cryptogon.com

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Jim Wilkinson, a one-time senior aide to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is part of a campaign, spearheaded by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), to quell the upsurge of “populist” anger directed at the financial sector. But the story leaves out an important part of his résumé: He’s a GOP PR operative with a history of disseminating misleading information and once served as the deputy communications director in the Bush White House.

…

Zelaya insisted as he arrived in regional neighbour Costa Rica that he remained the president of his Central American nation, but just hours later the Congress voted in the parliamentary speaker as the country’s new leader.

The first such major upheaval in several decades in the impoverished country was triggered by a tense political standoff between Zelaya and the country’s military and legal institutions over his bid to secure a second term.

“I will never give up since I was elected the president by the people,” Zelaya said from San Jose, accusing Honduran troops of kidnapping him and denouncing what he called a “political conspiracy.”

But Congress said it voted unanimously to remove him from office for his “apparent misconduct” and for “repeated violations of the constitution and the law and disregard of orders and judgments of the institutions.”

In his place they appointed speaker Roberto Micheletti as the new leader to serve out the rest of the term, which ends in January. New general elections are planned for November 29.

Zelaya, elected to a non-renewal four-year term in 2005, had planned a vote Sunday asking Hondurans to sanction a future referendum to allow him to run for reelection in the November polls.

The planned referendum had been ruled illegal by the country’s top court and was opposed by the military, but the president said he planned to press ahead with it anyway and ballot boxes had already been distributed.

The Supreme Court said Sunday that it had ordered the president’s ouster in order to protect law and order in the nation of some seven million people.

“Today’s events originate from a court order by a competent judge,” the country’s highest court said in a statement read by spokesman Danilo Izaguirre.

The drama unfolded just about dawn on Sunday when some 200 troops swooped on Zelaya’s home. He was bundled away in his pyjamas and flown out of the country.

A leading government official, Armando Sarmiento, told AFP that at least eight cabinet members were also detained including Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas.

As planes and helicopters overflew the capital, several hundred Zelaya supporters ignored warnings to stay home and flooded onto the streets of Tegucigalpa shouting out, “We want Mel,” the president’s nickname.

A new strategy involves a subtle reconfiguring of the bug’s DNA. Scientists working in labs near Oxford have devised a genetic modification that sterilizes the male Aedes, transforming the critter into his own worst enemy. He can still mate—but he can’t breed. Any offspring dies before becoming fully developed. The idea is to release a huge, all-conquering swarm of the doctored insects into the wild, let them find partners among the native females and wait for the mosquito population to decline. Preliminary trials, looking at both safety and effectiveness, have already taken place in Malaysia. Within a few years, the Franken-insects could be airborne.

The idea of GM mosquitoes was first floated 20 years ago. But it’s only recently gained the support of mainstream health officials. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $38 million into the research. In May, experts from around the world gathered in Geneva for a meeting sponsored by the World Health Organization to discuss progress and develop global guidelines for testing. Some environmental groups are alarmed at the development, and a confrontation looks certain. This is one they may lose. Unlike GM crops, whose benefits have more often gone to farmers, GM insects address a global health problem that causes great human suffering and death.

Dengue fever may be only the start. Researchers are tweaking the genome of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, the species that carries the malaria parasite, which kills at least a million people each year. Scientists hope to produce, say, a mutant bug with a superboosted immune system capable of killing off the parasite or loaded with an extra gene to block its development.

…

Obama included a five-paragraph signing statement with the bill, including a final paragraph that outlined his objections to at least four areas of the bill.

President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for his use of signing statements, declaring he’d ignore some elements of legislation by invoking presidential prerogative.

The Obama administration announced in the statement it would disregard provisions of the legislation that, among other things, would compel the Obama administration to pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require the Treasury department to report to Congress on the activities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“Provisions of this bill…would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions,” Obama said in a statement.

“I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations,” he added.

Press TV said eight staffers had been seized for their role in the unrest following the disputed presidential elections on June 12. The Foreign Office did not confirm the number of people held.

Earlier Sunday the Foreign Office said it had recently “received a number of, sometimes confused, reports that British nationals or others with British connections had been detained. We continue to raise them with the Iranian authorities.”

A spokesman further added: “People with a connection to the UK have been arrested all week.”

Last week, Tehran expelled two British diplomats. London responded by kicking out two Iranian envoys.

Iran then recalled its ambassador to Britain, saying it would reconsider its diplomatic ties with the United Kingdom.

Withdrawing an ambassador is a very serious gesture in diplomatic circles.

The Iranian government has long accused other countries, especially Britain, of “meddling” in its affairs, but has offered no proof any outside forces have been involved in the unrest after the disputed June 12 presidential election.

On Wednesday, Iranian authorities said they had arrested several foreign nationals, some with British passports, for allegedly helping foment the disturbances.

At the time, the Foreign Office said it was looking into the claims. It said it was aware that one of the arrested nationals was Washington Times reporter Iason Athanasiadis, who also goes by Jason Fowden.

Athanasiadis holds British and Greek passports.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government will allow a demonstration at Tehran’s Ghoba mosque Sunday, CNN has confirmed.

Scientists, politicians and other officials gathered Monday for a groundbreaking of sorts at a lab 4,850 foot below the surface of an old gold mine that was once the site of Nobel Prize-winning physics research.

The site is ideal for experiments because its location is largely shielded from cosmic rays that could interfere with efforts to prove the existence of dark matter, which is thought to make up nearly a quarter of the mass of the universe.

The deepest reaches of the mine plunge to 8,000 feet below the surface. Some early geology and hydrology experiments are already under way at 4,850 feet. Researchers also hope to build two deeper labs that are still awaiting funding from Congress.

“The fact that we’re going to be in the Davis Cavern just tickles us pink,” said Tom Shutt of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, referring to a portion of the mine named after scientist Ray Davis Jr., who used it in the 1960s to demonstrate the existence of particles called solar neutrinos.

Davis and a colleague named John Bahcall won a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize for physics for their work.

The old Homestake Gold Mine in a community called Lead (pronounced LEED) was shut down in 2001 after 125 years. Pumps that kept the mine dry were turned off years ago, so workers have been drying it out to prepare for the new research.

Before the labs are built, crews must also stabilize the tunnels and install new infrastructure. The lab at 4,850 feet is not much to look at yet. A rusty orange film covers the walls, floors, ceilings and debris left behind by miners.

The first dark matter experiment will be the Large Underground Xenon detector experiment — or LUX — a project to detect weakly interacting particles that could give scientists greater insight into the Big Bang explosion believed to have formed the universe.

Shutt, along with Brown University’s Rick Gaitskell and nearly a dozen collaborators will work at the site to search for dark matter, which does not emit detectable light or radiation. But scientists say its presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter.

Scientists believe most of the dark matter in the universe contains no atoms and does not interact with ordinary matter through electromagnetic forces. They are trying to discover exactly what it is, how much exists and what effect it may have on the future of the universe.

Physicists have said that without dark matter, galaxies might never have formed. By learning more about dark matter, they hope to understand better whether the universe is expanding or contracting.

The research team will try to catch the ghostly particles in a 300-kilogram tank of liquid xenon, a cold substance that is three times heavier than water. If they tried to detect dark matter above ground, the highly sensitive detector would be bombarded by cosmic radiation.

The man was charged with drug possession and later released on $3,000 bail.