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May | June

2nd May - 16th May | 17th May - 31st May

2nd May - During the advert breaks for the opening episodes of Lost, Season Two, we see adverts for The Hanso Foundation, directing us to their new, improved website www.thehansofoundation.org and giving us a phone number to call. This led to you to a voicemail system with a bunch of options - and some weirdness going on during a few of them. Within one of the messages, a person calling themselves Persephone told you that if you wanted to know the truth about the Hanso Foundation, the real story is in the number. She also gave a password to use on the Hanso site: 'Breaking Strain'.

On the Hanso site, you had to sign up for the newsletter, which would prompt you to enter the password. Enter 'breaking strain' and Persephone takes over your screen to communicate a brief message. Once you've done this, you can go to Joop's corner for the next clue. Again, enter the password 'breaking strain' into the message box and Joop screams, before your screen then becomes what looks like a cluster of glowing cells - as seen on the screen grab to the right. Clicking around on these uncovers the next clue from Persephone - 2 concealed letters.

The first (dated 19th Sept 2005) is from the Jacques Maillot of the Global Welfare Consortium to the Hanso Foundation, expressing serious concern that they have released a transgenic disease into the area surrounding their experimental station in Zanzibar and demanding they open their doors for inspection. The second letter (dated 25th Sept 2005) is also from the GWC to the Hanso Foundation, but is from Peter Thompson, apologising for Maillot's letter and acknowledging that the Hanso Foundation have fully complied and are found to be clear of conducting any research that may have contributed to the outbreak. At the bottom of this letter, Persephone has circled Thompson's name in red and added 'The Hanso Foundation, setting world speed records for subverting authority' (see screen grab on right). Thompson - as you're probably aware - is one of the Hanso Exec Directors. Quashing the truth? Damn straight, from what Persephone's showing us.

The other bizarro thing on the Hanso site was the World Map on the Worldwide Wellness and Prevention Development Programme. In addition to the two visible links, there was also an invisible one which, if you hovered over it, gave you a faint, flickering garbled message. If you converted the numbers to letters (A=1, B=2 etc) on this, you decoded the words 'Missing Organs'. Clearly, whoever Persephone is, she sure doesn't subscribe to the Hanso Foundation's purported aim of "securing a brighter future for all humanity".

4th May - The Hanso Foundation issue a press release that indicates they are aware of disruption to the site and are working to fix them; there's also a link to http://persephone.thehansofoundation.org/ hidden in the file. If you went there and translated the numbers on it, they told you to check back on the 6th May, which later became the 8th. The plot thickens all the time...

8th May - Persephone hacks the Alvar Hanso's bio. Alvar is the CEO and founder of the Hanso Foundation. Persphone tells us that he has not been seen in public since the 31st December 2002

9th May - The clock on the Hanso site intermittently changed to 'OB:EY'. Clicking on it took you to the rather peculiar www.sublymonal.com which, after some playing around, gave you the password "heir apparent". This in turn enables the next Persephone revelation, that all is not as it seems with Dr Thomas Mittelwerk - apparently, the place at which he was supposed to have gained his degree in molecular biology, Caltech, has no record of him - see pic on right. My my, aren't these Hanso types a shady bunch?

The other bit of funny business going on was the Hanso site taking ads out and posting stuff on their site denouncing the book Bad Twin, by the author Gary Troup. Troup was a writer who wrote the highly controversial book The Valenzetti Equation (out of print) and Bad Twin, which discusses various corporations, including the Hanso Foundation. Clearly, the Hanso lot didn't like what he was saying about them.

16th May - Persephone hid the URL to the website of American shock jock DJ Dan in the source code of the Hanso site. Why? Well, it seems that this notorious conspiracy theorist has made Alvar Hanso the subject of his infamous radio show. Listen to the podcast over at his website... One of the theories is that Hanso has been cryogenically frozen - is that possible?!