British reps might have been thinking they could stride proudly into this week’s UN counter-terrorism committee meeting on stopping al-Qaeda’s cash flow. Their 1998 arrest of accused bin Laden ally Khalid al-Fawwaz came with the giddy announcement they’d frozen al-Fawwaz’s bank account, pulling £23.19-million ($54.42-million Canadian) out of the hands of terrorists. However, new reviews showed a slight discrepancy between the claimed amount and what the account actually contained. In fact, in freezing al-Fawwaz’s account, the U.K. prevented £23.19, or about fifty bucks, worth of terror. In their rush to smile for the cameras, someone apparently bumped a decimal point six places to the right.

House of Commons MP Dr. Vincent Cable, whose questioning of parliament on the seizure led to the discovery, says he suspects it’s "a case of cock-up rather than conspiracy," but nonetheless finds it "worrying that the Treasury has made such a basic mistake on such an important matter." :

» Scott Saxon