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Post after post speculated that the commercial off-the-shelf microprocessors in the Syrian radar might have been purposely fabricated with a hidden “backdoor” inside. By sending a preprogrammed code to those chips, an unknown antagonist had disrupted the chips’ function and temporarily blocked the radar.

That same basic scenario is cropping up more frequently lately, and not just in the Middle East, where conspiracy theories abound. According to a U.S. defense contractor who spoke on condition of anonymity, a “European chip maker” recently built into its microprocessors a kill switch that could be accessed remotely. French defense contractors have used the chips in military equipment, the contractor told IEEE Spectrum. If in the future the equipment fell into hostile hands, “the French wanted a way to disable that circuit,” he said. Spectrum could not confirm this account independently, but spirited discussion about it among researchers and another defense contractor last summer at a military research conference reveals a lot about the fever dreams plaguing the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

Feeding those dreams is the Pentagon’s realization that it no longer controls who manufactures the components that go into its increasingly complex systems. A single plane like the DOD’s next generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, can contain an “insane number” of chips, says one semiconductor expert familiar with that aircraft’s design. Estimates from other sources put the total at several hundred to more than a thousand. And tracing a part back to its source is not always straightforward. The dwindling of domestic chip and electronics manufacturing in the United States, combined with the phenomenal growth of suppliers in countries like China, has only deepened the U.S. military’s concern.

The report cites cases where bulk lots of PEDVAX and ProQuad were contaminated. Unwanted “fibers” were found on the vial stoppers of MMR, the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, among others. They were caused by “lesser quality” supplies from a vendor, the FDA report said.

The report noted defective vials had to be rejected twice to be discarded, and that one internal quality investigation went on for more than a year.

Several experts said no single finding was horrendous but that the overall pattern was troubling. “It’s the sum of many small things that puts the whole operation in question,” said consultant Wheelwright.

…

That Merck would be having problems with FDA inspectors surprised several longtime company observers.

Sammie Young, a retired FDA deputy director, inspected the West Point plant early in his career and for many years oversaw vaccine-plant inspections for the entire agency.

“There are a lot of violations there [in the report],” Young said, after reading the report. “I’m surprised.”

He said vaccine-makers were supposed to investigate vaccine lots if their use was associated with a death or a life-threatening event.

Merck failed to investigate two such cases, the FDA report said. A patient treated with the pneumococcal vaccine Pneumovax developed a half-dollar-size abscess and needed intravenous antibiotics to contain the infection. A pregnant woman who took the HPV vaccine Gardasil lost her baby, the FDA report noted. The Gardasil packaging warns against its use for pregnant women.

“I am concerned about the adverse-event reporting system,” Young said. “It looks like the people didn’t know when they were supposed to report. I find that hard to believe.”

Wheelwright, a consultant with 25 years’ experience in vaccine manufacturing, suspects that the workload could be overwhelming.

WestLB has been plagued with problems because its investments exposed it to the U.S. sub-prime crisis.

The local government has said it will cover up to 5 billion euros in losses from risky investments made by WestLB.

The Commission, executive arm of the European Union, said the shield was in line with rules on rescue aid.

“Strict conditions ensure that the aid is limited in time and reversible. The approval of the rescue aid does not prejudice the Commission’s assessment of the restructuring plan Germany has committed to submit by 8th August 2008,” the Commission said in a statement.

If the Commission approves the restructuring plan after Aug. 8, WestLB will have to shrink in size to offset the competitive advantage of state help.

Rescue aid like that granted on Wednesday may be loans or guarantees that usually last no more than six months. The total of 5 billion euros in guarantees and assistance agreed by WestLB’s owners will be used to finance a special purpose company and cover any losses it may face.

The arrangement provides crucial support to the bank’s credit rating. A lower rating would raise its borrowing costs, crimping business.

Some dealers in the Midwest ran out of fertilizer last fall, and they continue to restrict sales this spring because of a limited supply.

A prototype of what is likely to be the first turbine for tapping the tidal energy of New Zealand waters is sailing around Scottish seas bolted to a ship.

Christchurch company Neptune Power wants to begin installing an experimental turbine in Cook Strait next summer, based on the design being tested off Scotland.

Neptune received resource consent from the Greater Wellington Regional Council this month for a trial that can last up to 10 years.

Neptune director Chris Bathurst said the company was awaiting the results of the shipboard testing before buying a turbine from the unnamed manufacturer.

So far it has been established that the turbine rotates as intended and now performance and reliability testing is under way.

“Because they wanted to measure how much power it develops at exact speeds, they’ve bolted it to the front of this vessel, which is much easier than measuring where you’ve got variable tidal flows,” Bathurst said.

The turbine Neptune intends installing at a cost of $10 million 4.5km off Wellington’s Island Bay will have a maximum generation capacity of 1MW – enough for about 500 homes.

That is a fraction of the 12GW of power – 1.5 times New Zealand’s present generation capacity – Bathurst calculates could be extracted from Cook Strait at a cost of billions.

Bathurst, a mechanical engineer with a background in the aluminium smelting industry, is not daunted by that sum. He says he is well versed in capital raising, having been involved from the beginning in a successful US$1.3 billion smelter project in Mozambique.

“I’m quite sure we could bring in overseas money for this because people will see it as a way of attracting carbon credits.”

But he wants New Zealand investors to have priority, and would like up to a third of the venture’s value to be available to the public.

“We’ve turned various offers of investment down because first we wanted to get resource consent and know that the technology is going to work. Then we would go after the money, and we’re at that stage now.”

It is intended that the turbines will be made in New Zealand. The 14m-diameter machines are made of carbon fibre so yacht builders are potential manufacturing partners.

The turbine’s carbon fibre construction should give it three times the generation capacity per tonne of a conventional wind turbine, Bathurst said.

“It’s very light. That means when we get into mass production it will be correspondingly cheaper as well. Manufacturing costs generally are in line with the mass of the materials used.”

Bathurst can see New Zealand becoming an exporter of marine energy expertise in the same way that it is a world leader in geothermal power generation.

The turbine itself might be light but it will be held in place by a concrete tank weighted with 700 tonnes of a material that is yet to be finalised.

The trial turbine will be anchored with a heavier weight than is likely to be needed for the production turbines because it is not known what forces they will have to withstand.

“After we’ve had it down for a period and analysed the forces, we’ll be able to be more accurate about the weight needed.”

The turbine will be placed in waters known as the “Karori rip”, an area where the tidal current changes orientation from east-west to north-south where Wellington juts into Cook Strait.

“That speeds up the current at that point – a bit like a bend in a river,” Bathurst said.

In an interview with The Scotsman, Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, warned the controversial draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill did not prevent human sperm being inseminated into animals.

He said if a female chimpanzee was inseminated with human sperm the two species would be closely enough related that a hybrid could be born.

He said scientists could possibly try to develop the new species to fill the demand for organ donors.

Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.

Oil is priced in U.S. dollars on the world market, and the currency’s depreciation has concerned producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and eroded the value of their dollar reserves.

“The dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard told state-run television Wednesday. “We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the depreciating dollar a “worthless piece of paper” at a rare summit last year in Saudi Arabia attended by state leaders from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Iran put pressure on other OPEC countries at the meeting to price oil in a basket of currencies, but it has not been able to generate support from fellow members — many of whom, including Saudi Arabia, are staunch U.S. allies.

Iran has a tense relationship with the U.S., which has accused Tehran of using its nuclear program as a cover for weapons development and providing support to Shiite militants in Iraq that are killing American troops. Iran has denied the allegations.

The U.S. is sending a second U.S. aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, a deployment that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday could serve as a “reminder” to Iran. But he said it’s not an escalation of force.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with Mexican leaders, Gates said the number of ships there rises and falls continuously. He said he doesn’t expect there to be two carriers there for a long time.

Asked if the carrier move went hand in hand with the rising U.S. rhetoric against Iran, Gates said, “I don’t see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder.”

Iranian oil officials have said previously that they were shifting oil sales out of the dollar into other currencies, but Ghanimifard indicated Wednesday that all of Iran’s oil transactions were now conducted in either euros or yen.

“In Europe, Iran’s oil is sold in euros, but both euros and yen are paid for Iranian crude in Asia,” said Ghanimifard.

Three protesters have been arrested after invading the base and puncturing one of the large white domes that house two satellite dishes.

Adrian Leason, Sam Land and Dominican friar Peter Murnane are due to appear in Blenheim District court this afternoon.

Questioned in Auckland this morning, Helen Clark would not put an estimate on the cost of the attack but said Air Marshal Ferguson was travelling to Marlborough today to make an assessment.

“Obviously it’s just imposing a cost on the taxpayer having to rebuild. That’s why I describe it as a senseless act of criminal vandalism”.

Asked if any information had been lost in the security breach, she said she never commented on security matters.

“Our focus today is on the steps we’re going to take to support the police with the criminal investigation and to start repairing the damage.”

Helen Clark said the Government had received no comment from other countries regarding the breach.

Opponents of the Waihopai base argue that it is primarily feeding information to the United States in support of wars New Zealanders do not support.

But the secretive Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which operates the base, near Blenheim, rejects this.

The protesters’ spokesman, Manu Caddie, spoke to nzherald.co.nz from Waihopai.

He said all three protesters had been arrested after cutting through three fences – one of which had razor wire – and using sickles to deflate the kevlar dome structure.

Mr Caddie estimated the group could have caused $30,000 worth of damage during the protest, which was against the US-led “war on terror”.

“We are drawing attention to the issue, particularly in an election year and encouraging New Zealanders to have a debate about whether they want to be funding this kind of activity in their backyard,” Mr Caddie said.

Air Marshal Ferguson said today the security breach was of grave concern.

“Naturally, this is a very serious breach and it’s one of the reasons I’m here – to look at that, and initiate an inquiry into how this in fact occurred so we can put in place further preventative measures,” he told Radio New Zealand

Air Marshal Ferguson said it was obvious the men had penetrated three fences before deflating the dome but it was unclear how other security devices failed to detect the intrusion.

Alarms did activate but CCTV footage was no help due to heavy fog, he said.

The domes, made of a rubberised material, acted purely as a “waterproof jacket” to protect the antennae from adverse weather, he said.

“We’re trying to protect them for longevity.”

He said there was some protest action at the base over the weekend but it was not known if it was linked to today’s attack.

Mr Caddie said there were direct parallels between the Roman Empire and modern day America. He said the group, which called themselves the Ploughshares, followed Jesus’ example of resisting power on an ethical basis.

Mr Caddie told NZPA news agency the action took about two months to plan and the group did not really expect to succeed.

“We were expecting not to get anywhere close to it.”

The planning involved a lot of texting, emails and phone calls, which were not intercepted, he said.

“I guess it shows that the system doesn’t work that well.”

He said the three protesters who had been arrested hoped not to go to jail, but were prepared for it.

A statement by the group from their website said: “Our group, including a Dominican Priest, temporarily closed the base by padlocking the gates and proceeded to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes.

“At 6am we cut through three security fences surrounding the domes – these are armed with razor wire, infrared motion sensors and a high voltage electrified fence.

“Once inside we used sickles to cut one of the two 30-metre white domes, built a shrine and knelt in prayer to remember the people killed by United States military activity.”

The group said that it had financed its activities through “personal savings, additional part-time employment and a small interest-free loan from one of our supporters”.

In its justification for the attack, the group said it was responding to the Bush administration claim that intelligence gathering was the single most important tool in the “so-called war on terror” and that Waihopai was a part of that.

“This war will have no end until citizens of the world refuse to let it continue.”

It said that it had carried out the attack in the name of the “Prince of Peace”. The website contains Christian references to the Bible.

One of the protesters is Father Peter Murnane from the Dominican Priory in Auckland.

Father Chris Loughnan, who lives with Father Peter, said he was unaware of any arrests.

He said he was also unaware of the protest but it didn’t surprise him.

“It’s about New Zealand’s passive cooperation in war mongering. The information obtained at Waihopai is used in military intelligence,” Father Chris said.

Green Party foreign affairs spokesman Keith Locke said the party would be calling for a public debate and information on the cost and the purpose of the Waihopai base if it was part of the next government.

Mr Locke said the US spy base effectively compromised New Zealand’s independent foreign policy.

He said he had previously asked the Government for a breakdown of the GCSB’s budget but was refused. Mr Locke said the true cost of the spy base to New Zealanders was not known.

The intelligence game

* The secretive Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) collects “intelligence” on New Zealand’s behalf, and is responsible for guarding the country’s secret information.

* Its budget for the current financial year is $39.288 million and it employs about 370 staff.

All of the dead were believed to be drug traffickers, possibly rival members of the same cartel who were trying to settle scores, said Rommel Moreno, the attorney general of Baja California state, where Tijuana is located.

“Evidently this is a confrontation between gangs,” Moreno told reporters.

Eight suspects and one federal police officer were injured in the pre-dawn shootings, none gravely, said Agustin Perez Aguilar, a spokesman for the state public safety department. The suspects are being held on suspicion of weapons possession among other possible charges.

Police recovered 21 vehicles, many with bullet holes or U.S. license plates; a total of 54 guns; and more than 1,500 spent shell casings at various points in the city where the battles broke out, Perez Aguilar said.

At one point, the alleged traffickers fired at one another as their sport-utility vehicles sped down a busy six-lane boulevard lined with restaurants, car repair shops, medical offices and strip malls.

Bullet holes could be seen in the walls of a factory building and on the perimeter wall of a housing complex along the road, but no bystander deaths were reported. It was not clear how long the gunbattles lasted.

A mall security guard who did not want to give his name for fear of reprisals said he heard hundreds of gunshots fired, some of which passed near him.

“I hit the ground,” the guard said. When he got up again, he said he saw bullet holes in the wall behind him, a dead man lying in a pool of blood and 11 abandoned, bullet-ridden SUVs on the street.

The first shootout claimed seven victims. Three subsequent gunbattles — one outside a hospital — claimed five more, police said. The body of a man police believe to be the 13th victim turned up at a city hospital.

Tijuana, a sprawling metropolis just across the border from San Diego, California, is pervaded by frequent violence, much of it blamed on drug cartels battling for control of lucrative trafficking routes. The city is home to the Arellano-Felix drug cartel.