Woman With Ties to White Supremacists Represents School for Blacks and Hispanics

By Lomin Saayman

FOXNews.com

A Florida woman who has been married to both the former head of the Ku Klux Klan and the creator of a notorious white supremacist Web site is working as a spokeswoman for a school that aims to lift underprivileged black and Hispanic children out of poverty.

An executive with an organization that tracks hate groups calls the employment of the woman, Chloe Black, an "untenable position" and "unbelievable."

Black, the ex-wife of former KKK leader David Duke, is now married to Don Black, the creator of the white-power hate site Stormfront. Chloe Black is currently employed as an executive assistant at Florida Crystals, a sugar conglomerate whose owners, the Fanjul brothers, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to help build a new campus for Glades Academy.

Glades is a charter school for the children of African-American and migrant workers in Pahokee, a rural town in Palm Beach County. Billionaire Jose "Pepe" Fanjul's wife, Emilia, is chairman of the board of Glades Academy, and she hired Black to help promote the school.

Reports suggest that Black's salary from the school may be going to support her husband's activities on the hate site, as Don Black has had no clear source of income for some time.

Don Black, in an online appeal for contributions to his hate site, wrote that he does not receive a salary from the site. "Stormfront is an online community of White activists," he wrote. "It's not a business, no one receives a salary, and our work is supported by voluntary contributions."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based non-profit organization that tracks hate groups, Don Black has not had a regular job for “years and years,” though the SPLC could not prove that Chloe Black’s salary from Florida Crystals was going to support Stormfront.

When contacted by FOXNews.com, Chloe Black refused to discuss the allegations or her role in Glades Academy. She told the New York Post earlier this month that she hasn’t been involved with the white supremacy movement “in 30 years.”

But the SPLC, which has followed the Blacks as principal leaders of the white supremacist movement for decades, said that is not true.

Mark Potok, the SPLC’s intelligence project director, said Black in June attended a key conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that says on its Web site that it opposes “all efforts to mix the races of mankind” and once described black people as “a retrograde species of humanity.”

“The SPLC’s role is not to make demands of the Fanjuls. But they have put as a front woman on this very worthy philanthropic project a woman who represents everything that is antithetical to this project. This is an untenable position. She is not merely a woman who married white supremacist leaders; she has actively participated in white supremacist functions,” Potok said.

Potok said he found Black’s involvement with Glades Academy “unbelievable.”

There is no indication that the Fanjuls or Florida Crystals were aware of Chloe Black’s right-wing sympathies when she was appointed to speak on behalf of Glades Academy.

Gaston Cantens, Florida Crystals' vice president of corporate relations, did not respond to repeated requests by FOXNews.com for comment but has been quoted as saying that the company does not “comment on the private lives of our employees.”

But a cursory look at Black's resume would have revealed her connections to the Knights of the KKK and the National Party.

In 1972 the then Chloe Hardin married David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the KKK who is described as a neo-Nazi by his critics. They divorced in 1984 but are reportedly still friendly and speak regularly. Black is the mother of Duke’s two daughters.

Four years later she married Don Black, Duke’s best friend and an ex-Klansman himself. Black is the founder and webmaster of Stormfront, the premier online location for white supremacists in the U.S. and Europe.

“Don Black and David Duke are not lightweight nationalists,” Potok said. “They are rabid white separatists. Duke is better described as a neo-Nazi more than anything else.”

The Black family residence in West Palm Beach has been registered in Chloe Black’s name since the year she separated from Duke.

According to the SPLC, 32 percent of Pahokee residents live in poverty. The Glades Academy project aims not only to educate the children in the area, but encourage graduates to give back to the community.

Deutsche Bank took its pain but is it now poised to gain?

The Wall Street Journal

Deutsche Bank has avoided the worst of the banking carnage by pulling off a series of trades that have lightened its load of soured investments. While it still could need to write down assets or raise capital, Germany's largest bank by market value is positioning itself to be an acquirer in the second half.

Behind the strategy are its co-heads of investment banking, Anshu Jain and Michael Cohrs.

In the past three months, Deutsche has found buyers for corporate loans, reducing the bank's portfolio to at least €25bn ($39.25bn) from €33bn in March.

They will get a report card when Deutsche posts results Thursday.

A year into the credit crunch, new worries are looming over banks, such as increased consumer losses in the US and Europe, and deteriorating corporate loans.

Banks in Europe are expected to report billions of dollars in write-downs for investments tied to mortgages and other assets when they post midyear results in coming weeks.

Bank stocks have been battered. Deutsche's shares in Germany this year have fallen 35%, roughly on par with the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx Banks index, which is down 31%.

Still, Deutsche's stock has outperformed rivals such as Lehman Brothers and Royal Bank of Scotland, which have seen drops of about 75% and 45%, respectively.

Jain and Cohrs's strategy comes at a cost.

Deutsche took a loss on selling real estate in New York, though it got some of the properties off its books.

In Las Vegas, the bank has had to take responsibility for the Cosmopolitan Resort Casino, an unfinished $3.9bn project it originally financed for US developer Ian Bruce Eichner.

Rather than sell the property in a weak market and have to finance the buyer, Deutsche has decided to complete construction on its own and seek assistance from outside investors.

Lehman analyst Jon Peace and others expect Deutsche to post a write-down in the range of €2bn to cover leveraged and commercial-property loans in the second quarter.

Some analysts also say that Deutsche may have to write down some of the €9bn in insurance it used to hedge mortgage-securities risk.

"Deutsche Bank has been better at weathering the storm," said Guy de Blonay, a fund manager at New Star Asset Management in London. Even so, de Blonay hasn't purchased Deutsche Bank shares because he remains concerned about more write-downs.

Some analysts and investors worry that the bank hasn't marked down its commercial real-estate and corporate loans as steeply as competitors. But Deutsche has said the values it puts on such debt reflect the quality of the loans.

Last month, David Williams, an analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller, said he expects that Deutsche might have to raise €3bn to remain well-capitalised.

Deutsche, though, is counting on client money from retail and private-bank deposits to enable it to stave off fund raising that other banks have needed to weather their losses, a person familiar with the situation said.

Deutsche recently said it would be profitable in the second quarter, and it wouldn't need to raise money.

It recorded a €2.7bn write-down for its loans tied to commercial property and corporate buyouts and a net loss of €141m in the first quarter.

On Thursday, Switzerland's Credit Suisse defied analysts' expectations by posting a 1.2bn Swiss franc ($1.16bn) profit after minimal write-downs, which bodes well for Deutsche's results.

The Swiss bank also was able to sell 6.5bn francs of corporate loans in the second quarter, reducing its portfolio to 14.3bn francs.

Jain and Cohrs both arrived in 1995 as part of Deutsche's big hiring push to expand investment banking.

The 45-year-old Jain joined from Merrill Lynch, and Cohrs, 51, from the former SG Warburg, now part of UBS.

As co-heads of the investment bank, Jain oversees sales and trading of stocks, bonds and other products, while Cohrs handles the mergers and corporate-lending businesses.

Egypt's child protection law sparks controversy

Islamist opponents from the Muslim Brotherhood argue that the law imposes foreign values on Egyptians.

By Liam Stack
The Christian Science Monitor

Cairo, Egypt - Since June, Egypt's government and Islamist opposition parties have been trading barbs over a new law designed to protect the rights of children. Reforms instituted by the law touch on issues ranging from children's legal status to personal health issues.

The law was passed by parliament, which is dominated by President Hosni Mubarak's ruling party. But the measure has spurred a debate over the competing roles of religion, tradition, and the state in the upbringing of children. The controversy is making waves in a country where 32 percent of the population is under the age of 15, according to a 2006 government census.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a banned yet tolerated opposition group that holds 20 percent of the seats in the lower house, argues that the law violates Islamic law and imposes foreign values on Egyptians.

Saad El Katatny, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in parliament, says his movement is not opposed to the child law as a whole, rather "just those provisions that run counter to the norms, customs, and nature of the Egyptian people."

Aspects of the law that he takes issue with include articles that make it illegal to try children as adults, permit birth certificates for the children of unwed mothers, restrict corporal punishment, raise the marriage age to 18 years, and reinforce a standing ban on female circumcision.

"When you do things like this, for example limiting the age of marriage to 18, it does not reflect the norms of our society, it reflects international norms," Mr. Katatny adds.

Supporters of the law accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of playing politics with children's rights and argue that changing cultural attitudes that endanger young people is the exact intention of the law.

"We wanted the law to be stringent or extreme because we want it to challenge some of the prevalent norms and values in our society, particularly female genital mutilation (FGM) and the practice of child marriage," says Hany Helal, who directs the Egyptian Center for the Rights of the Child and helped the government write the law.

"In our country, a number of forms of violence against children have become the norm," he adds.

One of the most controversial subjects in the law is female circumcision, which remains widespread despite a year-old ban that was enacted after a girl died during the procedure in June 2007.

In Arabic, FGM is referred to as "purification." It is widely seen as a rite of passage that helps protect girls from sexual desire and sin.

"Purification is a good thing, it's a beautiful thing," says Moubaraka Aly Mohamed, an elderly woman. "I have three daughters and we circumcised them all when they were 4 or 5 years old, so that they wouldn't get into trouble at school," she says, adding that they will soon circumcise her 3-year-old granddaughter. "It's the only way. If they weren't circumcised they would be committing sinful acts that I would not approve of," she says.

Egypt has one of the highest FGM rates in the world. According to a 2005 study conducted by UNICEF, 96 percent of women between the ages of 15 to 49 who had ever been married are circumcised. A recent study by the country's Ministry of Health and Population also found that 50.3 percent of girls between the ages of 10 and 18 had been circumcised.

Katatny says that the Brotherhood is not in favor of female circumcision, but opposes banning it because it is a tradition that should remain an option for medical reasons and "beautification" purposes.

For her part, Dr. Amna Nosseir, a former dean of Al Azhar University and a member of Egypt's Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, says the law's Islamist opponents are being "obnoxious." "Female circumcision is in no way, shape, or form part of the Islamic religion. It is an example of how religious texts can be manipulated to support local customs or people's own points of view," she says.

Human rights activists suggest that the child law's religious opponents are more concerned about embarrassing the government than protecting children. "This is a law the government wanted. It was a big investment for them," says Clarisa Bencomo, a Cairo-based researcher in the children's rights division of Human Rights Watch. "There is a lot in this law that makes Egypt look good internationally, but it is also something that makes it easy for the Muslim Brotherhood to put its finger in the government's eye."

The opposition backlash combined with a legal system rife with overworked and poorly trained lawyers have many worried, however, that efforts to implement the measure will remain complicated.

NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell claims alien contact cover-up

The Daily Telegraph

FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

He claimed our technology is "not nearly as sophisticated" as theirs and "had they been hostile", he warned "we would have been gone by now".

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 minutes during their 1971 mission.

"I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real," Dr Mitchell said.

"It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

"I've been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes - we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it's been happening quite a bit."

Dr Mitchell, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics claimed Roswell was real and similar alien visits continue to be investigated.

He told the astonished Kerrang! radio host Nick Margerrison: "This is really starting to open up. I think we're headed for real disclosure and some serious organisations are moving in that direction."

Mr Margerrison said: "I thought I'd stumbled on some sort of astronaut humour but he was absolutely serious that aliens are definitely out there and there's no debating it."

Officials from NASA, however, were quick to play the comments down.

In a statement, a spokesman said: "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe.

'Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue.'

Key Eyewitness In Benazir Bhutto Assassination Case Killed

The Memri Blog

Khalid Shahenshah, the key eyewitness in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case and the Chief Security Officer to her husband Asif Zardari, the leader of ruling Pakistan People’s Party, was shot dead at his door.

According to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, car-borne assailants fired six bullets into Khalid Shahenshah in Karachi. In the image below, Khalid Shahenshah is seen standing next to Benazir Bhutto as she addresses her last public rally just before the assassination.

Source: Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, Pakistan, July 23, 2008; Roznama Khabrain, Pakistan, July 23, 2008

Newfound genetic clue to HIV rate in blacks

by Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO -- An international team of AIDS scientists has discovered that a gene variant common in blacks protects against certain types of malaria but increases susceptibility to HIV infection by 40 percent.

Researchers, keen to find some biological clues to explain why people of African descent are bearing a disproportionate share of the world's AIDS cases, suspect this subtle genetic trait - found in 60 percent of American blacks and 90 percent of Africans - might partly explain the difference.

Ten percent of the world's population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, but that region accounts for 70 percent of the men, women and children living with HIV infection. In the United States, African Americans make up 12 percent of the population but account for half of newly diagnosed HIV infections.

"The cause of this imbalance is not necessarily driven by behavior," said Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. "Gay black men do not engage in riskier behavior than gay white men, for example. African people with this gene may have a higher vulnerability."

Based on their analysis, the researchers estimated that this gene variant alone may account for 11 percent of the estimated 25 million HIV infections that have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa - roughly 2.7 million cases.

The gene study was led by Dr. Sunil Ahuja, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and published Wednesday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
Finding the Duffy protein

Working in collaboration with renowned virologist Robin Weiss of University College in London, the group zeroed in on a protein found on the surface of red blood cells. It is known in laboratory circles as the "Duffy antigen."

Certain species of malaria parasites latch on to the Duffy protein and use it as a gateway to enter red blood cells. Africans overwhelmingly carry a gene that disables this gateway - and Weiss believes this may have been the result of an evolutionary battle between humans and malaria. The genetic trait is also prevalent among African Americans, who typically carry a mixture of African and European bloodlines.

"If there is no Duffy there, the malaria parasite can't get in," said Weiss.

In the 20th century, however, the Duffy protein appears to have taken on another role, seeming to absorb HIV particles, like a sponge, the researchers said. By sopping up the virus, the protein hampers the virus' chances of invading vulnerable white blood cells - the first step in HIV infection.

People with a disabled Duffy protein - most Africans, for example - may therefore be more vulnerable to infection.

Ahuja's team compared 814 African American military personnel who were HIV negative with 470 who were infected with HIV. Out of this comparison, the researchers found a 40 percent higher risk of HIV among those whose genes suppressed the Duffy protein.

The researchers also made another remarkable finding - once a person with the African gene becomes infected, the same genetic trait appears to prolong survival. One of the Duffy protein's natural roles appears to be to ramp up the immune system. It attracts a number of chemical signals that promote inflammation - a defensive mechanism that normally protects the body, but lays out a banquet of white blood cells for HIV to infect and destroy.

So the same genetic mutation that raises the risk of HIV infection provides some protection to those who become infected. Similarly, those who carry the normal Duffy protein may be somewhat shielded from HIV infection, but once infected may sicken and die sooner without treatment. "There is a high order of complexity here," Ahuja conceded.

Although Ahuja and his team are highly respected researchers, some scientists in the field cautioned that the conclusions may be premature. "I'm a little skeptical about it," said Cheryl Winkler, head of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute, in Frederick, Md.
More study urged

Winkler, an expert in genetic factors that cause disease, said the differences in infection rates between soldiers who carried the gene variant and those who did not was statistically significant, but barely so. "They have a model here, but they don't have enough evidence," she said. "This definitely requires more study and replication of results before you can make these assumptions."

UCSF Professor Dr. Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology in San Francisco, said the new study is intriguing and presents a portrait of the evolutionary struggle between humans and pathogens. "In response to the threat of malaria, you may be set up to become more susceptible to HIV," he said.

At a deeper level, he said, the study opens doors for new research into the complex relationship between blood cells and the chemical signals that turn the immune system on and off.

"They've done a real good job of trying to explain their results," said UCSF virologist Dr. Jay Levy, who was among the first to isolate HIV as the cause of AIDS. "It poses a nice challenge to researchers trying to understand how HIV causes disease."
How the study was done

To find out if people carrying the malaria-protective gene might be more vulnerable to HIV, researchers drew on a unique cohort of experimental subjects - U.S. Air Force personnel whose blood has been collected and stored for 25 years.

The Wilford Hall Medical Center cohort is a valuable resource for genetic research because military personnel live in similar environments (military bases), work for the same employer (the Air Force), have similar incomes and the same health care. Those similarities make it easier for researchers to pinpoint differences unlikely to be caused by social or environmental factors.

In this study, researchers compared 814 African American military personnel who were HIV-negative with 470 who were infected with HIV.

They also screened those airmen to find if they carried the Duffy protein. Out of this comparison popped the surprising number: A 40 percent higher risk of HIV among those whose genes suppressed the Duffy protein - a trait that presumably evolved in Africa as a defense against malaria.
By the numbers

The AIDS epidemic disproportionately affects people of African descent.

49%

of new HIV cases in the United States are diagnosed in African Americans, who make up 12 percent of the population.

10%

of the world's population lives in sub-Saharan Africa.

70%

of the world's HIV/AIDS cases are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; UNAIDS

SEC's Cox: 'Naked' Short Ban to Restore Confidence

CNBC.com

The SEC issued its emergency ruling against "naked" short-selling to build investor confidence in market information, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told CNBC.

"What we are particularly concerned about is the potential for there to be maliciously manufactured, false information that feeds into a run, which is furthered by not legal short selling, but illegal naked short selling," Cox said.

In a regular short sale, investors sell stock they've borrowed, hoping to return the shares later at a lower price and pocket the difference. In "naked" short selling, the investor simply "sells" the stock without ever borrowing any shares.

Cox said "naked" short-selling isn't illegal, contrary to what some market experts say, so the SEC imposed an emergency rule that prohibts naked selling in the stocks of 19 major financial institutions.

Although there are "operational reasons" why the SEC can't eliminate this procedure throughout the entire market, it hopes to put an end to as much of it as possible, Cox said.

It's important to understand that the SEC is only trying to eliminate illegal naked short-selling and not regular short-selling, Cox added.

"We need the shorts in our market in order to balance so we don't have bubbbles and so on," he said. "There's got ot be a yin and a yang to this."

The SEC already has ample enforcement in place and will not need to increase its budget for regulation of the new rule, Cox said.

The emergency measure will take effect Monday, July 21 and last for at least 30 days. During this time the SEC will evaluate whether they want to extend the ruling.

White-power groups recruiting from military

by Jim Popkin
MSNBC.com

White-supremacist groups have recruited 203 people who served in the U.S. military or who claim to have U.S. military backgrounds, according to a new report by the FBI. The unclassified FBI Intelligence Assessment, issued last week and obtained by NBC News, cautions that white-power extremists are trying hard to recruit active-duty soldiers and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“White supremacist extremists hope to revitalize the white supremacist movement by exploiting antigovernment sentiment among opponents of the overseas conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the FBI report states. It adds, however, that the effort is not going particularly well. “Although some veterans of these conflicts have joined the extremist movement, they have not done so in numbers sufficient to stem declines among major national extremist organizations, nor has their participation resulted in a more violent extremist movement,” the FBI writes.

The report, titled “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11,” compiles statistics from hundreds of FBI cases from October 2001 to May 2008. It finds that U.S. military experience “is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement.” It adds: “FBI reporting indicates extremist leaders have historically favored recruiting active and former military personnel for their knowledge of firearms, explosives, and tactical skills and their access to weapons and intelligence in preparation for an anticipated war against the federal government, Jews, and people of color.”

And it’s not just veterans who are drawn to the cause. “FBI cases also document instances of active duty military personnel having volunteered their professional resources to white supremacist causes,” the report states. The FBI finds that “an estimated 19 veterans (approximately 9 percent of the 203) have verified or unverified service in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Reaction from Watchdog Groups:
NBC News shared the bulletin, prepared by the FBI Counterterrorism Division, with Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Potok is an expert on extremist groups, and helped prepare a report called "A Few Bad Men," on how “extremists are once again worming their way into a recruit-starved military.”

“This is a genuinely important report,” Potok said. “The FBI has confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center disclosed in a major investigation -- that radical right-wing extremists have infiltrated the military in a bid to gain weapons and other specialized training, and that many former military members are a part of organized white supremacist groups.”

“The fact is, even if their numbers are small, violent white supremacists armed with the best military training in the world are a real presence in hate groups today. It’s important to remember that Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people with a truck bomb, got his training in the military,” he added.

FBI Stats:
Skinhead groups and the extremist organizations National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement account for 72 percent of the total number of successfully recruited veterans (or men who claim to be U.S. veterans.) “According to sensitive and reliable source reporting in October 2006, the National Socialist Movement received a number of queries from active duty Army and Marine personnel stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan expressing interest in joining the organization or inquiring about chapters located near domestic US military bases,” the FBI states. “Whether as a result of group recruitment efforts or self-recruitment by active military personnel sympathetic to white supremacist extremist causes, FBI information derived from reliable, multiple sources documents white supremacist extremist activity occurring at some military bases.”

The authors also state that supremacist leaders have encouraged followers who lack histories of neo-Nazi activity to infiltrate the military as “ghost skins,” in order to recruit and receive training for the benefit of the extremist movement.

French students' murder: Victims were 'two of the brightest students of their generation'

The young French scientists murdered in London were "two of the brightest students of their generation" who were at the forefront of research into human disease and environmental issues.

by Richard Edwards and Rupert Neate
Telegraph.co.uk

Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were in the second year of a three-year Master's degree in bio-engineering in France.

They had won internships to take part in a three-month research project into chains of protein within DNA at London's Imperial College.

The pair arrived in May and were just a few weeks from returning home when they were killed.

They were born in north and southern France, but became close friends at the Polytech Clermont-Ferrard, a state run institution founded in 1794 which is viewed as the most prestigious engineering Grande Ecole in France.

"They were brilliant students with glittering careers ahead of them," said a spokesman for the Polytech.

"There is no doubt that they were two of the brightest students of their generation. Everybody is absolutely devastated at what has happened. Emotions are running very high."

Mr Bonomo was brought up in the medieval village of Velaux, near Marseille and left La Nativite school in Aix in 2001.

Known to close friends as Lolo, he has been described as a sociable and well-rounded young man, with a passion for his work, tennis and chess.

At the Polytech, where he had spent a year as student union president, students remembered him from "countless parties".

He was very close to his family, who he spoke to on most days while in England, and was engaged to Mary Bertez, who studies at the Université de Valenciennes, Lille.

Four days before his murder, Miss Bertez, posted a message on his Facebook page: "Cheri, a little hello from St Paul-sur-Vence. Missing you..."

The post is among many from a wide circle of friends and family, among whom Mr Bonomo was clearly a much loved figure.

Another message from Miss Bertez said: "Come back quickly, mon chou!!! London is too far away. Sniff! Love you to death. Your princess!"

At Imperial College, Mr Bonomo was researching how proteins in a parasite cause disease in humans.

Professor Steve Matthews, who worked closely with him, said: "Laurent was particularly mature and well-rounded. He was a keen tennis fan and looking forward to following the French players at Wimbledon.

He added: "Laurent was very well-liked. He was intelligent and he obviously had a bright future. He was conspicuous in the fact that he was mature, well-rounded and with excellent English."

Mr Ferez, was brought up in Prouzel, near Amiens, and described his hobbies on a personal website as travelling playing his guitar gardening and DIY.

He worked as a technician at the Hopital Philipe Pinel in Amiens and spent time at a university in Mexico last year. He said he dreamed of visiting Canada and Finland.

At university he was treasurer of the arts club.

As well as having a brilliant scientific brain, he was a prodigious reader of history books, and played badminton regularly.

Friends recalled that he loved the Hugh Laurie TV series Doctor House, as well as cooking and listening to music.

On a personal website, Mr Ferez admitted that his personal life was "less successful than I had expected".

In London he was working on the production of ethanol from bacteria for use as a biofuel.

Student Nicky Crowhurst, 25, who shared a laboratory with Mr Ferez, said he was a "really nice guy".

"It's a huge shock. I can't believe it. Him and his mate were always in the lab. They had only been here a little while".