands of bright young people continue to flee Greece, Ireland, Spain and other countries every month for the booming economies of Australia and Canada.

Portuguese workers are even going to Africa in search of a better future, as the middle class there grows along with improving economic conditions on the southern part of the African continent.

Yet painful adjustments are starting to bear some fruit. Labor costs have come down in countries including Spain and Portugal, helping make their work forces more competitive within the region. In Spain, for instance, where unit labor costs have fallen 4 percent since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the labor market is now so alluring that Ford, Renault and Volkswagen have announced plans to expand production there.

In addition, the alarming flight of deposits from banks in Spain has come to a stop.

The euro zone’s problems have proven an opportunity for some countries to remove structural impediments to growth. In France, where Mr. Hollande has promised to make the economy more competitive, labor unions have agreed to a deal to overhaul swaths of the notoriously rigid labor market.

The deal would tame some of the French labor code’s most confounding restrictions, including lengthy hiring and firing procedures and outsize business taxes, as the country tries to lift its competitiveness, curb unemployment and improve the budget.

“Is the worst over? Probably yes,” analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a recent note to clients.

That will be especially true if leaders and businesses persist in using the crisis as a chance to renew European competitiveness.

While some countries may have made enough economic overhauls to enjoy substantial growth, once the crisis is past, said Nicolas Véron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels, “there are a lot of nuts still to crack.”

Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt.

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U.S., other nations await Algeria death toll

CAIRO—

The U.S., Britain and other countries sought to learn the fate of their citizens Sunday after Algeria announced that the death toll from a hostage crisis at a remote gas refinery was expected to rise beyond a previous estimate of 23.

It was another painstaking day for security officials trying to determine how a band of Islamist militants overran the gas complex last week, and for families and nations awaiting word of new deaths. Britain confirmed that three of its citizens were killed and three are unaccounted for.

Algerian officials said security teams defusing mines and explosive booby-traps at the Sahara Desert site had found “numerous” bodies, according to the Associated Press. Algerian communications minister Mohamed Said Belaid was quoted by the state news agency as saying: "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up."

As many as seven U.S. hostages are missing, along with about 14 Japanese. Other captives included Norwegians, Malaysians and French. Algerian officials said a final death count would be released in the coming hours.

Nearly 700 Algerians and 107 foreigners had been freed or had escaped from the gas field in eastern Algeria during the four-day, bloody ordeal that ended Saturday. Officials said at least 23 hostages and 32 militants had been killed. But discrepancies remained over the nationalities of the dead and the exact number of those who died.

“The priority now must be to get everybody home from Algeria," said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "This is a stark reminder once again of the threat we face from terrorism the world over. We have had successes in recent years in reducing the threat from some parts of the world, but the threat has grown particularly in northern Africa.”

Cameron, who had earlier appeared irritated that the Algerians did not inform foreign capitals before troops first stormed the refinery Thursday, tempered his criticism.

"People will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events,” he said. “But I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack. And I'd also say that when you’re dealing with a terrorist incident on this scale, with up to 30 terrorists, it is extremely difficult to respond and to get this right in every respect.”

 The natural gas complex at In Amenas -- near the Libyan border -- is operated by BP, Statoil and Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company. BP said four of its employees were missing.

Militants linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb raided the facility before dawn Wednesday. They claimed it was to avenge French airstrikes on Islamic rebels in neighboring Mali. But officials from the U.S. and other countries indicated the attack was planned ahead of this month’s French military action. 

Belaid said the militants were "nationals of Arab and African countries, and of non-African countries."

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

(Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report)     

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Google says Wall Street estimates need adjusting

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc issued a rare advisory to Wall Street on Friday that analyst estimates for its fourth quarter financial results are flawed.

The world’s No.1 search engine, which reports its quarterly results on Tuesday, said most analysts have not adjusted their estimates to reflect the pending $ 2.35 billion sale of the Motorola Home business.

The business must be presented separately from the results of Google’s continuing operations under U.S. accounting rules, Google Treasurer Brent Callinicos wrote in a post on Google’s investor relations Web page on Friday.

“As of this writing, a majority of Wall Street analysts who cover Google have not reflected the Home business as discontinued operations in their estimates,” Callinicos wrote.

The discrepancy means the fourth-quarter net revenue that Google reports on Tuesday could appear to be less than the $ 12.34 billion average that analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S are expecting.

Raymond James analyst Aaron Kessler says his fourth-quarter net revenue estimate includes nearly $ 900 million from the Motorola Home business.

“They’re saying that the headline number is going to be less than what most analysts have for Q4,” said Kessler.

The advisory is a rare move for Google, which does not provide financial forecasts and typically has limited interactions with analysts. The company has in the past provided accounting advisories to analysts about the Motorola Mobility business, which Google acquired for $ 12.5 billion in May.

Google bought Motorola Mobility primarily for its large portfolio of communications patents and its mobile phone business.

In December, Google agreed to sell the Motorola Home television set-top box business to Arris Group Inc for $ 2.35 billion in cash and stock.

Analysts expect Google to report adjusted earnings of $ 10.56 per share for the fourth quarter.

“It’s a little surprising that they’re doing this the Friday before the report,” said Kessler. “They should have put it out a week ago if they wanted analysts to change their numbers.”

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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Dan Lin, Roy Lee Counter Sue Legendary over ‘Godzilla’

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Producers Dan Lin, Roy Lee and Doug Davison have hit back at Legendary Pictures over “Godzilla,” filing a cross complaint Thursday in L.A. Superior Court seeking millions in damages and credit for their contributions to the upcoming movie.

Lin, Lee and Davison allege breach of contract and mistreatment, rehashing the history of how they came to work with Legendary. They began work in 2009 and helped Legendary secure the rights because they were assured they’d be treated well.

“Apparently, Legendary’s idea of treating the producers who brought them ‘Godzilla’ well included concocting a scheme to try to force them off the project, and depriving them of their screen credit and substantial fixed and backend compensation in order to keep more of the money and to aggrandize themselves,” the suit claims.

Legendary preemptively sued the producers last week to kick them off of the movie, anticipating a restraining order that could impede the looming production. Legendary unveiled its plans for the movie at Comic-Con last July, and has slated it for a 2014 release. It would begin production in Spring with Gareth Edward directing.

Legendary alleged that it had entered an agreement in March 2011 that gave the producers $ 25,000 in development money but no right to the intellectual property. In order to receive credit as a producer or backend money from the movie’s profits, their early work would need to be the basis for the movie.

Lin, Lee and Davison say they were responsible for bringing the rights to Legendary and never signed a written agreement because Legendary changed the terms of the deal. However, they say, Legendary had orally agreed to pay $ 1.3 million and three percent of first dollar cross receipts in addition to the development money.

Legendary has since hired a new writer, Frank Darabont, and sought other producers.

The producers are all based at Warner Bros., Legendary’s main partner – Lin at Lin Pictures and Lee and Davison for Vertigo Entertainment. Their suit against Legendary places most of the blame with president and chief creative officer Jon Jashni rather than CEO Thomas Tull.

However, they are still pointed in their claims, explaining that they “seek substantial punitive damages to make an example of Legendary so that it and no other studio will in the future treat their producers in this outrageous manner.”

Legendary had no comment on the suit.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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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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N.T.S.B. Rules Out a Cause for Battery Fire on 787 Dreamliner

Federal investigations said Sunday that they had ruled out excessive voltage as the cause of a battery fire on a Boeing 787 in Boston this month, widening the mystery into what led to the grounding of the world’s most technologically advanced jet after a second battery-related problem last week.

With investigators focused on the plane’s lithium-ion batteries, the National Transportation Safety Board said an examination of the data from the plane’s flight recorder indicated that the battery “did not exceed the designed voltage of 32 volts.” The fire aboard a Japan Airlines plane on Jan. 7 at Logan International Airport in Boston occurred after the passengers had gotten off.

Last week, a battery problem on another 787 forced an All Nippon Airways jetliner to make an emergency landing in Japan. That episode prompted aviation authorities around the world to ground the plane, also known as the Dreamliner. The Federal Aviation Administration said last week that it would not lift the ban until Boeing could show that the batteries were safe.

But with investigators on a global quest to find out what went wrong, the safety board’s statement suggested that there might not be a rapid resumption of 787 flights. The 787 first entered service in November 2011 after more than three and a half years of production delays. Eight airlines currently own 50 787s, including United Airlines.

On Friday, Japanese safety officials, who are in charge of investigating the second battery problem, suggested that overcharging a battery might have caused it to overheat. Pilots decided to make an emergency landing 20 minutes after takeoff after receiving several alarms about the battery and smelled smoke in the cockpit.

That investigation is conducted by Japan’s transportation safety board. American investigators are heplping with the inquiry.

The GS Yuasa Corporation of Japan, one of the world’s leading lithium-ion battery manufacturers, makes the batteries for the 787, and Thales, of France, makes the control systems for the battery. The battery is part of a complex electrical system that powers the 787. Like many other components and structures, Boeing outsourced much of the manufacturing to partners around the world.

The safety board typically conducts investigations through a process of elimination, and rules out possible causes along the way.

It said that the lithium-ion battery that powered the auxiliary power unit, a small jet engine used on the ground, had been examined in the safety board’s Materials Laboratory in Washington.

The battery was first X-rayed and put through a CT scan. Investigators then disassembled it into its eight individual cells for detailed examination and documentation. Three of the cells were selected for more detailed radiographic examination.

Investigators have also examined several other components that they removed from the airplane, including wire bundles and battery management circuit boards as well as the battery management unit, the controller for the auxiliary power unit, the battery charger and the power start unit.

On Tuesday, investigators will convene in Arizona to test and examine the battery charger and download nonvolatile memory from the auxiliary power unit controller. Several other components have been sent for download or examination to Boeing’s facility in Seattle and to the manufacturer in Japan.

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7 hostages reported dead in 'final assault' on Algerian refinery

CAIRO — Algerian troops raided a remote natural gas refinery Saturday, killing 11 Islamic militants but not before extremists executed seven hostages who for days had been trapped in a deepening international crisis, according to media reports.

Algerian state media described the army mission as the “final assault” to end a hostage ordeal that began in the predawn Wednesday at a gas compound on the Algerian-Libyan border. It was not clear if the hostages killed were Algerians or foreigners.

"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a local source familiar with the operation told Reuters.

The fate of as many as 30 foreign hostages, including an estimated seven Americans, remained unknown. Algerian forces discovered 15 burned bodies as they swept through the compound Saturday to rout heavily armed militants. The militants threatened to blow up the facility and a number of hostages were reported earlier to have been forced to wear explosive belts.  

The Algerian government had refused to negotiate with the extremists, who were linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and appear to include Algerians, Libyans, Egyptians and at least one commander from Niger.

Algeria’s state-run media earlier reported that 12 refinery workers, including Algerians and foreigners, had been killed since a government operation to retake the plant began Thursday. Unconfirmed media reports suggested that as many as 35 foreign captives may have been killed, including some struck by gunfire from the Algerian military.

The militants, some dressed in fatigues, were armed with machine guns and rocket launchers. The compound is encircled by army tanks, troops and special forces. A Mauritanian news agency that has been in contact with the extremists said the captors were holding two American, three Belgians, one Japanese and one Briton.

The Algerian government on Friday said 573 Algerians and nearly 100 of an estimated 132 foreign hostages had been freed or had escaped. But the chaotic scene at the gas compound at In Amenas has frustrated international officials who complained they were not consulted about the Algerian military’s operations at the plant.   

The natural gas refinery at In Amenas is also jointly operated by BP; Statoil, a Norwegian firm; and Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company.

ALSO:

Bolshoi artistic director attacked with acid

Pentagon planning to ferry more French troops, gear to Mali

Algeria: Accounts emerge as nearly 100 foreigners reported freed

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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Schwarzenegger takes a

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking inspiration from his idol, Clint Eastwood, returns to the big screen on Friday in the action film “The Last Stand,” his first starring role since he took a seven-year break from moviemaking to serve as California governor.

In a departure from his typical superhuman roles, Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman forced to protect a tiny border town from a notorious drug kingpin. The 65-year-old former bodybuilder looks every bit his age and admits in the film feeling “old” as he takes a ribbing from some of his significantly younger deputies.

As he embarks on a movie comeback in which he will star in three films over the next 12 months, Schwarzenegger is embracing his age rather than trying to relive his glory days as an action star.

He is taking his cue from the 82-year-old Eastwood – the gun-toting former macho “Dirty Harry” star who eased into more senior roles, winning plaudits for movies like last year’s “The Trouble with the Curve,” and “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004, for which he was nominated for a best-actor Oscar and won for best director.

Schwarzenegger said he was inspired by Eastwood in the 1993 film “In the Line of Fire,” where Eastwood’s character, a Secret Service agent, is short of breath after running alongside the president’s limousine.

“I thought that was so cool,” Schwarzenegger told Reuters TV recently. “I remember how smart it was to acknowledge that because it took the curse off. No one was trying to say, ‘Isn’t he too old for this job?’ That’s what I tried to do in this film since (Eastwood) is a big idol of mine and I always like to learn from him.”

Schwarzenegger said he felt great physically, but that reality had set in. “I’m not a 30-year-old action hero anymore,” he said. “I’m now 65 years old, but I’m still doing action movies. I acknowledge that it’s a different ballgame now. I’m an older guy.”

In “Last Stand,” Schwarzenegger said he agreed to play the part of Sheriff Ray Owens because “it was kind of a traditional Schwarzenegger action movie” with “big blow-ups, a great story, good drama, fight scenes and action from the beginning to the end.”

Schwarzenegger began his transformation to an aging action star in the 2010 film “The Expendables” and its 2012 sequel where he played an aging movie star in an ensemble cast that included Sylvester Stallone and other older stars.

“I was very pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction,” said Schwarzenegger, who was Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011.

‘I-DARE-YOU ATTITUDE’

Critics have mostly embraced Schwarzenegger’s return with “Last Stand,” despite the film’s modest budget. Film critic Marshall Fine called it “shamelessly entertaining,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy wrote that Schwarzenegger “still conveys the old self-confident, humorous I-dare-you attitude towards his adversaries.”

An older, wiser Schwarzenegger chose to play vintage roles in his other upcoming films as well. In September, he teams up again with Stallone in “The Tomb,” where they play aging inmates who plot a prison escape. Next January, Schwarzenegger will star in “Ten,” playing what the film’s director, David Ayer, called “a broken old drug warrior.”

In an interview with Reuters, Ayer said his No. 1 goal in working with Schwarzenegger was “transformation.” The director said he studied every frame of Schwarzenegger’s films, noting that most of the actor’s filmography had “a very specific tone, almost jocular in a sense, where it is not necessarily a psychologically realistic portrayal of a man or a character.”

“You look at all these performances, and the question is, have these characters been treated as something he can transform himself?” Ayer said. “I probably asked him to do things he wasn’t asked before. I knew I could take him someplace new. Some of these scenes required real, heavy lifting.”

In the end, Ayer believes moviegoers will be “blindsided” by what they see of Schwarzenegger on screen.

Yet even as Schwarzenegger attempts to widen his range as an actor, he is not leaving behind the genre films that made him famous.

That means going back to some of his popular franchises of the past, including a new “Conan the Barbarian” film that is expected to go into production later this year and a sequel to the 1988 action comedy “Twins” to be called “Triplets.”

“It’s important I pick projects that the fans, that the audiences like to see,” he said.

He already has another big fan in his friend Stallone, who talked him into acting in the two “Expendables” films.

“What is the definition of a star? Someone who people will wait three hours in the rain to see,” Stallone said. “And people still have their umbrellas out for him.”

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

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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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