Mahony, top aide discussed ways to thwart investigation into pedophile priests, church records show

By Times staff

January 21, 2013, 1:00 p.m.

Fifteen years before the priest abuse scandal erupted, then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement officials, according to internal Catholic Church records released today.

The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement had previously been known, but the memos by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation’s largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police.

In confidential letters written in 1986 and 1987 and filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry, then the archdiocese’s chief advisor on sex abuse cases, proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

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A 'Courage Board' for All Conditions

Rating: 9/10 Nearly flawless; buy it now

It’s easy to guess what The Hovercraft was built for just by looking at it: The short swallowtail and the big blunted nose all scream “powder hound.”

I did my first series of tests in early December up in Lake Tahoe, and there was a lot more crust, ice and grooms than powder, so I took it out without expecting much. I got waaay more than I figured I would: The board held its edge just fine in the groomers, but there was no surprise there. The shock came when I crossed over to the shaded side of the mountain, when the soft groomers turned into icy crud. I was fully expecting the Jones to sketch out and leave me butt-checking all over the place, but The Hovercraft’s edge sliced right into the ice and held it as well as it did the soft stuff. No transition, no adjustments — the board just went from soft snow to ice without skipping a beat.

It was so odd that it took me most of the morning before I really trusted it. But by lunchtime, I was flying down the mountain at speeds I wouldn’t dare with any of the other boards we tested. The board’s great bite is thanks to the Jones’ underfoot camber and so-called Magne-Traction edges, which essentially act like a serrated blade to bite into hard snow. These features combine to give the board a huge amount of precision and control in hard snow.

A few weeks later, I was finally able to take it out on Mt. Shasta’s backcountry to hit some deep stuff. It excelled there as well (entirely as expected) thanks to the rockered and blunted nose, which let the board float on top of the soft stuff, while the short, stiff tail made it easy to kick back and keep the nose up.

Bottom line: I’ve never seen a board perform so well in such a wide range of snow conditions. During my multi-mountain testing session of The Hovercraft snowboard, I let one of my friends ride it. He echoed my own thoughts with one simple statement: “This thing just does whatever you ask it to do.”

WIRED Simply some of the best all-mountain performance I’ve seen. Great float on powder, plus a locked-in grip on ice and crud. Seamlessly transitions from soft to hard snow. Shockingly lightweight construction.

TIRED Blunt nose and swallowtail design means you’re not gonna be riding a lot of switch.

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt mines the humor in porn for “Don Jon”

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) – After a remarkable run with leading roles in films such as “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Inception,” actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt stepped behind the camera to direct “Don Jon’s Addiction,” a raunchy comedy that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

“Don Jon’s Addiction,” which Gordon-Levitt also wrote and stars in, leads a slate of films about sex on this year’s Sundance roster.

The film follows the story of Jon, a handsome young man who is unable to maintain a relationship, due to his addiction to pornography.

When Jon meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), a beautiful but high-maintenance woman obsessed with Hollywood romantic comedies, and Esther (Julianne Moore), an emotionally fragile widow, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

Gordon-Levitt, 31, a former child star who has risen through the ranks of television and independent film to become one of Hollywood’s most bankable actors, said he thought it would be “hilarious” to pair a porn addict with a woman addicted to romance films.

“I wanted to tell a love story, and in my observations, what gets in the way of love most the time is how people objectify each other,” the actor told Reuters on Saturday.

While the story uses pornography as a device, Gordon-Levitt emphasized it was not meant as a commentary on porn addiction.

“I wasn’t really focused on porn or porn addiction. It was really, to me, more of a metaphor,” he said. “It is astonishing how prevalent it is in our culture today.”

Moore said the story reflected what is happening in modern society and culture.

“Both (characters) create expectations that people can’t authentically meet in a relationship,” Moore said. “We have so much of that in our lives right now in the world, with all the media influences, so people are growing up with this expectation that this is how you have a relationship.”

“Don Jon” and other festival films such as “The Look of Love,” “Lovelace,” “kink” and “Interior. Leather Bar,” explore the ways sex affects individuals and their ability to form relationships.

Actor Tony Danza, who worked with Gordon-Levitt in the 1994 film “Angels in the Outfield” and plays his father in “Don Jon,” said the film would spark conversation.

“It’s just an uncomfortable subject, which lights everyone’s fire,” Danza said. “It exposes human nature, albeit with a sometimes uncomfortable subject. But he exposes a real slice of human nature, and it’s really prevalent right now.”

MODERN DAY DON JUAN

Gordon-Levitt, who founded the HitRECord project that brings together an online community of creative artists, said he found inspiration for “Don Jon’s” humor on social media platforms.

“If you go on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and you look at the humor on there, you might call it smutty, you might call it raunchy, but there’s also a sort of honesty to it,” he said.

Gordon-Levitt said he set out to shake up assumptions about porn addiction by playing his character “Jon” against type. Instead of playing a socially awkward guy who turns to porn because he cannot connect with women, “Jon” is a buff lothario. While he has plenty of female companions, Jon’s porn addiction warps his views and expectations of women and sabotages his relationships.

Jon is portrayed as an Italian-American, but Gordon-Levitt said the “archetype is beyond ethnicity.”

“I thought, ‘who is the current-day Don Juan,’ and the first thing I thought of was that guy with too much gel in his hair and a gym body … I loved it instantly and thought it would be so funny to play that part.”

Gordon-Levitt said he hoped audiences come away from the film “wanting to engage with each other.”

“I would hope people … examine each other as unique individuals as opposed to items on a checklist, and I hope they have a great time and laugh,” he said. “And I hope they go home and have transcendent sex.”

(Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Really?: The Claim: In Children, Flu Vaccine Can Prevent Ear Infection

Really?

Anahad O’Connor tackles health myths.

THE FACTS

For many children, flu season means an increased risk of ear infections as well.

Although many people do not realize it, the middle ear has a direct link to the upper respiratory tract: the auditory, or Eustachian, tube. Infections in the nose or sinus cavities thus can spread to the ear.

Ear infections are a common scourge of childhood. Most children under the age of 8 will have at least one, and over a quarter will experience them chronically.

Although ear infections can strike at any time, they do show some seasonal variation. In a large study published in December, researchers looked at more than 270,000 cases of acute ear infections. They found that ear infections increased along with the flu and illnesses caused by two other respiratory viruses (though not the common cold).

So does that mean that vaccinating against the flu might prevent ear infections in children? Some researchers think so.

In a report published in 2011, scientists pooled data from eight randomized studies of 24,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 7 years. They found that those who received the FluMist vaccine, a nasal spray made with live but weakened flu virus, had a significantly lower risk of acute ear infections compared with children who received a placebo. Among children who ultimately got the flu, those who had been vaccinated had a 40 percent reduction in ear infections compared with children who were given a placebo.

A study published last year also found that the flu vaccine reduced the incidence of acute ear infections in children. FluMist appears to be more effective than the shot, but scientists say more research is needed.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The flu vaccine appears to reduce the likelihood of ear infections in children.

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China Looks to Aerospace Industry in a Bid for Growth

TIANJIN, China — When Airbus executives arrived here seven years ago scouting for a location to assemble passenger jets, the broad, flat expanse next to Tianjin Binhai International Airport was a grassy field.

Now, Airbus, the European aerospace giant, has 20 large buildings and is churning out four A320 jetliners a month for mostly Chinese state-controlled carriers. The company also has two new neighbors — a sprawling rocket factory and a helicopter manufacturing complex — both producing for the Chinese military.

The rapid expansion of civilian and military aerospace manufacturing in Tianjin reflects China’s broader ambitions.

As Beijing’s leaders try to find new ways to invest $3 trillion of foreign reserves, the country has been aggressively expanding in industries with strong economic potential. The Chinese government and state-owned companies have already made a major push into financial services and natural resources, acquiring stakes in Morgan Stanley and Blackstone and buying oil and gas fields around the world.

Aerospace represents the latest frontier for China, which is eyeing parts manufacturers, materials producers, leasing businesses, cargo airlines and airport operators. The country now rivals the United States as a market for civilian airliners, which China hopes to start supplying from domestic production. And the new leadership named at the Party Congress in November has publicly emphasized long-range missiles and other aerospace programs in its push for military modernization.

If Boeing’s difficulties with its recently grounded aircraft, the Dreamliner, weigh on the industry, it could create opportunity. Chinese companies, which have plenty of capital, have been welcomed by some American companies as a way to create jobs. Wall Street has been eager, too, at a time when other merger activity has been weak.

Washington is trying to figure out what to do about China’s deal-making broadly. “Many of these transactions raise important security issues for our country,” said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which was created by Congress to monitor the bilateral relationship. “China’s interest in promoting these investments isn’t necessarily consistent with our own interests, and it’s appropriate to thoroughly examine the transactions.”

In aerospace, the Chinese deal-makers have deep ties to the military, raising additional issues for American regulators. The main contractor for the country’s air force, the state-owned China Aviation Industry Corporation, known as Avic, has set up a private equity fund to purchase companies with so-called dual-use technology that has civilian and military applications, with the goal of investing up to $3 billion. In 2010, Avic acquired the overseas licensing rights for small aircraft made by Epic Aircraft of Bend, Ore., using lightweight yet strong carbon-fiber composites — the same material used for high-performance fighter jets.

Provincial and local government agencies in Shaanxi province, a hub of Chinese military aircraft testing and production, have set up another, similar-sized fund for acquisitions. Last month, a consortium of Chinese investors, including the Shaanxi fund, struck a $4.23 billion deal with the American International Group to buy 80 percent of the International Lease Finance Corporation, which owns the world’s second-largest passenger jet fleet.

“There has always been an obvious cross-fertilization of ideas, expertise and money between the civilian and military,” said Martin Craigs, a longtime aerospace executive in Asia who is now the chairman of the Aerospace Forum Asia, a nonprofit group in Hong Kong. He added that Chinese companies had been actively hiring senior American and European aerospace engineers, so national security concerns could be circumvented by hiring the right people.

The push into aerospace coincides with growing worries in the West and across Asia about China’s increasingly assertive territorial claims, including the dispatch of Chinese warships to waters long patrolled by Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Coincidentally, hours after the A.I.G. deal was announced, two Chinese navy destroyers and two frigates showed up in disputed waters patrolled by Japan. China and Japan have stepped up public criticisms of each other since. And the Obama administration has begun a strategic “pivot,” shifting military forces from the Mideast back to the western Pacific, a move that Chinese officials have criticized as an attempt to contain their country.

Such confrontations in the region are drawing attention to China’s deal-making ambitions.

In October, a $1.79 billion bid by a business linked to Beijing’s municipal government to acquire the corporate jet and propeller plane operations of bankrupt Hawker Beechcraft in Wichita, Kan., fell apart over national security concerns in Washington. Executives found it hard to disentangle the civilian operations from the company’s military contracting business.

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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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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Soap Bubble Nebula

Informally known as the "Soap Bubble Nebula", this planetary nebula (officially known as PN G75.5+1.7) was discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich on July 6th, 2008. It was noted and reported by Keith Quattrocchi and Mel Helm on July 17th, 2008. This image was obtained with the Kitt Peak Mayall 4-meter telescope on June 19th, 2009 in the H-alpha (orange) and [OIII] (blue) narrowband filters. In this image, north is to the left and east is down.

PN G75.5+1.7 is located in the constellation of Cygnus, not far from the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888). It is embedded in a diffuse nebula which, in conjunction with its faintness, is the reason it was not discovered until recently. The spherical symmetry of the shell is remarkable, making it very similar to Abell 39.

Image: T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF [high-resolution] Read NOAO Conditions of Use before downloading

Caption: NOAO

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Singer Randy Travis reaches plea deal in assault case: TV

DALLAS (Reuters) – Country music singer Randy Travis has reached a plea agreement in a misdemeanor assault case arising from an altercation last summer in a Texas church parking lot, KTVT-TV reported on Saturday.

The Grammy winner will serve 90 days of deferred adjudication under a plea he entered on Friday in a municipal court in Plano, a Dallas suburb, the CBS-affiliated station in Dallas/Forth Worth reported.

Deferred adjudication lets a defendant plead “guilty” or “no contest” in exchange for meeting requirements such as probation during the period. The defendant may avoid a formal conviction or have his case dismissed once the requirements are met.

Police said Travis assaulted a man in the parking lot of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano on August 23 while attempting to intervene in a disagreement between a woman, who is now his fiancée, and her estranged husband.

Travis pleaded not guilty to the charge last month. He filed a lawsuit in a Collin County court against the man he was charged with assaulting, saying the incident was an attempt to injure and embarrass Travis, the TV station reported.

Attempts to contact Travis’ attorney on Saturday were unsuccessful.

The 53-year-old singer still faces charges of driving while intoxicated in an August 7 incident near his hometown of Tioga, about 60 miles north of Dallas.

Authorities are still investigating alleged threats he made to troopers who took him to jail, and no charges have been filed.

(Reporting by Marice Richter; Writing Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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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 Richters’ 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.

The safety board did not address the grounding issue or provide a timetable for its investigation, which industry experts said could take months.

But with investigators on a global quest to find out what went wrong, the safety board’s statement could mean 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 helping with the inquiry.

Speaking after the American safety board’s statement on Sunday, a Japanese investigator said their inquiry was not as far along as the American one.

“The N.T.S.B.'s investigation started earlier,” the inspector, Hideyo Kosugi, told Reuters. “We still haven’t taken X-rays or CT-scans of the battery. In our case, both the battery and the surrounding systems are still stored,” at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

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.

The plane’s charger and start power will be sent to Securaplane, a maker of aircraft avionics and electrical systems, which is based in Tucson, and where they will be tested. The controller for the auxiliary power unit will be test in Phoenix where its maker, Pratt & Whitney Power, is based.

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