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The top five executives at Fannie Mae received $33.3 million in 2009 and 2010, while the top five at Freddie Mac received $28.1 million. And each company has set pay targets of as much as $17 million for its top managers for 2011.

That’s a total of $95.4 million, which will essentially be coming from taxpayers, who have been keeping the mortgage finance giants alive with regular quarterly cash infusions since the Federal Home Finance Agency (FHFA) took control of the companies in September 2008.

A team of international researchers said food production would likely be “severely impaired” by the elevated levels of caesium found in soil samples across eastern Fukushima in the wake of meltdowns at the tsunami-hit plant.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, suggests farming in neighbouring areas may also suffer because of radiation, although levels discovered there were within legal limits.

“Fukushima prefecture as a whole is highly contaminated,” especially to the northwest of the nuclear power plant, the researchers said.

Taxi drivers in the university town have been told that they need to install the £460 devices by 2015 or face having their licenses revoked. The microphones, accompanied by CCTV cameras, will activate once the ignition in the car is turned on and will remain recording for 30 minutes after the engine is turned off.

The council says the recording equipment is necessary to protect drivers and passengers as well as deal with any disputes over fares. Recorded information would only be accessible to the police or council officials.

But privacy campaigners say the plans represent a significant “ramping up” of surveillance culture in Britain and may well be in breach of Government guidelines.

That’s exactly the point, according to the Darpa-funded researchers behind a collaborative effort underway at MIT and the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC). Only one year into a four-year research contract, the team is showing off stunning results that are expected to produce the fastest, most agile ‘bot ever. He’s called FastRunner, and he’ll zip along at 10 times the speed of a standard mobile robot, which clocks a mere 3 miles per hour.

“We’re using principles found in biology to build efficiency and speed right into the robot,” Johnny Godowski, a research associate at IHMC, tells Danger Room. “And we’re confident that this will open up the possibility for humanoid robots that are useful in all sorts of situations — military for one, but also fire rescues or natural disasters, for example.”

While Iranian officials insist the explosion at the Bid Ganeh base was accidental, caused by the movement of ammunition, claims from anonymous western and Israeli officials that Saturday’s blast was a covert Israeli operation have gained momentum.

Leading Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot picked up a post by US blogger Richard Silverstein claiming the Mossad had teamed up with Iranian militant group Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) to execute the alleged attack. MEK denies involvement in the attack.

Leftwing broadsheet Ha’aretz also led with reports that a western intelligence source quoted in Time magazine had claimed the Mossad carried out the attack in an attempt to stall Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon. The official is said to have warned: “There are more bullets in the magazine.”

The blast at the base, which is reported to have been a storage facility for long-range missiles, was so powerful that it was said to have been felt 30 miles away in the capital, Tehran.

Among those killed was Major General Hassan Moghaddam, the Revolutionary Guard Commander charged with “ensuring self-sufficiency” in armaments, and described by Iranian media as a pioneer in Iranian missile development.

Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, responded to news of Moghaddam’s death by saying: “May there be more like it.”

At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, police handed out notices from the park’s owner, Brookfield Office Properties, and the city saying that the park had to be cleared because it had become unsanitary and hazardous. Protesters were told they could return in several hours, but without sleeping bags, tarps or tents.

Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, says most people began filing out of the park once they received the notices; one person was arrested for disorderly conduct. Brown says the park was not heavily populated Tuesday morning.

Rabbi Chaim Gruber, an Occupy Wall Street member, said police officers were clearing the streets near Zuccotti Park.

“Cultured meat” — burgers or sausages grown in laboratory Petri dishes rather than made from slaughtered livestock — could be the answer that feeds the world, saves the environment and spares the lives of millions of animals, they say.

Granted, it may take a while to catch on. And it won’t be cheap.

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Using stem cells harvested from leftover animal material from slaughterhouses, Post nurtures them with a feed concocted of sugars, amino acids, lipids, minerals and all other nutrients they need to grow in the right way.

So far he has produced whitish pale muscle-like strips, each of them around 2.5 cm (1 inch) long, less than a centimeter wide and so thin as to be almost see-through.

Pack enough of these together — probably around 3,000 of them in layers — throw in a few strips of lab-grown fat, and you have the world’s first “cultured meat” burger, he says.

“This first one will be grown in an academic lab, by highly trained academic staff,” he said. “It’s hand-made and it’s time and labor-intensive, that’s why it’s so expensive to produce.”

Not to mention a little unappetizing. Since Post’s in-vitro meat contains no blood, it lacks color. At the moment, it looks a bit like the flesh of scallops, he says.