The World - Aug. 13, 2009

THURSDAY

Four Guantanamo prisoners who were released to Bermuda in June have been given jobs tending a public golf course on the tiny Atlantic island. The four members of China’s Muslim Uighur minority began working last week to help prepare the lush, seaside Port Royal course to host the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in October.

Officials with the European Organization for Nuclear Research announced the Large Hadron Collider - the biggest and most complex machine ever made – will restart at a lower energy level in November. The $9.4 billion machine over-heated and was switched off nine days after its inauguration in September 2008. Its experiments are meant to reproduce conditions just after the “Big Bang” that scientists believe created the universe.

In what some speculated was a coordinated campaign, hackers crash Twitter and Facebook, cutting service to the world’s most popular online social networking sites.

FRIDAY

Bank regulators closed three banks on Friday, bringing the number of failures so far this year to 72. The FDIC estimated the three closures would cost its deposit fund a total of about $185 million.

Cuba’s economic crisis has caused a shortage of toilet paper on the communist island nation. Government officials said the country may not be able to get sufficient supplies until the end of the year.

WEEKEND

Judge Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in on Saturday as the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nine people were killed on Saturday when a small plane hit a helicopter over New York and both crashed into the Hudson River. The plane, a Piper Saratoga, appeared to hit the back of the helicopter, which immediately broke up and fell into the river.

Patrick Kane, star winger for the Chicago Blackhawks, was arrested on Sunday and charged with robbing a cab driver in Buffalo, New York. Kane paid the driver $15 for a $13.80 fare and was angered when the driver did not have proper change. Kane signed a multi-million dollar contract with the Blackhawks after they selected him with the first overall pick in the 2007 NHL draft.

An obese prisoner in Harris County, Texas, has been charged with illegal possession of a firearm after he was discovered to be hiding a 9mm pistol in between his rolls of fat.

Police in Alice Springs, Australia, say an inflatable clown recently stolen from the Moscow Circus has been found. A man walking through a golf course found the clown with a handwritten note demanding better working conditions.

MONDAY

U.S. District Judge James Redden gave the Obama administration another month to tell him its new position on balancing salmon against federal hydroelectric dam operations in the Columbia Basin.

Chicago White Sox general manager Kenny Williams was given a $56 jaywalking ticket by the Seattle Police Department outside Safeco Field. Williams was cited Monday for illegally crossing a street while talking on his cell phone after exiting a cab. Williams had just completed a waiver claim that brought All-Star outfielder Alex Rios to Chicago.

A Tacoma car salesman was left stranded on the freeway after a man on a test drive punched him and then drove off with the car. Bill Van Well said a sweaty, mumbling man came in and asked to test drive a van. State troopers caught up with the suspect in Olympia.

NASA officials said Monday they plan to use $50 million of stimulus funds to seed development of commercial transportation to space. Aspiring spaceship operators will have 45 days to submit proposals, which will be competitively evaluated. The United States is retiring its fleet of space shuttles next year. After that, the United States plans to buy rides for astronauts to and from the $100 billion International Space Station from Russia.

TUESDAY

Messages from Earth will be sent into space as part of National Science Week. The Hello From Earth web site allows people to post text-like message that will be transmitted to Gliese 581d - the nearest earth-like planet outside our solar system.

A massive statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin collapsed on a 21-year old man who was climbing on it, killing him on the spot.

Alaska legislators override former Gov. Sarah Palin’s veto of more than $28 million in federal stimulus funds for energy projects. Hours earlier, Palin had urged lawmakers not to do so on Facebook.

WEDNESDAY

Autopsy results show a bighorn ram shot by game officials near Lewiston in June did not have a bacteria that has caused large-scale deaths in wild herds as they had feared.

The unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands is under threat from disease-carrying mosquitoes arriving on board growing numbers of aircraft and tourist boats. Experts fear the spread of the southern house mosquito could have the same devastating effect in the Galapagos as in Hawaii during the late 19th century, when disease wiped out many indigenous birds.