Bobby Seale bound and gagged
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Is Video Killing the Concert Vibe?
James Franco brings 'Howl' to life, aurally
Photo: Aaron Tveit, left, as Peter Orlovsky and James Franco, right, as Allen Ginsberg in "Howl." Credit: Oscilloscope Laboratories
This weekend, "Howl" opens in New York and San Francisco. It's the story of Allen Ginsberg, his iconic beat poem and the legal battle that followed its publication. The movie, written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, opens in Los Angeles on Oct. 1.
KPCC's Alex Cohen talked to filmmakers Epstein and Friedman about casting James Franco as Ginsberg and their work at bringing the writer to life on screen. "He had a personal connection to the beats," Epstein said.
In a nice use of radio, the piece includes Franco reading "Howl" as Ginsberg. "I imagined it that James Franco probably spent a lot of time in the studio just focusing on the sound, the voice, creating this poem," Cohen said. "Bringing it to life."
"He did indeed do all of that," Epstein said."But in fact that was the last layer of the work we did together."
How much does Franco sound like Ginsberg? The earliest recordings of Ginsberg reading "Howl" are from 1956, the year the poem was published. In this MP3, from the Ginsberg archive at the University of Pennsylvania, he reads all three parts.
At the time it was published, the poem's sexual content was expected to be controversial -- when Lawrence Ferlinghetti published it, the ACLU assured him it would defend him on 1st Amendment grounds, and he was arrested and tried in 1957.
Later, Ginsberg would become a kind of spokesperson -- for the beats, for open homosexuality, for alternative religious practices, for drugs -- but in the earliest recordings, he was a poet with only the first inklings of what his role might mean.
It's that pre-headline Ginsberg that you can hear in the early MP3, and it sounds like, from Franco's reading, that it is that Ginsberg that the actor is evoking. He's pretty close. At the Poetry Foundation, D.A. Powell asked the filmmakers, "Is Franco lip-synching Ginsberg?" No, they replied, but they find it "wonderful" that people think he is.
Carolyn Kellogg @'LA Times'
REpost: William S. Burroughs & David Bowie: (The Rolling Stone Interview February 1974)
Beat Godfather Meets Glitter MainmanRolling Stone
February 28, 1974
by Craig Copetas
February 28, 1974
by Craig Copetas
...Burroughs: Politics of sound.
Bowie: Yes. We have kind of got that now. It has very loosely shaped itself into the politics of sound. The fact that you can now subdivide rock into different categories was something that you couldn't do ten years ago. But now I can reel off at least ten sounds that represent a kind of person rather than a type of music. The critics like being critics, and most of them wish they were rock-and-roll stars. But when they classify they are talking about people not music. It's a whole political thing.
Burroughs: Like infrasound, the sound below the level of hearing. Below 16 MHz. Turned up full blast it can knock down walls for 30 miles. You can walk into the French patent office and buy the patent for 40p. The machine itself can be made very cheaply from things you could find in a junk yard.
Bowie: Like black noise. I wonder if there is a sound that can put things back together? There was a band experimenting with stuff like that; they reckon they could make a whole audience shake.
Burroughs: They have riot-control noise based on these soundwaves now. But you could have music with infrasound, you wouldn't necessarily have to kill the audience.
Bowie: Just maim them.
Burroughs: The weapon of the Wild Boys is a Bowie knife, an 18-inch bowie knife, did you know that?
Bowie: An 18-inch bowie knife.... you don't do things by halves, do you? No, I didn't know that was their weapon. The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.
Burroughs: Well, it cuts both ways, you know, double-edged on the end...
Albert Hofmann's psychedelics doubts
Psychedelics are back! As readers of Scientific American know, scientists have recently reported that psychedelics show promise for treating disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety in terminal cancer patients. This weekend, researchers and other enthusiasts are gathering in New York City for a two-day celebration, "Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics," sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, along with other groups.
Overall, I'm thrilled by the psychedelic revival. I've had good trips, which gave me first-hand evidence of the drugs' therapeutic potential. But like many other people, I've also had bad trips, which left me feeling alienated from, rather than blissfully connected to, the world. In fact, it's worth recalling that the godfather of psychedelic research—the chemist Albert Hofmann, whom I interviewed before his death in 2008—occasionally harbored doubts about these potent drugs.
In 1943, when war wracked the world, Hofmann was in Basel, Switzerland, working for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz. On April 16, he was investigating a compound related to ergot, a toxic extract of a fungus that infects grain-producing plants. Hofmann hoped that the ergot compound, which he had originally synthesized five years earlier, might have potential for stimulating blood circulation.
During his experiments, Hofmann was overcome by what he recalled later as "remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness." He guessed that he had absorbed the ergot compound through his skin. Three days later, to test his theory, he dissolved what he thought would be an extremely small dose of the chemical—250 millionths of a gram, or micrograms—in a glass of water and drank it. Within 40 minutes Hofmann felt so disoriented that he rode his bicycle home.
When he arrived at his house he spotted a female neighbor, who looked like a "malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask." Inside his house "furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms." Hofmann feared he was losing his mind or even dying. He was tormented by the thought that his wife and three children would never understand "that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but rather with the utmost caution."
Gradually, "the horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude." This sense of well-being persisted through the following morning. When Hofmann walked out into his garden after a rainfall, "everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh new light. The world was as if newly created."
Thus did Hofmann discover the psychotropic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. Hofmann's psychedelic research continued. In the late 1950s he showed that psilocybin and psilocin are the primary active ingredients of Psilocybe cubensis, a "magic" mushroom consumed as a sacrament by Indians in Central and South America...
Continue reading
John Horgan @'Scientific American'
The sun at night
Neutrinos are ghostly subatomic particles which are created in abundance by the sunlight-generating nuclear reactions in the core of the Sun. To them solid matter is as transparent as a pane of glass.
Hold up your hand. You would never know it but about a 100 million million neutrinos are passing through every square centimetre of your flesh every second. That’s why it is possible to image the Sun on the other side of the Earth by looking down through almost 13,000 kilometres of rock.
This picture was obtained by the Japanese Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector, situated in the Kamioka metal mine in the Japanese Alps. While sunlight takes about 30,000 years to work its way out from the centre to the surface of the Sun, neutrinos take just two seconds.
Once at the surface, it is only another eight-odd minutes of free-flight before they get to the Earth. Consequently, neutrinos reveal what the core of the Sun is like “now”.
Since the Sun’s light was made at the height of the last Ice Age, for all we know its nuclear fires could have gone out 29,000 years ago. However, solar neutrinos, on account of being in the heart of the Sun just over eight minutes ago, tell us all is well with the Sun and there is no need to worry. For now.
Marcus Chown @'New Humanist'
Saturday, 25 September 2010
YouTube wins Spanish copyright case
A Spanish federal court has dismissed copyright infringement charges against Google’s YouTube that could have brought the online video service to a halt by forcing it to monitor every piece of content.
Telecinco, a Spanish broadcaster, had brought the charges against YouTube, arguing that it should be liable when users upload material that violates copyright protection.
Google, which owns YouTube, praised the court’s decision to reject the charges on the basis that YouTube offers users tools to remove content that infringes on copyrights.
“This decision is a clear victory for the internet and the rules that govern it,” Google said on its blog.
The ruling follows a similar victory in the US in a case brought by Viacom, creating clearer legal direction for Google’s copyright responsibilities on YouTube. Viacom has said it will appeal against that decision
It comes as Google steps up efforts to make the site a destination for professional content, as well as the home-made videos for which it is still best known.
Television programmes and films are already available for free viewing on the site in some countries, including shows from Channel 4 and Channel 5, the UK broadcasters. Vevo, its music video subsidiary, is expected to launch in Europe later this year.
YouTube has also shown live broadcasts of a U2 concert and Indian Premier League cricket matches, and Google has explored offering pay-per-view movies with Hollywood studios.
Under European law, owners of content are considered best placed to monitor how their work is being used rather than service providers such as YouTube.
The company said that more than 24 hours of video is uploaded to its website every minute and that the task of screening all of that content would make it and other social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace “grind to a halt”.
YouTube said it had created a content identification tool that allows content creators to remove edited copyrighted material and alerts them if something is wrongfully uploaded. This “Content ID” service is used by more than 1,000 media companies.
Aaron Ferstman, head of communications for YouTube’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa said the decision “demonstrates the wisdom of European laws” and that YouTube hopes to work with Telecinco in the “spirit of copyright protection.”
@'FT"
Friday, 24 September 2010
Man jailed for killing hamster in microwave
A man who killed his hamster by cooking it in a microwave has been jailed for nine weeks.
Anthony Parker, 29, of Holyrood Way, Hartlepool, admitted causing unnecessary suffering to a Syrian hamster in February.
He was also banned from keeping animals for five years by Hartlepool magistrates.
The court heard Parker put the animal, called Suzie, in the microwave after a drunken row with his girlfriend.
Neil Taylor, prosecuting, said the animal had been killed in a cruel way.
He said: "It was clear the hamster died in agony."
The animal's lips were burned and its eyes were opaque. A post-mortem examination showed Suzie had been exposed to microwave radiation.
Parker had initially denied the offence because he made a confession to police when he was drunk.
He later said he had no recollection of events. But he changed his plea before Wednesday's hearing.
The court heard he told officers he had not meant to kill Suzie.
Adrian Morris, defending, said his client had previous convictions for drink-driving and a public order offence which happened six years ago.
But there was nothing on his record linked to cruelty.
He said: "He effectively comes before this court a man of good character."
Suzie's death would have been rapid and the "cruelty and suffering were not prolonged", he said.
But Mr Taylor said: "This is a man so drunk he puts a hamster into a microwave and kills it."
Explosion Rocks Honeywell Uranium Facility Run by Scab Workers
Union workers have been locked out at the uranium enrichment facility in Metropolis, Illinois for two months now after contract negotiations broke down over Honeywell's demand that workers give up their retiree health care coverage and pension plans. The Metropolis uranium facility is the only one in the United States that can convert U308 into the extremely deadly UF6.
Because the plant is the only conversion facility of its kind in the United States, familiarity with the Metropolis plant, and not just generic experience in the field, is essential to ensuring the plant's safety. Concerns have been raised by local community members and union officials that replacement workers at the Honeywell facility cannot safely operate the plant since they have no site-specific experience in this type of conversion facility.
Workers claim that Cote is far more interested in keeping his record profits high than actually protecting workers and the surrounding community. They believe that Honeywell CEO David Cote is willing to risk radioactive contamination in order to demand that uranium workers cut their retiree health care and pension plans.
On Saturday, nuclear regulators allowed Honeywell to start up core production at the facility, where core production had been shut down for over two months due to concerns about the training of replacement workers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission delayed reopening the plant for several days after questions were raised about the unusually high levels of uranium that were appearing in the urine tests of several nuclear workers.
The following day, a hydrogen explosion rocked the plant. The blast shook the ground in front of the plant and could be heard a mile away, according to local reports. State Trooper Bridget Rice said that police were called to investigate to the scene of the explosion after receiving several phone calls reporting an explosion at the plant. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Roger Hannah also confirmed that there was indeed "a small hydrogen explosion that was very loud" at the Metropolis facility.
The plant splits hydrofluoric acid into hydrogen and fluoride. The hydrogen then gets scrubbed and released into the atmosphere and fluorine goes into the process. If the hydrogen and fluorine recombine, it can be very reactive and cause a non-radioactive hydrogen explosion. On Saturday, hydrogen was accidentally recombined with fluorine causing a massive explosion that could be heard a mile away and leading to the plant being temporarily shut down.
Honeywell Spokesman Peter Dapel released this statement: "There was a noise at Metropolis Works yesterday that occurred as a result of the normal venting of one of our systems.... The union workforce is very familiar with the procedure that caused yesterday's noise, having executed similar processes on at least two occasions earlier this year prior to the work stoppage with the exact same outcomes. It is common to plants that work with fluorine, and characteristic of plants that are following correct procedures."
However, union spokesman John Paul Smith claims that the workers who worked at the plant for decades said very minor explosions had occurred, but no explosion of such a magnitude that it could be heard outside of the plant. State police also could not cite an incident where they had been called to the plant to investigate an explosion at the Metropolis facility that had been reported to them by local community members.
Workers and local community members see this explosion as evidence that the quickly trained replacement workers are not qualified to operate the plant.
Local union officials claim that the workers are not properly trained to work in the plant. In a statement released last week USW Local 7-699 claimed, "The Union workforce was required to have extensive on-the-job training on running units from qualified trainers for several months prior to being qualified. We have recently learned that several Fluorination workers were deemed 'qualified' by company personnel after one week of training. Furthermore, Union employees were required to have been a qualified operator for six months on a running unit before they were allowed to begin to train another employee. The company is currently training their own employees with people who themselves are not qualified."
Additional concerns have been raised about the safety records of the replacement workers at the Metropolis facility who are employed by the Shaw Group. In 2009, a subsidiary of the Shaw Group was made to pay $6.2 million to the federal government for forcing its workers not to report safety and site violations when working on nuclear plant sites in Alabama and Tennessee.
Local community members are claiming that Honeywell is also not properly reporting safety violations at the nuclear facility in Metropolis. A recent report by Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) says Honeywell has failed to notify the NRC of 37 reportable unplanned, uranium contamination events at its Metropolis facility between January 2008 and January 2010.
The Metropolis facility had previously been shut down after a release of deadly toxic UF6 gas in December of 2003, which hospitalized four community members and lead to evacuations of dozens of residents near the plant. This was only the second time in American history (the first being the infamous Three Mile Island disaster) where a site area emergency forced the evacuation of a community surrounding a nuclear power facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time found that Honeywell "failed to implement some parts of its emergency response plan and did not provide sufficient information to local emergency responders".
The Environmental Protection Agency has also been very critical of the safety record of the uranium enrichment facility. According to the report by Sam Tranum of Uranium Intelligence Weekly, in May of 2009 the EPA listed the Metropolis facility as being "in significant noncompliance - a high priority violator" of the Clean Air Act and that the Metropolis facility had been in violation of the Clean Air Act for the nine months prior to that. Also, the EPA found that the Honeywell Metropolis uranium facility had been violating the Clean Water Act for about two years, but returned to compliance in December of 2009...
Continue reading
Mike Elk @'HuffPo'
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Israeli raid on Gaza aid flotilla broke law - UN probe
Israel's military broke international laws during a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, a UN Human Rights Council investigation says.
Its report said the action by commandos, which left nine dead, was "disproportionate" and "betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality".
It said there was clear evidence to support prosecutions against Israel for "wilful killing".
Israel rejected the report as "biased" and "one-sided."
It insists its soldiers acted in self-defence during the 31 May raid.
Nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed and many others injured after Israeli commandoes boarded the six-ship convoy as it tried to breach an Israeli naval blockade of Gaza.
The convoy's passengers were detained and later deported by Israel.
There was widespread international criticism of Israel's actions, which severely strained relations with its long-time Muslim ally, Turkey.
'Biased'
In a 56-page report, the UN panel of three international lawyers said: "There is clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: wilful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health".
The Convention is an international treaty governing the protection of civilians in times of war.
The UN fact-finding mission also said the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory was "unlawful" because of a humanitarian crisis there.
The panel had interviewed more than 100 witnesses in Britain, Jordan, Switzerland Turkey, but not in Israel.
Before the report was released, Israel dismissed the Human Rights Council as being biased, politicised and extremist.
After the findings were published, it said the report was "as biased and as one-sided as the body that has produced it".
"Israel... is of the opinion that the flotilla incident is amply and sufficiently investigated as it is," said the Israeli foreign ministry in a statement.
"All additional dealing with this issue is superfluous and unproductive."
The Israeli government has begun its own independent inquiry into the flotilla raid, the Turkel Commission. It has two foreign observers, but critics say its remit is too narrow.
There is also a separate UN inquiry - ordered by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon - into the raid. Israel has said it will co-operate with the investigation.
MI6 'used bodily fluids as invisible ink'
A diary entry belonging to a senior member of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) has revealed that during the First World War it was discovered that the bodily fluid could act as an effective invisible ink.
In June 1915, Walter Kirke, deputy head of military intelligence at GHQ France, wrote in his diary that Mansfield Cumming, the first chief (or C) of the SIS was "making enquiries for invisible inks at the London University".
In October he noted that he "heard from C that the best invisible ink is semen", which did not react to the main methods of detection. Furthermore it had the advantage of being readily available.
A member of staff close to "C", Frank Stagg, said that he would never forget his bosses' delight when the Deputy Chief Censor said one day that one of his staff had found out that "semen would not react to iodine vapour".
Stagg noted that "we thought we had solved a great problem".
However, the discovery also led to some further problems, with the agent who had identified the novel use having to be moved from his department after becoming the butt of jokes.
In addition, at least one agent had to be reminded to use only fresh supplies of the 'ink' when correspondents began noticing an unusual smell.
The revelations are included in 'MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949' by Professor Keith Jeffery.
Prof Jeffery, of Queen's University, Belfast, was given access to all of MI6's files between those years. The book is published on Tuesday and is being serialised in The Times.
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
'Pop Sinner' - From an interview with Paul Kelly on ABC's 7:30 Report 21/09/10
...KERRY O'BRIEN: You're very candid in the book about your period with heroin. You say, "Heroin was the one for me." You single out all the other drugs that were available, but you say, "Heroin was the one for me." It sounds like for a long time you told yourself you could use it, enjoy it, without succumbing to it. Is that right?
PAUL KELLY: Yeah. Well, it was - I had a relationship on and off with heroin for 20 years. Again, as I was saying before, when you - I didn't realise for a while that I was writing a memoir and once I realised I was, I realised certain things had to be spoken about.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Because it was so much a part of your life for that long.
PAUL KELLY: Well a part of my life.
KERRY O'BRIEN: A part of my life.
PAUL KELLY: But my sort of other rough rule of thumb for what stayed in the book and what wasn't was whether it was interesting, whether this particular chapter is an interesting piece of writing. And I thought I had something to say about heroin that was different to the usual narrative. I mean, you hear people - the usual sort of story of heroin is either a tragedy or redemption, you know. You go down with it, you don't get up; or you go down and you come up and you got the redemption story. And I thought there was - I just thought there was another story there.
KERRY O'BRIEN: And what is it?
PAUL KELLY: That, you know, people do use hard drugs recreationally and not all the time, that people can use drugs like heroin without having a habit. I never did. And that, at some point, you weigh up the costs against the benefits and at some point you think, "The costs are getting too much; I'll stop."
KERRY O'BRIEN: And what were the costs in the end for you?
PAUL KELLY: Um ... oh, there's a lot of costs. There's ...
KERRY O'BRIEN: You talk about the fact that towards the end, the coming down, that the coming down was taking much longer, that it was harder to come off it each time. That's the way I read it.
PAUL KELLY: I think it's like most drugs, including alcohol. You know, when you're young you can drink 20 beers in a night and get up the next day and play football. But, you know, I can't drink that much anymore without feeling the effects of it. So it's the same with any kind of drug. I think as you get older, you get - the toll gets - you can't go at it so hard.
KERRY O'BRIEN: But you - whether it was just that heroin was illicit or whether you felt something else about it, felt uncomfortable about it anyway I'm not sure, but for a long time there you were hiding it from others. You hid it from friends and family and colleagues, but you say that after a certain time you knew that they knew, that the - it was becoming obvious to people when you were using heroin.
PAUL KELLY: Yeah, I think - I mean, it's - I don't know whether it's a particular trait of heroin or just other drugs, but I think it is a kind of brainwasher so you sort of think you're getting away with it. And if you have any sorta clarity about it, you start to realise, well, you're not.
KERRY O'BRIEN: I've talked with James Taylor about his experience with heroin. He said that for him it was self-medication for depression, but that in the end it was too narrow, too stultifying. "I felt as though I lived on a postage stamp," he said. Does that ring any bells for you?
PAUL KELLY: Like I said, I think I had a different experience. I didn't ...
KERRY O'BRIEN: So you didn't come to it as a prop, you didn't come to it as an escape. For you it was - you were introduced to it as a recreational drug and that's how you saw yourself using it.
PAUL KELLY: Yeah. For a long time it worked like that.
KERRY O'BRIEN: So have you ever talked to your own kids about that experience? What would you - have you ever said to them, "I'd be relaxed if you tried it," or, "My advice to you is stay away?"
PAUL KELLY: Ohh, yeah, well, my conversations with my children is probably not something I wanna talk about. I'm sorry, Kerry.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Well then let me put to it you this way: what would you now say to others who might consider using heroin?
PAUL KELLY: Ah, I wouldn't say anything at all. I think the last thing the world needs is pop sinners (sic) giving advice.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You're more than a pop singer.
PAUL KELLY: Well I'm certainly not someone who wants to give advice to people I don't know.
KERRY O'BRIEN: How hard was it to walk away from when you did?
PAUL KELLY: Not that hard.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You don't occasionally still miss it?
PAUL KELLY: Not anymore...
Despite Kerry O'Brien's intentions it was so refreshing to have a well respected Australian talk some sense about drugs (that we are NOT all the same) and as we are in the middle of Grand Final week here in Melbourne, chances are that 'the tabloid' won't pick up on this!
Nuclear power at heart of Russia's Arctic ambition
Could the Arctic become a battleground over control of large reserves of oil and gas thought to lie under the Arctic Sea, or will there be co-operation in the polar region? This will be a question for politicians and experts from around the world as they meet in Moscow.
In a grimy shipyard in St Petersburg, an ugly hulk of red-painted metal sits floating in the dock.
On deck, workmen scurry back and forth, hammering, drilling and welding.
In 2007, Artur Chilingarov planted a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed
This strange construction, part ship, part platform, is unique and lies at the heart of Russia's grand ambitions for the Arctic.
When it is completed in 2012, it will be the first of eight floating nuclear power stations which the government wants to place along Russia's north coast, well within the Arctic Circle.
The idea is the nuclear reactors will provide the power for Russia's planned push to the North Pole.
Moscow is claiming more than a million square kilometres of extra territory in the Arctic, stretching from its current border in the Arctic Sea, all the way to the Pole.
'Complicated and dangerous'
The area includes an underwater mountain range called the Lomonosov ridge, which some Russian scientists claim could hold 75 billion barrels of oil.
This is more than the country's current proven reserves.
"These [floating nuclear power stations] have very good potential, creating the conditions for exploring the Arctic shelf and setting up drilling platforms to extract oil and gas," says Sergey Zavyalov, deputy director of the operating company, Rosenergoatom.
"Work in the Arctic is very complicated and dangerous and we should ensure there's a reliable energy supply."
He says each power station, costing $400m, can supply electricity and heating for communities of up to 45,000 people and can stay on location for 12 years before needing to be serviced back in St Petersburg.
And while initially they will be positioned next to Arctic bases along the North coast, there are plans for floating nuclear power stations to be taken out to sea near large gas rigs.
"We can guarantee the safety of our units one hundred per cent, all risks are absolutely ruled out," says Mr Zavyalov...
Continue reading
Richard Galpin @'BBC'
Vatican Bank 'investigated over money-laundering'
The inquiry into Ettore Gotti Tedeschi has surprised the Vatican
The head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, is under investigation as part of a money-laundering inquiry, police sources say.
Prosecutors also seized 23m euros ($30m; £19m) from the bank's accounts with another smaller institution.
The inquiry was launched after two suspicious transactions were reported to tax police in Rome.
The Vatican said it was "perplexed and astonished", and expressed full confidence in Mr Tedeschi.
The Vatican Bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), was created during World War II to administer accounts held by religious orders, cardinals, bishops and priests.
Police intervention
Rome magistrates are looking into claims that Mr Gotti Tedeschi and the bank's chief executive Paolo Cipriani violated laws that require banks to disclose information on financial operations.
The BBC's David Willey in Rome says the Bank of Italy's financial intelligence unit tipped off Italy's tax police last week, after two suspicious transactions were reported between the Vatican Bank and two different Italian banks.
The tax police seized 23m euros that the Vatican Bank had tried to transfer from a small Italian bank called Credito Artigianato.
Some 20m euros was destined for JP Morgan in Frankfurt, with the remainder going to another Italian bank, Banca del Fucino.
Reports say the Vatican Bank had failed to inform the financial authorities where the money had come from.
Past scandal
In a statement, the Vatican strongly defended its record.
"The Holy See is perplexed and astonished by the initiatives of the Rome prosecutors, considering the data necessary is already available at the Bank of Italy," the statement said.
And the Vatican also gave its backing to the two officials under investigation.
"The Holy See wants to express the maximum confidence in the president and in the chief executive of the IOR," it said.
Mr Gotti Tedeschi, who is an expert on financial ethics, has been in charge of the bank for a year. He was formerly head of Spanish bank Santander's Italian operations.
The Vatican Bank was last mired in scandal in 1982 when its governor Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was indicted over his involvement with the collapse of what was then Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano.
Although he was never arrested, the fallout from that scandal took a darker turn when two of its top executives, one of them its chairman, Roberto Calvi, were murdered.
Calvi, known as God's Banker because of his close ties to the Vatican, was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London.
US Supreme Court allows execution of Virginia woman
The US Supreme Court has refused to halt the Virginia execution of Teresa Lewis, scheduled for Thursday.
She is the first woman to face the death penalty in the US for five years.
Teresa Lewis, who has learning difficulties, conspired with two men to kill her husband and stepson in 2002, leaving a door unlocked so the gunmen could enter the family home.
Two of three women in the nine-judge court voted to halt the execution.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor voted against. but there was no other comment from the court.
Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell has said he will not commute the death penalty, despite claims Lewis, who pleaded guilty, has learning disabilities.
The two gunmen who carried out the killings received life sentences.
Lewis - due to die by lethal injection on Thursday - will be the first woman executed in Virginia since 1912.
Her lawyers filed a petition for executive clemency on 25 August 2010.
Declining to commute the sentence, Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell said: "Lewis does not deny that she committed these heinous crimes.
"Numerous psychiatrists and psychologists have analysed Lewis, both before and after her sentencing.
"After numerous evaluations, no medical professional has concluded that Teresa Lewis meets the medical or statutory definition of mentally retarded."
Lewis's husband, Julian Lewis, and stepson, Charles Lewis, were killed with shotgun blasts by Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller at their home in Danville, Virginia.
Fuller reportedly arranged a deal with prosecutors and received a life sentence.
Shallenberger - who was Lewis's lover - was also sentenced to life. Lewis's lawyers argue that he manipulated her.
Lewis was motivated by inheriting her husband's assets and her stepson's life insurance. She paid for the weapons and ammunition used in the murders.
Prosecutors said Lewis's husband was still alive after the shootings and that she waited 45 minutes before ringing police.
"I'm a little nervous... I'm also scared. But I am peaceful because I've got Jesus with me," Lewis said in an interview with CNN hours before her appeal for clemency was denied.
vaughanbell Drug testing circulated euro banknotes. Heroin traces found on 90%; Cocaine on every single one. http://is.gd/flOuI
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