Astronauts narrowly avoided disaster Thursday during their first spacewalk to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, but the more treacherous tasks still await them.

Astronaut Andrew Feustel on Thursday successfully wrenched out a stubborn bolt that, if it had broken off, could have blocked installation of a $132 million camera on Hubble. The camera is one of astronomers’ highest priorities for this mission, the fifth and final visit to fix and modernize the Hubble.

There will be no weekend off for Feustel and the other six crewmembers of space shuttle Atlantis, which pulled up to the Hubble on Wednesday. In the next few days, they’ll undertake work so difficult that NASA is downplaying their chance of success.

“Today was a speed bump,” Hubble senior scientist David Leckrone said. “Two days from now is going to be the hold-your-breath day.”

What’s planned:

• On Saturday, Feustel and astronaut John Grunsfeld will attempt the first repair on a Hubble scientific instrument while in orbit. Fixing the Advanced Camera for Surveys requires them to remove tiny screws that they won’t be able to see – while wearing bulky space gloves.

“This will be a nail-biter all the way,” Grunsfeld said before Atlantis’ May 11 launch.

• On Sunday, astronauts Michael Massimino and Michael Good will try to mend another broken scientific instrument. To bring the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph back to life, they’ll have to undo more than 110 screws not much bigger than watch screws.

The telescope could be crippled if a single stray screw floats into it.

“I don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out,” Massimino said before launch. “A lot of miracles have to occur.”

The scientific instruments on Hubble – unlike its standard components, such as the observatory’s batteries – were not designed to be fixed in orbit. So it’s extraordinarily difficult to access them. Hubble’s managers decided the two instruments are so scientifically valuable that it’s worth the risk to try to repair them.

If the astronauts pull off the repairs, Hubble will have five functional scientific instruments for the first time since 1993, but Hubble’s overseers are trying to tamp down expectations.

“On this mission, the final mission, we’re going for broke,” Leckrone said.

Thursday’s spacewalk was not expected to be challenging, but the astronauts encountered an unexpected obstacle as they tried to remove a scientific instrument known as Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The camera has been a scientific workhorse, but it’s 15 years old, and its replacement will be 15 to 35 times more powerful. Astronomers are eager to start using the new camera.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – An unknown number of people were cut off from Google Inc.’s search engine, e-mail and other online services Thursday, sparking a flurry of frustrated venting that served as a reminder of society’s growing dependence on Google’s technology.

Without providing specifics, Google said technical problems had prevented a “small subset of users” from getting into their e-mail accounts. The e-mail issues also had a ripple effect on other services, including the Google’s search engine, according to the Mountain View-based company.

The intermittent trouble lasted for hours before the issues were fixed by early afternoon EDT

Before the repair, many people locked out from Google went elsewhere on the Internet to express their dismay and despair.

Multiple messages posted on Twitter, a popular information-sharing forum, indicated that people all over the world had trouble with the Google search engine and e-mail. But other Twitter users said their Google services have been running smoothly.

Because Google is used by hundreds of millions of people, even a breakdown affecting a small percentage of its audience can have a major impact. Google’s search engine, by far the most popular on the Internet, fields more than 9 billion monthly search requests in the United States alone.

As part of its effort to retain its current users and expand its market share so it can sell more Internet ads, Google has invested billions of dollars to create a vast network of computers to lessen the chances of breakdowns.

Although its search engine is renowned for its reliability, Google isn’t fail-safe. Its 5-year-old e-mail service, in particular, has been susceptible to periodic outages.

In this image from NASA TV the Hubble Space Telescope is shown being held by the robotic arm from Shuttle Atlantis on Wednesday. Atlantis began a 350-mile-high grab of the telescope on Wednesday setting the stage for five days of formidable spacewalking repairs.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A pair of spacewalking astronauts stepped outside Thursday to begin demanding repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope, a job made all the more dangerous because of the high, debris-ridden orbit.

John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel emerged from space shuttle Atlantis and quickly got started on their first job, a camera swap. The telescope — the size of a school bus — loomed over them.

“Ah, this is fantastic,” Grunsfeld said as he floated out.

“Woo-hoo,” Feustel shouted.

It was the first of five high-risk spacewalks to fix Hubble’s broken parts, install higher-tech science instruments and make the observatory more powerful than ever.

Atlantis and its crew are traveling in an especially high orbit, 350 miles above Earth, that is littered with pieces of smashed satellites. A 4-inch piece of space junk passed within a couple miles of the shuttle Wednesday night, just hours after the shuttle grabbed Hubble. Even something that small could cause big damage.

Grunsfeld and Feustel first needed to remove a 15-year-old camera and then put in an updated model. Each is the size of a baby grand piano and awkward to handle. Also on their to-do list: replacing a computer data unit that broke down last fall, and installing a docking ring so a robotic craft can guide the telescope into the Pacific years from now.

The new wide-field and planetary camera — worth $132 million — will allow astronomers to peer deeper into the universe, to within 500 million to 600 million years of creation.

The old one coming out was installed in December 1993 during the first Hubble repair mission, to remedy the telescope’s blurred vision. It had corrective lenses already in place and, because of the astounding images it captured, quickly became known as the camera that saved Hubble. It’s also been dubbed the people’s telescope because its cosmic pictures seem to turn up everywhere.

The camera — which has taken more than 135,000 observations — is destined for the Smithsonian Institution.

Grunsfeld, the chief repairman with two previous Hubble missions under his work belt, took the lead on the camera replacement as well as the work to install a new science data-handling device.

Hubble’s original data handler, which was launched with the telescope 19 years ago, failed in September, just two weeks before Atlantis was supposed to take off on this fifth and final servicing mission. The breakdown caused all picture-taking to cease and prompted NASA to delay the shuttle flight by seven months.

Flight controllers managed to get the telescope working again, but NASA decided to replace the faulty computer unit. The goal is to keep Hubble running for another five to 10 years.

Astronaut Michael Massimino, who will venture out Friday, took a moment to send a Twitter update from Atlantis on Thursday.

“Rendezvous and grapple were great, getting ready for our first spacewalk,” he typed.

Massimino, a.k.a. Astro—Mike, has been sending tweets since a month before liftoff.

This image provided by NASA on Tuesday and annotated by source, shows white scuff marks around the edge of the shuttle where the right wing joins the fuselage and the belly curves up to the top of Atlantis. The Atlantis astronauts uncovered a 21-inch stretch of nicks on their space shuttle Tuesday, but NASA said the damage did not appear to be serious.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Shuttle Atlantis and its crew moved toward the Hubble Space Telescope for a 350-mile-high grab Wednesday that will set the stage for five days of formidable spacewalking repairs.

Late Tuesday, the astronauts got comforting news: the ugly stretch of nicks on Atlantis’ thermal tiles were not considered serious, and no further inspections were needed. NASA is continuing to prep another shuttle, though, just in case a piece of space junk hits the shuttle during the mission.

Hubble’s unusually high orbit is strewn with smashed satellite pieces and other debris.

Commander Scott Altman and his co-pilot fired the engines Wednesday morning and steered Atlantis up into Hubble’s orbit. Early in the afternoon, robot arm operator Megan McArthur will use the 50-foot boom to grab the school bus-sized observatory and anchor it in Atlantis’ payload bay.

The capture is expected to occur over the Indian Ocean, just northeast of Madagascar.

Hubble scientists and managers warn that Hubble may look a little ragged; it hasn’t had a tuneup for seven years.

Beginning Thursday, two teams of spacewalking astronauts — two men per team — will take turns venturing outside to replace the 19-year-old Hubble’s batteries and gyroscopes, and an old camera and pointing mechanism. They also will install fresh thermal covers on the telescope and a new science data-control unit — the original conked out last September and, although revived, delayed the shuttle flight by seven months.

The space repairmen also will go into the guts of two broken science instruments and attempt to fix the fried electronics. Astronauts have never attempted anything like this before at Hubble.

This is the fifth and final flight to Hubble, costing NASA just over $1 billion. The space agency hopes to get another five to 10 years of dazzling views of the cosmos, with all the planned upgrades, which should leave the observatory more powerful than ever.

The mission almost didn’t happen.

A year after the 2003 Columbia tragedy, NASA canceled the repair effort, saying it was too dangerous. The astronauts would not have anywhere to seek shelter because the international space station is in a different, inaccessible orbit.

But a new NASA regime reinstated the flight in 2006 after shuttle repair techniques were developed and tested in orbit. A plan also was put in place to have a rescue shuttle on the launch pad to blast off within days for a rescue.

That shuttle, the Endeavour, will remain on standby until Atlantis and its crew of seven head back to Earth late next week.

As for the nicks on Atlantis, they stretch over 21 inches on the right wing, on the forward edge where it joins with the fuselage. The astronauts discovered the damage Tuesday while inspecting their ship.

The nicks are shallow and embedded in thick thermal tiles, in a location that is not particularly vulnerable during re-entry at flight’s end. Engineers believe those scrapes were caused by debris that came off the fuel tank 1 1/2 minutes after liftoff Monday.

Columbia’s damage was considerably more severe — a plate-size hole in the most sensitive part of the left wing.

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ON THE WEB

NASA: www.nasa.gov/mission—pages/hubble/main/index.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Atlantis astronauts have uncovered a long stretch of nicks on their space shuttle, the result of launch debris.

They were inspecting their ship Tuesday for signs of launch damage when they came across the nicks. Mission Control informed the crew that it’s a 21-inch stretch of nicks over four to five thermal tiles on the right side of Atlantis. The damage is where the right wing joins the fuselage.

Mission Control says it could be related to debris that came off the fuel tank almost two minutes after liftoff.

NASA says the damage does not appear to be serious, but more analysis is needed.

Atlantis blasted off Monday on a risky repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Endeavour is on standby in case a rescue is needed.

Space Shuttle Atlantis lifts-off from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Monday.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Atlantis and a crew of seven thundered away Monday on one last flight to the Hubble Space Telescope, setting off on a daring repair mission that NASA hopes will lift the celebrated observatory to new scientific heights.

Atlantis rose from its seaside pad about 2 p.m. and arced out over the Atlantic, ducking through clouds. The Hubble was directly overhead, 350 miles up.

For the first time ever, another shuttle was on a nearby launch pad, primed for a rescue mission if one is needed because of a debris strike.

After seven months of delay, the astronauts were anxious to get started on the complicated, riskier-than-usual job at Hubble. They were two weeks away from launching last fall when a critical part on the telescope failed and picture-taking ceased. NASA decided it wanted to take up a spare to replace the broken unit, and it took months to get it ready.

“At this point, all I’ve got left to say is, ‘Let’s launch Atlantis,”‘ commander Scott Altman said just before liftoff.

“Enjoy the ride, pal,” replied launch director Mike Leinbach.

Atlantis should reach the orbiting telescope Wednesday.

This is NASA’s fifth and final trip to Hubble, launched 19 years ago. The stakes, as well as the dangers, are higher since astronauts last visited in 2002. Space has become more littered with junk at Hubble’s altitude because of satellite collisions and breakups, and NASA now knows all too well how much damage can be done at liftoff by a piece of fuel-tank foam. Columbia was brought down by such a blow.

During the first few minutes of flight, Mission Control repeatedly advised Altman and his co-pilot to disregard a bad engine sensor and assured them that everything was fine. Indeed, Atlantis ended up where it needed to be in orbit.

About 30,000 people jammed Kennedy Space Center, all of them gazing up as Atlantis headed into the sky. Scientists hugged one another and posed for pictures.

“We have 60 years of Hubble between us,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s science mission chief, his arm around senior project scientist David Leckrone. “It’s bittersweet … I know this one is the last one. On the other hand, I know that Hubble is going to be better than ever once the astronauts do their thing.”

Leckrone was also wistful: “It’s the end of the era of Hubble servicing.”

Hubble is way overdue for a tuneup.

Two spacewalking teams will replace the 19-year-old Hubble’s batteries and gyroscopes, install two new cameras and take a crack at fixing two broken science instruments, something never before attempted. Those instruments, loaded with bolts and fasteners, were not designed to be tinkered with in space.

The astronauts also will remove the science data-handling unit that failed in September and had to be revived, and put in an old spare that was hustled into operation. Fresh insulating covers will be added to the outside of the telescope, and a new fine guidance sensor for pointing will be hooked up.

Five spacewalks will be needed to accomplish everything. The work is so tricky and intricate that two of the repairmen are Hubble veterans, John Grunsfeld and Michael Massimino. Grunsfeld, the chief repairman, is making an unprecedented third trip to the telescope. Altman, the commander, also has previously flown to Hubble.

“We’ll give it our best,” Altman said at liftoff.

All told, it’s a $1 billion mission. The space telescope, over the decades, represents a $10 billion investment. It was launched amid considerable hoopla in 1990, but quickly found to be nearsighted, producing blurred images, because of a flawed mirror.

Corrective lenses were installed in 1993 during what NASA’s science mission chief, Ed Weiler, calls “the miracle in space mission.” The results were stunning and included the acclaimed “pillars of creation” image of Eagle Nebula, a star-forming region 6,500 light years away.

With all the newest pieces, NASA hopes to keep Hubble churning out breathtaking views of the universe for another five to 10 years. The new cameras should enable the observatory to peer deeper into the cosmos and collect an unprecedented amount of data.

“I personally believe the stakes for science are very high,” Leckrone said.

Atlantis will be flying in an unusually high orbit for a space shuttle. Space is more strewn with satellite and rocket parts there, and the odds of a catastrophic strike are greater. In addition, there’s always the chance the shuttle could be damaged during liftoff by a piece of fuel-tank insulating foam or other debris, which doomed Columbia in 2003.

NASA canceled this last Hubble mission in 2004, saying it was too dangerous. Atlantis would not be able to get to the international space station, which is in another orbit, and would have only 25 days of air.

The mission was reinstated two years later by the space agency’s new boss, but only after shuttle flights had resumed and repair techniques had been developed. As an added precaution, another shuttle was ordered to be on standby, in case Atlantis suffered irreparable damage.

Endeavour, the rescue ship, is ready to lift off within a week to save the six men and one woman aboard Atlantis. It will remain on standby, as little as three days from launching, until Atlantis heads back home May 22.

This is the last time a shuttle flies somewhere other than the space station, and NASA doesn’t expect to have shuttles on both pads again.

Photographers record the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis.

Austin Calderon examines mobile phone accessories in Los Angeles in this 2008 file photo. For the first time, the number of U.S. households opting for only cell phones outnumber those that just have traditional landlines in a high-tech shift accelerated by the recession.

WASHINGTON – In a high-tech shift accelerated by the recession, the number of U.S. households opting for only cell phones has for the first time surpassed those that just have traditional landlines.

It is the freshest evidence of the growing appeal of wireless phones.

Twenty percent of households had only cells during the last half of 2008, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released Wednesday. That was an increase of nearly 3 percentage points over the first half of the year, the largest six-month increase since the government started gathering such data in 2003.

The 20 percent of homes with only cell phones compared with 17 percent with landlines but no cells.

That ratio has changed starkly in recent years: In the first six months of 2003, just 3 percent of households were wireless only, while 43 percent stuck with only landlines.

Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the CDC and an author of the report, attributed the growing number of cell-only households in part to a recession that has forced many families to scour their budgets for savings. People who live in homes that have only wireless service tend to be disproportionately low-income, young, renters and Hispanics.

“We do expect that with the recession, we’d see an increase in the prevalence of wireless only households, above what we might have expected had there been no recession,” Blumberg said.

Six in 10 households have both landlines and cell phones. Even so, industry analysts emphasized the public’s growing love affair with the versatility of cell phones, which can perform functions like receiving text messages and are also mobile.

“The end game is consumers are paying two bills for the same service,” said John Fletcher, an analyst for the market research firm SNL Kagan, referring to cell and landline phones. “Which are they going to choose? They’ll choose the one they can take with them in their car.”

In one illustration of the impact these changes are having, Verizon Communications Inc. had 39 million landline telephone customers in March 2008 but 35 million a year later. Over the same period, its wireless customers grew from 67 million to 87 million, though 13 million of the added lines came from the firm’s acquisition of Alltell Corp., according to figures provided by Verizon spokesman Bill Kula.

Another Verizon spokesman, Eric Rabe, said he wasn’t sure the overall drop in landlines was directly related to the stalled economy, although he said the company has lost some landline business customers because companies are closing some of their locations.

“For somebody who’s mobile and not planning to be in the same apartment for more than a year, it’s very appealing to go with a cell,” Rabe said.

Further underscoring the public’s diminishing reliance on landline phones, the federal survey found that 15 percent of households have both landlines and cells but take few or no calls on their landlines, often because they are wired into computers. Combined with wireless only homes, that means that 35 percent of households — more than one in three — are basically reachable only on cells.

The changes are important for pollsters, who for years relied on reaching people on their landline telephones. Growing numbers of surveys now include calls to people on their cells, which is more expensive partly because federal laws prohibit pollsters from using computers to place calls to wireless phones.

About a third of people age 18 to 24 live in households with only cell phones, the federal figures showed, making them far likelier than older people to rely exclusively on cells. The same is true of four in 10 people age 25 to 29.

About three in 10 living in poverty are from wireless-only households, nearly double the proportion of those who are not poor. Also living in homes with only cell phones are one in four Hispanics, four in 10 renters and six in 10 people living with unrelated adults such as roommates or unmarried couples.

One in 50 households has no phones at all.

The data is compiled by the National Health Interview Survey, conducted by the CDC. The latest survey involved in-person interviews with members of 12,597 households conducted from last July through December.

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ON THE WEB

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: www.cdc.gov

ASU among schools that might go to e-texts

NEW YORK – Amazon.com Inc. hopes a bigger version of its Kindle electronic reading device can be a hit, even if it’s more expensive, and the company is aiming it in part at college students who are eager to save money on their textbooks.

Since the Kindle debuted in 2007, it has jazzed many users and technophiles, but electronic readers from Amazon and rivals such as Sony Corp. are still in an early stage. Amazon has not disclosed Kindle sales figures, and the publishing industry has said e-books account for less than 1 percent of book sales.

Now, by offering the larger, $489 version of the Kindle and the smaller $359 Kindle 2, Amazon will try to open more avenues for digital versions of books — and other kinds of content. The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post plan pilot programs in which they will offer the new Kindle at a discount to some readers who sign up for subscriptions to read the news on the device.

In an interview, Amazon founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said that because the newest Kindle has a 9.7-inch screen, it will be better suited than the 6-inch regular Kindle at showing “complex layouts” in everything from cookbooks to travel guides.

“Things like those that have a lot of layout, structure, look really good on a big screen,” he said on the sidelines of a press event Wednesday at Pace University in New York.

The Kindle already had features that could aid textbook reading, like the ability to highlight and bookmark passages. Users could tap the Kindle’s typewriter-layout keyboard to look up words and annotate text. But in addition to a larger screen, the new version also offers more data storage — room for 3,500 books instead of 1,500 on the Kindle 2.

Three textbook publishers — Pearson PLC, Cengage Learning and John Wiley & Sons Inc. — have agreed to sell books on the device. Collectively, they publish 60 percent of all higher-education textbooks, Bezos said.

At least six universities have agreed to run Kindle pilots in the fall — Pace, Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The schools will work with publishers to make sure books assigned for courses are available in the Kindle format, and some colleges might subsidize the devices for their students.

Case Western President Barbara Snyder said her school will be looking to see whether the device changes how students take notes, study and communicate with each other and their professors. Using the Kindle DX “opens a new world of educational opportunity,” she said.

For students, the biggest advantage could be the lower cost of electronic textbooks. Reading material on the Kindle is consistently less expensive than printed versions, with new releases of mass-market books typically costing $10, for example.

A 2005 Government Accountability Office report said the average cost is $900 per year for students at four-year public colleges, though the textbook industry argues the figure is closer to $625. Typically the prices are high because publishers are trying to capture as many sales as possible in the first year of release, before students can buy used versions.

Though Amazon currently sells physical textbooks, Bezos believes electronic versions will eventually dominate. “It just makes so much sense,” he said.

Whether portable, electronic versions of newspapers make sense will remain to be seen. But publishers that have struggled to get people to pay for digital versions of news stories in Web browsers are exploring the Kindle and similar devices.

“Ultimately, this is about providing our readers with what they want and need,” said New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who joined Bezos on stage for the event.

When the Kindle 2 was unveiled, NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin predicted that for e-book readers to reach broader audiences, the price would have to come down — something he didn’t expect to happen until must-haves like textbooks became available for the devices. Since the Kindle DX actually costs quite a bit more than the Kindle 2, “it makes sense to explore … other forms of distribution, such as subsidization by newspapers,” Rubin said.

Bezos said another potential improvement in the Kindle — a color screen — is being explored but is “many years away from commercial readiness.”

“The electronic paper display we’re using now, that was in the lab for 13 years,” he said.

Amazon shares dropped 92 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $80.98 in afternoon trading.

NEW YORK – They wouldn’t blow away the competition on “Dancing with the Stars,” but it turns out that some birds got rhythm.

After studying a cockatoo that grooves to the Backstreet Boys and about 1,000 YouTube videos, scientists said they’ve documented for the first time that some animals “dance” to a musical beat.

The results support a theory of why the human brain is wired for dancing.

In lab studies of two parrots and close reviews of the YouTube videos, scientists looked for signs that animals were actually feeling the beat of music they heard.

The verdict: Some parrots did, and maybe an occasional elephant. But researchers found no evidence of that for dogs and cats, despite long exposure to people and music, nor for chimps, our closest living relatives.

Why? The truly boppin’ animals shared with people some ability to mimic sounds they hear, the researchers say. (Even elephants can do that). The brain circuitry for that ability lets people learn to talk, and evidently also to dance or tap their toes to music, suggests Aniruddh Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. He proposed the music connection in 2006.

He also led a study of the cockatoo Snowball that was published online Thursday by the journal Current Biology.

A separate YouTube study, also published Thursday by the journal, was led by Adena Schachner, a graduate student in psychology at Harvard. In sum, the new research “definitely gives us a bit of insight into why and how humans became able to dance,” Schachner said.

A video of Snowball bobbing his head and kicking like a little Rockette to music has been viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube since it was posted in 2007.

HATFIELD, England – Scientists have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is close to Earth in size — far different from the behemoths previously detected, researchers said Tuesday.

Scientists attending a conference in England said that the planet was less than twice the size of Earth. Nearly 350 so-called exoplanets have been found outside our solar system but so far nearly every one has been too close or too far from its sun, making all too hot or too cold to support life.

Massive planets are more likely to be uninhabitable gas giants like Jupiter. Planets much smaller than earth are very difficult to detect.

The new planet is the smallest exoplanet yet discovered but it is probably too hot for human life because it sits very close to the sun-like star it orbits, researcher Michel Mayor said.

Mayor made the announcement at a press conference during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.

This frame grab from a video surveillance camera at the Westin hotel provided by the Boston Police Department on Wednesday shows a "person of interest" in attacks on two masseuses-for-hire at luxury hotels.

WARWICK, R.I. – An attempted robbery of a woman at a suburban Providence hotel may be linked to the slaying at an upscale Boston hotel of a woman who advertised massage services on Craigslist, police said Friday.

A 26-year-old woman who also advertised massage services on Craigslist was bound with cord and held at gunpoint at the Holiday Inn Express at about 11:15 p.m. Thursday, Warwick Police Chief Stephen McCartney said. The assailant fled when the victim’s husband returned to the room.

The husband briefly chased the assailant out of the room, but then returned to check on his wife, McCartney said. The woman told police she worked at The Cadillac Lounge, a Providence strip club.

“She may have been involved in some sort of a sex-for-money transaction at the point in time when she had the confrontation with this alleged assailant,” McCartney told WPRO-AM radio.

The suspect’s description matches that of a “person of interest” wanted for questioning in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Julissa Brisman of New York City at the Marriott Copley Place in Boston on Tuesday night.

And the same person may have been involved in the robbery last week of a Las Vegas woman at the Westin Copley Hotel, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said.

The 29-year-old woman had also advertised massage services on Craigslist, the online classified service.

Police in Warwick, which is about 60 miles south of Boston, describe the suspect as a clean-cut white male, approximately 6-foot tall, 200-pounds, with blond hair, wearing a black coat and blue jeans.

Warwick police said they are working with Boston police on the case.

Police in Boston have said that they believe the victim at the Westin was involved in prostitution but that they are uncertain about Brisman.

Brisman’s friends said they didn’t know she had advertised massage services online.

Matthew Terhune, 34, a photographer from New York City, said he photographed Brisman last year for head shots she needed for a tanning salon.

He said Brisman told him she had been paid $1,000 to fly out to private parties in Chicago and walk around in a bikini or topless. “But I don’t think it went beyond that,” Terhune said. “They were just parties where guys wanted to see hot girls.”

Makeup artist Emily Claire, 30, Terhune’s girlfriend, worked with Brisman during the photo shoot. She said Brisman, a recovering alcoholic, wanted eventually become an Alcoholics Anonymous counselor.

President Barack Obama called Thursday for the country to move swiftly to a system of high-speed rail travel, saying it will relieve congestion, help clean the air and save on energy.

Appearing with Vice President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Obama said the country cannot afford not to invest in a major upgrade to rail travel. He said he understands it necessarily will be “a long-term project” but said the time to start is now.

The president allocated $8 billion in the enormous $787 billion economic stimulus spending package for a start on establishing high-speed rail corridors nationwide.

Obama said, “This is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It’s happening now. The problem is, it’s happening elsewhere.” He cited superior high-speed rail travel in countries like China, Japan, France and Spain.

The rail upgrades are critically needed, Obama said, because the nation’s highways and airways “are clogged with traffic.”

The money will go to high-speed rail development as well as a parallel effort to improve rail service along existing lines — upgrades that would allow faster train travel.

The White House said funding will move into the rail system through three channels, first to upgrade projects already approved and only in need of funding, thus providing jobs in the short term. The second and third channels would focus on high-speed rail planning and then a commitment to help in the execution of those plans far into the future when the stimulus funds are no longer available.

Transportation Department officials say about six proposed routes with federal approval for high-speed rail stand a good chance of getting some of the $8 billion award. Those routes include parts of Texas, Florida, the Chicago region, and routes in the Southeast through North Carolina and Louisiana.

The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration says the term “high-speed rail” applies to trains traveling more than 90 mph. The European Union standard is above 125 mph.

Many overseas bullet trains — most powered by overhead electricity lines — run faster than that. In France, for example, the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse) covers the 250 miles between Paris and Lyon in one hour, 55 minutes at an average speed of about 133 mph.

In Japan, which opened the first high-speed rail in the 1960s and with a system that carries more passengers than any other country, the Japanese Shinkansen trains hurtle through the countryside at an average of about 180 mph.

Super-fast trains also run in Germany, Spain and China, at speeds up to 140 mph, according to a 2007 survey in the trade publication Railway Gazette.

The only rail service that qualifies under America’s lower high-speed standard is Amtrak’s 9-year-old Acela Express route connecting Boston to Washington, D.C.

The trains are built to reach speeds up to 150 mph, but only average about 80 mph because of curving tracks and slower-moving freight and passenger trains that share the route. On the heavily traveled line from New York City to the nation’s capital, the Acela arrives just about 20 minutes earlier than standard service, at more than twice the cost during peak travel times.

WASHINGTON – Micro cars can give motorists top-notch fuel efficiency at a competitive price, but the insurance industry says they don’t fare too well in collisions with larger vehicles.

In crash tests released Tuesday, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that drivers of 2009 versions of the Smart “fortwo,” Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris could face significant leg and head injuries in severe front-end crashes with larger, midsize vehicles.

“There are good reasons people buy mini cars. They’re more affordable, and they use less gas. But the safety trade-offs are clear from our new tests,” said Adrian Lund, the institute’s president.

Automakers who manufacture the small cars said the tests simulated a high-speed crash that rarely happens on the road. They also said the tests rehashed past insurance industry arguments against tougher fuel efficiency requirements. The institute has raised questions about whether stricter gas mileage rules, which are being developed by the government, might lead to smaller, lighter vehicles that could be less safe.

“If you were to take that argument to the nth degree, we should all be driving 18-wheelers. And the trend in society today is just the opposite,” said Dave Schembri, president of Smart USA.

Sales of small cars soared when gas prices topped $4 per gallon last year but have fallen off as gasoline has retreated to about $2 a gallon and the economic downturn has slowed car sales. The small cars are affordable — prices of the three cars tested range from about $12,000 to $18,000 — and typically achieve 30 miles per gallon or more.

The tests involved head-on crashes between the fortwo and a 2009 Mercedes C Class, the Fit and a 2009 Honda Accord and the Yaris and the 2009 Toyota Camry. The tests were conducted at 40 miles per hour, representing a severe crash.

In the fortwo collision, the institute said the Smart, which weighs 1,808 pounds, went airborne and turned around 450 degrees after striking the C Class, which weighs nearly twice as much. There was extensive damage to the fortwo’s interior and the Smart driver could have faced extensive injuries to the head and legs. There was little damage to the front seat area of the C Class.

Schembri said the test simulated a “rare and extreme scenario” and noted that the fortwo had received solid ratings from the government’s crash test program. The fortwo has received top scores from the Insurance Institute in front-end and side crash tests against comparably sized vehicles but in the front-end tests against the C Class, the institute gave the mini car poor marks.

In the Fit’s test, the dummy’s head struck the steering wheel through the air bag and showed a high risk of leg injuries. In the vehicle-to-vehicle test, the Fit was rated poor while the Accord’s structure held up well.

Honda spokesman Todd Mittleman said the tests involved “unusual and extreme conditions” and noted that all 2009 Honda vehicles had received top scores from the Insurance Institute.

In the Yaris test, the institute said the mini car sustained damage to the door and front passenger area. The driver dummy showed signs of head injuries, a deep gash on the right knee and extensive forces to the neck and right leg.

The Yaris has received good ratings in past front and side testing but received a poor rating in the crash with the Camry. Toyota spokesman John Hanson said the car-to-car test had little relevance to consumers because of its severity.

“It’s fairly obvious that they have an agenda here with regard to how smaller cars are going to be entering the North American market in larger numbers,” Hanson said.

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ON THE WEB

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety: www.iihs.org

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – A cell phone used by a Wyoming 13-year-old to run up a nearly $5,000 phone bill will text no more thanks to her angry father and his hammer.

Dena Christoffersen of Cheyenne sent or received about 20,000 text messages over about a month, and her parents’ phone plan didn’t cover texting.

Gregg Christoffersen told KUSA-TV of Denver this week that he thought texting had been disabled on her daughter’s phone, which he smashed hours after getting a phone bill for more than $4,750.

The family says Verizon has been willing to knock the bill down to a reasonable level.

Dena has been grounded until the end of school. She says she feels bad and has learned her lesson.

Fight fat with fat? The newest obesity theory suggests we may one day be able to do just that.

Just like good and bad cholesterol, there apparently are good and bad types of body fat. Scientists until recently believed this good fat, which spurs the body to burn calories to generate body heat, played an important role in keeping infants warm but by adulthood was mostly gone or inactive.

Now three studies — from researchers in Boston, Finland and the Netherlands — show that some good fat remains in adults, affecting metabolism and potentially offering a target to help people shed pounds.

Dr. Francesco Celi, an endocrinology and metabolism researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, said the studies show this fat burns large amounts of energy.

“So it could be used as a target” for a pill that would somehow rev up the fat, he said.

Dr. Louis Aronne, former president of the Obesity Society and a weight control expert at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, said the findings are the most conclusive evidence so far of the role of such fat in regulating body temperature and weight.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘exercise-in-a-pill,’ but it’s doing something (that’s) getting rid of calories,” he said, adding that any obesity treatment developed around the fat could be a potential treatment for diabetes as well.

The studies were published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

The good fat is actually brownish, while the more predominant bad fat is white or yellow. Brown fat is stored mostly around the neck and under the collarbone. White fat tends to concentrate around the waistline, where it stores excess energy and releases chemicals that control metabolism and the use of insulin.

All three research groups documented the presence and activity of the brown fat by examining tissue samples from some patients and using high-tech imaging that indicated how much sugar, and therefore calories, the fat burned.

One group from Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School and three hospitals in Boston looked at scans done on nearly 2,000 patients to diagnose various health problems. The other two groups scanned small numbers of patients, first at room temperature and then after a couple hours in mild cold, about 60 degrees.

Here’s what the scientists learned about brown fat:

— Lean people had far more than overweight and obese people, especially among older folks.

— It burns far more calories and generates more body heat when people are in a cooler environment.

— Women were more likely to have it than men, and their deposits were larger and more active.

Finding a successful treatment for obesity would be a Holy Grail for scientists. Most obese and overweight people are unable to shed pounds and keep them off with dieting and exercise.

And despite plenty of effort, pharmaceutical companies have been unable to develop a medicine that helps people safely lose and keep off a significant amount of weight. Any drug that could do that would be a guaranteed blockbuster.

Aronne said the findings likely would renew interest in the area of brown fat among drugmakers; at least one briefly studied a treatment in lab animals several years ago.

So how could researchers use these basic findings about good fat to eventually come up with a weight-loss medication?

One possibility would be a pill to stimulate a specific protein to release more energy from the fat cells in the form of heat rather than storing it for future energy needs, Aronne and Celi said.

Finding a way to increase the amount of brown fat in a person would be another strategy. Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have been injecting certain genes into mice to try to produce brown fat cells instead of white ones.

Celi said researchers also could try to make a pill that stimulates nerve endings inside brown fat to make it burn more calories.

Or overweight people could simply try turning down the thermostat to see if it makes them burn more energy and lose weight — a strategy that Celi and researchers are testing in a small study that could produce results by the end of the year.

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On the Web

New England Journal: www.nejm.org

Obesity Society: www.obesity.org