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Justin Cannon, 27, and Chris Drotleff, 29, worked for a subsidiary of security firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwater.

The men were sacked after the incident for failing to comply with the terms of their contract.

The charges came on the same day that Xe reached a settlement in a number of separate civil lawsuits over the killings of Iraqi civilians.

The Justice Department said Mr Cannon and Mr Drotleff faced murder charges and could face the death penalty if found guilty.

Now Mr. Chanos, a wealthy hedge fund investor, is working to bust the myth of the biggest conglomerate of all: China Inc.

As most of the world bets on China to help lift the global economy out of recession, Mr. Chanos is warning that China’s hyperstimulated economy is headed for a crash, rather than the sustained boom that most economists predict. Its surging real estate sector, buoyed by a flood of speculative capital, looks like “Dubai times 1,000 — or worse,” he frets. He even suspects that Beijing is cooking its books, faking, among other things, its eye-popping growth rates of more than 8 percent.

“Bubbles are best identified by credit excesses, not valuation excesses,” he said in a recent appearance on CNBC. “And there’s no bigger credit excess than in China.” He is planning a speech later this month at the University of Oxford to drive home his point.

As America’s pre-eminent short-seller — he bets big money that companies’ strategies will fail — Mr. Chanos’s narrative runs counter to the prevailing wisdom on China. Most economists and governments expect Chinese growth momentum to continue this year, buoyed by what remains of a $586 billion government stimulus program that began last year, meant to lift exports and consumption among Chinese consumers.

Still, betting against China will not be easy. Because foreigners are restricted from investing in stocks listed inside China, Mr. Chanos has said he is searching for other ways to make his bets, including focusing on construction- and infrastructure-related companies that sell cement, coal, steel and iron ore.

Mr. Chanos, 51, whose hedge fund, Kynikos Associates, based in New York, has $6 billion under management, is hardly the only skeptic on China. But he is certainly the most prominent and vocal.

For all his record of prescience — in addition to predicting Enron’s demise, he also spotted the looming problems of Tyco International, the Boston Market restaurant chain and, more recently, home builders and some of the world’s biggest banks — his detractors say that he knows little or nothing about China or its economy and that his bearish calls should be ignored.

“I find it interesting that people who couldn’t spell China 10 years ago are now experts on China,” said Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros and now lives in Singapore. “China is not in a bubble.”

Colleagues acknowledge that Mr. Chanos began studying China’s economy in earnest only last summer and sent out e-mail messages seeking expert opinion.

The system that Israeli-based WeCU Technologies has devised and is testing in Israel projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, company CEO Ehud Givon said.

The logic is that people can’t help reacting, even if only subtly, to familiar images that suddenly appear in unfamiliar places. If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, Givon explained, you couldn’t help but respond.

The reaction could be a darting of the eyes, an increased heartbeat, a nervous twitch or faster breathing, he said.

The WeCU system would use humans to do some of the observing but would rely mostly on hidden cameras or sensors that can detect a slight rise in body temperature and heart rate. Far more sensitive devices under development that can take such measurements from a distance would be incorporated later.

If the sensors picked up a suspicious reaction, the traveler could be pulled out of line for further screening.

“One by one, you can screen out from the flow of people those with specific malicious intent,” Givon said.

Some critics have expressed horror at the approach, calling it Orwellian and akin to “brain fingerprinting.”

The National Whistleblowers Center, representing former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld as he fights the government over his role in helping a billionaire evade taxes, filed a complaint with the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, seeking an internal investigation and correction of the court’s records related to the case.

The complaint comes a day after a U.S. judge upheld Birkenfeld’s 40-month prison sentence, set to begin on Friday. Although U.S. officials credit Birkenfeld for a key role in exposing wrongdoing at UBS, they prosecuted him because they say he refused to provide vital information about his own role.

Birkenfeld, a U.S. citizen, went to the U.S. government in 2007 with details of tax evasion practices at the Swiss bank. The U.S. government later won changes to the bank’s practices, a $780 million settlement and the promise of the names of thousands of suspected tax cheats.

Prosecutors contend that Birkenfeld was unwilling to give details of work he personally did for his client, California billionaire named Igor Olenicoff, who eventually was indicted and pled guilty for tax evasion.

The whistleblower’s group says that Justice Department attorneys were not speaking the truth when they said Birkenfeld refused to cooperate. They say the DOJ is at fault for not providing a subpoena sought by Birkenfeld, so he would be protected under Swiss law.

“While Mr. Birkenfeld did not disclose Olenicoff’s identity at his initial meeting with the Justice Department in June 2007, he refused only because he was still a resident of Switzerland, and could not disclose Mr. Olenicoff without violating Swiss law,” the group’s lawyers wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Mary Patrice Brown, acting counsel of DOJ’s office of professional responsibility.

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman was not available for comment.

Birkenfeld pleaded guilty to a single fraud conspiracy count in June 2008, when he acknowledged helping his largest U.S. client hide assets.

No other UBS banker has received jail time in connection with the case.

The case is USA v. Birkenfeld et al, U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida, No. 08-cr-60099.

Paula Sladewski and her boyfriend flew into South Florida to spend New Year’s Eve at a Lady Gaga concert at Miami Beach’s posh Fontainebleau.

But the holiday trip would end in a horrific tragedy.

At the back entrance on 35th Street, awaiting trash haulers, were bags of garments that appear to have never been worn. And to make sure that they never would be worn or sold, someone had slashed most of them with box cutters or razors, a familiar sight outside H & M’s back door. The man and woman were there to salvage what had not been destroyed.

He worked quickly, never uttering a word. A bag was opened and eyed, and if it held something of promise, was tossed at the feet of the woman. She said her name was Pepa.

Were the clothes usually cut up before they were thrown out?

“A veces,” she said in Spanish. Sometimes.

She packed up a few items that had escaped the blade — a bright green T-shirt that said “Summer of Surf,” and a dark-blue hoodie in size 12, with a Divided label. The rest was returned to the pyramid.

It is winter. A third of the city is poor. And unworn clothing is being destroyed nightly.

A few doors down on 35th Street, hundreds of garments tagged for sale in Wal-Mart — hoodies and T-shirts and pants — were discovered in trash bags the week before Christmas, apparently dumped by a contractor for Wal-Mart that has space on the block.

Each piece of clothing had holes punched through it by a machine.

They were found by Cynthia Magnus, who attends classes at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on Fifth Avenue and noticed the piles of discarded clothing as she walked to the subway station in Herald Square. She was aghast at the waste, and dragged some of the bags home to Brooklyn, hoping that someone would be willing to take on the job of patching the clothes and making them wearable.

A TSA agent was arrested on January 3rd in Terminal One at LAX, a source told NBCLA. He had just gotten off duty and was behaving erratically, saying, “I am god, I’m in charge.”

Meanwhile, a TSA Internal Affairs investigation turned up evidence of LAX TSA agents using drugs at an after-hours party.

TSA officials say a videotape of the party was of poor quality and the employees were not in uniform, but 4 employees were tentatively identified.

Thousands of homes have been left without power, schools have closed and travellers have faced chaos as the weather hit roads, rail services and airports over the last two days. The disruption is estimated to have cost businesses around £700 million.

Councils continued to struggle with a growing salt emergency as police warned drivers in many areas not to travel unless their journey was essential.

The AA expect to have attended 20,000 breakdowns today – compared with about 9,000 for a normal Thursday – and warned that conditions were expected to remain “treacherous”.