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With the Dow Jones industrial average and other major indexes exceeding 3 percent declines, the company posted the following message on the site: “We are having technical difficulties that may result in limited access to your account. We are working to correct this problem as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

A representative of T.D. Ameritrade did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press. But customers expressed frustration with the problem, posting numerous messages on social networking websites.

Nick Jackson, a customer from the Phoenix area, said in an interview he couldn’t get on for about 30 minutes. When he called the company’s customer service line, he was given an access code to another site.

“By the time I could get somebody on the phone, I was already down about $2,000,” Jackson said.

The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA.

The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.

The researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.

The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

He and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another.

Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a “synthetic cell”, although only its genome is truly synthetic.

Dr Venter likened the advance to making new software for the cell.

The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used “synthesis machines” to chemically construct a copy.

Dr Venter told BBC News: “We’ve now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell – a different organism.

“As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code.”

The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA.

If Prof Wereley is correct, it’s only been a month and the amount of oil spilled has already topped the second largest oil spill in history: the Ixtoc 1 Mexico Oil Spill of 1980. By coincidence, that spill was also in the Gulf of Mexico. Like the BP oil spill, the Ixtoc spill was due to an explosion in an offshore oil rig that caused a leak that couldn’t be capped for a entire year despite attempts to shoot material into the well pipe and drilling nearby relief wells.

Fiona Patten, president of the Australian Sex Party, is demanding an inquiry into why a new question appears on Incoming Passenger Cards asking people if they are carrying “pornography”.

Along with local police, the FBI launched an investigation after an explosion shook the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida at 9:35 p.m. Monday, when approximately 60 people were inside praying. No one was injured.

“They heard a loud explosion and went out an emergency exit in the back,” Muhammad Mansoori, a Jacksonville resident who worships at the mosque, told AOL News. “There was a fire, and a wall where the bomb was left was blackened. Otherwise, the building is sturdy, no real damage.”

Mansoori said the Muslim population in Jacksonville totals around 5,000 families and that most who practice the religion do so at the Islamic Center mosque.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations held press conferences in Miami and Tampa today, and announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the person who planted the bomb.

“This incident comes after a man was seen barging into the mosque on April 4, shouting anti-Muslim slurs and threatening to come back later,” Ibrahim Hooper, the council’s communication director, told AOL News. “We’re not sure if he is involved with this latest attack.”

Applications for unemployment benefits rose to 471,000 last week, up by 25,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the first increase in five weeks and the biggest jump since a gain of 40,000 in February.

The companies involved are Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya.

A 10th chip maker, Micron, was also part of the price-fixing cartel but escaped a fine in return for alerting the competition authorities.

The chips – DRAMS – are used in popular items such as personal computers.

Samsung received the biggest single fine of 146m euros. The second biggest was 57 million euros, which was levied on Germany’s Infineon.

All the fines were reduced by 10% because the companies cooperated with the probe.

Tracking bestselling books tells us about the reading habits, or at least buying habits, of the American public. But is there anything we can learn from tracking what information people consider important in those books?

We may find out, because Amazon is now displaying lists of the passages and books most heavily highlighted on the Kindle. It’s a relatively small sample – the current #1 passage, from Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller “Outliers”, was highlighted by 1,698 Kindle users. (For the record, it was this: “[T]hree things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”)

The entire Top 10 list of highlighted quotes was made up of “Outliers” and fellow bestsellers “The Shack” by William P. Young, and “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown. In the category of most highlighted books, “The Lost Symbol” beat out the Bible for the #1 spot. I assume that says more about the narrow sampling parameters and the demographics of Kindle users than the depth of Brown’s prose.