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Japan is investigating a possible defect in Apple Inc.’s iPod after one of the popular digital music players reportedly shot out sparks while recharging, a government official said Wednesday.

An official at the trade and economy ministry, which oversees product problems, said a defect is suspected in the lithium-ion battery in the iPod Nano, model number MA099J/A. He spoke on customary condition of anonymity, saying he is reiterating a ministry position.

The problem surfaced in January in Kanagawa Prefecture southwest of Tokyo, and Apple reported the problem to the ministry in March. No one was injured, the official said. Other details weren’t available.

Apple Japan did not contest the ministry statement but declined further comment. Nano players are sold all over the world, and it was still unclear where else besides Japan the suspected model was sold, said Masayoshi Suzuki, an Apple spokesman in Tokyo.

The ministry has instructed Apple Japan to find out the cause of what it is categorizing as a fire and report back to the government.

The iPod was assembled in China, but it was unclear who made the lithium-ion battery, the ministry official said.

Lithium-ion batteries have been blamed for a series of blazes in laptops recently that have resulted in massive global recalls.

The ministry said Apple has shipped about 425,000 iPods of the same suspected model were shipped into Japan. It was unknown how many have been sold and how many might still be in stores.

Shipments of the model began in September 2005 and were discontinued after September 2006, the ministry said.

The iPod has been the symbol in recent years of the successful fashionable image of Apple. But its sales momentum may be gradually running out of steam.

Apple sold 22.1 million iPods during the holiday quarter ended Dec. 31, fewer than the 25 million iPods analysts had expected it to sell. That’s raising fears that the company, based in Cupertino, Calif., may suffer as it tries to convince consumers to buy higher-end iPods — a key part of its strategy.

The batteries in Apple products have had some problems in the past, largely about wearing out, not about being prone to fires.

In 2006, Japanese electronics and entertainment maker Sony Corp. apologized for the troubles it had caused consumers through defective lithium-ion batteries that had equipped Sony laptops and products by Dell Inc., Apple, Lenovo and other major manufacturers.

The Tokyo-based company recalled about 10 million batteries following reports of some computers using Sony power packs overheating and bursting into flames.

The lithium-ion battery is considered an overall good technology because of its ability to furnish power in relatively small sizes, although its suspected tendency to catch fire is a major reason Toyota Motor Corp. and other automakers are being cautious about using it in ecological cars.

Toyota’s Prius gas-electric hybrid uses a different kind of battery, and the switch in future green models to the lithium-ion battery will be seen as a considerable breakthrough.

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More : Yahoo 

A good contractor is the key to a successful bath renovation. Candice’s crew installed streamlined storage, waterproof lighting and a gorgeous vessel sink in this modern guest bath

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See more : hgtv 

It’s hard to find anyplace in Europe today, even here in peaceable Sweden, where people aren’t squabbling over cultural property and the spoils of war. For some time, it turns out, a handful of nationalist Danes have been loudly barking about booty that the Swedes nabbed 350 years ago in a war with Denmark. The cache includes an ornate canopy from Kronborg Castle, of Hamlet lore, and recently people in Skane, a region in the south of Sweden that was ceded by Denmark in 1658 after losing the war, said they wanted the canopy handed over.

In other words, one part of Sweden claimed restitution from, well, the rest of Sweden. An Internet poll by a Swedish newspaper revealed that a majority of residents in the region apparently still harbor dreams of Danish citizenship and resent their calm, polite, democracy-loving Swedish masters. On Valentine’s Day, a Danish newspaper went so far as to run a front-page headline accusing Ikea, the furniture giant founded by a Swede, which Danes have long loved to hate, of “bullying Denmark” by giving comfy sofas and shiny tables Swedish and Norwegian place names while assigning Danish names to doormats and rugs.

“I don’t think this can be a coincidence,” a Danish professor is quoted as saying on The Local, an English-language Swedish Web site (thelocal.se). He called it “cultural imperialism.”

Feeling guilty about my living room carpet, I decided to stop the other day into the Royal Armory here for a show called “War Booty” to see if the Swedes had anything to say for themselves. The exhibition ends up being a refresher course in history for an amnesiac nation that, having not fought a battle since losing Finland to the Russians 200 years ago, clearly prefers to think of itself as the home of Dag Hammarskjold rather than as a bygone empire.

But into the 18th century, as the show recounts, Sweden stocked its libraries and museums and churches with stolen arms, books, altarpieces, textiles and art by painters like Titian and Tintoretto, Dürer and Archimboldo. Much of this loot was pinched from Poland and Lithuania. The show argues that this was the custom of the day and that the best thing now is simply to lay everything on the table for all the world to see. But the clock can’t be turned back.

Not until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (notice how that date falls after Sweden’s empire collapsed, a happy coincidence, no doubt) did countries in Europe generally agree that taking booty was a war crime. So there’s a cut-off date, a legal line in the sand.

Which won’t placate the Danes, you can bet on that. Under the Communists, Poland and Czechoslovakia also made some noises about getting back what Sweden took. The Swedes volunteered to return a treasured scroll to the Poles as a goodwill gesture.

The Czechs longed for the Silver Bible, produced around 520 in Ravenna, Italy. It had wended its way to a monastery in Essen, Germany, before ending up in the hands of Rudolph II in Prague, from whom Sweden’s Queen Christina grabbed it in 1648. Recently the Swedes have loaned the so-called Devil’s Bible to the Czech Republic, but they aren’t going to fork over either permanently. Former Eastern bloc countries are caught today between pressing to recover works like these Bibles and proving themselves to be agreeable partners in the European Union. It’s a tricky diplomatic problem that 17th-century monarchs like Christina clearly didn’t face.

“Do not forget to procure and send me the library and the rarities there in Prague,” she instructed her troops. “These, as you know, are all I really care about.” Her father, King Gustavus Adolphus, at least had looted in what you might call a more enlightened way, to fill Sweden’s then-backward libraries and churches. She treated war like a shopping spree.

Which raises the question: Does it matter whether booty comes from good wars or bad ones, from evil owners or helpless ones, from public places or obscure corners and rich men’s vaults? In principle, the answer should be, “No, it doesn’t matter.” But Germany in World War II stole art from its victims; the Soviets then looted Germany when their troops overran Berlin. In Germany’s case, it’s considered a war crime. Russians insist their actions were just revenge.

And now the descendants of two great czarist-era Russian collectors are pressing the Russian government to compensate them for what the Soviets took from their families, using the occasion of a show currently at the Royal Academy in London of loans from Russia to press their case. And good luck to them with the current Russian regime.

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Read More : nytimes