Peter Pan, Snow White arrested at Disneyland

ANAHEIM, Calif. - Cinderella, Snow White, Tinkerbell and other fictional fixtures of modern-day childhood were handcuffed, frisked and loaded into police vans Thursday at the culmination of a labor protest that brought a touch of reality to the Happiest Place on Earth.

The arrest of the 32 protesters, many of whom wore costumes representing famous Disney characters, came at the end of an hour-long march to Disneyland's gates from one of three Disney-owned hotels at the center of a labor dispute.

Those who were arrested sat in a circle on a busy intersection outside the park holding hands until they were placed in plastic handcuffs and led to two police vans while hundreds of hotel workers cheered and chanted.

Obama adviser compares Putin to Hitler

The former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has called on the world community to isolate Russia in protest over its campaign in the Caucasus, likening its tactics to those of "Hitler or Stalin".

Brzezinski, who was the national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981, and is now an occasional adviser to the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, said the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, was "following a course that is horrifyingly similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s".

He said that Putin's "justification" for splitting up Georgia - because of the Russian citizens living in South Ossetia - could be compared to when Hitler used the alleged suffering of ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland as a pretext for annexing Czechoslovakia in 1938.

In an interview with the conservative German daily Die Welt, he said even more striking were the parallels between Putin's strategy against Georgia and Stalin's invasion of Finland in 1939, describing both as "the undermining of the sovereignty of a small, democratic neighbouring state through the use of violence". He added: "Georgia is to an extent the Finland of today, both morally and strategically."

Polish-born Brezinski, 80, who earned a reputation as a hardliner due to his anti-Soviet politics, said the world was now being confronted with the question as to how it should react to Russia and what he saw as its efforts to "reincorporate old Soviet areas into the Kremlin's sphere of control". He said at the heart of the issue was access to oil and specifically who controlled the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which runs through Georgia.

"If Georgia no longer has its sovereignty it means not only that the west is cut off from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia, but we can also assume that Putin will exercise a similar strategy against Ukraine if he faces resistance. He's already publicly voiced threats against Ukraine."

"If Russia continues on this path it has to be isolated by the international community," he said, including economic sanctions on which all alliances from the European Union to Nato would have to take a joint stand.

He added that Russia's invasion of Georgia was proof of the failure of the White House during George Bush's eight year tenure, to recognise the "Putin regime" for what it really was.

"Two episodes illustrate this better than any others," he said. "First, when Bush met Putin for the first time and said he had looked into his soul and could trust him. Secondly, when Condi Rice, not so long ago, said that the American-Russian relations had never been better than they are today." He said the White House had deceived itself.

Asked why it was that he only spoke of Putin and not of the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, Brzezinski said: "He [Medvedev] has about as much influence over the current situation as the official head of state in the Soviet Union of the 1950s had over the Soviet Union. Nobody can even remember his name."

LHC synchronization test successful

The synchronization of the LHC's clockwise beam transfer system and the rest of CERN's accelerator chain was successfully achieved last weekend. Tests began on Friday 8 August when a single bunch of a few particles was taken down the transfer line from the SPS accelerator to the LHC.

After a period of optimization, one bunch was kicked up from the transfer line into the LHC beam pipe and steered about 3 kilometres around the LHC itself on the first attempt. On Saturday, the test was repeated several times to optimize the transfer before the operations group handed the machine back for hardware commissioning to resume on Sunday.
The anti-clockwise synchronization systems will be tested over the weekend of 22 August.

Lennon's killer denied parole again

John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, was denied parole for the fifth time Tuesday.

The New York State Division of Parole issued a release saying Chapman's request was denied "due to concern for the public safety and welfare."

Chapman, 53, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison for shooting to death the former Beatle outside his New York City apartment on December 8, 1980.

The killer has served 24 years of his sentence at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility and was previously turned down by the New York State division of parole in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Chapman is held in a building with other prisoners who are not considered to pose a threat to him, according to officials with the state Department of Correctional Services. He has his own prison cell but spends most of his day outside the cell working on housekeeping and in the library.

For the past 16 years he has received conjugal visits with his wife, Gloria. The visits are part of a state program called "family reunion" that allows inmates to spend up to 44 hours at a time with family members in a special setting.

Inmates must meet certain criteria to receive the privilege. Chapman has not had an infraction since 1994, said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the Department of Corrections.

Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, in previous years has submitted a letter requesting that Chapman be denied parole. Calls Tuesday to Ono's legal representative have not been returned.

Fifty letters and a petition signed by almost 1,100 people were submitted objecting to releasing Chapman, said Division of Parole spokeswoman Heather Groll. Only three letters were submitted appealing for Chapman's release.

The next time Chapman can apply for parole is in August 2010.

Obama to announce VP via SMS

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is planning to announce his choice of vice presidential running mate not at a press conference nor on nationwide TV. Instead he’s making this key declaration via text message.

In a text message and e-mail campaign Sunday night, Obama organizers alerted anyone who would listen that the candidate would announce his VP choice between now and the Democratic National Convention Aug. 25 through a text message to his supporters. To get on the distribution list, one only has to text the message “VP” to the Obama SMS short code number, 62262. The campaign is also allowing people to sign up for an email alert on its Website as well as receive notice through the microblogging site Twitter.

Obama is certainly no stranger to using new communications platforms to benefit his campaign. Though not the first to use the Internet as a fund-raising and organizing tool, he’s used it most effectively in the current presidential campaign, generating millions in small online donations. The VP SMS program isn’t even Obama’s first venture into the world of wireless. Much more than his rival, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, Obama has been tapping into the power of the mobile phone, not just to distribute his message but to generate buzz for his candidacy.

On Obama’s campaign Website is a section called Obama Mobile, where would-be supporters can download ringtones and wallpaper featuring the candidate’s voice and mug. Wireless users can also receive regular text updates on different policy positions such as healthcare or the war in Iraq. And for those that want it all, just send the word “hope” to Obama’s short code and become part of the campaign distribution network.

The VP announcement, however, goes far beyond any of Obama’s previous dabbling in the mobile medium. By making a major news announcement—or creating the illusion thereof--via SMS and e-mail, Obama not only controls the message he sends but distributes it directly to the presumably hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who opt in to the SMS campaign. In the case of the text alert, Obama also can get that message to supporters instantaneously before it has been filtered through the news stories and commentaries of the national media. He gets to bypass the middleman.

But there are other advantages for the Obama campaign. For each of the mobile or email lists users sign on to, the campaign collects critical phone numbers, email addresses and even postal address information on potential supporters. The importance of the Democratic VP choice will likely attract into the Obama network a great a deal of people who previously had no interest in receiving Obama’s more mundane campaign messages—all of whom can be hit up for contributions or volunteer requests later.

Man convicted of smuggling iguanas in his fake leg

A Long Beach man trying to illegally transport rare iguanas has fallen to the long arm of the law.

Jereme James, 34, of Long Beach, was found guilty Thursday on two federal charges related to bringing three rare iguanas into the U.S. from a nature preserve in Fiji in 2002. Prosecutors said he brought the reptiles into the U.S. by hiding them in a special compartment he had constructed in his prosthetic leg.

James was convicted on one count of concealing and one count of possessing the endangered animals, Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said in a statement. He was acquitted on one count of smuggling. James is scheduled to be sentenced by United States District Judge Manuel Real on July 14, facing a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

During a three-day trial, prosecutors attempted to show that James stole three hatchling Fiji Island banded iguanas (Brachylophus fasciatus) and brought them to the United States in violation of federal and international law. The iguana faces extinction and is protected under an international treaty .

After receiving a tip that James possessed the reptiles, prosecutors said, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service opened an undercover investigation.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, James told an undercover agent that he sold a trio of Fiji Island banded iguanas four years ago for $32,000. After a series of meetings with James, Fish and Wildlife Service agents executed a search warrant at James’ house last July and found the reptiles.

As for iguanas, they'll end up in a breeding program in the U.S., officials said.

Today Gagarin became the first human to travel into space

On 12 April 1961, Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1) and return. His call sign in this flight was Kedr (Cedar). During his flight, Gagarin famously whistled the tune "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows". The first two lines of the song are: "The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky". This patriotic song was written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1951 (opus 86), with words by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky.

There are speculations in the media that from orbit Gagarin made the comment, "I don't see any God up here." There are, however, no such words in the full verbatim record of Gagarin's conversations with the Earth during the spaceflight. In a 2006 interview a close friend of Gagarin, Colonel Valentin Petrov, stated that Gagarin never said such words, and that the phrase originated from Nikita Khrushchev's speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, where the anti-religious propaganda was discussed. In a certain context Khrushchev said, "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any God there". Colonel Petrov also said that Gagarin had been baptized into the Orthodox Church as a child.

While in orbit Gagarin was promoted "in the field" from the rank of Senior Lieutenant to Major, and this was the rank at which TASS announced him in its triumphant statement during the flight.[citation needed]

Gagarin being safely returned, Nikita Khrushchev rushed to his side and Gagarin issued a statement praising the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the "organizer of all our victories". Khrushchev saw Gagarin's achievement as a vindication of his policy of strengthening the Soviet Union's missile forces at the expense of conventional arms. This policy antagonized the Soviet military establishment and contributed to Khrushchev's eventual downfall.

After the flight, Gagarin became an instant, worldwide celebrity, touring widely with appearances in Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Canada, and Japan to promote the Soviet achievement.

In 1962, he began serving as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet. He later returned to Star City, the cosmonaut facility, where he worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft. Gagarin worked on these designs in Star City for 7 years.

Gagarin became Lieutenant Colonel (or Podpolkovnik) of the Soviet Air Force on June 12, 1962 and on November 6, 1963 he received the rank of Colonel (Polkovnik) of the Soviet Air Force.