Notre Dame hoax tip was emailed: Deadspin.com editor

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The tip that led to the revelation that one of the most widely recounted U.S. sports narratives of the past year was a hoax came to the editors of an online sports blog as many of their news tips do: an unsolicited email.

That email led Deadspin.com assignment editor Timothy Burke on the hunt of a story that exposed the heart-wrenching tale of standout Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o's dead girlfriend as a fabrication, Burke said on CNN on Thursday.

Te’o sprang to national prominence last fall when the senior co-captain was seen heroically leading the Fighting Irish to an underdog victory against the Michigan State Spartans within days of learning his grandmother had died. Moreover, it was widely reported, Te’o's girlfriend had died of leukemia just hours after his grandmother’s death.

From that point, Te’o's narrative was a prominent feature in coverage of the team, which has a dedicated following and whose games are televised nationally each week.

Notre Dame went on to an undefeated regular season, culminating in a berth in the national championship game, which the Fighting Irish lost to the Alabama Crimson Tide on January 7.

“We got an email last week at Deadspin.com that said ‘Hey, there’s something real weird about Lennay Kekua, Manti Te’o's allegedly dead girlfriend. You guys should check it out,’” Burke said.

The email prompted Burke and co-author Jack Dickey to begin searching online for background on Kekua. “So we start Googling the name Lennay Kekua. We can’t find any evidence of this person that wasn’t attached to stories about her being Manti Te’o's dead girlfriend.”

Their investigation led about a week later to a 4,000-word expose, published Wednesday under the headline “Blarney,” that painstakingly debunked the story of Kekua’s existence. The story went viral online.

Within hours of its publication, officials at Notre Dame, one of the most powerful institutions in college football and U.S. collegiate athletics overall, held a hastily organized press conference to assert that Te’o had been duped in a hoax perpetrated by a friend of his.

The girlfriend, who called herself Kekua and claimed to be a Stanford University graduate, was merely an online persona who “ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia,” university spokesman Dennis Brown said in a statement.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said the university learned of the hoax from Te’o on December 26. Te’o answered questions forthrightly and private investigators uncovered several things that pointed to Te’o being a victim in the case, Swarbrick said.

Deadspin’s Burke said he remains skeptical of this being a hoax perpetrated on Te’o rather than by Te’o.

“Ask yourself why and what incentive a person would have to execute such a lengthy, time-consuming and expensive con that would involve multiple people and essentially consume his entire life just to screw around with a guy that he knows?” Burke said on CNN.

Deadspin.com said the woman whose photograph was frequently shown on TV and in news reports about Kekua was actually a young California woman who had never met or communicated with Te’o. The website declined to identify her by name.

On Thursday, TV newsmagazine “Inside Edition” said the woman in the photograph was a 23-year-old marketing professional in Los Angeles named Diane O’Meara. Inside Edition, which is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution, said O’Meara was a former classmate of one of Te’o's friends. It Aredid not give the friend’s name.

In the expose published Wednesday, Deadspin.com said a friend of Te’o's named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was “the man behind” the hoax.

Outside Tuiasosopo’s home in Palmdale, California on Thursday, a member of his family who did not identify himself told reporters, “Please, we have no comment. Please respect that.”

The Te’o hoax is the latest black eye Notre Dame’s legendary football program has suffered in recent years.

In 2011, the school was fined $ 42,000 by an Indiana agency over the death of football videographer Declan Sullivan, 20, who died in October 2010 after a hydraulic lift he was using to record practice toppled over in high winds.

In 2010, Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg, a freshman at nearby St. Mary’s College, killed herself ten days after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexual battery. Her family began questioning the campus police department’s reluctance to gather evidence and a 15-day delay in interviewing the accused.

After a federal investigation into the matter, the school agreed to revise its policies on sexual misconduct.

(Additional reporting by Dan Burns, Dana Feldman, David Bailey and Mary Wisniewski.; Editing by Vicki Allen, Greg McCune and Andrew Hay)

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Legend, 2 Chainz, MC Lyte honored at Hip-Hop Ball

WASHINGTON (AP) — John Legend believes hip-hop played its part in helping Barack Obama become president, and he's proud at how the genre has matured over the years.

"I think hip-hop had a role in making sure we elected a black president in America because we made it so that black people were in people's homes ... through our music and through our culture," the R&B crooner said Sunday night at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball.

"I think it made Barack Obama and more people like him possible, so I'm really thankful for hip-hop and the role it plays in society," he continued.

Legend was awarded the humanitarian award at Sunday's event, and it was one of many honors handed out at the Harman Center for Arts.

Hip-hop pioneers MC Lyte and Doug E. Fresh were both given lifetime achievement awards. Fresh even hit the stage, beat boxing while comedian-actor-singer Wayne Brady cooed Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" At one point, Brady even busted out his own rhymes.

Rapper Yo Yo earned a roaring cheer when she hit the stage to honor MC Lyte; Lil Mama also paid tribute to the "Ruffneck" rapper.

2 Chainz, who had a breakthrough year with his Grammy-nominated solo debut and multiple rap hits, earned the street soldier award for encouraging young voters as a spokesperson for the Hip-Hop Caucus' "Respect My Vote!" campaign.

"Doing my thing on the charts is one thing, but to be getting honored on another avenue, it just feels like a blessing," he said in an interview. "I'm keeping my head leveled and staying humble."

Actress Rosario Dawson won the vanguard award for her work as chairman of the Voto Latino organization.

"It's time to step out of the shadows. It's time to not just be talked about by other people, it's time to take the leadership ourselves and that first step of leadership is voting," Dawson said of the importance of the Latino vote.

Rappers Swizz Beatz and Meek Mill also earned honors at the event, attended by a few hundred hip-hop fans, including model Tyson Beckford, former NBA star Dikembe Mutumbo and Victor Cruz of the New York Giants. La La Anthony and Terrence J hosted the ball.

British singer Marsha Ambrosius also delivered a rousing performance, and playful jokes about Obama.

"I got a call from the president and he asked me to perform his favorite song," she said before singing the R&B jam "Hope She Cheats on You (With a Basketball Player)."

Then she sang "Butterflies," a song she co-wrote for Michael Jackson's 2001 "Invincible" album.

"This might have been his favorite," she said.

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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Well: A Check on Physicals

“Go Beyond Your Father’s Annual Physical. Live Longer, Feel Better”

This sales pitch for the Princeton Longevity Center’s “comprehensive exam” promises, for $5,300, to take “your health beyond the annual physical.” But it is far from certain whether this all-day checkup, and others less inclusive, make a meaningful difference to health or merely provide reassurance to the worried well.

Among physicians, researchers and insurers, there is an ongoing debate as to whether regular checkups really reduce the chances of becoming seriously ill or dying of an illness that would have been treatable had it been detected sooner.

No one questions the importance of regular exams for well babies, children and pregnant women, and the protective value of specific exams, like a Pap smear for sexually active women and a colonoscopy for people over 50. But arguments against the annual physical for all adults have been fueled by a growing number of studies that failed to find a medical benefit.

Some experts note that when something seemingly abnormal is picked up during a routine exam, the result is psychological distress for the patient, further testing that may do more harm than good, and increased medical expenses.

“Part of the problem of looking for abnormalities in perfectly well people is that rather a lot of us have them,” Dr. Margaret McCartney, a Scottish physician, wrote in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper. “Most of them won’t do us any harm.”

She cited the medical saga of Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada. A CT scan performed as part of a checkup in 2005 revealed two small lumps in Mr. Mulroney’s lungs. Following surgery, he developed an inflamed pancreas, which landed him in intensive care. He spent six weeks in the hospital, then was readmitted a month later for removal of a cyst on his pancreas caused by the inflammation.

The lumps on his lungs, by the way, were benign. But what if, you may ask, Mr. Mulroney’s lumps had been cancer? Might not the discovery during a routine exam have saved his life?

Logic notwithstanding, the question of benefits versus risks from routine exams can be answered only by well-designed scientific research.

Defining the value of a routine checkup — determining who should get one and how often — is especially important now, because next year the Affordable Care Act will add some 30 million people to the roster of the medically insured, many of whom will be eligible for government-mandated preventive care through an annual exam.

Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who directed a study of annual physicals in 2007, reported that an estimated 44.4 million adults in the United States undergo preventive exams each year. He concluded that if every adult were to receive such an exam, the health care system would be saddled with 145 million more visits every year, consuming 41 percent of all the time primary care doctors spend with patients.

There is already a shortage of such doctors and not nearly enough other health professionals — physician assistants and nurse practitioners — to meet future needs. If you think the wait to see your doctor is too long now, you may want to stock up on some epic novels to keep you occupied in the waiting room in the future.

Few would challenge the axiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Lacking incontrovertible evidence for the annual physical, this logic has long been used to justify it:

¶ If a thorough exam and conversation about your well-being alerts your doctor to a health problem that is best addressed sooner rather than later, isn’t that better than waiting until the problem becomes too troublesome to ignore?

¶ What if you have a potentially fatal ailment, like heart disease or cancer, that may otherwise be undetected until it is well advanced or incurable?

¶ And wouldn’t it help to uncover risk factors like elevated blood sugar or high cholesterol that could prevent an incipient ailment if they are reversed before causing irreparable damage?

Even if there is no direct medical benefit, many doctors say that having their patients visit once a year helps to maintain a meaningful relationship and alert doctors to changes in patients’ lives that could affect health. It is also an opportunity to give patients needed immunizations and to remind them to get their eyes, teeth and skin checked.

But the long-sacrosanct recommendation that everyone should have an annual physical was challenged yet again recently by researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen.

The research team, led by Dr. Lasse T. Krogsboll, analyzed the findings of 14 scientifically designed clinical trials of routine checkups that followed participants for up to 22 years. The team found no benefit to the risk of death or serious illness among seemingly healthy people who had general checkups, compared with people who did not. Their findings were published in November in BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal).

In introducing their analysis, the Danish team noted that routine exams consist of “combinations of screening tests, few of which have been adequately studied in randomized trials.” Among possible harms from health checks, they listed “overdiagnosis, overtreatment, distress or injury from invasive follow-up tests, distress due to false positive test results, false reassurance due to false negative test results, adverse psychosocial effects due to labeling, and difficulties with getting insurance.”

Furthermore, they wrote, “general health checks are likely to be expensive and may result in lost opportunities to improve other areas of health care.”

In summarizing their results, the team said, “We did not find an effect on total or cause-specific mortality from general health checks in adult populations unselected for risk factors or disease. For the causes of death most likely to be influenced by health checks, cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality, there were no reductions either.”

What, then, should people do to monitor their health?

Whenever you see your doctor, for any reason, make sure your blood pressure is checked. If a year or more has elapsed since your last blood test, get a new one.

Keep immunizations up to date, and get the screening tests specifically recommended based on your age, gender and known risk factors, including your family and personal medical history.

And if you develop a symptom, like unexplained pain, shortness of breath, digestive problems, a lump, a skin lesion that doesn’t heal, or unusual fatigue or depression, consult your doctor without delay. Seek further help if the initial diagnosis and treatment fails to bring relief.

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DealBook: In Davos, Atmosphere for Bankers Improves

Two years ago, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told an audience in Davos, Switzerland, that people should stop picking on bankers. Mr. Dimon is still waiting for his wish to come true.

Bankers, always a big presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos, will arrive this year under less regulatory pressure and with better profits than in past years. But they are still on the defensive.

Mr. Dimon, scheduled to appear on one of the first panels when the Davos forum opens on Wednesday, is again embroiled in controversy. Last week, JPMorgan’s board cut his pay for 2012 in half, to $11.5 million, holding him accountable for a multibillion-dollar loss on derivatives trading.

International bankers are under pressure from the law enforcement authorities as well, and examples can be found near Davos.

UBS, based in Zurich, agreed to pay a $1.5 billion fine to the global authorities after admitting this month that it had helped manipulate a benchmark rate used to set mortgage and other interest rates.

And Wegelin & Company, a private bank based in St. Gallen, Switzerland, shut down this month after admitting it had helped wealthy Americans evade taxes. The bank, founded in 1741, was the oldest in Switzerland.

At a news conference last week in Washington, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, lamented a “waning commitment” to tougher financial regulation and called upon the banking authorities to finish the job of fixing the world’s banks.

For all that, though, bankers may find the atmosphere in Davos a bit more congenial than in some recent years. Among the government overseers who will also be in attendance, there appears to be a growing sentiment that the banks have taken enough abuse.

This month in Basel, Switzerland, for instance, an international gathering of central bankers and bank supervisors relaxed new rules that were intended to ensure that banks would be able to survive an event like the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The rules, which are not binding but serve as a benchmark for national regulators, would require banks to maintain a 30-day supply of cash or liquid assets that are easy to convert into cash. But after the decision in Basel this month, banks would have until 2019 to accumulate the additional cash and assets, instead of 2015.

The regulators also broadened the types of assets that could be used to include even some mortgage-backed securities — the same general class of security that was at the heart of the crisis.

Many analysts see the decision as a gift to the banking industry, which had insisted that planned new regulations would lead banks to curtail lending. Bank stocks in Europe rose after the decision.

“Most bankers I talked to breathed a huge sigh of relief,” said Cornelius K. Hurley, a professor at the Boston University School of Law and former assistant general counsel to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve.

Gavan Nolan, a credit analyst at Markit, a data provider in London, agreed that changes in the rules “went further than many had presumed, and in a direction that seems to favor the banks.” Still, he wrote in a note to clients, “the effects shouldn’t be overstated,” adding that the rules “will still make it more difficult to make money, in comparison to the previous era.”

The discussions at Davos may offer clues about whether the Basel decisions foreshadow other concessions.

There is a risk that efforts to rein in financial risk could lose momentum as the trauma of Lehman’s collapse fades, Mr. Hurley said.

“We said to ourselves back in 2008, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” he said. “It seems the farther away we get, the evidence is that we are wasting it.”

The World Economic Forum tends to be a place for talk rather than action, but it is one of the few events that reliably brings central bankers, regulators, economists, legislators and bankers under one snow-laden roof.

The discussions have sometimes been contentious, as in 2010 when American policy makers like Representative Barney Frank met behind closed doors with top bankers including Brian T. Moynihan, then the chief executive of Bank of America.

Mr. Frank left the meeting fuming about bankers’ unwillingness to accept more safeguards and vowed to impose them anyway. Six months later, Congress passed the sweeping financial regulation bill known as Dodd-Frank.

But Mr. Frank has retired, and there are signs that the officials who set the tone for global regulation of banks have become more worried about a credit squeeze in Europe than about the risk of another banking crisis.

Some of the most influential people in the regulation debate are sounding more conciliatory.

“We welcome these rules, we think they are important,” Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank and a member of the group that met in Basel, said this month. “We also welcome their gradual phasing in.”

At least some banks have had a profit rebound recently, including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, whose chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, is scheduled to take part in a panel on competitiveness at Davos on Friday.

European banks are still ailing, though, which threatens the fragile calm that has prevailed in financial markets. Whereas the euro zone debt crisis has fallen most heavily on southern European countries like Spain, weakness in the banking system is a problem even in healthier countries like Germany.

Deutsche Bank, the largest lender in Germany, is profitable but faces official investigations in Germany and the United States, mostly related to its activities before the financial crisis.

In December, police officers surrounded the bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt and seized documents as part of a tax-evasion inquiry that involves one of the bank’s co-chief executives, Jürgen Fitschen.

Other large German banks like Commerzbank and several of the state-owned landesbanks are still hobbled by bad investments they made before Lehman collapsed.

Belgium, France and Austria also have troubled banks, even though they are not considered to be countries in crisis.

“The bottom line is that I don’t think the banking system is in good condition, and I don’t expect it to come back to good condition soon,” said Nicolas Véron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.

Mr. Véron said he did not have reservations about the decision in Basel to ease new regulations on liquid assets, noting that previously there were no rules at all on liquidity.

“I think the big headline remains that liquidity regulations have been introduced,” he said. “When you look at what has happened in the crisis, that is a good thing.”

But he sounded less optimistic that policy makers meeting in Davos or elsewhere were making progress on other important banking issues, like how to close down terminally ill banks at no cost to taxpayers.

“We have not had the systemwide restructuring process I believe is necessary to get back to sound conditions,” he said.

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

TOKYO — The National Transportation Safety Board has ruled out excess voltage as the cause of a battery fire on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet operated by Japan Airlines at Boston’s Logan Airport this month, the agency said on Sunday.

Last week, governments across the world grounded the Dreamliner jet after a problem with a lithium-ion battery on a second 787 plane, flown by All Nippon Airways forced the jet to make an emergency landing in western Japan.

The agency said in a statement forwarded by a Boeing Japan representative that examination of the flight recorder data from the JAL B-787 airplane indicated that the battery in the auxiliary power unit “did not exceed its designed voltage of 32 volts.”

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

American investigators have examined the lithium-ion battery that powered the auxiliary unit, where the battery fire started in the JAL plane, as well as several other components removed from the airplane, including wire bundles and battery management circuit boards, the safety agency statement said.

On Tuesday, the investigating group will convene in Arizona to test and examine the battery charger and download nonvolatile memory from the controller of the auxiliary power unit, it added.

The GS Yuasa Corporation of Japan makes the batteries for the Dreamliner, while Thales of France makes the control systems for the battery.

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Will.i.am, Legend take part in young voters event

WASHINGTON (AP) — Will.i.am says though he's an active supporter of President Barack Obama, don't expect the Black Eyed Peas leader to become a politician.

"Nope. I like it from this angle," he said in an interview Saturday night.

Will.i.am attended an event for OurTime.org, a non-profit organization that encourages young people to vote. Several hundred people packed the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, where John Legend, Common and T-Pain performed.

The event was just one of will.i.am's inaugural appearances: He's attending the Candle Light Inaugural Ball and Green Inaugural Ball on Sunday and will be a guest at Obama's public swearing in ceremony Monday and at the Inaugural Ball later that day.

He said it "feels good" to lend his hand to the Obama campaign and that he wants to see young voters do more.

"This is important for the youth to realize how powerful they are and to stay active and stay informed, and go out when it's time to vote. And not just for a presidential candidate, but for local government, too," he said.

Common kicked off the live performances with songs like "The People" and "Testify." He even danced and kissed a fan onstage — and on the lips — while Beyonce's "Party" blasted in the background.

"Just be whoever you are no matter what they say," Common said to the crowd.

The rapper also hit the stage with John Legend, who played piano as Common performed "The Light." Legend slowed the night's upbeat mood, crooning on songs like "Green Light," ''Tonight (Best You Ever Had)" and "Ordinary People."

Newly crowned Miss America 2013 Mallory Hagan, actress Sophie Bush and Arianna Huffington also attended.

Rapper-singer T-Pain closed the night, performing hits like "Bartender" ''5 o'clock," ''Good Life" and "Blame It."

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

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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

TOKYO — The National Transportation Safety Board has ruled out excess voltage as the cause of a battery fire on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet operated by Japan Airlines at Boston’s Logan Airport this month, the agency said on Sunday.

Last week, governments across the world grounded the Dreamliner jet after a problem with a lithium-ion battery on a second 787 plane, flown by All Nippon Airways forced the jet to make an emergency landing in western Japan.

The agency said in a statement forwarded by a Boeing Japan representative that examination of the flight recorder data from the JAL B-787 airplane indicated that the battery in the auxiliary power unit “did not exceed its designed voltage of 32 volts.”

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

American investigators have examined the lithium-ion battery that powered the auxiliary unit, where the battery fire started in the JAL plane, as well as several other components removed from the airplane, including wire bundles and battery management circuit boards, the safety agency statement said.

On Tuesday, the investigating group will convene in Arizona to test and examine the battery charger and download nonvolatile memory from the controller of the auxiliary power unit, it added.

The GS Yuasa Corporation of Japan makes the batteries for the Dreamliner, while Thales of France makes the control systems for the battery.

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Algerian Hostage Standoff Continues; U.S. Victim Identified

Anis Belghoul/Associated Press

An Algerian military truck on a road leading to a Saharan gas field where militants still held at least 10 foreign hostages on Friday.

BAMAKO, Mali — Islamic militants in Algeria continued to hold at least 10 and possibly dozens of foreign hostages Saturday as details started emerging about some of the people killed in the standoff.

The United States said for the first time that Americans were among the remaining captives and confirmed the first known death of an American hostage, Frederick Buttaccio, 58, of Katy, Tex. Linked In, the social networking site for professionals, lists a Frederick Buttaccio as a sales operations coordinator for BP, the British energy giant that helped run the complex, but a BP executive said it would not comment on any employee who may have been at the facility.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, identified a French citizen who was killed as Yann Desjeux, but he added that “the lives of three others of our compatriots who were on the site during the terrorist attack have been saved.” The country’s defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Saturday that the government believed that no more French nationals were being held hostage.

As the hostage situation entered its fourth day, there were no signs of a resolution. A senior Algerian government official said no talks were planned with the militants.

“They are being told to surrender, that’s it,” the official said. “No negotiations. That is a doctrine with us.”

French television said that shooting had erupted again at the site early Saturday, but gave no details.

Two days after the Algerian army began an assault to try to free the hostages, all foreign governments and companies with citizens at risk were still scrambling for basic information about the missing as they ferried escaped hostages out of the country on military aircraft and urged Algeria to use restraint.

The Norwegian energy firm Statoil said that six workers for the company, all of them Norwegian, were unaccounted for.

“We can never lose hope,” Statoil’s chief executive, Helge Lund, told a news conference Saturday morning. “Bringing home our employees is our primary goal.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Washington on Friday that the situation in Algeria was “extremely difficult and dangerous.”

Describing a conversation she had earlier Friday with Algeria’s prime minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, Mrs. Clinton said she had emphasized to him that “the utmost care must be taken to preserve innocent life.”

Algeria’s state news agency, APS, said 12 Algerian and foreign workers had been killed since Algerian special forces began an assault against the kidnappers on Thursday. It was the highest civilian death toll Algerian officials that have provided in the aftermath of the assault, which freed captives and killed kidnappers. The incident was one of the worst mass abductions of foreign workers in years.

Previous unofficial estimates of the foreign casualties have ranged from 4 to 35. The American who died, Mr. Buttaccio, lived in a gated community in Katy, a suburb that is about 30 miles west of downtown Houston.The Algerian news agency also said that 18 militants had been killed and that the country’s special forces were dealing with remnants of a “terrorist group” that was still holding hostages in the refinery area of the gas field in remote eastern Algeria.

It also gave a new sense of how many people may have been at the facility when the militants seized it on Wednesday, asserting that nearly 650 had managed to leave the site since then, including 573 Algerians and nearly half of the 132 foreigners it said had been abducted. But that still left many people unaccounted for.

The senior Algerian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he believed there were about 10 hostages under the control of possibly 13 to 15 militants, but he emphasized that “nothing is certain” about the numbers, which have varied wildly since the crisis began. He also said that there were other workers on the site “who are still in hiding” but that the Algerian military had secured the residential part of the gas-field complex.

“What remains are a few terrorists, holding a few hostages, who have taken refuge in the gas factory,” he said. “It’s a site that’s very tricky to handle.”

Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako, and Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong. Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Bumiller, John F. Burns and Julia Werdigier from London; Alan Cowell, Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare from Paris; Michael R. Gordon, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker from Washington; Martin Fackler and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo; Clifford Krauss and Manny Fernandez from Houston, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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

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

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

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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