World in brief: Scientists ready to smash protons

LOS ANGELES – Sometime after midnight Monday Los Angeles time – more than a year and a half later than originally projected – researchers in Geneva were expected to begin smashing two proton beams together at the highest energies ever recorded.

Traveling around the $10 billion, nearly 17-mile Large Hadron Collider, the beams of protons will carry more than three times the energy of particles in the largest U.S. accelerator, previously the world’s most powerful. Scientists hope the resulting collisions will provide new information about the events happening in the first fractions of a second after the so-called big bang that created the universe, as well as about the existence and identity of the dark matter that comprises the bulk of the universe.

On Monday, as technicians at the collider underneath the Switzerland-France border were finalizing their preparations, U.S. physicists at CalTech, the University of Florida and a score of universities in between began to gather to watch via Internet.

The feat of colliding two proton beams circling the giant ring-shaped accelerator in opposite directions has been described as akin to firing needles across the Atlantic Ocean from both sides and getting them to collide halfway across.

Arrest made in Americans’ killing

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Mexican soldiers have arrested a gang member suspected in the killings of three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state police said Monday.

The announcement came a day after gunmen in another northern state killed 10 young people riding in a pickup truck when they didn’t stop at a gang’s illegal roadblock, authorities said.

Police spokesman Enrique Torres said the consulate shooting suspect arrested Friday was a member of the Barrio Azteca gang, which authorities say works for the Juarez drug cartel on both sides of the border.

Consulate employee Lesley A. Enriquez and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, were killed March 13 in Juarez when gunmen opened fire on their sport utility vehicle . Their 7-month-old daughter was found in the back of the vehicle.

Rio Tinto trial questioned

SYDNEY – Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Tuesday that secrecy surrounding China’s trial of four Rio Tinto workers for commercial espionage leaves room for doubt about the convictions.

Canberra says the jail sentence handed to Australian citizen Stern Hu on bribery charges was harsh, and has criticized the decision to keep media and diplomats out of the court while it considered the other charges of stealing commercial secrets.

Hu, Rio Tinto’s executive in charge of iron ore negotiations in China before his arrest last July, was sentenced in a Shanghai court on Monday to a total 10 years in prison. Three Chinese colleagues were imprisoned for between seven and 14 years.

The case was closely watched by foreign companies operating in China. The rulings suggest Chinese authorities are taking a sterner stance toward foreign companies caught violating the country’s often selectively enforced corruption code.