Israeli Says Syria Twisted Comments by Rebel Supporter

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A public relations controversy erupted Saturday after a leading Israeli newspaper published comments from a brief interview with the leader of Syria’s main exile opposition group.

The news media outlets of the Syrian government, and its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, reported that the opposition leader had declared that Israel had “nothing to fear” from a rebel-led Syrian government. Moreover, the reports said, the opposition was working with other countries to keep Syria’s chemical weapons away from Hezbollah, which he called a “son of the devil.”

But the opposition leader, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, never said any of that, according to the article in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, and its author, a prominent Israeli defense expert, Ronen Bergman.

Sheik Khatib was quoted in the article reiterating the opposition’s promise to keep Syria’s chemical arsenal out of “the hands of unauthorized elements,” and it was the international community, he said, not Israel, that had “nothing to fear.”

When Sheik Khatib realized that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli — after glancing at his business card — he abruptly ended the conversation, Mr. Bergman said in a Skype interview, repeating what he had written.

The original article was published only in Hebrew — and only in print — so it was the Arabic and English versions put out by the Syrian government and Hezbollah that raced around the Internet on Saturday, provoking outrage from government supporters and opponents at Sheik Khatib, who posted a message on his Facebook page denying that he had given the interview.

Yet the episode appeared to have been more than a simple misunderstanding. Syria’s conflict is not only a shooting war but also a propaganda war. Pro-government media apparently could not resist the chance to bolster their contention that the rebellion had been promoted by Israel and the West to punish Syria and its president, President Bashar al-Assad, for taking uncompromising positions against Israel.

“Unfortunately, the original text was less exciting,” Mr. Bergman said. “I would be happy if he would say something like, ‘Yes, we will make peace with Israel’ — then I would get the front page.” As it was, the article elicited little reaction in Israel.

But misrepresentation of the article suggested that it hit a nerve on one issue. An unnamed opposition member, not Sheik Khatib, called Hezbollah “sons of the devil,” according to Mr. Bergman, and said the rebel coalition was working with other countries to ensure that “not one piece of military equipment, not chemical weapons and not any other item, will pass into their hands.”

Syria is Hezbollah’s main conduit for arms, and Hezbollah has backed Mr. Assad’s bloody crackdown at great cost to its popularity in the wider Arab world.

Although Mr. Bergman said the opposition member was offering his own opinion and not presenting official policy, his comments bolstered the widely held view that a rebel-led government might halt the shipment of Iranian arms through Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah, a Shiite group and political party, is also concerned about the rise within the rebel movement of extremist Sunni jihadists who view Shiites as apostates.

The misleading reports appeared to be an attempt to further divide the opposition. Sheik Khatib found himself fending off critics from within the anti-Assad movement who objected to his even speaking with an Israeli reporter, though by all accounts he did not initially realize that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli.

It was the second time in a month that Sheik Khatib found himself on the defensive. He recently proposed talks with members of Mr. Assad’s government, but had not built political support for the proposal.

On Friday, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, gave the first official response to the proposal, saying that the government would negotiate with any opposition members who agreed to lay down their arms.

On Saturday, Mr. Assad named new cabinet ministers for oil, finance, social affairs, labor, housing, public works and agriculture, as Syria faces growing economic problems and shortages of electricity, fuel and bread.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut.

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Snoop Dogg blazes one during BMI songwriting panel

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Music fans who turned out to BMI's annual pre-Grammy Awards "How I Wrote That Song" discussion got a little more than they expected thanks to Snoop Dogg — a contact high.

The rapper smoked marijuana during Saturday's panel discussion, lighting up a large, Kush-filled blunt on stage at The Roxy. He briefly passed it off to B.o.B before methodically reducing it to ash over a 15-minute period. The panel also included Busta Rhymes and songwriters Luke Laird and Evan Bogart, all of whom abstained — at least on stage.

Fittingly, the conversation eventually turned to Snoop's groundbreaking work on "The Chronic."

Laird recalled growing up at the end of a dirt road 10 miles outside Conneaut Lake, a small town of 700 in rural Pennsylvania. Yet Snoop's work with Dr. Dre still infiltrated his world and that of all the other country kids around him.

"Let me just say, the album everyone was listening to was 'The Chronic,'" Laird said, noting how surreal it was to be sitting on stage with Snoop.

With acoustic guitar in hand, he played a bit of his Blake Shelton hit "Hillbilly Bone" in its original form: a rap song. The Nashville-based songwriter had everyone bobbing their heads to the beat.

"Now I feel like more than ever you see these influences crossing genres," Laird said.

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott at http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott .

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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Business Week in Pictures

Phil Libin, the chief executive of Evernote, during a staff meeting at Evernote’s headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. Evernote is among the privately held Silicon Valley start-ups that are worth more than $1 billion. An unprecedented number of high technology start-ups, easily 25 and possibly exceeding 40, have crossed that threshold. Many employees are quietly growing rich, or at least building a big cushion against a crash, as they sell shares to outside investors. Airbnb, Pinterest, SurveyMonkey and Spotify are among the better-known privately held companies that have reached $1 billion.

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California Police Officer Manhunt

Alex Gallardo/Reuters

A police cruiser in which an officer was shot in Corona, Calif.

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. — The search for the former Los Angeles police officer wanted in three killings continued throughout Friday here, even as a blizzard covered the mountains with a foot of snow. But as no new traces of the suspect were found, the authorities wondered if he had somehow slipped through their fingers.

Law enforcement agencies from across Southern California had been on a regionwide manhunt since early Thursday for Christopher J. Dorner, 33, a former Navy reservist sought in connection with the shooting deaths of three people and the attempted shootings of several police officials.

Over the course of the week, since the first killing on Sunday, Mr. Dorner had been spotted all over Southern California, from Riverside to San Diego. His trail seemed to lead here on Thursday when a burned-out pickup truck found at the base of the mountain was identified as belonging to Mr. Dorner. Law enforcement followed tracks from the car into the nearby woods. With only a few routes in and out of town, they were confident they had Mr. Dorner cornered.

More than 100 law enforcement officers have spent the last two days combing the area, going door to door overnight, taking special care to investigate remote cabins and other vacation homes whose owners were away, and scanning the area by helicopter.

But they have been unable to turn up any new clues, Sheriff John McMahon of San Bernardino County, said at a news conference on Friday.

“We searched all night; we did not discover any additional evidence,” Sheriff McMahon said on Friday morning. “We will continue searching until either we discover that he left the mountain, or we find him.”

“We don’t have any evidence to suggest that he is or is not here,” he added.

For the second day in a row, local schools were closed, keeping schoolchildren and their yellow buses off the mountain roads in the midst of the search.

Still, as the search continued without new evidence, and the ski resort reopened, life in the town began to return to normal. Skiers and snowboarders flocked to the mountain to take advantage of the fresh powder. And both local residents and visitors expressed growing skepticism that Mr. Dorner was — or ever had been — in town. Instead, many thought the pickup truck was a diversion.

Cindy Johnston was in the Big Bear Lake area, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, to ski with her family. “We’re being a little bit more careful, but that’s about it,” Ms. Johnston said. “We’re keeping the kids closer together and not going out so much at night. I think he’d be stupid if he was here, and he doesn’t seem stupid. There are too many people looking for him.”

Yvette Blunt, a Big Bear Lake resident, did not think Mr. Dorner was in town anymore, either.

“He left the car here to attract everyone here,” Ms. Blunt, 66, said. “That way, he can go somewhere else.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled, in some instances, the surname of the former police officer who the authorities say has killed at least three people as part of a rampage aimed at police officers and their families. It is Christopher J. Dorner, not Dornan.

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NBC pulls 'Do No Harm' after 2 low-rated episodes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — NBC is pulling the drama series "Do No Harm" after two low-rated episodes.

The show is a take on the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and stars Steven Pasquale of "Rescue Me." He plays a respected neurosurgeon who turns into a dangerous alter ego each night. Other cast members include Alana De La Garza and Phylicia Rashad.

"Do No Harm" started with a historically small audience for a major network debut and then dropped further in its second Thursday airing.

NBC will replace "Do No Harm" with reruns of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" for the next two weeks.

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?

Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of illnesses when he suddenly becomes confused and paranoid. I will provide you with the main medical notes, labs and imaging results available to the doctor who made the diagnosis.

The first reader to figure out this case will get a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” along with the satisfaction of knowing you solved a case of Sherlockian complexity. Good luck.

The Presenting Problem:

A 55-year-old man who is recovering from a devastating injury in a rehabilitation facility suddenly becomes confused, frightened and paranoid.

The Patient’s Story:

The patient, who was recovering from a terrible injury and was too weak to walk, had been found on the floor of his room at the extended care facility, raving that there were people out to get him. He was taken to the emergency room at the Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut, where he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors thought his delirium was caused by the infection, but after 24 hours, despite receiving the appropriate antibiotics, the patient remained disoriented and frightened.

A Sister’s Visit:

The man’s sister came to visit him on his second day in the hospital. As she walked into the room she was immediately struck by her brother’s distress.

“Get me out of here!” the man shouted from his hospital bed. “They are coming to get me. I gotta get out of here!”

His brown eyes darted from side to side as if searching for his would-be attackers. His arms and legs shook with fear. He looked terrified.

For the past few months, the man had been in and out of the hospital, but he had been getting better — at least he had been improving the last time his sister saw him, the week before. She hurried into the bustling hallway and found a nurse. “What the hell is going on with my brother?” she demanded.

A Long Series of Illnesses:

Three months earlier, the patient had been admitted to that same hospital with delirium tremens. After years of alcohol abuse, he had suddenly stopped drinking a couple of days before, and his body was wracked by the sudden loss of the chemical he had become addicted to. He’d spent an entire week in the hospital but finally recovered. He was sent home, but he didn’t stay there for long.

The following week, when his sister hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days, she forced her way into his home. There she found him, unconscious, in the basement, at the bottom of his staircase. He had fallen, and it looked as if he may have been there for two, possibly three, days. He was close to death. Indeed, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped. Rapid action by the E.M.T.’s brought his heart back to life, and he made it to the hospital.

There the extent of the damage became clear. The man’s kidneys had stopped working, and his body chemistry was completely out of whack. He had a severe concussion. And he’d had a heart attack.

He remained in the intensive care unit for nearly three weeks, and in the hospital another two weeks. Even after these weeks of care and recovery, the toll of his injury was terrible. His kidneys were not working, so he required dialysis three times a week. He had needed a machine to help him breathe for so long that he now had to get oxygen through a hole that had been cut into his throat. His arms and legs were so weak that he could not even lift them, and because he was unable even to swallow, he had to be fed through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Finally, after five weeks in the hospital, he was well enough to be moved to a short-term rehabilitation hospital to complete the long road to recovery. But he was still far from healthy. The laughing, swaggering, Harley-riding man his sister had known until that terrible fall seemed a distant memory, though she saw that he was slowly getting better. He had even started to smile and make jokes. He was confident, he had told her, that with a lot of hard work he could get back to normal. So was she; she knew he was tough.

Back to the Hospital:

The patient had been at the rehab facility for just over two weeks when the staff noticed a sudden change in him. He had stopped smiling and was no longer making jokes. Instead, he talked about people that no one else could see. And he was worried that they wanted to harm him. When he remained confused for a second day, they sent him to the emergency room.

You can see the records from that E.R. visit here.

The man told the E.R. doctor that he knew he was having hallucinations. He thought they had started when he had begun taking a pill to help him sleep a couple of days earlier. It seemed a reasonable explanation, since the medication was known to cause delirium in some people. The hospital psychiatrist took him off that medication and sent him back to rehab that evening with a different sleeping pill.

Back to the Hospital, Again:

Two days later, the patient was back in the emergency room. He was still seeing things that weren’t there, but now he was quite confused as well. He knew his name but couldn’t remember what day or month it was, or even what year. And he had no idea where he was, or where he had just come from.

When the medical team saw the patient after he had been admitted, he was unable to provide any useful medical history. His medical records outlined his earlier hospitalizations, and records from the nursing home filled in additional details. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, depression and alcoholism. He was on a long list of medications. And he had been confused for the past several days.

On examination, he had no fever, although a couple of hours earlier his temperature had been 100.0 degrees. His heart was racing, and his blood pressure was sky high. His arms and legs were weak and swollen. His legs were shaking, and his reflexes were very brisk. Indeed, when his ankle was flexed suddenly, it continued to jerk back and forth on its own three or four times before stopping, a phenomenon known as clonus.

His labs were unchanged from the previous visit except for his urine, which showed signs of a serious infection. A CT scan of the brain was unremarkable, as was a chest X-ray. He was started on an intravenous antibiotic to treat the infection. The thinking was that perhaps the infection was causing the patient’s confusion.

You can see the notes from that second hospital visit here.

His sister had come to visit him the next day, when he was as confused as he had ever been. He was now trembling all over and looked scared to death, terrified. He was certain he was being pursued.

That is when she confronted the nurse, demanding to know what was going on with her brother. The nurse didn’t know. No one did. His urinary tract infection was being treated with antibiotics, but he continued to have a rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure, along with terrifying hallucinations.

Solving the Mystery:

Can you figure out why this man was so confused and tremulous? I have provided you with all the data available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. The case is not easy — that is why it is here. I’ll post the answer on Friday.

Friday Feb. 8 4:13 p.m. | Updated Thanks for all your responses. You can read about the winner at “Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient Solved.”

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below.. The correct answer will appear Friday on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Correction: The patient’s eyes were brown, not blue.

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DealBook: Southeastern Asset Management to Fight Dell's Takeover

7:44 p.m. | Updated One of the biggest investors in Dell said on Friday that it would oppose the company’s plans to go private, setting up a major potential roadblock for the biggest buyout since the financial crisis.

Southeastern Asset Management, Dell’s largest outside shareholder, argued in a letter to the board that the $24.4 billion takeover bid was too low.

The company’s founder, Michael S. Dell, and the investment firm Silver Lake, are offering $13.65 a share. Southeastern, which has an 8.5 percent stake in Dell, contends that the company is worth closer to $24 a share.

To block the “ill-advised transaction,” Southeastern laid out a range of possible tactics, including a proxy fight and lawsuits. The firm also pushed the board to “aggressively” look for alternative proposals. Dell has 45 days to solicit other bids as part of the so-called go-shop process.

A Dell spokesman said in a statement on Friday that a special committee of the company’s board had considered various options with the help of advisers before accepting the management buyout.

“Based on that work, the board concluded that the proposed all-cash transaction is in the best interests of stockholders,” said the spokesman, David Frink. “The transaction offers an attractive and immediate premium for stockholders and shifts the risks facing the business to the buyer group.”

The opposition highlights the conflict facing Dell and its investors.

Many shareholders bought the company at lofty prices, watching the value of their shares erode. Analysts estimated that Southeastern paid more than $20 a share on average, meaning that the asset management firm would lose over $800 million if the current deal was completed.

Still, the takeover values Dell at price that the company has not touched for months. Its stock has not reached $14 since late May, and it lingered below $10 for two months late last year.

The company also faces continued pressure in its operations. Its core PC business is ceding ground to lower-cost rivals, as well as new entrants like tablets and smartphones.

Additionally, its effort to sell servers to big companies has been hurt by the changing industry dynamics, including the move to cloud computing.

Management buyouts have long been regarded skeptically by investors. The concern is that they enrich executives at the expense of other shareholders. The takeovers of companies like J. Crew and Affiliated Computer Services spurred a number of lawsuits by irate investors.

Southeastern and its founder, O. Mason Hawkins, generally keep a low profile and shun the press. But the money manager, based in Memphis, has been more outspoken of late.

The firm stepped into the spotlight last year when it called on Chesapeake Energy to entertain takeover offers, after the company ran into financial difficulties and faced criticism for the compensation plan of its co-founder, Aubrey McClendon. Southeastern and another activist investor, Carl C. Icahn, eventually won seats on Chesapeake’s board. Last month, Mr. McClendon was forced to retire under pressure from the board.

In its letter to Dell’s board, Southeastern said that it would support a number of alternatives. The investor, for example, outlined a plan to pay out a special dividend to shareholders or a buyout that would allow existing investors to keep a piece of the company.

But Southeastern said the current deal, hashed out over six months, “falls significantly short,” adding that it “appears to be an effort to acquire Dell at a substantial discount to intrinsic value at the expense of public shareholders.”

Dell’s board was mindful of potential conflicts — legal and otherwise — that its founder faced in trying to buy back the company he founded nearly three decades ago. To assess the deal, it formed a special committee of its board, led by Alex J. Mandl, which was advised by two sets of financial advisers.

JPMorgan Chase served as the principal investment bank for the committee, negotiating with Silver Lake.

Evercore Partners is overseeing a 45-day go-shop period intended to flush out rival suitors for the company. The company itself was advised by Goldman Sachs.

To help further minimize conflicts, JPMorgan refrained from providing financing for the deal. And Evercore’s advisory fee is set up in a way that encourages the bank to find a higher bid.

“The go-shop process provides stockholders an opportunity to determine if there are alternatives that are superior to the present offer,” the Dell spokesman said in a statement.

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U.S. Official Faults F.A.A. for Missing 787 Battery Risk

The nation’s top transportation safety official said on Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration accepted test results from Boeing in 2007 that failed to properly assess the risks of smoke or fire from the batteries on Boeing’s new 787 jets.

Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters that the problems seemed to have originated in the battery, when one of the eight cells had a short circuit and the fire spread to the rest of the cells. But she said that Boeing’s tests showed no indication that the new lithium-ion batteries on its 787 planes could erupt in flame and concluded that they were likely to emit smoke less than once in every 10 million flight hours.

Once the planes were placed in service, though, the batteries overheated and emitted smoke twice last month, and caused one fire, after about 50,000 hours of commercial flights.

“The assumptions used to certify the batteries must be reconsidered,” Ms. Hersman said.

Late Thursday, the F.A.A. said it would allow Boeing to conduct test flights with its 787 to collect data on the batteries and the plane’s electrical system. The agency said the flights “will be an important part of our efforts to ensure the safety of passengers and return these aircraft to service.” It did not immediately specify the number of test flights or when they would begin.

Ms. Hersman, at her news conference, said that before the F.A.A. certified the batteries, Boeing’s tests found no evidence that a short circuit in one of the eight cells could spread to other cells.

But Ms. Hersman said the fire on a 787 parked at an airport in Boston on Jan. 7 started with a short circuit in one cell and then spread to the others.

She said investigators had still not been able to tell what caused the short circuit in that cell and led to a “thermal runaway,” overheating up to 500 degrees, that then cascaded to the rest of the cells.

Still, she said, “This investigation has demonstrated that a short circuit in a single cell can propagate to adjacent cells and result in a fire.”

Battery experts said that the finding pinpointed one step Boeing could take to make the batteries safer: it could expand the size of the battery to create more physical separation between the cells. Ralph J. Brodd, a battery industry consultant in Henderson, Nev., said Boeing and its Japanese battery subcontractor, GS Yuasa, could make the design and manufacturing changes needed to do that fairly quickly.

But unless investigators can determine what caused the first cell to short-circuit, federal officials said, Boeing will also be required to make other changes to prevent any of the possible causes and to better contain or vent any overheated materials. And given the safety board’s findings about how poorly Boeing gauged the original safety risks, the F.A.A. is likely to take its time in assessing the validity of any new tests.

The 787 is the first commercial airplane to use large lithium-ion batteries for major flight functions. All 50 of Boeing’s 787s that were delivered to airlines have been grounded since mid-January, when a 787 made an emergency landing in Japan after the pilots smelled smoke in the cockpit. That incident occurred nine days after the Boston fire.

In searching for the cause of the fire on the plane in Boston, Ms. Hersman said the safety board was still looking at the battery’s charging mechanism and potential manufacturing defects or contamination, and whether the cells were not as isolated as they should have been.

Investigators have so far ruled out two possible reasons for the short circuit — a mechanical or electrical shock from outside the battery.

“We have not yet identified what the cause of the short circuit is,” she said. “We are looking at the design of the battery, at the manufacturing, and we are also looking at the cell charging. There are a lot of things we are still looking at.”

Boeing said in a statement Thursday that it viewed the safety board’s findings as narrowing the likely source of the problem to within the battery itself, as opposed to other components of the plane’s extensive new electric system. But company officials said they also recognized that it would take a combination of changes to restore confidence in the battery system.

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Bieber's mom trying to stay out of abortion debate

NEW YORK (AP) — Justin Bieber's mom wants to set the record straight: She's not interested in the political fray on abortion as she promotes "Crescendo," a new film she hopes will raise $10 million for centers that help pregnant girls.

Pattie Mallette, an unmarried teen herself when she had Bieber, signed on as an executive producer after the film was finished. She said Thursday that she connected personally with the story about a suicide and abortion attempt by Beethoven's mother.

"The press has been saying that I'm producing an anti-abortion film and taking this big stance. You know, I haven't shared my stance with anyone and I'm not here to make a political statement, so there's been a lot of assumptions made."

Mallette, in numerous interviews and her autobiography, "Nowhere but Up," has recounted her own suicide attempt, pressure to have an abortion when she became pregnant at 18 and struggles with drugs and alcohol before becoming a Christian.

The movie does include some producers who have anti-abortion beliefs, she said, but her goal is simple: to support residential programs like the one that helped her after her parents kicked her out of the house in Canada.

"The pregnancy center that I lived in is now closed because of lack of funds, so I thought it was a really important thing that they're doing to raise money," Mallette said.

The movie will be released Feb. 28 worldwide.

Mallette has had her share of mom moments of late with her only child, who at 18 is the youngest singer to have five chart-topping albums and will be both host and musical guest for the Feb. 9 episode of "Saturday Night Live" on NBC.

Like his Instagram photo (since deleted) of his butt crack. What ran through her head?

"I thought, I'm a mom, I don't want to see that," Mallette sighed, shaking her head. "I don't want to see him doing that kind of stuff. But, you know, he's 18. He's making some of his own decisions and he's going to make some mistakes and he's going to make some good choices, too."

What of reports of pot smoking and partying with "sizzurp"-downing hip hop singers — sizzurp being a purplish mixture of cough syrup with codeine and promethazine, a carbonated soft drink and pieces of Jolly Rancher candy.

"It's hard, you know, as a mom of an 18-year-old because that's the time when you just gotta start letting go," she said. "And, you know, I had to make some of my own mistakes. I gotta kind of let go and let him make some of his own mistakes and just hope that I put all the right things in him."

And what of Bieber's relationship with Selena Gomez?

"I have no idea if they're on-again, off-again," she said. "It's a constant thing. Today I'm not sure where they stand. I try to stay out of it. He's 18. He doesn't want me getting involved in his romantic life."

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Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

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