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By nightfall, the opposition claimed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev had fled and a new government headed by former foreign minister Rosa Otumbayeva, 59, was in control.

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Scores of protesters were reportedly shot and killed by security forces during waves of day-long running battles that left the capital littered with burning vehicles as crowds stormed the main television station and the Interior Ministry. According to witness reports, another leading opposition figure, Keneshbek Duishebayev, was issuing orders for calm from the National Security Agency, the reviled and feared secret police.

Raised in suburban Wisconsin, Heimo set off in his teens to the Alaskan Bush to pursue the Davy Crockett lifestyle in more or less the only place it was still possible. Amid numerous setbacks and misadventures, Heimo gradually learned how to master his terrain, provide for his Eskimo wife, and rear children in one of the most inhospitable environments in North America.

About 3,000 people entered the gates of Parliament for about two hours and thousands more occupied Bangkok’s commercial district for a fifth day. The emergency decree bans gatherings of more than five people, allows detention without charge and gives soldiers immunity from prosecution.

“The law doesn’t mean we aim to crack down or hurt people, especially innocent people,” Abhisit said in a televised address. “The nation has been severely affected by the protests and the government needs to rectify the situation.”

The protesters, many loyal to exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, grew in confidence after police and soldiers abandoned attempts to disperse them yesterday. Army Chief Anupong Paojinda enforced orders from Abhisit a year ago to break up rallies by the same group that turned violent, something he may be reluctant to do this time.

“Declaring martial law may backfire on Abhisit,” said Michael Nelson, a lecturer at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “If Anupong sees this as a political problem, an emergency decree may not prompt the military into action.”

Also note the interesting detour into what Stephan Spicer of the Central Fund Of Canada, said regarding his friend at a major bank, who wanted access to his 15,000 oz of silver, and had to wait 6-8 weeks for its to be flown in from Hong Kong.

That’s the question friends and colleagues were asking late Tuesday after Morrissey, 46, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Nova Southeastern University, was fatally shot during what police say was a home invasion robbery.

Morrissey was “very well-liked,” said Andres Malave, dean of NSU’s College of Pharmacy.

Just after midnight Monday, an intruder burst into his Plantation home, bound him and his wife, and set fire to the house in the 600 block of NW 75th Terrace, according to police.

A neighbor told WFOR-Ch. 4 that during the ordeal the robber also abducted the couple, took them to a nearby bank and forced them to make a cash withdrawal.

Morrissey’s wife Linda, 48, and the couple’s young son, who was asleep at the time, later escaped from the house and were not injured.

“This is very disturbing,” said Appu Rathinavelu, a fellow scientist who has known Morrissey for 15 years. “I am not able to believe it when I heard the news. It’s like a dream.”

First to respond to the scene were Plantation firefighters, who extinguished a blaze accelerated by gasoline, according to Detective Robert Rettig.

Plantation Fire-Rescue Battalion Chief Joel Gordon said firefighters were met by a woman, apparently Morrissey’s wife, and directed to his body in a patio area.

The investigation, quickly joined by officials from the State Fire Marshal’s office, continued well into the afternoon Tuesday.

Access to the quiet suburban street in a neighborhood called Secluded Gardens was blocked to all but residents for much of the day, and yellow crime scene tape surrounded the turquoise-colored house.

Any fire damage to the house was not visible from the outside.

During the day two cars belonging to the Morrisseys were towed away.

Police said the suspected robber was a man, but provided no additional details.

While Morrissey was not teaching classes this semester, he still kept a rigorous schedule in the lab.

Malave said Morrissey customarily arrived at his lab by 7 a.m., and often returned to his work the late afternoon after picking up his son from school at 4 p.m.

“He was very focused on his research,” Malave said. “We will miss him as a friend at the college.”

In a statement, NSU Chancellor Ray Ferrero Jr. said, “Our hearts and prayers go out to his family. Dr. Morrissey was an excellent professor and well regarded in the research world. He will be missed by the entire NSU family — faculty, staff and students.”

Morrissey earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of South Florida and a PhD from Stanford University. He came to Florida in 1993 to work for the Goodwin Institute for Cancer Research in Plantation.

“He was so energetic. He enjoyed his life and his work,” said Claire Thuning-Roberson, the founder and former director of the institute.

At NSU, Morrissey did research in the use of electromagnetic energy to enhance the effectiveness of cancer medications, the university said.

He recently brought in grants worth $100,000 to fund his work at NSU and was just back from delivering a keynote address at a conference in Australia.

“We lost a great individual, a great scientist, and someone who was to [help] move this college into the future,” said Malave. “He was a key faculty member.”

The city’s top financial official issued a grim assessment of the escalating budget crisis Monday, warning that Los Angeles could be unable to pay its bills in just over four weeks.

Dr. Julian Nicholas told an audience of imaging specialists that he and other FDA staffers “were pressured to change their scientific opinion,” by managers in the agency’s medical device division.

Nicholas, now a physician at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego, said he and eight other staffers raised their concerns with the division’s top director Dr. Jeffrey Shuren last September.

“Scientific and regulatory review process for medical devices was being distorted by managers who were not following the laws,” Nicholas said. A month later Nicholas’ position was “terminated,” he said.

The allegations about suppression of scientific dissent within FDA are not the first, and come at an inopportune time for the agency.

Tuesday’s meeting was designed to kick off FDA’s campaign to reduce radiation exposure from medical scanning. The agency is seeking input from physicians and manufacturers on additional safety controls and training to improve CT scanners and other medical imaging devices.

Hundreds of studies have linked certain types of radiation, including the type used in medical imaging, to cancer that can surface decades later.

FDA medical reviewer Dr. Robert Smith, a colleague of Nicholas who also presented at Tuesday’s public meeting, said he hoped the FDA would learn a lesson from Nicholas’ testimony.

“Science must not be ignored, suppressed or distorted as that endangers the public,” Smith told the audience.

Agency spokesman Dick Thompson said in a statement the FDA’s inspector general looked into Nicholas’ allegations of retaliation against agency scientists and did not pursue further action or investigation. The agency’s policies do not allow staffers to be penalized for expressing scientific views, he added.

“It is not uncommon for scientists, both internal and external to the agency, to disagree on the safety and effectiveness of products under review or on the steps needed to achieve public health goals,” said the FDA statement.

Nicholas, an Oxford University-trained intestinal specialist, raised specific concerns about the safety and effectiveness of CT screening for colon cancer.

CT scans provide detailed, three-dimensional images of the body, but at a cost: one CT chest scan carries as much radiation as nearly 400 chest X-rays, according to the FDA.

As a reviewer of medical device applications, Nicholas repeatedly rejected a manufacturers’ request to market a CT scanner specifically for colon cancer screening. Nicholas said he is legally barred from naming the manufacturer or discussing the details of its application.

In a June 2009 letter to senior managers, Nicholas stressed that patients should be warned of the radiation risks of CT scanning.

“I hope you understand that the failure to include a warning on the label will mean that patients will undoubtedly develop abdominal cancer and leukemia,” Nicholas wrote “It may not happen tomorrow, but yes, sadly it will happen.”