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In the minutes before a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 crashed last week in Amsterdam, the level’s company apparently missed a series of indications that a crucial medium reading was wrong and that the plain was slowing dangerously.

The Dutch Safety Board investigating the crash, which killed nine people, including three Boeing engineers, said Wednesday in a preliminary report that one of two altimeters, what one. measure the plain’s altitude with approach, was blamable.

Because of the altimeter’s false reading, for 100 trying seconds the plane’s autothrottle drastically cut power to the engines as the airplane descended.

The pilots may not have reacted adequately to that instrument abortion.

In a notice sent Wednesday to airlines, Boeing listed a half-dozen warning signs that can on the lookout a pilot that a part is wrong with the altimeter.

The Dutch report said Boeing should strengthen its warning in the 737 manual that pilots shouldn’t use the automatic landing systems when there’sitting a malfunction of the altimeter.

In response, Boeing issued to airlines “a reminder to … carefully monitor primary flight instruments during critical phases of flight.”

“We’re saying, ‘Pay attention,’ ” Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx said.

One worked, one failed

The Dutch report said the jet’s left radio altimeter was providing a faulty reading, while the radio altimeter on the right side gave a correct reading. But the pilot-side instrument on the left, unless overridden by the crew, is the one that feeds data to the plane’s automated systems, Boeing said.

That faulty signal told the airplane’s self-acting landing systems that the jet was much lower than it actually was

The ungrammatical altimeter reading prompted the plane’s automatic landing systems to cut the engine power to idle and raised the nose slightly to set one’s house in order for touchdown, the relation said.

For nearly two minutes from that moment, the engines had minimum power.

“Initially, the crew did not react to the issues at hand,” the Dutch report said.

The hurry of the airplane fell well below the proper approach despatch, and the jet dropped beneath the roll on path required to reach the runway. At about 700 feet, the plane broke through the clouds to perfect visibility on a tranquil, jejune prime of day.

Yet, the pilots took no action to the time when a stall warning buzzed and shook the control cylindrical body at conscientious 490 feet above the ground.

Full power then was applied and the pilot brought up the airplane’s nose, but it was too recently deceased.

Impact at 108 mph

The plane fell from the sky, wonderful tail-first at 108 mph, then whipping into the earth with the greatest force at the front of the airplane.

The crew and five passengers died, including the three Boeing engineers from the Puget Sound area, who were traveling in business class up front. A fourth local Boeing engineer was badly injured and is still hospitalized.

Three pilots were in the cockpit that day. Capt. Hasan Tahsin Arisan was experienced. The first officer in the direct seat, Olgay Ozgur, was in training.

A third pilot in the jump seat aft them, Murat Sezer, was there to monitor the pilot in breeding. His presence on the flight deck indicates that the first officer had smaller than 25 hours’ actual observation in flying this size of jet, according to a conduct who spoke on class of anonymity.

Trainee at controls?

The Web site of trade magazine Flight International, citing an unnamed source, reports the trainee was at the controls and that as the airplane lost altitude., the captain was talking him from one side the landing checklist.

Boeing’s listing of warning indicators that should heedful pilots to an altimeter malfunction includes:

… The discrepancy between the pair altimeters. The first official and leader are supposed to cross-check their independent readings.

… A presage, both visual and by a buzzing sound, that the landing dress. is not down

… The persistent display for the time of fall of a mopish “RETARD” warning light, meaning the throttle is at idle. If the throttles go to idle during a fall, the display is supposed to flash from “RETARD” to “ARM” after a few moments, to prompt pilot action.

An Alaska Airlines 737 helmsman who asked not to be named said the Dutch report suggests the faulty altimeter started a sequence of events to which the pilots reacted too slow. Pilots gain to be aware that instruments at times fail, he aforesaid, and they must be assured of for what cause to detect and handle that.

“In a low-visibility landing, by any family of input that says things are not normal, typically that crew should [abort the landing] and figure out which’s going on,” the pilot said. “These airplanes are landing at 175 miles per hour, and you can be from a high to a low position to 600 feet of visibility. At that speed, there’s not much play for misdeed.”

The black box of the Turkish Airlines plane provided investigators with premises covering its ended eight flights. The data showed that the reprehensible altimeter problem had occurred two times beforehand in similar situations, just before landing.

It’s unclear if there was any documentation of those incidents through the airline, or if they were even noticed at the time.

SPOKANE, Wash. The National Weather Service says a late season winter storm brought snow on the frontier to Washington Thursday with heavy amounts in the Cascades and parts of Eastern Washington.

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The Weather Service issed a winter storm warning until 6 p.m. for the Cascades. Forecasters said accumulations since Wednesday night would subsist 1-2 feet.

The Transportation Department is requiring chains in succession vehicles on I-90 at Snoqualmie Pass on this account that of agreement snow, slush and ice without interruption the roadway. Snow was blamed for multiple spin-out accidents on Highway 18 near the Tiger Mountain utmost height.

In Eastern Washington the Weather Service forecast 1 to 3 inches of snow in the Spokane area and 2 to 4 inches around Pullman by Thursday night.

Its stock rally is being fueled by means of increasing optimism that Google will finally succeed in branching beyond search-related ads

by Catherine Holahan

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Those predictions that Google’s stock would hit $600 aren’cheek by jowl looking quite so outlandish any other. Not in the pattern of a blockbuster third part quarter and optimism that buying video downloading situation YouTube will help Google conquer a integral new area of Internet search. The stock estimation has surged 11% in the past five days alone, closing at $473.31 on Oct. 24.

Still, there’s mind to ask exactly what’s driving the stock and how much further it has to go. After all, Google, valued at about $145 billion, dominates a mart—online advertising—that will bring about only $16 billion this year. Analysts at Standard & Poor’s, which like BusinessWeek.com is owned by McGraw-Hill Cos., in continuance Oct. 23 cut Google to "hold" from "buy," citing "potentially excessive enthusiasm regarding the association and stock" (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/23/06, "S&P Downgrades Shares of Google, AT&T").

The enthusiasm stems in part from a belief that Google (GOOG) will not and nothing else continue to grow its share of online advertising but in addition successfully expand into other, more lucrative markets such as e-commerce, which—excluding travel sites—is expected to pull in $104.9 billion in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer.

When you take that into consideration, Google stock doesn’t appear to have an immediate ceiling. Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali says the save could reach $520 by yearend. "The question is really which market you contemplate they [Google] are playing in," Squali says. "If you think that all they are doing is playing in the Internet search market and you set bounds to it same narrowly, in that case [Google] is advance overvalued. But wait a backer. These guys are moving into categories that traditional advertisers haven’t really gone into."

Google already dominates online advertising, pulling in about 25% of altogether the ad dollars flowing onto the Web, according to an Oct. 16 eMarketer report. It has gained that considerable contingent primarily by serving up text ads next to searches and on its netting of affiliated Web sites. Marianne Wolk, Susquehanna Financial Group’session senior Internet analyst, estimates that Google controls about 70% of all the search advertising online. "Neither Microsoft (MSFT) nor Yahoo! (YHOO) is a major rise of competition yet in search advertising," says Wolk.

And Google shows no signs of letting up. On Oct. 24, Google unveiled tools to allow users to erect and customize their own search engines. In doing so, it moved onto the race-course of companies such viewed like Septet Systems, which offers the expertness to personalize search engines and participate in them with others from one side its "Personal Search Syndication" site (www.pssdir.com). The company sells ads through Google and splits the revenue. "I’m very flattered that they are doing this, because it makes our function model that much more legitimate," says PSS’session co-founder Benjamin Epstein, adding that his search engine still has some features Google’s does not. "But, yeah, there is always concern that they be inclined just wipe us at a loss."

Competing for again search ad share, however, is just a organ of Google’s online advertising strategy. Google clearly plans to offer more branded and multimedia advertising. Its acquisition of YouTube provides a ready platform beneficial to video and multimedia advertising, and in that place is potential for it to serve up more than text ads end its partnership with News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace.

The ex-supermodel on why she launched her cosmetics line and pushed as far as concerns placement nearest to greater brands, not "ethnic" products

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Iman hired makeup artists to do in-store product demos in chain stores.

Iman signed a licensing deal with Procter & Gamble in 2004.

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The Entrepreneur: Somali-born former supermodel Iman, 53

Background: Fashion photographer Peter Beard discovered Iman in 1975, while she was a 19-year-old scholar at the University of Nairobi. A year later, the seed according to Iman Cosmetics was planted during her first photo shoot by reason of Vogue. (It came when the makeup artist asked Iman if she had her own foundation because he didn’face to face have a formulary for black skin.) Over the nearest couple decades, even as she was gracing countless magazine covers and serving as the muse for stamp designers Yves St. Laurent and Versace, Iman eternally mixed and assayed her own foundation. Women frequently came up to her and asked which brand of foundation she was wearing, thinking that the famous model had access to some imagination new formula.

The Company: Despite frequent discussion almost multiculturalism and "the browning of America," Iman, who had retired from modeling in 1992, realized that there was a dearth of quality beauty products for women of color. After finding a matter partner and researching Census data that showed rises in the population and median incomes of African-American and Latinos, Iman decided the time was right to create a line of products targeted at this market. In 1994, Iman Cosmetics and its accompanying skincare line were unveiled at 400 J.C. Penney (JCP) stores across the country, as well as at department stores in England, France, and Canada. In 2007, Iman leveraged her success to launch a straight direction of handbags and accessories, Iman Global Chic, on the HSN.

Revenues: $25 a thousand thousand (in the U.S.)

Her Story: When I started my cosmetics company, I wanted to be the ebon Estée Lauder (EL). I wanted to be big. I knew that there was a potentially huge recess place of traffic in cosmetics and skincare for women of color.

Initially I launched my brand through J.C. Penney. At the time, they were pile their recognize cosmetics province. The decision made sense; they had the customer base and they were willing to endure the brand.

And I was right. I had 10 full-time employees and we were very successful immediately. By 1996 we had sales of over $5 million. Celebrities and beauty editors got it right away, but I knew that I had made it at the time women stopped me on the street and showed me my products in their purses. There was a real appetite for this kind of cosmetics. Women were buying the product in bulk, afraid we might go out of business because a lot of companies in the past had lines for women of show color but about a time would stop products or just render impassable producing entire lines altogether.

However, in 2003 Penney positive to move in one more direction and opted to phase out cosmetics. It forced me to quickly consider my next move. Yes, we were a huge good fortune at the beginning, but I learned it is staying in business that is the difficult part. You have to keep your eye without ceasing the sphere. With the end of my relationship with Penney, I had to determine what kind of sales distribution I needed going forward.

I could have continued selling in another department plenty, but mass chains are additional profitable and have a bigger reach. In 2004, we began selling Iman Cosmetics at Wal-Mart (WMT), Target (TGT), Walgreens (WAG), Duane Reade, and the Chicago-based seemliness retailer Ulta.

I had deep-read a great dole out from our experience at J.C. Penney. But I think one of the things that veritably contributed to my success was that I knew who my customer was because I was my customer.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Facebook, the fast-growing social network that claims more than 175 million users worldwide, unveiled product changes on Wednesday that it said will help enhance communications as being both rank-and-file members and business, political and institutional entities that use the platform to convey messages to a broad audience.

“We are going to endure making the flow of information even faster and more customized to those you want to connect and bestow. with, not at all body in what plight broadly or privately,” Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in blog posting.

The announcement comes in dynamic period because of the 5-year-old Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, which Zuckerberg aforesaid is forward pace to touch in extent 200 million users “in the next marry of months.”

The new product changes, which began to roll out at noon Wednesday, would over time enable user “Profiles” to serve besides as individual Web pages that could convey messages far beyond the current 5,000 “intimate” limit, executives said.

Perhaps taking a cue from Twitter, the rising office for letting people express themselves in 140 characters or not so much and keep up with what celebrities have to assume, Facebook said Wednesday it will let users follow open figures, such as President Obama and swimmer Michael Phelps, bands partiality U2 and even institutions taste The New York Times.

A “tour” of the approach changes showed, for example, that users will be able to more easily categorize their Facebook “friends” into separate and sometimes overlapping subgroups, similar as “family,” “close friends,” and “co-workers.”

Posting links easier

Another change will enable users to more easily post links, photos or videos with their comments into the “stream” of information to and from the Facebook site.

Beginning next Wednesday, Facebook will also launch a redesigned home serving-boy that lets users receive continuous updates from their friends instead of every 10 or 15 minutes.

Facebook will also twinge its central feature, the status update, what one. at that time invites people to broadcast to their friends a response to “What are you doing right a little while ago?” Responses can very lately range from under the sun to poetic to uncomfortably material.

Facebook’s new question, “What’s on your mind?” may help forward people to excavate deeper into their subconscious and post more entertaining updates than “Kevin is updating Facebook.”

In hopes of avoiding complaints that followed past redesigns, the company posted a preview of the changes Wednesday and invited feedback.

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Horton Foote, whose bittersweet stories of heartbreak and regret set in small Southern towns earned him vast liked acclaim as well as two Academy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, died Wednesday. He was 92.

Mr. Foote died in Hartford, Conn., where he was with his lineage, including his actress daughter Hallie and son-in-law Devon Abner, who are appearing in a stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee novel for what one. he wrote the film script. Mr. Foote emerged upon the body the public scene in 1962 when he won every Academy Award for his adaptation of the novel about a black man unjustly accused of rape in a Southern thorp.

He won a encourage Oscar for his original screenplay “Tender Mercies” in 1983. The low-budget film about a popular country singer trying to beat alcoholism and impulse a modern life starred Robert Duvall, who won a best-actor Oscar for his performance.

Mr. Foote was a contender for a third Oscar in 1986 with “The Trip to Bountiful,” the story of an elderly woman who takes one last journey back to the place at which place she was raised.

The screenplay did not acquire an Academy Award, but Geraldine Page won a best-actress award by reason of her performance as Carrie Watts.

After 50 years as a auspicious playwright, Mr. Foote current the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1995 with “The Young Man From Atlanta.” The make merry concerned a middle-age conjoin from Houston fatiguing to quantity with their son’s suicide and revelations that he was gay.

Mr. Foote wrote at least 60 plays, 14 movie scripts and another 14 teleplays before age 90.

Last fall, his play “Dividing the Estate” opened to rave reviews on Broadway.

Mr. Foote based many of his plays on stories his parents told him when he was increasing up in Wharton, Texas. He drew stories from as far back as the Civil War and set many of his works in Harrison, a fictional town based on Wharton. His characters were as the world goes average folks trying to cope with change.

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At a time when Costco Wholesale is getting deals on high-end luggage and prime-grade meat, it’s notable that its hottest sellers these days are food and sundries.

Strapped, worried shoppers are focused on basics, and Costco continues to lower prices on those items to keep them loyal to its stores.

The reductions are one reason the Issaquah-based company reported a 27 percent drop in second-quarter profit Wednesday, to $239.7 the public, or 55 cents a share.

Total revenue slipped less than 1 percent to $16.8 billion, but Costco’s same-store sales — which measures sales at stores open at least a year — fell 3 percent during the quarter that included Christmas. It was Costco’s pristine quarterly drop in same-store sales since 1994.

The per-share profit was about 4 cents take down than analysts expected, according to Thomson Reuters, but investors were not surprised by the results released before the market opened and sent the stock up 12 cents to $40.81.

The stock in continuance has not recovered from a 7 percent drop last month, when Costco warned that second-quarter profit would be “substantially below” what Wall Street expected. Over the past year, shares traded betwixt $40.15 and $75.23.

Despite the profit drop, Costco is faring better than mostly retailers, who are expected today to report double-digit declines in same-store sales for February.

The chain’session discounts onward basics like milk, cheese, butter and chicken might hurt profits in the short pursue, but they’re important for Costco’s future, said David Abella, a portfolio comptroller at Rochdale Investment Management, which manages assets of $2 billion including Costco stock.

“You dress in’familiarily want to get people used up of the habit of going to Costco,” Abella before-mentioned. “When things pick up, especially in states hard hit like California, it could be a stock that does really well in a redemption. Consumers who are already shopping in that place be pleased start to pick up greater degree of (items).”

Costco officials said in a conversation call through analysts Wednesday that the set instituted a hiring freeze about sum of two units months agone at its corporate and regional offices, that represent about 8,000 of its 140,000 employees.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com

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NEW YORK — Shares of General Electric plunged through while much as 18 percent Wednesday, its fourth consecutive day of decline, as investors speculated that more problems keep out of the way at GE Capital, the diversified pudding-stone’s financing branch of the service.

Frost & Sullivan analyst Dilip Sarangan reported investors are worried about just how much exposing. GE Capital has to bad debt and whether it will need to find outside capital to buttress its financial portion. Jason Feldman, of UBS, and Nicholas Heymann, of Sterne Agee & Leach, also told clients this week that GE may have to add funding to its fiscal arm.

In a report on the company’s www.gereports.com Web site, GE denied any need for outer funding:

“This is pure speculation, is inaccurate and is not based forward any input from our company.”

GE likewise uttered that in the “unexpected event” that GE Capital requires additional equity, “We have a number of options to satisfy that need without seeking external leading.”

But Sarangan said the company needs to subsist “more open” about GE Financial’s condition.

“How much trouble is it in and how much is it hemorrhaging? How much exposure do they really have to bad debts? What measures are they taking to reduce their exposing. to such troubled assets?”

Answering those questions “would reduce the speculation on the company’s prospects,” the analyst said.

Shares fell 32 cents, or 4.6 percent, to shut at $6.69. After hours, they slipped 3 cents to $6.66. The ancestry, which closed Tuesday at $7.01, fell as low as $5.73 earlier in the sitting — a level not seen since 1991.

“I find it hard to confident that we think GE is going out of business,” said Scott MacDonald, head of study at Aladdin Capital Management. “When you get into panic mode, you tend to throw everything up in the air and continue.”

Since the beginning of this year, shares have fallen more than 50 percent.

Among reasons for the downdraft are concerns that the Dow Jones pertaining average component will wander from its surmount AAA credit rating this year because of GE Capital’s perceived troubles. In joining, the assembly has slashed its dividend.

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Joe’sitting Sports & Outdoor — a Wilsonville, Ore.-based retailer that got its fright more that 50 years ago selling sleeping bags out of a station wagon, and now includes a twelve stores in the Puget Sound region — filed for insolvency protection Wednesday, saying it indispensably time to operate out its financial problems.

Joe’s said it plans to keep all 30 of its supplies in the Northwest open and testament continue to pay its employees wages and benefits. To fund its operations, it reported it has obtained $50 million in new borrowing from Wells Fargo Retail Finance.

President and CEO Hal Smith said the restructuring will give Joe’s time to face its “involving death challenges so that we be able to come up an even stronger company with a firm financial standing.”

Joe’s, formerly called G.I. Joe’s, listed the couple assets and debt of $100 million to $500 a thousand thousand in Chapter 11 documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The 20 largest consolidated creditors without indirect backing their claims are owed a total $12.8 million, court papers show.

Portland-based outerwear brand Columbia Sportswear is listed as the second-largest unsecured creditor. It’session owed about $888,300.

“They’ve always been undivided of the top accounts for us in the Northwest,” said Ron Parham, Columbia’s senior director of investor relations. “We’re certainly hopeful they’ll work through the Chapter 11 insolvency period and come out the other edge.”

Joe’sitting began in 1952 when Edward Orkney, a World War II veteran, began selling Army surplus sleeping bags from the back of a station wagon in Portland.

Today, Joe’s has two stores in Idaho, 13 in Oregon and 15 in Washington, 12 of which are in the Puget Sound region.

In 2006, the company took over sum of two units prominent Eastside locations previously occupied by Larry’s Markets, giving it a strong foothold in Bellevue and Kirkland.

Two years ago, Gryphon Investors, a San Francisco private-equity firm, bought Joe’s for an undisclosed amount.

The company employs near 1,600 people.

Jeff Green, a San Francisco Bay Area retail consultant, said he’d exist surprised if Joe’s does not ultimately use the insolvency proceedings to get out of some store leases and coalesce lowest performers.

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Seattle will be converted into the first city in King County to mandate food- and yard-waste service March 30.

Unless they can evince they are composting nutrition scraps, single-family homes will have to sign up with a view to at least the smallest food-scrap bin — and affix $3.60 to their monthly recycling bill. Food solitude can stilly go in the trash. Food and yard waste make progress in the same bin.

Rates for garbage pickup are rising at the end of the month, too, by about $3 to $5 for residential customers. And recycling guidelines are changing slightly. Most notably, glass doesn’t need to be separated from other recyclables.

“Life has gotten a lot more complicated since the days when we just threw everything in the trash,” related Mayor Greg Nickels, who helped toss fake fruit, some dead flowers and a rubber chicken into a food-waste box at a Wednesday morning news talk on Beacon Hill.

He held up a pliable fish for the television cameras: “If this were actually a fish, you could oddity this in your food decrement.”

The pageantry is party of an schooling campaign to prepare the masses for the changes coming at the end of this month.

City officials said residents already recycle almost 50 percent of their total waste. They hope the food-waste-recycling push enjoin help the city get that number to the mayor’sitting goal of 60 percent. Recycling more, and throwing out inferior garbage, is intended to help the incorporated town put off building a third transfer station.

In 2006, Seattle began enforcing its recycling rules. Trash collectors allowance residents’ offal on the restraint if more than 10 percent of the can’s capacity are recyclable. Last year, they left behind about 1,500 cans. Apartment buildings and businesses audacity fines admitting that they don’t recycle.

Seattle is being more aggressive than surrounding cities by mandating recycling and, as of this month, food-waste service.

But other cities in King County are actually a little in front of Seattle in making food-waste collection widely available, uttered Josh Marx, a recycling planner for King County’s Solid Waste Division. Seattle is adding meat and dairy products to the list of food items that can be recycled. Surrounding cities have been doing that for years, Marx said.

“King County and the incorporated town of Seattle, we’re way ahead of the majority of the country,” he said.

In Snohomish County, residents can put food waste — including meat and dairy — in their yard-debris containers.