Business Highlights

By The Associated Press

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Overcharging batteries eyed in Boeing 787 fires

WASHINGTON (AP) ⿿ It's likely that fires on two Boeing 787 Dreamliners were caused by overcharging lithium ion batteries, aviation safety and battery experts said Friday, pointing to developments in the investigation of the Boeing incidents as well as a battery fire in a business jet more than a year ago.

An investigator in Japan, where a 787 made an emergency landing earlier this week, said the charred insides of the plane's lithium ion battery show the battery received voltage in excess of its design limits.

The similarity of the burned battery from the All Nippon Airways flight to the burned battery in a Japan Airlines 787 that caught fire Jan. 7 while the jet was parked at Boston's Logan International Airport suggests a common cause, Japan's transport ministry said.

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Transcripts show Fed underestimated crisis in 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) ⿿ Federal Reserve officials in 2007 badly underestimated the scope of the approaching financial crisis and how it would tip the U.S. economy into the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, transcripts of the Fed's policy meetings show.

The meetings occurred as the country was on the brink of its worst financial crisis since the 1930s. As the year went on, Fed officials shifted their focus away from the risk of inflation as they slowly began to recognize the severity of the problem.

Beginning in September 2007, the Fed cut interest rates and took extraordinary steps to try to ease credit and shore up confidence in the banking system. Throughout the year, the housing crisis deepened, home prices weakened and subprime mortgages soured.

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China's growth rebounds but still vulnerable

BEIJING (AP) ⿿ China's economy is finally rebounding from its deepest slump since the 2008 global crisis but the shaky recovery could be vulnerable to a new downturn in global trade.

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