cryptogon.com

The newspaper claims Karadzic was secretly granted immunity in return for keeping a low profile.

“Karadzic, indicted for genocide and war crimes, was under US protection until 2000, when the CIA intercepted his telephone conversation that clearly proved he personally chaired a meeting of his old political party,” the daily quoted a “well-informed US intelligence source” as saying.

That view partly echoed what Karadzic himself told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in his opening written submission this week. He told The Hague-based court that US peace negotiator in Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, had promised he would avoid trial if he withdrew from public life.

Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade last month after more than a decade as a fugitive and transferred to the ICTY to be tried for alleged war crimes during the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia.

Holbrooke has insisted that no deal with Karadzic existed.

The Blic source said: “I’m not sure there was a written document confirming so, but I do have Holbrooke’s admission of verbal guarantees given to Karadzic from the highest level of the US.”

“During the year 2000, at the time of the (November general) elections in Bosnia, the CIA learned that Karadzic was still leading the SDS (the Serbian Democratic Party, founded by Karadzic), despite their deal that he was not to interfere in political life,” the source added, according to the newspaper.

“In 2000 there was a SDS meeting in (the eastern Bosnian town of) Bijeljina, chaired personally by Karadzic. He was providing instructions to members and the leadership who should be replaced and who should be appointed to which position,” it said.

Karadzic “was personally engaged in all activities of the SDS,” the source said.

“In America they went crazy realising Karadzic was making a fool of them,” it said, adding that “the Americans and CIA then withdrew the informal protection enjoyed by Karadzic.”

Karadzic also was granted immunity from the arrest by other intelligence services, such as the French and British one, as a part of the deal with the CIA, the daily claimed.

In a separate report by the state-run Radio Belgrade, former Bosnian Serb foreign minister Aleksa Buha claimed he witnessed the deal.

“Holbrooke strongly promised me that The Hague tribunal would be history for Karadzic if he withrdrew from politics forever,” Buha told the radio.

It was the first major revision of an executive order originally issued by President Reagan in 1981 to formally define the roles of the various U.S. spy agencies, place limits on their activities and address the privacy rights of Americans.

But Harman and other lawmakers complained that they were left out of the revision process and did not receive copies of the new order until after Bush had signed it.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) walked out of a closed-door briefing of the House Intelligence Committee by McConnell on Thursday morning and was followed by several other lawmakers.

In an interview, Hoekstra, the committee’s senior Republican, said he told McConnell that he was disgusted with what he described as the Bush administration’s continuing effort to undercut any kind of outside oversight.

Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability–the “potential” for Mars to support life–at the Phoenix arctic landing site, sources say.

The data are much more complex than results related NASA’s July 31 announcement that Phoenix has confirmed the presence of water ice at the site.

International news media trumpeted the water ice confirmation, which was not a surprise to any of the Phoenix researchers. “They have discovered water on Mars for the third or fourth time,” one senior Mars scientists joked about the hubbub around the water ice announcement.

The other data not discussed openly yet are far more “provocative,” Phoenix officials say.

In fact, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory science team for the MECA wet-chemistry instrument that made the findings was kept out of a July 31 news conference at the University of Arizona Phoenix control center. The goal was to prevent them from being asked any questions that could reveal information before NASA is ready to make an announcement, sources say.

The Bush Administration’s Presidential Science Advisor’s office, however, has been briefed on the new information that NASA hopes to release as early as mid August. It is possible an announcement would not come until September, to allow for additional analysis. That will depend upon the latest results still being analyzed from the spacecraft’s organic oven and soil chemistry laboratories.

Phoenix scientists have said from the start that neither the TEGA organic chemistry lab nor the MECA wet chemistry system could detect current or past life.

MECA’s two microscopes do, however, have the resolution to detect bacteria–which would be life. Sources, however, say the microscopes have not detected bacteria.

The Phoenix scoop was successful in delivery of a soil/ice mixture to TEGA this week after the material stuck in the scoop on two tries. The analysis of that sample is under way. The sample contains about 1% ice and 99% soil.

As expected, the instrument immediately detected hydrogen and oxygen atoms indicating water. Its electricity load also increased initially, a positive sign that water ice was being melted by the system.

The fact TEGA is starting to process some ice samples “had champagne corks popping” here, says William Boynton TEGA principal investigator from the University of Arizona. “We have tasted the water and it tastes great,” he said.

Before launch, some website literature by the TEGA team indicated it possibly could find organic evidence of “past” life. Both Boynton and Peter Smith, who heads the mission now, say that is not the case, although TEGA organic data could start major new arguments about life.

It has yet to find organics, but still has several sample ovens available to make such a discovery. An electrical short that earlier threatened TEGA operations has resolved itself, Boynton says.

News media cited the water ice finding as a major discovery, but it was totally expected by the science team. The different MECA data combined with TEGA is increasingly compelling as another piece in the puzzle of life.

The key is in the soil and water, and how the two behave together at that site on Mars, not the expected confirmation of water ice at this stage in the mission, Mars investigators told Aviation Week.

The MECA instrument, in its first of four wet chemistry runs a month ago, found soil chemistry that is “Earth-like” and capable of supporting life, researchers said then.

Lilly’s research showed some patients on Zyprexa gained as much as 80 pounds and that the incidence of high blood sugar at diabetes levels was 3.5 times higher than for placebos, according to documents filed in a lawsuit brought by the state of Alaska. Before those findings, doctors already saw a “logical link between weight gain and diabetes,” an instruction sheet advised the sales force in 2002.

“We believe it is essential to weaken this link to neutralize the diabetes/hyperglycemia issue,” the company said in the sales document, which was provided for the Alaska case. “Neutralizing any concern from our customers will be essential to the future growth of Zyprexa in the marketplace.”

Zyprexa became the company’s top-selling drug, with $4.76 billion in sales last year — about a quarter of Lilly’s revenue. Company sales representatives disputed or ignored the risks and pursued primary-care and nursing-home doctors as well as psychiatrists, according to documents in the Alaska case that were released July 29 after Bloomberg News filed a motion to unseal them.

A liquid catalyst was added to water before electrolysis to achieve what the researchers claim is almost 100-percent efficiency. When combined with photovoltaic cells to store energy chemically, the resulting solar energy systems could generate electricity around the clock, the MIT team said.

“The hard part of getting water to split is not the hydrogen — platinum as a catalyst works fine for the hydrogen. But platinum works very poorly for oxygen, making you use much more energy,” said MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera. “What we have done is made a catalyst work for the oxygen part without any extra energy. In fact, with our catalyst almost 100 percent of the current used for electrolysis goes into making oxygen and hydrogen.”

Nickel oxide catalysts are currently used to boost the efficiency of electrolyzers, and they worked equally well in MIT’s formulation, Nocera acknowledged. He added that the toxicity of nickel oxide forces the use of expensive, hermetically-sealed water containers. MIT’s patented catalyst formulation is “green,” Nocera said, and can be used in inexpensive open containers.

“Nickel oxide can’t be used around anything else in the environment because of corrosion — even the carbon dioxide in the air will react with it to make carbonates,” said Nocera. “But our catalyst uses abundant materials that don’t react with environment.”

MIT’s patented formulation of cobalt phosphate was dissolved in water. When the electrical current is passed through it to initiate electrolysis, the catalyst attached itself to the oxygen electrode to increase its efficiency. When the electrical current was turned off, the cobalt phosphate dissolved back into water.

The simplicity of the process enables basic electrolyzers to be used, the researchers said.

“Because our catalyst is green, the machines that perform electrolysis can be much less expensive than they are today, since they don’t need to be protected from environmental contaminants,” said Nocera.

Currently, MIT is working with photovoltaic cell manufacturers to incorporate electrolysis using their catalyst into solar energy systems. By combining the two, excess capacity during the day could be stored as hydrogen and oxygen, then used in fuel cells at night when needed.

“Solar cell makers can add super-cheap electrolyzers to their system so that they work 24/7 — during the day making hydrogen and oxygen, then at night recombining it in fuel cells to generate electricity,” Nocera predicted.

The cease-and-desist orders issued in June said the four banks needed to raise more capital, expand their loss allowances and better oversee and diversify their loan portfolios. A fifth bank was cited for violating consumer protection laws.

Losses on mortages and other loans have helped bring down eight US banks this year, including one small Florida institution on Friday. Last month, Indymac, a California lender with $32bn in assets, became one of the largest banks to go under in US history. It filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on Friday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said late today that it took control of First Priority Bank of Bradenton, Fla., marking the eighth bank failure this year — and the fourth just since July 11, when the feds seized IndyMac Bank of Pasadena.

First Priority had assets of $259 million and deposits of $227 million. And in a sign that the high-profile failure of IndyMac still hasn’t persuaded all bank depositors to keep their accounts within FDIC insurance limits, the agency estimated that First Priority had about $13 million in uninsured deposits.

SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta agreed to buy First Priority’s insured deposits and to take over the bank’s six branches. But the uninsured depositors, as in IndyMac’s case, will be paid 50% of those balances upfront and then will have to wait to see what the FDIC gets as it liquidates First Priority’s assets.

The move, dismissed by critics as a gesture to force legislators to reach a compromise on how to resolve the state’s $15bn budget deficit, left more than 10,000 part-time and temporary employees without work today.

The order also reduced the pay of up to 200,000 state employees to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour, below California’s minimum wage.

“I have a responsibility to make sure that our state has enough money to pay its bills,” the Republican governor said as he signed the order at a press conference in the state capital, Sacramento.

“It is a terrible situation to be in. I don’t think any governor wants to be in this situation … But this is really the only way out at this point.”

Critics, including the state controller John Chiang, a Democrat, disagree. Chiang, the state official who issues paychecks, has said he will pay employees normally, arguing that Schwarzenegger does not have the legal authority to summarily reduce employees’ pay.

Referring to the employees as “the innocent victims of a political struggle,” Chiang declared, “The state of California, the elected leadership, cannot put the important public servants of California in harm’s way. We put people first, we make sure we protect their interests, and that’s why I have to tell the governor, with all due respect, I am not going to comply with this order.”

Unions also declared their intention to challenge the order in court.

California, the nation’s largest state and the world’s seventh-largest economy, regularly fails to agree a budget by the annual July 1 deadline.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan visited Washington this week.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.