Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.

The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.

Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.

"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.

In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.

Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

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Online:

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

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Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Armstrong Tearful Over Telling Kids Truth

Lance Armstrong, 41, began to cry today as he described finding out his son Luke, 13, was publicly defending him from accusations that he doped during his cycling career.

Armstrong said that he knew, at that moment, that he would have to publicly admit to taking performance-enhancing drugs and having oxygen-boosting blood transfusions when competing in the Tour de France. He made those admissions to Oprah Winfrey in a two-part interview airing Thursday and tonight.

"When this all really started, I saw my son defending me, and saying, 'That's not true. What you're saying about my dad? That's not true,'" Armstrong said, tearing up during the second installment of his interview tonight. "And it almost goes to this question of, 'Why now?'

"That's when I knew I had to talk," Armstrong said. "He never asked me. He never said, 'Dad, is this true?' He trusted me."

He told Winfrey that he sat down with his children over the holidays to come clean about his drug use.

"I said, 'Listen, there's been a lot of questions about your dad, about my career and whether I doped or did not dope,'" he said he told them. "'I always denied that. I've always been ruthless and defiant about that, which is why you defended me, which makes it even sicker' I said, 'I want you to know that it's true.'"

He added that his mother was "a wreck" over the scandal.

Armstrong said that the lowest point in his fall from grace and the top of the cycling world came when his cancer charity, Livestrong, asked him to consider stepping down.

George Burns/Harpo Studios, Inc.

Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: How Honest Was He? Watch Video

Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: Doping Confession Watch Video

After the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency alleged in October that Armstrong doped throughout his reign as Tour de France champion, Armstrong said, his major sponsors -- including Nike, Anheuser Busch and Trek -- called one by one to end their endorsement contracts with him.

"Everybody out," he said. "Still not the most humbling moment."

Then came the call from Livestrong, the charity he founded at age 25 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

"The story was getting out of control, which was my worst nightmare," he said. "I had this place in my mind that they would all leave. The one I didn't think would leave was the foundation.

"That was most humbling moment," he said.

Armstrong first stepped down as chairman of the board for the charity before being asked to end his association with the charity entirely. Livestrong is now run independently of Armstrong.

"I don't think it was 'We need you to step down,' but, 'We need you to consider stepping down for yourself,'" he said, recounting the call. "I had to think about that a lot. None of my kids, none of my friends have said, 'You're out,' and the foundation was like my sixth child. To make that decision, to step aside, that was big."

In Thursday's interview installment, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France admitted publicly for the first time that he doped throughout his career, confirming after months of angry denials the findings of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which stripped him of his titles in October.

He told Winfrey that he was taking the opportunity to confess to everything he had done wrong, including for years angrily denying claims that he had doped.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

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Foreigners still trapped in Sahara hostage crisis

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - More than 20 foreigners were captive or missing inside a desert gas plant on Saturday, nearly two days after the Algerian army launched an assault to free them that saw many hostages killed.

The standoff between the Algerian army and al Qaeda-linked gunmen - one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades - entered its fourth day, having thrust Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.

The number and fate of victims has yet to be confirmed, with the Algerian government keeping officials from Western countries far from the site where their countrymen were in peril.

Reports put the number of hostages killed at between 12 to 30, with possibly dozens of foreigners still unaccounted for - among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons, Americans and others.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed on Friday the death of one American, Frederick Buttaccio, in the hostage situation, but gave no further details.

Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among the seven foreigners confirmed dead in the army's storming, the Algerian security source told Reuters. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.

A U.S. official said on Friday that a U.S. Medevac flight carrying wounded of multiple nationalities had left Algeria.

By nightfall on Friday, the Algerian military was holding the vast residential barracks at the In Amenas gas processing plant, while gunmen were holed up in the industrial plant itself with an undisclosed number of hostages.

Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to a French military operation in neighboring Mali.

Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched an operation, but many hostages were killed in the assault. Algerian forces destroyed four trucks holding hostages, according to the family of a Northern Irish engineer who escaped from a fifth truck and survived.

Leaders of Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed frustration that the assault was ordered without consultation and officials have grumbled at the lack of information. Many countries also withheld details about their missing citizens to avoid releasing information that might aid the captors.

An Algerian security source said 30 hostages, including at least seven Westerners, had been killed during Thursday's assault, along with at least 18 of their captors. Eight of the dead hostages were Algerian, with the nationalities of the rest of the dead still unclear, he said.

Algeria's state news agency APS put the total number of dead hostages at 12, including both foreigners and locals.

The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.

Norway says eight Norwegians are still missing. JGC said it was missing 10 staff. Britain and the United States have said they have citizens unaccounted for but have not said how many.

The Algerian security source said 100 foreigners had been freed but 32 were still unaccounted for.

"We must be prepared for bad news this weekend but we still have hope," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

The attack has plunged international capitals into crisis mode and is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

"We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part," British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.

"(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome' before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held," Algeria's state news agency said on Friday, quoting a security source.

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Algerian commanders said they moved in on Thursday about 30 hours after the siege began, because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.

A French hostage employed by a French catering company said he had hidden in his room for 40 hours under the bed before he was rescued by Algerian troops, relying on Algerian employees to smuggle him food with a password.

"I put boards up pretty much all round," Alexandre Berceaux told Europe 1 radio. "I didn't know how long I was going to stay there ... I was afraid. I could see myself already ending up in a pine box."

The captors said their attack was a response to the French military offensive in neighboring Mali. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the single week since France first launched its strikes.

Paris says the incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary.

Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.

The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in a civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of Al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year, prompting the French intervention in that poor African former colony.

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.

Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said those responsible would be hunted down: "Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere. ... Those who would wantonly attack our country and our people will have no place to hide."

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London, Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries in Dublin, Andrew Quinn and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff; Editing by Andrew Roche, Tom Pfeiffer and Jackie Frank)

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Some children outgrow autism: study

WASHINGTON: Some children diagnosed as autistic at a young age see their symptoms completely disappear when they get older, new research shows.

The small-scale study -- published in the "Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry" -- included 34 subjects who were diagnosed very early on with the disorder but who, by ages 18 to 21, no longer exhibited any signs of it.

Unlike when they were little, the subjects no longer showed deficits in speech, communication, recognizing faces or social interactions -- all hallmarks of autism.

"Although the diagnosis of autism is not usually lost over time, the findings suggest that there is a very wide range of possible outcomes," said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Previous studies had already suggested it was possible for an autism diagnosis to disappear over time.

But this research looked deeper into the legitimacy of the phenomenon. The authors questioned whether the initial diagnosis had been accurate and whether the subjects had truly caught up to their peers.

In both cases, it turned out the answer was yes.

The researchers, led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut, reviewed the original reports written when the children were diagnosed and had them examined by additional experts outside the research group.

The data was compared to groups of young adults whose diagnoses of autism and its milder sibling, high-functioning autism, persisted, and to a control group.

The analysis showed that, among the 34 subjects whose autism symptoms had abated, doctors had originally observed lower levels of social deficits than among the subjects with high-functioning autism.

But other symptoms, including language delays and repetitive behaviour, had been on par with the other group.

And the contemporary testing of the study subjects -- all of whom attended school in mainstream classrooms with no special services -- confirmed that the young adults no longer exhibited any deficits.

But the authors emphasised that the study offers no insight on what percentage of children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, will grow out of their diagnosis.

"All children with ASD are capable of making progress with intensive therapy, but with our current state of knowledge most do not achieve the kind of optimal outcome that we are studying," said lead author Fein.

"Our hope is that further research will help us better understand the mechanisms of change so that each child can have the best possible life."

-AFP/fl

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MHA inquiry finds PCR response could have swifter in Nirbhaya case

NEW DELHI: An inquiry by the home ministry into allegations made by Nirbhaya's friend about the "tardy" response of Delhi Police in reaching her to hospital has found that the response time could indeed have been better.

The inquiry report by Veena Kumari Meena, a joint secretary in the home ministry, also said Dinesh Yadav, operator of the bus on which the gang rape took place, had been blatantly flouting norms by plying not only the rogue bus despite repeated challans, but was also running several other buses in his fleet without valid permits.

Sources in the government told TOI that Meena noted that though the PCRs responded to the distress call made on Nirbhaya's behalf within "reasonable" time and, as per PCR logs, left the spot within 15 minutes, this time could have been cut further had the police "reacted better" to the emergency.

Though exact details of the report are still awaited, sources hinted that the inquiry faulted Delhi Police for failing to immediately rush the victims to hospital despite the first PCR having reached the spot at 10.27 pm, by the police's own account. According to the Delhi Police, the control room received a call about the incident at 10.21 pm on December 16. PCR van Z-54 was assigned the call but another PCR, E-74, reached the spot on its own at 10.27 pm. Z-54 was there at 10.29 pm.

Z-54 finally left the spot with Nirbhaya and her friend at 10.39 pm, after arranging bed-sheets from a nearby hotel to cover them.

Nirbhaya's friend had, in an interview to a news channel, alleged that the PCRs which reached the spot wasted crucial time in arguing over jurisdiction and that the police were reluctant to shift an injured Nirbhaya to the PCR.

However, joint commissioner of police Vivek Gogia denied this, saying, "There was no issue over jurisdiction as PCR vans do not operate under police stations."

The inquiry was set up on January 7 to assess the alacrity of Delhi Police as well as the response of Safdarjung Hospital staff to the December 16 rape. Meena was asked to identify lapses and fix responsibility.

The terms of reference also included examining how the rogue bus continued to ply on Delhi roads despite being challaned several times, and to study the responsiveness of Dial 100 helpline.

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Will Obama's order lead to surge in gun research?

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Nearly as many Americans die from guns as from car crashes each year. We know plenty about the second problem and far less about the first. A scarcity of research on how to prevent gun violence has left policymakers shooting in the dark as they craft gun control measures without much evidence of what works.

That could change with President Barack Obama's order Wednesday to ease research restrictions pushed through long ago by the gun lobby. The White House declared that a 1996 law banning use of money to "advocate or promote gun control" should not keep the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies from doing any work on the topic.

Obama can only do so much, though. Several experts say Congress will have to be on board before anything much changes, especially when it comes to spending money.

How severely have the restrictions affected the CDC?

Its website's A-to-Z list of health topics, which includes such obscure ones as Rift Valley fever, does not include guns or firearms. Searching the site for "guns" brings up dozens of reports on nail gun and BB gun injuries.

The restrictions have done damage "without a doubt" and the CDC has been "overly cautious" about interpreting them, said Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"The law is so vague it puts a virtual freeze on gun violence research," said a statement from Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's like censorship: When people don't know what's prohibited, they assume everything is prohibited."

Many have called for a public health approach to gun violence like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.

"The answer wasn't taking away cars," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

However, while much is known about vehicles and victims in crashes, similar details are lacking about gun violence.

Some unknowns:

—How many people own firearms in various cities and what types.

—What states have the highest proportion of gun ownership.

—Whether gun ownership correlates with homicide rates in a city.

—How many guns used in homicides were bought legally.

—Where juveniles involved in gun fatalities got their weapons.

—What factors contribute to mass shootings like the Newtown, Conn., one that killed 26 people at a school.

"If an airplane crashed today with 20 children and 6 adults there would be a full-scale investigation of the causes and it would be linked to previous research," said Dr. Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"There's no such system that's comparable to that" for gun violence, he said.

One reason is changes pushed by the National Rifle Association and its allies in 1996, a few years after a major study showed that people who lived in homes with firearms were more likely to be homicide or suicide victims. A rule tacked onto appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services barred use of funds for "the advocacy or promotion of gun control."

Also, at the gun group's urging, U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, led an effort to remove $2.6 million from the CDC's injury prevention center, which had led most of the research on guns. The money was later restored but earmarked for brain injury research.

"What the NRA did was basically terrorize the research community and terrorize the CDC," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who headed the CDC's injury center at the time. "They went after the researchers, they went after institutions, they went after CDC in a very big way, and they went after me," he said. "They didn't want the data to be collected because they were threatened by what the data were showing."

Dickey, who is now retired, said Wednesday that his real concern was the researcher who led that gun ownership study, who Dickey described as being "in his own kingdom or fiefdom" and believing guns are bad.

He and Rosenberg said they have modified their views over time and now both agree that research is needed. They put out a joint statement Wednesday urging research that prevents firearm injuries while also protecting the rights "of legitimate gun owners."

"We ought to research the whole environment, both sides — what the benefits of having guns are and what are the benefits of not having guns," Dickey said. "We should study any part of this problem," including whether armed guards at schools would help, as the National Rifle Association has suggested.

Association officials did not respond to requests for comment. A statement Wednesday said the group "has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership" and that "attacking firearms" is not the answer. It said nothing about research.

The 1996 law "had a chilling effect. It basically brought the field of firearm-related research to a screeching halt," said Benjamin of the Public Health Association.

Webster said researchers like him had to "partition" themselves so whatever small money they received from the CDC was not used for anything that could be construed as gun policy. One example was a grant he received to evaluate a community-based program to reduce street gun violence in Baltimore, modeled after a successful program in Chicago called CeaseFire. He had to make sure the work included nothing that could be interpreted as gun control research, even though other privately funded research might.

Private funds from foundations have come nowhere near to filling the gap from lack of federal funding, Hargarten said. He and more than 100 other doctors and scientists recently sent Vice President Joe Biden a letter urging more research, saying the lack of it was compounding "the tragedy of gun violence."

Since 1973, the government has awarded 89 grants to study rabies, of which there were 65 cases; 212 grants for cholera, with 400 cases, yet only three grants for firearm injuries that topped 3 million, they wrote. The CDC spends just about $100,000 a year out of its multibillion-dollar budget on firearm-related research, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said.

"It's so out of proportion to the burden, however you measure it," said Dr. Matthew Miller, associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. As a result, "we don't know really simple things," such as whether tighter gun rules in New York will curb gun trafficking "or is some other pipeline going to open up" in another state, he said.

What now?

CDC officials refused to discuss the topic on the record — a possible sign of how gun shy of the issue the agency has been even after the president's order.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that her agency is "committed to re-engaging gun violence research."

Others are more cautious. The Union of Concerned Scientists said the White House's view that the law does not ban gun research is helpful, but not enough to clarify the situation for scientists, and that congressional action is needed.

Dickey, the former congressman, agreed.

"Congress is supposed to do that. He's not supposed to do that," Dickey said of Obama's order. "The restrictions were placed there by Congress.

"What I was hoping for ... is 'let's do this together,'" Dickey said.

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Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Lance Armstrong Admits to Doping

Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.

After years of denying that he had taken banned drugs and received oxygen-boosting blood transfusions, and attacking his teammates and competitors who attempted to expose him, Armstrong came clean with Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive interview, admitting to using banned substances for years.

"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," he said. "I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there. The truth isn't what I said.

"I'm a flawed character, as I well know," Armstrong added. "All the fault and all the blame here falls on me."

In October, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a report in which 11 former Armstrong teammates exposed the system with which they and Armstrong received drugs with the knowledge of their coaches and help of team physicians.

George Burns/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc./AP Photo

Lance Armstrong Admits Using Performance-Enhancing Drugs Watch Video

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Lance Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape Watch Video

The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," USADA said in its report.

As a result of USADA's findings, Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles. Soon, longtime sponsors including Nike began to abandon him, too.

READ MORE: Did Doping Cause Armstrong's Cancer?

Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win."

He told Winfrey that his competition "cocktail" consisted of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone, and that he had previously used cortisone. He would not, however, give Winfrey the details of when, where and with whom he doped during seven winning Tours de France between 1999 and 2005.

He said he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.

"It was a mythic perfect story and it wasn't true," Armstrong said of his fairytale story of overcoming testicular cancer to become the most celebrated cyclist in history.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012

Armstrong would not name other members of his team who doped, but admitted that as the team's captain he set an example. He admitted he was "a bully" but said there "there was a never a directive" from him that his teammates had to use banned substances.

"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.

"No," Armstrong said. "Scary."

"Did you feel bad about it?" she asked again.

"No," he said.

Armstrong said he thought taking the drugs was similar to filling his tires with air and bottle with water. He never thought of his actions as cheating, but "leveling the playing field" in a sport rife with doping.

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UN apologizes for Serb nationalist song ovation

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations apologized Thursday for the ovation given to a militant Serb nationalist song performed at a concert honoring Serbia's presidency of the U.N. General Assembly, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman said.

Martin Nesirky said that "the United Nations was aware that some people were offended by the song "March to the Drina," sung in the General Assembly hall Monday night. Ban afterward stood at the podium alongside Vuk Jeremic, the former Serbian foreign minister and current assembly president, for a photo with the performers, the Belgrade vocal group Viva Vox.

Ban "expressed sincere regret that people were offended by this song," Nesirky said, adding that the U.N. chief "obviously was not aware what the song was about or the use that has been made of it in the past."

"March to the Drina," was originally written as a nationalist hymn after World War I, about a battle on the Drina River that now separates Serbia and Bosnia. It features lyrics such as "The battle was fought, Near cold water, Blood was flowing, Blood was streaming by the Drina... for Freedom!"

It became a favorite of Serb nationalists, and was banned by Yugoslavia's Communist government after World War II. It was reportedly sung in the 1990s during Serb attacks on Bosnian towns along the Drina River.

After the Yugoslav wars of secession, Serbs voted in 1992 to make it their national anthem. Serbia's parliament bypassed it as being too provocative and adopted an old song from the country's royalist period instead.

"March on the Drina" was added to the U.N. concert as an encore, and delighted the crowd, which was mostly unaware of its connotations.

Jeremic released a statement later Thursday saying "some outrageous claims have been put forward."

"With solemn respect for all the victims of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, these malicious misinterpretations of the song performed as an encore ... focus on its alleged misuses during the tragic conflicts. They represent regrettable attempts at twisting the meaning of our musical gift offered to the world last Monday and are deeply offensive to the Serbian people," Jeremic said.

Meanwhile, the Congress of North American Bosniaks said: "The concert is a scandalous insult to the victims of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina because the orchestra played the infamous and offensive Serb nationalist song 'March on the River Drina.'"

It called on the United Nations to "remove Vuk Jeremic from his position as the President of the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly."

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Japan Dreamliners must remain grounded: govt

TOKYO: All Boeing Dreamliners operating in Japan must remain grounded until their batteries are confirmed to be safe, the government said Thursday, following a similar order in the US.

"Following the FAA (US Federal Aviation Administration) decision, Boeing 787s will not be allowed to fly until their battery safety is assured," said Hiroshi Kajiyama, Japan's vice transport minister, adding that a formal order would be issued later Thursday.

The comments come after a probable battery leak emerged as the focus of the investigation into the forced emergency landing of an All Nippon Airways (ANA) Dreamliner in Japan on Wednesday.

They also come after the FAA ordered that 787 Dreamliners in the United States stop flying until a fire risk linked to their lithium-ion batteries was resolved, dealing a huge blow to Boeing and its next-generation aircraft.

Lithium-ion batteries of different specifications are widely used in consumer electronics such as laptops and mobile phones.

Japan Airlines (JAL) and rival ANA -- which together operate half the world's Dreamliners -- voluntarily grounded their fleets after the ANA flight made an emergency landing in southwestern Japan.

India's transport safety agency said on Wednesday it was also launching a probe of the fuel-efficient Dreamliner.

Kajiyama on Thursday said officials investigating the safety scare "reported that there are problems in the battery" and other parts of the plane.

"Just by observing with the naked eye, the battery showed abnormalities, but electricity-linked equipment is complex so we need more investigation," he said.

Electrolyte leaks and burn marks have been found on the battery's metal casing, ANA said, with officials from the Japan Transport Safety Board working on the principle that it overheated, Kyodo News reported.

"Liquid leaked through the room floor to the inside of the outer wall of the aircraft," the agency quoted investigator Hideyo Kosugi as saying.

Japan's Transport Minister Akihiro Ota earlier described the emergency landing as a "serious incident that could have led to a serious accident".

Embattled Boeing on Wednesday backed its Dreamliner, considered an aviation milestone for its use of lightweight carbon fibre materials and advanced electronics systems.

"We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity," Boeing CEO Jim McNerney said in a statement.

"We will be taking every necessary step in the coming days to assure our customers and the travelling public of the 787's safety and to return the airplanes to service."

Boeing, whose shares make up part of the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average, tumbled 3.4 percent on Wednesday.

The FAA order means 30 of the world's 50 Dreamliners have been grounded, with the two Japanese carriers operating almost half the world's fleet.

United Airlines, the world's biggest airline, is currently the only US airline operating the 787, with six aircraft in service.

Speaking after the FAA announcement, an ANA spokeswoman told Dow Jones Newswires: "We'll examine the information we've gotten so far and exchange information further as necessary and will attempt to take appropriate steps as soon as possible."

The carrier, which together with JAL has invested billions of dollars in the Dreamliner with a combined order totalling 111 aircraft, "has not made any" decisions over future use of the aircraft, she added.

A spokesman for JAL said it was too early to comment on the FAA decision but added that "we will continue to collect information".

In Tokyo trading on Thursday, ANA shares were down 0.54 percent to 181 yen by the midday break while Japan Airlines was off 0.27 percent at 3,665 yen.

- AFP/al

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Hina Rabbani Khar proposes foreign minister-level talk to defuse tension along LoC

NEW DELHI: Stating that continued tension along the LoC is not in the interest of peace and stability in the region, Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar has offered to discuss the issue at the lever of the foreign ministers. In what appeared to be a climb-down after her "warm-mongering" remark against Indian leaders, Khar also said that Pakistan and India are both important countries of South Asia and that it is imperative that they demonstrate "requisite responsibility for ensuring peace by addressing all concerns through dialogue".

"Instead of issuing belligerent statements by the military and political leaders from across the border and ratcheting up tension, it is advisable for the two countries to discuss all concerns related to Line of Control (LoC) with a view to reinforcing respect for the ceasefire, may be at the level of the Foreign Ministers to sort out things," said Khar in a late night statement.

Khar said Pakistan has invested hugely in the dialogue process and has worked energetically to keep the dialogue process moving forward in a sustained and constructive manner. "Pakistan has gone out of the way to build constructive relationship with India," she said.

"Rhetoric and ratcheting up of tensions is certainly counter-productive. We are saddened and disappointed at the continued negative statements emanating from India both from the media as well as certain Indian leaders. For its part, Pakistan has observed a measured and deliberate self-restraint in our public statements on India. This has been done keeping in view the interest of peace in the region," she added.

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