Sunday’s federal election threw Germany’s Greens into a state of disarray — should they celebrate their best result ever or mourn the fact they failed to prevent a centre-right coalition and languished in fifth place?

“A Victory that is a Defeat”, “Triumph and Bitterness”, “Celebrations despite missing goal,” read newspaper headlines on Monday.

(Photo: Kuenast and Trittin, top candidates of the Greens party, arrive on stage after the general election, Sept 27, Reuters/Ralph Orlowski)

The Greens, one of the world’s most successful environmental parties, won more than a tenth of the vote — not bad for a party whose members entered parliament as revolutionary rebels in the 1980s flourishing potted plants and sporting woolly jumpers.

“We feel strengthened in our fight for ecological modernisation, social justice and civil rights by the best result we have ever had,” co-leader Juergen Trittin told hundreds of party faithful on Sunday evening at the Greens headquarters in Berlin.

But a German colleague who attended the event, Hans-Edzard Busemann, told me the ambiance was confused rather than euphoric, and faces fell when they saw the results for the first time.

No wonder. The Greens were hoping to be the third strongest party at the elections and kingmakers in governemnt coalition talks — a goal they missed by a long stretch, trailing behind their nemesis the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) on 14.6 percent and the far-left Linke on 11.9 percent.

They campaigned hard to prevent a centre-right coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives with the pro-business Free Democrats — and failed.

Such a coalition is likely to undo much of the work that the Greens, who emerged from the anti-nuclear and peace movememnts of the 1970s, carried out while ruling with the Social Democrats from 1998 to 2005.

For a start, it will probably rewrite a national nuclear phaseout deal by allowing reactors to run longer than the previously agreed 2020 deadline. (Click here to see a story that a colleague in Frankfurt, Vera Eckert, wrote about this earlier today)

It will also likely change or drop the generous feed-in law for renewable energies introduced by the Greens and SPD, a prospect which sent shares in highly subsidised solar firms such as Q-Cells and Solarworld sliding on Monday.

(Photo: Supporters of the Green party react after the first exit polls, Sept 27, Reuters/Ralph Orlowski)

And as if all that that weren’t enough, Greens co-leader Cem Oezdemir — the only member of an ethnic minority to have ever headed a German party — failed to win a seat a parliament despite securing 30 percent of the vote in his constituency in Stuttgart.

So despite their best election result ever, the Greens may not be able to avoid some soul-searching over the coming weeks and months.

Some political analysts argue very little has changed in their manifesto over the past four years and the party executive, with the exception of Oezdemir, is still the same. Will Sunday’s result prompt a Greens renewal?

At his penultimate meeting with governors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog before he steps down in November, Mohamed ElBaradei gave diplomats a reminder of the colourful prose and no-nonsense authority they may soon miss.

   A veteran of the long-running dispute between the West and Iran over its contentious nuclear programme,  the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency  urged the 35-nation governing body to “put (your) heads together to break the logjam,” on the same day that Tehran submitted a package of proposals to foreign powers.

   He criticised countries – he did not name them but was clearly referring to Israel and France — who have suggested he hid evidence from his latest written report on Iran, pointing undeniably to illicit Iranian research into the making of atomic bombs.

   “Talking about formalities, whether the work plan has been implemented or not,  whether people telling us how to suck eggs, how to write our reports, whether there is a (secret) annex  (on Iran)  — these are not the issues,” he said in a swipe at both sides of the debate.

   “If anybody…has any information we have not shared, that has passed muster, been assessed critically in accordance with our practices, please step forward today. Otherwise, as a preacher would say, you should forever hold your peace,” ElBaradei told delegates.

   “We have, in our reports, always tried not to understate the facts or overstate the facts. We have serious concerns, but we are not in a state of panic. Because we have not seen diversion of nuclear material, we have not seen components of nuclear weapons. We do not have any information to that effect.”

   ElBaradei’s Aug. 28 report lent credence to a Western the intelligence dossier implying military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear activity.  But ElBaradei said caveats were still in order.

   “It’s alleged (studies), the whole question is about accuracy, whether this is real — that is the $64,000 question. That is where we are stuck, we have a limited ability to authenticate,” ElBaradei said. “People talk about assessments. I’m not a rocket scientist,” the 67-year-old lawyer and diplomat said.

   But the agency is losing patience with Iran, he said, for stonewalling IAEA efforts to verify that its nuclear programme is peaceful.

   “I know you have been reacting to others,” ElBaradei told Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, referring to Tehran’s 2006 decision to stop wider-ranging agency inspections because of U.N. sanctions. “But you are not penalizing others, you are penalizing yourself.”

   Further, ElBaradei prodded Iran to stop evading a U.S.-led big power offer of negotiations that would provide it major trade benefits if it reined in its nuclear activity and made it transparent to non-proliferation inspectors.

   “I’ve told (Iran) I don’t see where the problem is. The U.S. is making an offer without preconditions on that base of mutual respect. Soltanieh has said they are ready to have a comprehensive dialogue. I say the offer by the US can not be refused because it has no conditions attached to it and is based on mutual respect.”

   He also warned  Iran’s strongest Western critics against hyping the Iranian threat by talking about supposed IAEA cover-ups.  “(You are) trying to undermine the agency, (but) in the end (you are) undermining your own credibility. We went through this during the time of Iraq.”

   An outspoken ElBaradei clashed with the former U.S. administration over what he saw as its confrontational policy towards Iraq and Iran. He has said that anyone considering military force against the Islamic Republic would be “bonkers”.

   ElBaradei’s more soft-spoken, reserved successor, Yukiya Amano of Japan, takes over in December.

A technical fault at a German nuclear power station has thrown a spotlight on one of the few issues that divide the two main parties before September’s election — atomic energy.

But the anti-nuclear Social Democrats (SPD), who have shared power with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives since 2005, may be disappointed if they had hoped to win votes from it.

Merkel, forced to accept a phaseout of Germany’s atomic plants under its coalition deal with the SPD, is campaigning on extending the lifespan of nuclear plants which are deemed safe.

By contrast, the SPD is committed to the phaseout which it introduced in a previous alliance with the Greens, and Saturday’s failed restart at the ageing Kruemmel plant in northern Germany has galvanised some of its members into action.

The SPD, trailing Merkel’s conservative camp by more than 16 percentage points and at risk of losing its role in government, is trying to do all it can to mobilise its traditional supporters before the Sept. 27 vote.

SPD Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel pounced on the incident, swiftly taking to the airwaves to push his case that the phaseout should be accelerated. And on Wednesday a Berlin newspaper was strategically leaked a government statement, albeit from 2006-07, which said safety standards at older plants like Kruemmel were not as high as at more modern reactors.

Germans have for decades nurtured an aversion to atomic energy, which supplies just under 30 percent of their power needs.

But as other European countries have started to revive nuclear, opinion has started to shift due mainly to higher energy prices and fears about supply. Pollsters say Germans are now pretty evenly split on whether to support a later decommissioning of plants.

In their campaign manifesto, conservatives argue nuclear is an important part of the energy mix, at least until renewable sources are fully commercially viable.

“If the SPD tries to make this a big election topic, it will not have much success. Public opinion is moving towards an acceptance of atomic energy,” said Klaus-Peter Schoeppner, head of Emnid pollsters.

Climate health costs: bug-borne ills, killer heat
Tree-munching beetles, malaria-carrying mosquitoes and deer ticks that spread Lyme disease are three living signs that climate change is likely to exact a heavy toll on human health. These pests and others are expanding their ranges in a warming world, which means people who never had to worry about them will have to start.

Spain rearranges furniture as economy sinks

Moving a 17-metre high monument to Christopher Columbus 100 metres down the road is how the Spanish government is interpreting the advice of John Maynard Keynes. The economist once argued it would be preferable to pay workers to dig holes and fill them in again, rather than allowing them to stand idle and deprive the economy of the multiplier effect of their wages.

Picking up the pieces from Afghanistan’s war

U.S. gunners scanned a lush Afghan valley from their helicopter, as a  white van containing a badly burned baby inched toward another Black Hawk waiting at the army outpost. Eight soldiers had flown into the heart of hostile eastern Afghanistan, in a convoy of one air ambulance and one “chase” helicopter for protection, to collect 18-month-old Amanullah who knocked a pot of scalding water over his legs, penis and scrotum.

In Brazil, extreme weather stokes climate worries

No one could say they hadn’t seen it coming. The sand dunes had been advancing for decades before they swallowed the houses of families in Ilha Grande, an island in Brazil’s Parnaiba river delta. Standing on a dune that covers his old home, one man describes the landscape of his childhood — cashew trees as far as he could see. Not a dune in sight.

Angola’s hard-hitting beat electrifies the poor

It’s not break-dance, it isn’t rap either. The name is kuduro and its beat is electrifying dancers from Luanda to Lisbon and New York City. In Angola’s capital city, men and women are often seen performing robotic moves, bouncing off walls or pretending to drop dead once kuduro’s hard-hitting beat stops. The creator of kuduro, which means “hard-ass” in Portuguese, said he came up with the sound while watching martial arts expert Jean Claude Van Damme dance in a 1994 movie.

Cattle rustling on the rise as U.S. recession bites

Cattle theft is a growing problem as thieves realize that stealing cows is a relatively easy way to raise a quick buck. Stolen cattle are often taken straight from their farm or ranch to auction at a stockyard.  “When people think cattle rustling they think John Wayne. But it’s not like that. Cattle thieves are … technologically savvy. “

Fiat expansion stirs resentment in Italy’s south

Staring at the locked gates of a Fiat car factory, Mimmo Vacchiano says many families in this poor corner of southern Italy face a stark choice unless its turnstiles reopen. “If they close this plant, there’s nothing else here, only unemployment or the mafia.” Pomigliano d’Arco, a town of 40,000 people in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, relies on Fiat for its lifeblood. Residents now fear they may pay the price for cash-strapped Fiat’s high-stakes strategy to survive the recession by expanding to become the world’s second largest car maker.

Signs of recovery appear in Zimbabwe hospitals

The odors of death and decay are gone from the corridors of Zimbabwe’s biggest hospital, replaced by the smells of medicines and food for the patients who are once again coming for treatment. Nowhere is the change in Zimbabwe more evident than in the hospitals that just months ago failed so woefully to cope with a cholera epidemic that killed more than 4,000 people. Doctors and nurses have returned to Harare’s Parirenyatwa General Hospital. UNICEF has been helping to pay allowances to some doctors and nurses while the government is now paying them $100 a month like other state employees.

Boom-and-bust corner of California sees new hope

If the U.S. recession has an epicenter in California, it may be the  working-class neighborhoods called the “Inland Empire,” full of boarded-up homes, vacant storefronts, jobless workers. It faces years coping with foreclosed homes, jobless rates over 10 percent, a poorly educated workforce and empty warehouses.

Slain leaders’ heirs vie for Lebanon votes

The memory of assassinated Lebanese leaders lives in symbols and slogans of their heirs who are battling for Christian votes crucial to deciding the parliamentary election. Nayla Tueni and Nadim Gemayel are young, even by the standards of Lebanon’s dynastic politics. Running as allies in the June election, both evoke memories of fathers killed for their views.

Everglades swamped with invading pythons

The population of Burmese pythons in Florida’s Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes breed in the fragile wetlands. Wildlife biologists say they have been dumped by  owners who no longer want them and pose a threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat. “They eat things that we care about,” said an Everglades National Park biologist.

Cubans indulge baseball mania at Havana’s “Hot Corner”

For all the shouting and nose-to-nose confrontations, visitors to Havana’s Parque Central might think they had walked into a brawl or counter-revolution … but here in the park’s Hot Corner,  the topic almost always under discussion is baseball, Cuba’s national obsession.

Iraq’s orphans battle to outgrow abuse

At night, Salah Abbas Hisham wakes up screaming. Sometimes, in the dark, he silently attacks the boy next to him in a tiny Baghdad orphanage where 33 boys sleep on cots or on the floor. Salah, who saw both his parents blown apart in a car bomb, can never be left alone at night.

Colombian soccer club tries to forget cocaine past

Colombian soccer champions America de Cali are first to admit cocaine dollars had a hand in their sporting heyday. But after years of paying the price, they’re trying to wipe the slate clean … Cali’s mayor is leading a campaign to have the team removed from a U.S. anti-drugs blacklist.

Big French press find brand power helps online

In a grimy part of eastern Paris an editorial conference is underway, similar to planning meetings in newsrooms everywhere, except this is being blogged live and readers can join in … The meeting is at Rue89 … one of the interactive  sites to have appeared as a global crisis in the press squeezes French newspapers.

Shy teen spotlights battle over failing schools

A shy 14-year-old girl plucked from obscurity by the White House has come to symbolize a battle over how to fix dilapidated U.S. schools. Ty’Sheoma Bethea’s story proves that one small act — in this case writing to President Barack Obama — can have a big impact. It also highlights a battle over how far the federal government should fund U.S. education.

Toxic jatropha shrub fuels Mexico’s biodiesel push

All his life elderly Mexican farmer Gonzalo Cardenas has planted a stalky weed that grows wild in southern Mexico to form a sturdy live fence around his tropical fruit trees. Now it turns out the weed, jatropha, could be used to fuel jet planes.

Malaysia Christians battle with Muslims over Allah

The congregation at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral on Borneo island intones in Malay: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of Allah”. Now the government in this mostly Muslim Southeast Asian nation wants to prevent “Allah” being used by Christians.

Rape inquiry sheds light on racism in Italy

When police arrested two Romanians for the rape of an Italian teenager in Rome, a paper owned by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, reported: “The Romanian beasts have been caught.” Three weeks later, prosecutors admitted the “beasts” could not be guilty — DNA tests had ruled them out .

China’s last eunuch spills sex, castration secrets

Only two memories brought tears to Sun Yaoting’s eyes in old age — the day his father cut off his genitals, and the day his family threw away the pickled remains that should have made him a whole man again at death. China’s last eunuch was tormented and impoverished in youth, punished in revolutionary China for his role as the “Emperor’s slave”.

The Red Sea might save the Dead Sea

Abundant water from the Red Sea could replenish the shrinking Dead Sea if Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians decide to commission a tunnel north through the Jordanian desert from the Gulf of Aqaba. The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance project would supply the biggest desalination plant in the world.

Development takes toll on Chesapeake crabs

It doesn’t look like a disaster area. Crab boats dart back and forth on this inlet of the Chesapeake Bay as they have for generations … But watermen aren’t pulling blue crabs out of the Bay … the U.S. Commerce Department declared the fishery a federal disaster last September.

U.S. energy future hits snag in rural Pennsylvania

When her children started missing school because of persistent diarrhea and vomiting, Pat Farnelli began to wonder if she and her family were suffering from more than a classroom bug. After trying several remedies, she stopped using the water drawn from her well in this rural corner of northeastern Pennsylvania, the forefront of a drilling boom in what may be the biggest U.S. reserve of natural gas.

Could an Austrian oil and gas group with more than 41,000 employees, some 25.5 billion euros turnover and a presence in more than 20 countries actually be a secret front for Russian gas giants, extending their tentacles of power into Europe?

It could be if you believe Zsolt Hernadi, the chairman of Hungarian rival MOL, not to mention some scary headlines about Russian gas in the British press.

Earlier this week Austria’s OMV sold a 21 percent stake it held in MOL to Russian oil group Surgutneftegaz for 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion), double the amount the stake was worth as stock. The stake was originally bought from … a Russian family Almost half of the stake was originally bought from … a Russian family.

“Suspicion arises … that because the Russian investor bought this stake at exactly the (initial purchase) price, it (OMV) was just a front,” Hernadi told a Hungarian parliament committee.

The sale came just days after OMV’s chief executive said he did not plan to let go of the stake this year, fuelling speculation there was an ulterior motive behind the swift deal, finalised in the middle of the night on Sunday.

“Sometimes the markets offer opportunities you have to take,” OMV’s spokesman said. The sale also came after a miserable takeover attempt by OMV, which was repelled by the Hungarian group at every twist and turn.

The European Commission warned on the deal last year, saying it could create big competition problems and lead to higher prices. OMV eventually withdrew its $23 billion bid. Unofficial talk among EU officials has also highlighted worries about OMV’s Russian connections.

But doesn’t selling the stake just make good business sense? And if OMV is a Russian lapdog, why is it spearheading a consortium for the Nabucco pipeline, a project aimed at diversifying European supplies of gas away from Russia?

Well, Russia’s hold on energy supplies is an ever-sensitive issue. A spat with Ukraine over payments escalated into a two-week supply shutdown earlier this year, hitting parts of Europe and underlining reliance on Russian gas.

So Russia and OMV-bashing gets some sympathetic ears, even if MOL’s Hernadi said in 2007 that his company would be better off in the hands of the Russian firms than OMV.

Russia, for its part, may not have been keen to see a consumer of its oil fall into hostile hands.

Surgut, believed to have around $19 billion sitting on its balance sheet as of September 2008, could probably afford to pay a healthy premium. Investors, who have begged the company for years to put its cash in play, rewarded it with a rise in its stock price.

OMV has been doing business with Russia’s Gazprom since 1968, describing the oil giant as a “reliable partner” even during the last gas row.

It has to toe a fine line. While it relies heavily on Russia for some of its big contracts and for developing a major gas hub, it is also keen to push the Nabucco project, emphasising all the while that the plans are not politicised and certainly not anti-Russian.

Nabucco’s managing director told me late last year that the consortium does not worry about where gas comes from, as long as the sources are diverse - Iran, even Russia, are possibilities, it is about pragmatism, not politics, he said.

Most analysts think of the MOL stake sale as purely pragmatic too, ignoring the politically-charged comments from Budapest. “The price is favourable as OMV has achieved close to a 100 percent premium to MOL’s share price at the close on Friday,” UBS analysts wrote in a research note. “The deal eases liquidity worries at OMV.”

But whether OMV is just pragmatic or secretly a Russian puppet, this is unlikely to be the last time it gets drawn into the politics of energy.

Exotic animals trapped in net of Mexican drug trade - From the live snakes that smugglers stuff with packets of cocaine to the white tigers drug lords keep as exotic pets, rare animals are being increasingly sucked into Mexico’s deadly narcotics trade.

End of an era for the Amazon’s turbulent priests - They avoid taking buses, make sure friends know their schedules, and rarely go out when it’s dark. For the three foreign-born Roman Catholic bishops under death threat in Brazil’s northeastern state of Para, speaking out against social ills that plague this often-lawless area at the Amazon River’s mouth has come at a price.

West risks repeating Soviet mistakes in Afghanistan - The foreign warplanes swooped in just as the Afghan village of Ali Mardan was celebrating a wedding. Bombs slammed into the crowded village square, killing 30 men, women and children. After the smoke cleared and the dead were buried, all the able-bodied men left alive took up arms against the invaders. That was 1982…

Drought starts to bite in northern Kenya - Clouds of dust rising above the harsh scrub herald the arrival of more livestock at a borehole in northeastern Kenya, the end for some of a 45 km (28 mile) trek for water that must be repeated every few days. Drought is starting to bite into east Africa’s biggest economy and the government says 10 million people may face hunger and starvation.

World’s largest wetland threatened in Brazil - Jaguars still roam the world’s largest wetland Hyacinth Macaws nest in its trees, but advancing farms and industries are destroying Brazil’s Pantanal region at an alarming rate. “It’s a type of Noah’s Ark but it risks running aground,” biologist and tourist guide Elder Brandao de Oliveira says of the Pantanal.

Indonesian city grapples with quake threat - Remember the name Padang. Geologists say this Indonesian city of 900,000 people may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake. “Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake,” said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute.

‘Protest TV’ tries to bring down Georgian leader - It’s been dubbed “Protest TV”. A man in an improvised prison cell under the 24-hour gaze of television cameras, promising to stay put until Georgia’s president quits. Four cameras and a microphone on the ceiling capture his every shuffling move and political rant.  An edited version is broadcast in the evening, before Gachechiladze goes live all night, often with guests.

U.S. farmland fetches top dollar despite recession - On a chilly day in January, more than 200 investors gathered in west central Illinois to haggle over 4,000 acres of prime farmland called the Kilton Farm in the heart of U.S. Corn Belt. The auction came during the most depressing climate for the U.S. economy in decades. But when the hammer fell…

Sunken Green treasures at risk from scuba looters - A corroded mechanism recovered by sponge divers from a sunken wreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1902 changed the study of the ancient world.  Hundreds more wrecks beneath the eastern Mediterranean may contain treasures, but a new law opening Greece’s coastline to scuba diving has experts worried that priceless artifacts could disappear into the hands of treasure hunters.

In the north, Afghans fight hunger, not the Taliban - The United States’ decision to send more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village, whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger. “Life is not good. There was nothing last year. No water. No wheat. If there is no water this year, I will have to leave…”

Central Asia is much in demand these days, whether as a transit route for U.S. and NATO supplies to Afghanistan as an alternative to Pakistan or for its rich resources, including oil and gas.

So it's worth noting that India has been hosting Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev as its guest of honour at its Republic Day celebrations while signing a bunch of trade deals in the process. According to reports in the Indian media, including in the Business Standard, the Week and the Times of India,  India is seeking supplies of uranium for its nuclear plants and access to Kazakhstan's oil and gas and in return would be expected to support Kakazhstan's bid for membership of the World Trade Organisation. (India's state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) said on Saturday it had signed a deal to explore for oil and gas in Kazakhstan.)

Before anyone gets too carried away about India stealing a march in Central Asia, this Indian website adds a note of realism: "India’s strategy towards Central Asian countries has been no different than its strategy towards African nations, and can be only summarized as 'playing catch-up with the Chinese',” it says. "In this new “Great Game” of the century, India is consistently assuming the role of “Johnny-come-lately” to China in Central Asia."

That said, it still struck me as an interesting signpost in the competition between Asia and the U.S-led west for resources and influence, with Central Asia likely to become increasingly important both as a source of energy and as a supply route to Afghanistan.

The significance of this competition is unlikely to be lost on Russia which, according to this article by former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar ,could end up playing off the United States against China.  He writes that while Russia does not want to see the United States and NATO defeated in Afghanistan, nor does it want them to use Central Asian supply routes to Afghanistan as an excuse to win access to the region's oil and gas. "Russian experts estimate that the proposed Caspian transit route could eventually become an energy transportation route in reverse direction, which would mean a strategic setback for Russia in the decade-long struggle for the region's hydrocarbon reserves." So as part of this complex balancing act, he says, it is looking for a bigger role for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation -- dominated by Russia and China -- in stabilising Afghanistan.

Critics of the Bush administration acknowledged that former vice-president Dick Cheney got the importance of Central Asia even as they condemned his methods. Now India is jumping in on the act.  How is the new administration of President Barack Obama going to approach Central Asia, while juggling relations with Russia, trying to turn the tide in Afghanistan and reducing U.S. dependence on Pakistan?

(Photos: President Nursultan Nazarbayev inspects guard of honour in New Delhi/B. Mathur

Young hunter with his tame golden eagle in central Kazakhstan/Shamil Zumakov)

Scientists said they simply didn’t know what surprises might emerge when they started up the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most complex machine which until Wednesday lay benignly in its underground home on the outskirts of Geneva. 
                                                                                                            
Perhaps crashing together millions of particles at close to the speed of light would replicate the conditions just after the Big Bang that created the universe.           

Perhaps the high-energy collisions, which will generate temperatures more than 100,000 times than the heart
of the sun, would lay to rest an unproven theory of physics.

And maybe, just maybe, the largest scientific experiment in human history would produce some anti-matter, or miniature black holes that would quickly disappear

“The most exciting result would be something we don’t expect,” British physicist Stephen Hawking said on the eve of the tightly sealed machine’s start-up, echoing his scientific peers who bubbled over with enthusiasm about the prospect of finally cracking more of the universe’s mysteries once data starts spewing from the physics playground at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.  

But not everyone likes surprises.                                

For non-scientists, the scale and ambition of the 10-billion Swiss franc ($9 billion) project seem unnerving.  The possibility of creating black holes simply sound scary.   

Many people allow themselves to ask, are there limits to what science should seek to find out?  Will this experiment result in the end of the world as we know it, or even bring about the end of the world?   

Millions of people — myself included — were first introduced to CERN reading “Angels and Demons,” the prequel to “The Da Vinci Code,” in which bad guys try to steal anti-matter from the ultra-modern research centre to destroy the Vatican. 

But the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider on Wednesday proceeded without the drama or adrenaline of a Dan Brown novel.  Project director Lyn Evans even wore jeans and running shoes  for the occasion.  

So without a Big Bang of a start, we all may have to sit back with another book and wait to see what mysteries particle physics eventually beholds.  

Once called the “mad dog of the Middle East” by President Ronald Reagan, Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi will meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week.

Senior State Department official David Welch told reporters he had met Gaddafi — “a person of personality and experience” — several times. 

“We don’t refer to Colonel Gaddafi in those terms today,” said Welch when asked about Reagan’s derogatory reference. 

He anticipated Rice, America’s most senior diplomat, was “quite capable” of meeting with Gaddafi and looking after U.S. interests. 

“She is anticipating this one with great interest,” he said of the upcoming Tripoli encounter. 

No word on whether the meeting — the first between Libya and a U.S. secretary of state since 1953 — will take place in one of Gaddafi’s tents.