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It also has prompted the student, openly accused by the professor of being an FBI informant and a killer, to hire a prominent local civil rights attorney, and led the university to launch an investigation into the educator. The school has taken the unusual step of stripping the tenured professor of his teaching responsibilities while it conducts its inquiry.

Meanwhile, others at PSU are divided along two lines: Those who think the professor did the right thing, if in an unorthodox way; and those who think his actions were strange and out of line.

Some questions remain unanswered: Why would a tenured professor choose to openly confront a student he viewed as dangerous; and what does the situation mean for the student, who has not been charged with a crime, yet is said to have offered to teach others how to make Molotov cocktails and buy assault rifles.

Professor John Hall has not taught on campus since Jan. 14, when, during a comparative economics course, he accused a 30-year-old student of being an FBI informant and threatened to place posters of him around campus. Depending on the outcome of the internal inquiry, Hall could face a range of sanctions, including termination, said Scott Gallagher, communications director for PSU. Gallagher did not know when the inquiry would be completed.

The Oregonian made several attempts to reach Hall, who has taught at the university for 25 years, but he didn’t return messages. However, Phil Lesch, executive director for the Portland State chapter of the American Association of University Professors, defended Hall and said by e-mail Friday that Hall had asked him to act as his spokesman. The association is the union that represents faculty members.

PSU student Brett Condron, 20, who is studying German, was in class that day. He said about 40 students witnessed the confrontation between Hall and the student.

Condron said with about 30 minutes left in class, Hall made a dramatic announcement: An FBI informant was enrolled in the class. He talked about his experience with government informants in East Germany, then identified the student as Zach Bucharest.

Hall put a letter detailing his accusations on the overhead projector so the class could read it. Condron said Hall then handed Bucharest a packet to give to “his superiors.”

“And then he proceeded to say a lot of unpleasant things about Bucharest,” Condron said. For instance, he said, Hall called Bucharest a killer and said that he had the “spirit of Cain and the spirit of Judas.”

During the confrontation, Condron said, Hall snapped a digital photo of Bucharest and said that if “he ever saw him on campus again, he would plaster his photo and copies of his photos all over campus and tell everybody who he was.”

Condron said Bucharest was stoic and silent as Hall lashed out at him. Afterward, Bucharest defended himself, then walked out.

The Oregonian tried to talk to Bucharest multiple times but his attorney, Elden Rosenthal, advised his client against talking to reporters.

In one of two statements Bucharest released through Rosenthal, the student said he has admired Hall and “cannot imagine what I did or said to cause him to treat me the way he did.”

Another student in Hall’s class is Daniel Dreier, a 26-year-old economics major. He was among those who had earlier become concerned about Bucharest’s behavior.

He said at a winter term Economics Department party in December, Bucharest told a campus activist how to make a particularly effective Molotov cocktail. Dreier said Bucharest also offered to act as a middleman to help students buy military style rifles — AR-15s or AK-47s — through a gun dealer he knew in Washington and that he had access to machine guns.

In a second interview, Dreier said that Bucharest frequently told stories about confrontations involving guns and said that Bucharest had shown him a gun that he carries on campus.

Meanwhile, Lesch, the union representative, confirmed that Hall confronted Bucharest in front of the class, but did so solely out of concern for the safety of his students and the community. Lesch said Hall’s actions came after other students went to Hall with concerns that Bucharest was trying to “create a cabal of students on campus oriented toward violence.”

“There were some students who ended up being very upset but there were also students who were grateful” to Hall for confronting Bucharest, Lesch said.

He said previously a group of eight students that Hall had been advising came to him with concerns about Bucharest.

They told Hall that Bucharest “was trying to get them interested in shooting and blowing things up — all kinds of weapons, not just rifles, illegal weapons,” Lesch said. “They were scared. They had a close relationship with Professor Hall and they brought it to his attention.”

Asked why Hall didn’t go to authorities with his concerns, Lesch said Hall had extensive experience with school bureaucracy and “did not feel like taking this to campus safety was the right way to go.”

Lesch added in an e-mail that in Hall’s years at PSU, “There have been a number of occasions where his personal safety has been threatened … Hall reported these incidents through proper channels at the time, but the university either did nothing to address his concerns or dismissed his reports outright.

University officials could not be reached late Friday for response to Hall’s perception of campus security.

“In addition,” Lesch said Friday in an e-mail, “several of Professor Hall’s students, in expressing their concerns about Bucharest, conveyed that Bucharest boasted on a number of occasions about a ‘special’ relationship with campus public safety, which suggested that they might not take any complaint about him seriously.”

“Unfortunately, he ended up doing something that was very public and inflammatory and now his career is on the line,” Lesch said. “He ended up doing this knowing he could face personal negative consequences. He thought it was the most immediate way of resolving what he thought was a potential threat.”

Bucharest has been a PSU student since 2006, and a member of student government since 2009.

“Mr. Bucharest … is not and never has been an FBI agent, or an FBI informant,” Rosenthal wrote in a statement to The Oregonian.

The FBI in Portland confirmed last month, then again Thursday, that Bucharest is not an informant for the bureau.

“The suggestion that Mr. Bucharest in any way has tried to incite violence, or illegal activity, is false,” Rosenthal wrote. “The suggestion that Mr. Bucharest in any way has threatened any PSU student is false. Mr. Bucharest is disheartened that Professor Hall’s union representative is making inflammatory public statements, rather than letting the PSU investigation run its course.”

In a previous statement through Rosenthal, Bucharest said, “I truly hope that the university will take steps to clear my name.”

Hall has fans among his students at the downtown university, among them 23-year-old senior Allison Faris, who has spent five years as a college student in the United States and France.

The pupils will mark their fingerprints every time they go to church over three years and if they attend 200 masses they will be freed from the obligation of having to pass an exam prior to their confirmation, the paper said.

The pupils in the southern town of Gryfow Slaski told the daily they liked the idea and also the priest, Grzegorz Sowa, who invented it.

“This is comfortable. We don’t have to stand in a line to get the priest’s signature (confirming our presence at the mass) in our confirmation notebooks,” said one pupil, who gave her name as Karolina.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.

“The problems currently faced by peripheral Europe could be a dress rehearsal for what the U.S. and U.K. may face further down the road,” Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in London, wrote in a research note today.

Credit-default swaps on the debt of Greece, Spain and Portugal rose to record highs today amid concern that European governments will struggle to fund their deficits. Contracts on Greece climbed 19.5 basis points to 446.5 before dropping to 422.5, CMA DataVision prices show. Spain’s increased 13 basis points to 183 before falling to 168, and Portugal’s rose 9.5 basis points to 239 before slipping to 223.5.

The U.S. and U.K. “have similar issues to those facing peripheral Europe but have the luxury of a flexible currency up their sleeves as a first defense if the market wants to attack them,” Reid said. “Such a defense means that the market, for now, thinks there are easier targets.”

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

There’s even a $5 filing fee.

Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports.

Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies.

Speculation that the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Dr Ben Bernanke, would make an appearance could not be confirmed last night.

The event will be dominated by Asian delegations and is expected to include governors of the Peoples Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the Reserve Bank of India.

The arrival of the high-powered gathering coincided with a fresh meltdown on world sharemarkets, sparked by renewed concerns about global growth and sovereign debt.

Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is “extremely small,” said the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety report, which is restricted to the agencies concerned and not meant for public circulation. The group includes the European Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Health Organization.

A more accurate assessment about the health risks of the screening won’t be possible until governments decide whether all passengers will be systematically scanned or randomly selected, the report said. Governments must justify the additional risk posed to passengers, and should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.”

While grateful to have the information — Isabel received further testing and she doesn’t have the disease — the Mankato, Minnesota, couple wondered how the doctor knew about Isabel’s genes in the first place. After all, they’d never consented to genetic testing.

It’s simple, the pediatrician answered: Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it’s often done without the parents’ consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.

In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies’ DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center.

Many parents don’t realize their baby’s DNA is being stored in a government lab, but sometimes when they find out, as the Browns did, they take action. Parents in Texas, and Minnesota have filed lawsuits, and these parents’ concerns are sparking a new debate about whether it’s appropriate for a baby’s genetic blueprint to be in the government’s possession.

“We were appalled when we found out,” says Brown, who’s a registered nurse. “Why do they need to store my baby’s DNA indefinitely? Something on there could affect her ability to get a job later on, or get health insurance.”

According to the state of Minnesota’s Web site, samples are kept so that tests can be repeated, if necessary, and in case the DNA is ever need to help parents identify a missing or deceased child. The samples are also used for medical research.

Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, says he understands why states don’t first ask permission to screen babies for genetic diseases. “It’s paternalistic, but the state has an overriding interest in protecting these babies,” he says.

However, he added that storage of DNA for long periods of time is a different matter.