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Marijuana activists are criticizing — and at least partly laughing off — a counter-terrorism exercise carried out Wednesday in California that featured marijuana growers setting off bombs and seizing a dam.

Organized by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the exercise involved 20 government agencies and some 250 personnel, according to a report from theRedding Record-Searchlight. In the scenario, marijuana growers blew up a bus and car and seized control of northern California’s Shasta Dam in a bid to free an imprisoned colleague.

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Experts in the safety of genetically modified (GM) organisms have expressed concern over the release of GM mosquitoes into the wild on the Cayman Islands, which was publicised internationally only last month — a year after their initial release.

The trial of the OX513A strain of the dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito, developed by UK biotechnology company Oxitec, was carried out on Grand Cayman island by the Cayman Islands’ Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU) in 2009, followed by a bigger release between May and October this year. Together they represent the first known release of GM mosquitoes anywhere in the world.