Paul E. Ester's Flogger

Meanwhile, two Britons attempted to transport trillions of dollars in fake US treasury notes to Switzerland through an international courier company last week.

But NBI agents arrested Paul Edward John Flavell and Sam Beany, residing at Room 305, CEO Apartments, Jupiter St., Makati City before they could ship the fake federal bank reserves out of the country.

According to NBI Anti-Graft Division Head Agent Manuel Eduarte, the bureau received a call from DHL Phil. last April 14 about the suspects’ pending shipment.

Eduarte said the suspects had gone to the DHL office on Chino Roces Avenue to send out an iron-cast chest to a certain Mr. Rotondo and Mr. Z.M. Bayram in Zurich, Switzerland.

The chest, with the words “Treaty of Versailles” emblazoned on its lid, contained a metal scroll and 13 iron-cast boxes with bogus reserve certificates from Chicago, Illinois. Each box contained 250 fake certificates allegedly issued in 1934 worth $1 billion each, Eduarte said.

“The US government issues only up to $10,000 in reserves,” Eduarte stressed, adding that the suspects sold the bonds to unsuspecting buyers for a lower price.

After the suspects paid the shipment bill, NBI agents who had been monitoring their activities asked them to open the chest. The operatives arrested the Britons after they had confirmed from a US Embassy official that the notes were fake.

Charges of treasury or bank notes forgery, and illegal possession and use of treasury and bank notes were filed against the suspects in the Makati City Prosecutor’s Office…. Rest of Article

The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism.”

But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office ordered “Patterns of Global Terrorism” eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush’s administration’s frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism…. Rest of Article

Health experts have destroyed most samples of a deadly influenza strain mistakenly sent to labs around the world; but two shipments meant to reach Mexico and Lebanon are missing, UN officials said Friday.

“We don’t know where these boxes got lost, but the investigation into what has happened between the shipment of these panels and their non-arrival is ranking very high on our ‘to do’ list,” WHO influenza chief Klaus Stohr said, referring to the Mexico and Lebanon shipments.

The samples were unintentionally sent to nearly 4,000 labs in 18 countries at the request of the College of American Pathologists, which assists laboratories to do quality testing.

Most of them have been destroyed so far, The World Health Organization confirmed Friday, but two shipments meant to reach Mexico and Lebanon are unaccounted for.

Stohr said Friday that 10 countries that had received samples confirmed their labs destroyed the virus. Those countries include: Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Belgium, Germany Italy, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

However, laboratories in Lebanon and Mexico “never received the specimen even though they were on the distribution list,” Stohr said.

He said it was possible the samples had never been sent to the two countries, but that he couldn’t be sure.

The five other nations that had received the samples were Saudi Arabia, Bermuda, Brazil, Israel and Japan.

Stohr said four of the five labs in Saudi Arabia that received the samples had destroyed them. The other four countries had not yet confirmed that they followed up on instructions to destroy the samples…. Rest of Article


H2N2 caused the 1957 pandemic that killed an estimated one million to four million people around the world. It was last seen in humans in 1968.

NOW that President Bush has declared that the Social Security Trust Fund amounts to a stack of “worthless IOUs” in a government filing cabinet in West Virginia, what will he do next?

How about a press conference in front of the Treasury Building next to the White House, where Mr. Bush could dramatize the fact that the folding money Americans spend every day is just a collection of “worthless pieces of paper.”… Rest of Article

Two crew members of national airline Garuda Indonesia have been declared suspects in last yearÕs murder of human rights campaigner Munir, who was killed by arsenic poisoning while on a flight to Amsterdam, but police appear no closer to unmasking the masterminds of the crime.

Munir (38), founder of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and the Indonesian Human Rights Monitor (Imparsial), is believed to have ingested the poison while on the Jakarta-Singapore leg of Flight GA-974 on the night of September 6. He died at least three hours before the plane arrived in Amsterdam. A Dutch autopsy later found 465 milligrams of arsenic in stomach, almost four times the minimum lethal dose of 125 milligrams.

The two new suspects, named by police on Tuesday (5/4/05), are aircraft galley worker Oedi Irianto and senior flight attendant Yeti Susmiarti. They are the second and third suspects in the case and have not yet been arrested.

The first suspect is Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who was arrested last month and is rumored to have links to state intelligence agencies. He was assigned to MunirÕs flight as an Ôaviation security officerÕ and convinced the activist to switch from economy to business class. Police have found the pilotÕs letter of assignment was falsified, as it was issued after MunirÕs death. … Rest of Article

Like a good April fools joke the Whitehouse has added having the flu as yet another reason for your extrajudicial apprehension, detention, or conditional release.

Executive Order: Amendment to E.O. 13295 Relating to Certain Influenza Viruses and Quarantinable Communicable Diseases

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 361(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 264(b)), it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Based upon the recommendation of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Surgeon General, and for the purpose set forth in section 1 of Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003, section 1 of such order is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:

“(c) Influenza caused by novel or reemergent influenza viruses that are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic.”.

Sec. 2. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, entities, officers, employees or agents, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

April 1, 2005…. Rest of Article

DISSIDENT wine producers in the Languedoc region of France have raised the stakes in their struggle with the French government, using dynamite in attacks against official buildings in the cities of Montpellier, Carcassonne and Nimes.

A shadowy group calling itself the ComitŽ Regional dÕAction Viticoles (CRAV) used the explosives in protest at the diminishing market for their wines and at the governmentÕs offer of aid, considered insufficient to ease the industryÕs crisis.

No-one was injured in the attacks, which caused extensive damage to the regional headquarters of the forestry and agriculture ministry in Montpellier and at its Carcassonne branch. A car belonging to the agriculture authorities in Nimes was set alight in front of their offices. The letters CRAV were scrawled on the walls of the buildings targeted in the attacks.

The agriculture minister, Dominique Bussereau, travelled to the sites of the bombings yesterday, saying he “vigorously condemned” the attacks carried out by “a few isolated individuals who are seriously damaging the efforts of an entire profession”.

It is not the first time CRAV has resorted to violence. On 7 March the group claimed responsibility for bomb attacks at three sites, including the warehouses of Domaine La Baume, which is owned by FranceÕs largest wine exporter, Les GrandsChais de France. It is thought the attack was aimed at the perceived power of global wine companies compared with smaller operators.

Police at the time also found several unexploded sticks of dynamite at a neighbouring winery, Domaines de Virginie, part of the Castel Group, which owns Oddbins.

On 8 March a protest by 7,000 angry producers in Montpellier turned violent when a policeman was knocked off his scooter and injured. Protesters then set fire to the scooter before running away. Six hundred riot police were called in to control the demonstrators…. Rest of Article