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Is it really nothing more than bad luck or is there something weirder at work? Such speculation generally belongs to the lunatic fringe, but serious scientists have begun to suggest that the frequency of Cern’s accidents and problems is far more than a coincidence.

The LHC, they suggest, may be sabotaging itself from the future — twisting time to generate a series of scientific setbacks that will prevent the machine fulfilling its destiny.

At first sight, this theory fits comfortably into the crackpot tradition linking the start-up of the LHC with terrible disasters. The best known is that the £3 billion particle accelerator might trigger a black hole capable of swallowing the Earth when it gets going. Scientists enjoy laughing at this one.

This time, however, their ridicule has been rather muted — because the time travel idea has come from two distinguished physicists who have backed it with rigorous mathematics.

What Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, are suggesting is that the Higgs boson, the particle that physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be “abhorrent to nature”.

Torben Merriott, 63, of Stradbroke, Suffolk, was arrested on “suspicion of “acting in a manner likely to endanger an aircraft” on 18 September.

Police said Mr Merriott had been released from his bail conditions and no further action would be taken.

Mr Merriott said the experience had been “demeaning and humiliating”.

Mr Merriott, who runs a stage lighting firm, criticised police for being “heavy-handed” and “wasting resources”. He said he might complain.

‘Felt vibrations’

He said he was awoken by an “almighty noise and vibration” at 0100 BST on 18 September.

“My first reaction was that it was an earthquake,” he said.

“It was a clear night but pitch black and I could feel the vibrations beating against my chest – very frightening.

“That was when I realised it must be a helicopter really low and very close. I couldn’t see any navigation lights from the direction of the noise so I shone my torch.”

Mr Merriott said he found it hard to be believe the pilot would have lost control in the face of his torch.

“Don’t tell the Taliban that all they need is a 10-quid torch to bring down some of our finest young fliers in their multi-million pound, high-tech gunships,” he said.

Andrew Ross Sorkin tells the tale of the meeting in his new book, Too Big To Fail:

When Paulson learned that Goldman’s board would be in Moscow at the same time as him, he had [Treasury chief of staff] Jim Wilkinson organize a meeting with them. Nothing formal, purely social — for old times’ sake.

For fuck’s sake! Wilkinson thought. He and Treasury had had enough trouble trying to fend off all the Goldman Sachs conspiracy theories constantly being bandied about in Washington and on Wall Street. A private meeting with its board? In Moscow?

For the nearly two years that Paulson had been Treasury secretary he had not met privately with the board of any company, except for briefly dropping by a cocktail party that Larry Fink’s BlackRock was holding for its directors at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi in June.

Anxious about the prospect of such a meeting, Wilkinson called to get approval from Treasury’s general counsel. Bob Hoyt, who wasn’t enamored of the “optics” of such a meeting, said that as long as it remained a “social event,” it wouldn’t run afoul of the ethics guidelines.

Still, Wilkinson had told [Goldman chief of staff John] Rogers, “Let’s keep this quiet,” as the two coordinated the details. They agreed that Goldman’s directors would join him in his hotel suite following their dinner with Gorbachev. Paulson would not record the “social event” on his official calendar…

“Come on in,” a buoyant Paulson said as he greeted everyone, shaking hands and giving bear hugs to some.

For the next hour, Paulson regaled his old friends with stories about his time in Treasury and his prognostications about the economy. They questioned him about the possibility of another bank blowing up, like Lehman, and he talked about the need for the government to have the power to wind down troubled firms, offering a preview of his upcoming speech.

Felix Salmon has the appropriate reaction:

How on earth did Paulson think this was OK? Goldman Sachs was a hugely powerful for-profit investment bank, and there he is, giving private chapter and verse on his opinions about the US and global economy, talking about internal Treasury matters, and previewing an upcoming (and surely market-moving) speech. All in secret, at a “social event” which somehow got kept off his official calendar. Oh, yes, and one other thing — the whole shebang took place in the Moscow Marriott Grand Hotel, in the context of Goldman directors joking about how all the Moscow hotels were surely bugged.

This is sleazy in the extreme, and will only serve to heighten suspicions that Paulson’s Treasury was rigging the game in favor of Goldman all along.

You might recall that trip to Russia. It was a disaster. Paulson had gone to encourage Russian investment in the US economy, which was rapidly sliding into a recession. He wound up just being mocked by Russian officials.

Here’s how Reuters described the debacle:

Paulson, who is in Russia to discuss trade and investment, told Putin the United States welcomes Russian investment and both sides were working together to outline best practices for SWFs, owned by governments of cash-rich countries.

“Since we do not have a sovereign wealth fund yet, you are confusing us with someone else,” Putin told Paulson during a meeting in the Kremlin, adding that Russia had indeed created “various funds”.

Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts.

In the country’s rural Salzburg province, 90 per cent of pheasants and 80 per cent of hares were killed in the hail storms.

Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said : “Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so.”

Confused, she called the customer service line on the back of the card, issued by Citibank, and was told the account was closed because of something that appeared on her credit report. But when the Sykesville, Md., resident got a copy of her credit report online, the only negative thing she saw was “closed at credit grantor’s request” on the Shell MasterCard account.

“They said there was a routine review,” said Burdette, who maintained that she and her husband, Brian, used the card regularly and always paid the bill on time.

Burdette isn’t alone. People across the country have been reporting similar experiences in postings on various consumer Web sites.

Citi confirmed the basics. The bank said in a statement it “decided to close a limited number of oil partner co-branded MasterCard accounts.” That includes not only Shell, but Citgo, ExxonMobil and Phillips 66-Conoco cards.

The close date was Wednesday, and letters were sent out Monday to customers informing them of the change, a Citi spokesman said. The bank would not say how many cards were shut down or how much available credit they represented.

But unlike the bank’s move to shut down its Home Depot cards, Citi did not discontinue the sale of these cards altogether. It is still accepting applications, promising rewards like 3 percent cash back on fuel purchases and 1 percent cash back on other spending.

No law, including the Credit CARD Act that has started to take effect, prevents banks from closing down credit accounts without warning. Credit card issuers all maintain the right, typically listed in the fine print on credit card agreements.

Citi would not say why the cards in question were shut down, issuing a statement that said only it continuously evaluates its products.

The 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe roared away with officers in pursuit, but shortly after the suspect made a right turn, operators at General Motors Co.’s OnStar service sent a command that electronically disabled the gas pedal and the SUV gradually came to a halt.

The flustered thief got out and ran, but was quickly nabbed after he climbed several fences and fell into a backyard swimming pool, police said.

More bond sales will further inflate Japan’s national debt, the highest among advanced economies at roughly 170% of gross domestic product, which could raise long-term interest rates and threaten the country’s economic recovery.

“It is possible” for the central government’s tax revenues to fall below ¥40 trillion ($444 billion), missing an initial forecast made nearly a year ago for ¥46 trillion, Mr. Fujii said at a news conference. “This is due to the global recession that began last year, and we will deal with this through the additional issuance of government securities.”

Mr. Fujii also said the government would not use the ¥2.926 trillion it saved through restructuring the previous cabinet’s extra budget to meet the shortfall in tax revenue. Instead, those funds will be spent on steps to support households, either in the current fiscal year ending March or during fiscal 2010, he said.

Mr. Fujii’s comments may add to speculation that the new Japanese government, which is focused on jump-starting the country’s sluggish consumer spending and has yet to come up with a fiscal-reform plan, is not prioritizing government debt reduction.

Even before the Democratic Party of Japan rose to power last month, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development had predicted that Japan’s national debt would reach 200% by next year, indicating the gravity of Japan’s fiscal problems.

While Mr. Fujii declined to estimate how much more debt would be sold, analysts expect that the amount may be near the anticipated tax-revenue shortfall of ¥6 trillion or more. That would bring the total new bond issuance for this fiscal year to a record ¥50 trillion or higher.

Such views have driven investors to sell Japanese government debt recently, on concerns that greater supply will make JGBs less valuable. The yield on the benchmark 10-year government bonds, which moves inversely with bond prices, closed at a one-month high of ¥1.340% Monday. Around noon in Tokyo Tuesday the yield was at 1.345%.

Karzai and election officials loyal to the president appeared to balk at accepting the fraud investigators’ findings that he did not win the majority needed for a first-round victory in the landmark presidential election. That would trigger a runoff with his main challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

While Abdullah renewed demands for a runoff, the Obama administration and diplomats sought to persuade Karzai to acknowledge the validity of the U.N.-backed panel’s findings. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was encouraged by the direction events were taking.

The Secret Service is tracking a far broader range of possible threats to the nation’s leaders, the officials said, even as it also investigates financial crimes such as counterfeiting as part of its original mandate.

The new demands are leading some officials, both inside and outside the agency, to raise the possibility of the service curtailing or dropping its role in fighting financial crime to focus more on protecting leaders and their families from assassination attempts and thwarting terrorist plots aimed at high-profile events.

“If there were an evaluation of the service’s two missions, it might be determined that it is ineffective . . . to conduct its protection mission and investigate financial crimes,’’ according to a inter nal report issued in August by the Congressional Research Service.