Paul E. Ester's Flogger

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – U.S. chip behemoth Intel Corp said on Wednesday China will overtake Japan as the world’s second biggest PC market this year, earlier than expected and underscoring the weak demand in Asia’s most mature market.
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Though many of his Web sites involve pornography, Messner said he became interested in Alneda.com, a militant Islamic Web site that promotes the Al-Qaida terror organization and carries messages from its top members.

Alneda originally was registered in Malaysia but has been chased out of several countries after pressure by authorities. It also has shown up on computers in Michigan and Texas.

Messner used a software program that probes Web site addresses whose registrations are about to lapse, meaning the address will go into a pool available for sale. When it did, Messner snapped it up and filled the site with Web pages from the original Arabic site.

He hoped U.S. officials could use the site for disinformation campaigns or to collect data on visitors who used its message boards or other resources.

Even though some features didn’t work yet, his decoy site fooled some Web users.
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US President George W. Bush underscored his determination to crush threats posed by the “world’s worst leaders,” on a fundraising engagement in Charleston, South Carolina.

“We are going to respond in a determined, focused, effective way by defending freedom no matter what the cost, and that includes understanding we cannot let the world’s worst leaders blackmail the United States or our friends and allies with the world’s worst weapons,” Bush said.
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US and European banks and bondholders lent an estimated $500bn to the crippled US gas and power sector, new research commissioned by the Financial Times reveals. The figure raises fears that a further string of corporate failures in the wake of the Enron scandal would expose lenders to heavy losses.

Dynegy and Williams, which have combined debts of more than $20bn, are among those that could be forced into bankruptcy following the collapse of their energy trading markets and a crisis of investor confidence…. Rest of Article

The Bush White House has decided to transform what was a temporary effort to rebut Taliban disinformation about the Afghan war into a permanent, fully staffed “Office of Global Communications” to coordinate the administration’s foreign policy message and supervise America’s image abroad, according to senior officials…. Rest of Article

D.C. West Nile outbreaks cluster around Army unit Military lab experimenting with vaccine for virus… Rest of Article

WASHINGTON – West Nile virus ( news – web sites) is sickening people far earlier this summer than usual, and is spreading so quickly Ñ it’s hit 34 states, as far west as South Dakota Ñ that health officials believe it will reach California this year or next. … Rest of Article

This week the stock of elite money-center bank JPMorgan-Chase plummeted.Ê Will JPM’s precipitous plunge adversely affect its enormous derivatives positions?
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NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. put one of its investment bankers on leave on Friday after he said he would not testify to Congress in a probe of Enron Corp.’s collapse and allegations that Merrill worked side-by-side with the bankrupt energy trader.
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The world’s largest brokerage placed Schuyler Tilney on administrative leave after his attorney advised him not to testify to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations at a hearing set for Tuesday. … Rest of Article

Dynegy and Williams, which have combined debts of more than $20bn, are among those that could be forced into bankruptcy following the collapse of their energy trading markets and a crisis of investor confidence.

Although the energy trading companies are under the most immediate pressure, the fall in electricity prices is hitting the finances of the entire US gas and power sector which SNL Financial, an independent research firm, estimates had total debts of $450bn at the end of last year.

Karl Miller, who set up Enron’s European trading business and is now a consultant to distressed energy companies, claims these figures underestimate the total exposure because of large amounts of undisclosed, off- balance sheet debt.

“Managements continue to hide the ball from the capital markets. Managements have signed off on overly aggressive, fraudulent transactions and they have not been willing to take these big writedowns.”
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Following the fall in power prices, the companies – including Calpine, Reliant, Mirant, Aquila, El Paso, Duke and AES – are now struggling to support their borrowings as cash flow dries up and other sources of credit are closed off.

The banks most active in arranging finance to the sector include Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase – both under scrutiny over their role in the funding of Enron – and Bank of America…. Rest of Article