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That message was delivered to about 55 medical researchers, nutritionists and public health officials who gathered at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Friday to hear from Dr. Carol Wagner, a medical researcher from the Medical University of South Carolina.

Wagner presented the preliminary findings from her current study which focuses on the role of vitamin D during pregnancy and early infant development. Even in the preliminary stages, the results of Wagner’s study show profound, far-reaching implications for pregnant women, infants and the entire population as a whole.

This strain of HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, was developed by altering a single gene in the human version to allow it to infect a type of monkey called a pig-tailed macaque, the researchers said on Monday.

The genetically engineered virus, once injected into this monkey, proliferates almost as much as it does in people, but the animal ultimately suppresses it and the virus does not make it sick, they said.

The strain is called simian-tropic HIV-1, or stHIV-1.

Researchers hope to be able to test possible new AIDS drugs and vaccines in monkeys before trying them in people.

There is a “cousin” virus to HIV called SIV, or simian immunodeficiency virus, that causes a disease similar to AIDS in certain types of monkeys.

But this monkey AIDS virus is not identical to the one that infects people and is not a perfect substitute for testing drugs and vaccines against HIV.

“If our research is taken further, we hope that one day perhaps in the not-too-distant future, we’ll be able to make vaccines that are intended for use in humans and the very same product will be able to be tested in animals before human trials,” Paul Bieniasz of the Rockefeller University in New York, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

Scientists have struggled to create an AIDS vaccine.

“If you make a drug that’s effective against HIV, sometimes it works against SIV and sometimes it doesn’t. So that basically devalues SIV as an animal model for doing experiments involved with developing drugs,” Bieniasz said.

“Now if you want to develop a vaccine, essentially what you have to do is to make a parallel vaccine for HIV and for SIV. You can test the SIV vaccine in animals and then have to make the leap of faith that the same approach would work equivalently in humans.”

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists said in making the genetically engineered virus they removed the HIV version of a gene, known as vif, and inserted the SIV version. This gene acts to thwart proteins made by the monkey that that kill viruses.

Bieniasz said the scientists may need to make additional changes in the stHIV-1 to make it better for testing vaccines.

The genetically engineered virus infects the monkeys and during the early course of infection is a reasonably good mimic of what happens in HIV-infected people, Bieniasz said.

But after initially spreading in the monkey’s body, the animal succeeds in suppressing the virus — not completely clearing the virus but driving it to very low levels.

Next to his computer monitor is a smaller screen that looks like a handheld G.P.S. device and tells Emanuel where the President and senior White House officials are at all times.

So, Obama, Biden, and other “senior White House officials” are lojacked? It makes sense that they’d be wearing/carrying something (or is it, as seems likely, an injected RFID chip?) that always gives their location in case of kidnapping, medical emergency, etc.

But here’s the kicker: The device is obviously giving off a signal, which is how it can be tracked, and that signal could theoretically be intercepted by unauthorized parties. And it could probably be blocked, faked, etc.

One of the main objections to Obama keeping his BlackBerry is that the signal could be used to track him. Now that he’s keeping it, he’s trackable in two ways. Undoubtedly, strong measures have been taken to prevent his trackability via the BlackBerry or the monitoring device. But in the case of the latter, it’s supposed to monitor his movements. Its whole purpose is to let certain people know where he is at any given moment. Thus, the signal can’t be completely blocked because then it would be useless.

The one-paragraph decision by the Ninth Circuit reads, in full:

We agree with the district court that the January 5, 2009 order is not appropriate for interlocutory appeal. The government’s appeal is DISMISSED for lack of jurisdiction. The government’s motion for a stay is DENIED as moot.

The Justice Department had sought to block an order by Judge Vaughn Walker, who is also presiding over the more widely-publicized EFF lawsuit targeting telecoms that participated in a secretive NSA eavesdropping program, requiring the government to turn over a “secret” document that purportedly shows that the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation was subject to warrantless wiretaps.

The document had been handed over to attorneys for the foundation, which the government has labeled as a “Specially Designated Terrorist Group,” thanks to a government blunder. The government was able to retrieve the document by invoking the state secrets privilege, and a court agreed that the foundation could not use it to establish standing to sue under the redress provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Lawyers for al-Haramain, however, were able to establish standing to Judge Walker’s satisfaction by citing evidence in the public domain—at which point Walker ordered the Justice Department to hand over the document and arrange for security clearances that would allow the foundation’s attorneys to participate in the litigation.

The government sought to persuade Walker to stay his own ruling, which the judge declined to do. Normally, appeal to a higher court—such as the Ninth Circuit—must wait for the resolution of a case at the lower level, but in this case the Justice Department sought an “interlocutory” appeal, seeking the appellate court’s intervention in an ongoing proceeding. As the ruling quoted above makes clear, they fared no better there: the Ninth Circuit’s response means, in effect, “Walker’s your judge; if he doesn’t want to give you a stay, tough luck.”

Toyota Motor Corp. said no details had been decided. Kyodo News and NHK TV reported earlier in the day, without identifying sources, that Toyota’s auto loan unit, Toyota Financial Services, had asked for a 200 billion yen ($2 billion) government loan.

A spokesman for Toyota Financial Services said the talks with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation were among the various ways being studied to gain funding. The lender does 70 percent of its business in the U.S., where sales have been plunging and credit tightening.

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which started helping cash-strapped Japanese businesses last year as the global financial crisis unfolded, said it does not comment on individual company matters. Some companies have been struggling for cash ahead of the fiscal year end of March 31.

The memos provide a detailed glimpse into the thinking of Bush’s Justice Department legal advisers. They embraced the view that President George W. Bush, acting alone, had the authority to override the other branches of government.

That legal rationale by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a memo written six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, would have meant that U.S. soldiers could search houses and seize suspected terrorists without a court-approved warrant. The military never used that power, according to a former Bush administration lawyer, but the memo was the legal basis for some in the administration who wanted to use the military, instead of law-enforcement agencies, to arrest Al Qaeda suspects in the U.S., he said.

The memos disclosed Monday also said the military’s need to go after terrorists in the United States might override constitutional protections guaranteeing the right to free speech. One of the legal opinions set the stage for the Guantanamo Bay prison policy by asserting Bush had “the exclusive authority” to decide how prisoners would be detained. The Bush administration had refused to make any of the memos public.

The memos also show that five days before leaving office, the Bush Justice Department issued a secret retraction of some of the most sweeping definitions of presidential authority that its own lawyers had authored.

In a Jan. 15 “Memorandum For The Files,” Principal Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Steven G. Bradbury said many of the Office of Legal Counsel opinions issued between 2001 and 2003 no longer reflected views of the Justice Department.

The Justice Department had secretly withdrawn other controversial legal memorandums years earlier, Bradbury added, “and on several occasions we have already acknowledged the doubtful nature of these propositions.” But the memos released Monday go well beyond what was known about the assertion of presidential power.

An Oct. 23, 2001, memo authorizing use of the military in the U.S. was written by then-Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. John Yoo—now a law professor at the University of California Berkeley—and Special Counsel Robert Delahunty. Yoo did not return calls for comment, and Bradbury declined to comment.

“These military operations, taken as they may be on United States soil, and involving as they might American citizens, raise novel and difficult questions of constitutional law,” they said. But, they said, the president, as commander in chief in a time of war, had the right to authorize such extraordinary actions. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the memos showed that the Bush administration was already discussing ways to wiretap conversations in the U.S. without warrants, and to take other steps without oversight of Congress and the courts.

“The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically,” Yoo and Delahunty said in their October 2001 memo.

President Barack Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder have vowed to release other still-secret Bush legal memos as soon as possible.

In a speech Monday, Holder said he understood the need to protect America from terrorism. “But we must do so in a manner that preserves, protects and defends the rights that are enshrined in our Constitution, and the rule of law itself.”

Darling told the Daily Telegraph newspaper he also expected more banks to take advantage of the government’s Asset Protection Scheme, which insures against losses arising from toxic assets.

The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee convenes for its monthly interest rate meeting this week, with analysts expecting a further cut in borrowing costs from the current record low of one percent and then, the first tranche of quantitative easing.

“We’ve given them the levers,” Darling said. “They may decide this month that it’s appropriate to do so.”

An exchange of letters between Darling and Bank Governor Mervyn King is expected in the next few days setting out the parameters for any quantitative easing programme. The Bank is due to announce its policy decision at 12:00 p.m. on Thursday.

Boosting the money supply is regarded by policymakers as the next logical step when interest rates cannot fall any lower or when rate cuts become less effective.

The Monetary Policy Committee believes more monetary easing is probably needed to stimulate the ailing economy and King has said the supply of money is not growing quickly enough.