Down To Earth With A Bump

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Long before the shuttle Columbia was destroyed on re-entry last month, NASA scientists had considered literally hundreds of problems that might threaten the craft's safety — and decided to launch anyway. Columbia had accumulated a thick sheaf of what the rocket business calls safety waivers — problems that NASA had noted but decided posed too small a risk to bother with.

"That's a pretty deep stack; it really is," one member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board told TIME. "A lot of these [waivers] are legitimate — every launch is going to have them — but others are things you've learned to live with." The board is still weeks away from determining what caused Columbia to crash. But the overuse of the safety waivers hints that some blame may lie with NASA's approach to risk assessment. Many of the waivers, from snapped pins to broken foam, had been carried over from flight to flight during Columbia's 22 years of use.

"Engineers are raising the same concerns they were years ago," says Sheila Widnall, who is on the investigation board. "I sympathize that you can't hold up a launch every time you have a concern. But there needs to be a way to put those concerns into an actionable form." — By Broward Liston

Snow Falls, Dollar Plunges Finance: True to his name, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow sent a chill through currency markets last week, apparently reversing the Bush Administration's "strong dollar policy" when he said he didn't see "anything troubling" in the dollar's plunge of 20% over the past year. The buck promptly hit a four-year low of $1.10 to the euro. And while Snow spent the next day scrambling to "reiterate my support for the strong dollar," it plumbed new lows throughout the week — pushed down by a huge 300,000 increase in U.S. unemployment during February. That's bad news for Europe's exporters, for whom the dollar's drop acts like an extra tax. But Snow's first instinct may have been right — with foreign investment in the U.S. down 85% since 2000, the currently wimpy dollar may yet be punching above its weight. Broken Records EUROBLUES It's not because I'm in competition with Thierry Breton that I announce these results," said Vivendi CEO Jean-René Fourtou), but the CEOs were locked in a race to the bottom, kicked off on Wednesday when Breton's France Telecom announced a €20.7 billion loss — the biggest in French corporate history. But Vivendi reclaimed the title the next day with its own €23.3 billion loss. Both CEOs recommitted to bold moves to stem their cash crunch. For France Telecom that means a €15 billion cash call. For Vivendi, it means selling assets. And although Fourtou is coy about details, that may include Universal film and music — after all, he must by now be tired of making records.   Bitten By The Big Apple Besieged by falling poll numbers and a $3.4 billion budget deficit, New York's Mayor and self-made billionaire Michael Bloomberg is leaving the city to do a little hunting — in his $10 million London townhouse. Next week, Bloomberg will host London's élite business leaders and try to sell them on moving their companies to New York. And he'll also meet London's Mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone. The odd couple will talk about London's new congestion charge — something else Bloomberg is interested in importing. Does it pay to decamp? Here's Biz Watch's tale of the tape. New York   London $62.80 Office leasing costs, per square foot $118.60 $43,990 average wages $55,742 50% top corporate tax rate 30% $1.50 Price of a subway ticket $3.20 26% working-age population with a university degree 21% THE BOTTOM LINE "Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction" WARREN BUFFETT, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, in his annual letter to shareholders, lashing out against the $127 trillion market in complex futures contracts See Also: Comeback Crusader