Greece. North Korean ship. 1.5 million packs of cigarrettes. Busted

The coast guard detected yesterday a freight vessel off Katakolo, southwest Greece, that was attempting to smuggle into the country 1.5 million packets of cigarettes. The seven crew members on the North Korean-flagged Evva vessel were arrested. The Merchant Marine Ministry said that the cigarettes were destined for Greece and that unpaid taxes and dues from the shipment reached 3.5 million euros. Authorities said that they found the ship about 6 nautical miles off the port of Katakolo after receiving a tip-off about a suspicious vessel.

Behold the power of the blog(s)

President Bush has invited bloggers to join him today as he signs into law a bill creating a database of federal spending — a recognition of their role in forcing the bill through Congress over the objections of senior senators and an indication of how much bloggers are changing the political process.

A coalition of bloggers from the left and the right last month did what the Senate’s Republican leadership could not: smoke out obstructing senators, bring public pressure to break their hold and move the bill to the Senate floor, where it passed by a voice vote.

“The bloggers mobilized Congress; Congress did not mobilize bloggers,” said John Hart, spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who teamed with Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, to support the bill.

“It really does represent a revival of basic democratic values: that active citizens using tools of technology really can steer the political process,” Mr. Hart said. “And what happened was profoundly subversive to the established political order.”

Hopefully, what they can do for tracking federal spending, I can do for North Korean human rights.

Update: It may allow you to testify for a Congressional Committee.

For a better life, North Koreans turn ‘traitor’

SEOUL Back in North Korea, the woman’s husband was a disabled army veteran, and her baby son could not walk because malnutrition had atrophied his legs.

By the time she reached China, hoping to quickly earn cash, she was “an apparition, just skin over her bones, no flesh and no breasts,” said a North Korean defector in South Korea who had helped her in her quest for asylum. “Not even human traffickers would touch her.”

A year later, the woman was one of nine to appear on a videotape released to a reporter on condition that neither they nor the man that had helped them be identified, for fear of retaliation against their families in the totalitarian North.

The result is rare footage that captures the hopes and desperation of North Korean refugees in China. All but one of the nine women who appeared in the recording succeeded in entering South Korean diplomatic facilitates in China, where they await to be taken to the South.

The woman who was described as “an apparition” spoke before a camcorder of her dreams, of why she wished to embark on a journey to South Korea that could lead to death for her, misery for her family, or – if successful – freedom and financial help for her husband and child.

And all I can do is to try to find this video and show it to the world…