Tiger Woods Look-alike at Sex Rehab Center

A man appearing to be Tiger Woods has been photographed today at the Mississippi sex rehab clinic where Tiger is reportedly staying -- problem is ... he's not Tiger Woods. 

It has been widely reported in the media that Tiger is at the Pine Grove Behavioral Health & Addiction Services treatment center. Their evidence is a photograph showing a man with similar features, clothing and jewelry as Tiger. 

But today a man wearing the same clothing, jewelry and Stanford hat (where Tiger went to school), roamed the grounds and was caught by photographers -- and it is clearly not Tiger Woods. It is clear the man is trying to look like Tiger Woods. 

TMZ has a policy of not showing people in rehab facilities, so we will not publish the photo -- we can say there are similarities to Tiger, but the man clearly is not the famous golfer. 

So the question -- Is Woods really at the facility or is the whole thing a case of mistaken identity?

TMZ

A Prophet is a gripping story of survival

A Prophet (18) Running time: 155min

This French gangster hit is a far cry from the romanticised glamour of Hollywood mafia movies. Instead, steeped in a chilling sense of social realism and the grim cynicism of everyday life, this epic tour de force is a quietly enthralling study of one man’s rise to power.

Malik (acclaimed newcomer Tahar Rahim, pictured) is a French-Arab criminal imprisoned for an unnamed crime. With no friends or allies inside, he is reluctantly drawn into mob life after being forced to kill a fellow prisoner in a gruelling rite of passage. Thence on he becomes the unwilling lapdog to a brutal Corsican leader (Niels Arestrup).

It’s essentially a story of survival. Starting out jail life as a somewhat naive, conflicted and confused young man, Malik first observes from the sidelines, then learns the ropes and starts up his own business empire behind bars.

Rahim, a nominee for the Orange Rising Star Award at next month’s Baftas, is a revelation as the illiterate thug who learns to read and write in prison, discovering along the way that he must also learn to fight dirty whatever it takes.

Despite clocking in at two-and-ahalf hours, director Jacques Audiard (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Read My Lips) has crafted a masterful psychological thriller. Not one minute feels wasted, as the complex but taut narrative intelligently winds itself around issues of race, politics and prison life.

There are drug deals, prostitutes, corruption and bribery – nothing we’ve not seen before. But what elevates A Prophet above other gangster/prison dramas is the grubby moral ambiguity and poetic existential angst that simmer within its gritty examination of the underbelly of French society.

It’s violent, shocking and, most of all, gripping. Already cleaning up at the international film festivals, the real crime would be if this didn’t at least get an Oscar nod for Best Foreign Film.

Metro.UK

MEPs: No European Safe under Proposed EU-US SWIFT Agreement

The European Parliament Conference of Presidents has agrred that EP President Jerzy Burek should send a letter to the European Union Council, demanding suspension of the SWIFT* deal to provide bank transfer information to the US.

The SWIFT* agreement, poised to take effect on February 1, allows for the transfer of European citizens’ bank transfer information to US authorities, including the FBI, for use in the so-called "fight against terrorism".

Members of the EP Green party stated that "the EU Council has no right to allow the SWIFT agreement to take effect without the agreement of the European Parliament. Parliament must not be bypassed by the Commission and Council, which would be a breach of the Lisbon Treaty. Citizens' rights must be safeguarded."

The EP as a whole is annoyed that there has, so far, been a lack of official communication and consultation between the Commission and Council, and the Parliament.

Rebecca Harms and Jan-Philipp Albrecht, both from the Green MEP party, said that "it is shameful that the Council has said it intends to supply the text of the agreement to the EU Parliament only next week, when it has already been published in the EU Official Journal. Parliament simply cannot cooperate on this basis".

They further objected: "The major shortcomings we highlighted in November are still there. Legal protection of citizens' rights is severely lacking and there is no role for any independent data protection body.

"Parliament is not being told what data will be taken, which authorities will receive the data and under what conditions they will do so. All this information is hidden in secret annexes. Under these conditions, the interim agreement must be suspended."

They were supported by other parties in the Parliament. "The SWIFT agreement must not be pushed through," said Cornelia Ernst of Germany, Rui Tavares of Portugal, and Marie-Christine Vergiat of France, among other MEPs.

Tavares added that Parliament has been treated in an "insulting and humiliating way by having to wait for a text that has already been leaked to the press time and time again".

He also pointed out that the so-called "nine-month temporary nature of the agreement is misleading as our data will be kept in store for five years," and said that future US administrations might misuse the information they held.

"No European can feel safe with that prospect," he concluded.

Cornelia Ernst added: "The European Data Protection Supervisor has also voiced his displeasure since the agreement may violate European data protection laws".

MEPs had earlier on Friday also expressed their general dissatisfaction with proposed US-EU measures for enhanced airport and flight security.

*SWIFT - The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, based in Belgium, links over 8 000 financial institutions in 209 countries.

Novinite

Man in court over 1981 murder of Ulster schoolgirl Jennifer Cardy

By Deborah McAleese

A man appeared in court today charged with one of Northern Ireland’s most infamous child murders.

Robert Black was flown into the province from England to appear before Lisburn’s Magistrates Court charged with kidnapping and murdering schoolgirl Jennifer Cardy almost three decades ago.

Standing behind a glass wall in the dock Black, who was dressed in a blue jumper, spoke only to confirm his name and to say he understood the charges.

He was not handcuffed inside the court but was flanked by four prison-officers inside the dock while four more stood outside the box.

A defence barrister told the court Black has said he is innocent and will be contesting the charges. He has been remanded in custody to appear before Craigavon Magistrates for arraignment in March.

Black (62) was born in Scotland but is now a resident in England.

He was served with a summons charging him with the murder of nine-year-old Jennifer in December last year. Black was working as a van driver in Northern Ireland at the time of Jennifer’s disappearance.

The schoolgirl vanished from Ballinderry village in August 1981 while cycling to a friend’s house.

After her disappearance her red bike was discovered in a field beside a hedge, near her Ballinderry home.

Her body was later discovered by fishermen at McKee’s Dam near Hillsborough in Co Down.

Belfast Telegraph

New Hi-Res Flyover of Haiti Will Aid Recovery and Research

• By Sujata Gupta

New three-dimensional radar and hi-resolution aerial images of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas to be released starting Friday could boost both recovery and research efforts in Haiti in the wake of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck on Jan. 12.

Satellite images and aerial photos have been important resources, but the flatness of those images makes it hard for viewers to identify what they’re looking at.

“We have dozens of points located along [a satellite image of] the fault with annotations after these points saying things like, ‘I don’t know. This may be a footpath or maybe it is a fracture,’” said U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ken Hudnut, who’s been trying to map the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault that caused the earthquake. “With the resolution of the [old] imagery … it’s hard to be conclusive”.

On Thursday, remote-sensing scientists from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York began collecting new aerial images of the Port-au-Prince area. They’re using a twin-engine Piper PA-31 Navajo that houses numerous sensors, including a light-detection and ranging, or LiDAR, instrument that generates the 3-D data. It has a camera that shoots with enough resolution to make out cars and occasionally people and multiple infrared instruments that sketch out details invisible to the naked eye, such as hidden sources of heat and water.

The preliminary 6-inch resolution data shows enormous refugee areas dotted with brightly colored red and blue tents. “You can’t miss them,” said Stefi Baum, director of RIT’s imaging-science center. It also shows rubble piled precariously along hillsides, which could amplify the threat of mudslides. “Everything is OK until the rainy season,” Baum said. “But then all of that rubble will just flow down those structures”.

The data they gather will also help identify access roads that have been cut off by debris, broken bridges and unstable buildings that remain standing, as well as provide much clearer images of the fault, said RIT remote-sensing specialist Jan van Aardt, one of the project’s coordinators.

Scientists studying Haiti are most excited about the LiDAR instrument, which emits a pulse of light and then measures how fast that light takes to return to the aircraft. Because data from taller points will arrive faster than data from lower points, the points stitch together to form a 3-dimensional snapshot of the scene.

“You can almost hold up your fist in the middle of the air and assign it an ‘X’ a ‘Y’ and a ‘Z’ [coordinate],” van Aardt said. “You can think of LiDAR data as millions of such positions … each with an X a Y and a Z coordinate.” Those points will also be tied to geographic coordinates to help people pinpoint specific locations on the ground.

Sorting out the logistics of the $200,000 World Bank-funded project has been challenging, van Aardt said. Because of limited air space in Haiti, the team will be based in Puerto Rico and refuel every four hours in the Dominican Republic. Every night, researchers at the University of Puerto Rico will help the RIT team transfer the aerial images to Rochester and the huge LiDAR data files to Kucera International aerial imaging company in Ohio, where they will be processed. Then the images will be made public.

Companies, such as GoogleEarth, Microsoft and Yahoo, have all expressed interest in uploading this data, said Ron Eguchi, CEO of ImageCat, a California-based company that specializes in disaster management, and an RIT partner.

Because RIT’s team plans to assess damage in Port-au-Prince first, Hudnut will likely have to wait a day or two to receive images of the Enriquillo fault, which lies just outside the city. The new data could reveal major ruptures along the fault. With no such ruptures currently visible, Hudnut and his colleagues are worried that the ground beneath Port-au-Prince remains under a great deal of stress that could potentially trigger another, even larger earthquake.

“Our dour view of the situation is that it looks like where the fault broke is pretty far to the west and we’re now concerned that it didn’t rupture in the eastern part,” Hudnut said.

Because the possibility of another major earthquake of equal or greater magnitude remains low — around 3 percent over the next 30 days — even if no major ruptures are found, researchers hope to use these images primarily to create computer models that show how the fault has behaved in the past and how it might behave in the future.

For instance, about five years ago, researchers used LiDAR data to map the San Andreas fault in California. Scientists had previously concluded that an earthquake in 1857 caused the ground to shift 30 feet. But the LiDAR data made clear that the shift was caused not by one, but two, earthquakes.

“Past earthquakes … leave their imprint on the Earth,” said Eric Calais, a geophysicist at Purdue University. LiDAR data records those imprints, such as distinctive fracture patterns in rock and furrows in the topography of the land. Scientists should be able to use the Enriquillo images to predict the strength of future earthquakes and calculate how often the fault has ruptured in the past. “Then this information can be used to prepare a city, prepare a country,” Calais says.

We will update with 3-D LiDAR images as they become available.

Wired

Khloponin To Head Caucasus District

By Nabi Abdullaev

MOSCOW — Conflict-torn republics in the North Caucasus will be united in a new federal district overseen by newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin, President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday.

The surprise announcement redraws the seven so-called “super regions” established by then-President Vladimir Putin in May 2000 to reassert federal authority over provinces that had largely enjoyed autonomy in the 1990s.

The shift also serves as an indication of how seriously the Kremlin is treating the threat of escalating violence in the North Caucasus, which includes Chechnya.

But the appointment of Krasnoyarsk Governor Khloponin, a weathered politician with a past in big business, suggests that the Kremlin wants to shift its focus away from the seemingly never-ending fight against insurgents to building a more stable political system there, political analysts said.

“First, I’ve changed the system of federal districts that exists in our country,” Medvedev said in announcing the changes during a meeting with Khloponin in the Kremlin on Tuesday evening.

The president said the new North Caucasus Federal District would include the republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia and the Stavropol region — all of which were part of the Southern Federal District previously. The capital of the new district will be located in the Stavropol region’s resort of Pyatigorsk.

The Southern Federal District will encompass the regions of Krasnodar, Astrakhan, Rostov and Volgograd, along with the republics of Adygeya and Kalmykiya.

Medvedev also said he had signed a decree Tuesday appointing Khloponin as his envoy in the North Caucasus Federal District and, simultaneously, to the post of deputy prime minister. The government will now have seven deputy prime ministers and two first deputy prime ministers.

Medvedev also accepted Khloponin’s resignation as Krasnoyarsk’s governor and promoted his deputy Edkham Akbulatov to the post of acting governor.

Medvedev said Khloponin would have authority over economic issues related to the North Caucasus Federal District and oversee top personnel decisions and the activities of law enforcement agencies there.

Medvedev said North Caucasus authorities have learned how to fight insurgents and criminals but lacked experience in rooting out corruption, clamping down on economic crime and nurturing economic development. He said he hoped that Khloponin would use his experience as a successful governor to improve the social and economic situation in the North Caucasus.

The president also sent a bill to the State Duma on Tuesday allowing Khloponin to jointly serve as a Cabinet member and an official with the presidential administration.

Khloponin, a former chairman of the Norilsk Nickel metals giant who won gubernatorial elections in the Taimyr autonomous district in 2001 and in the Krasnoyarsk region the following year, said Tuesday that he would use “economic methods” to tackle the many problems that have accumulated in the North Caucasus.

Medvedev hinted that he would appoint a new North Caucasus tsar during his state-of-the-nation address in November. Political pundits named several potential candidates, but Khloponin was not among them. The Kremlin and Krasnoyarsk administration released statements ahead of Tuesday’s meeting that said Khloponin had been invited to the Kremlin to participate in a presidential meeting dedicated to education and demography with other senior officials.

Medvedev previously had never indicated that he might create an eighth federal district.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov expressed hope Tuesday that the creation of the new federal district would boost local economic development.

“It is a relatively small, compact territory, and we want to hope that this reform will help to solve problems of economic growth quickly,” he told Interfax.

Senior officials in United Russia, where Khloponin is a member of the party’s Political Council, made similar noises Tuesday.

While violence has surged in recent months in the North Caucasus, particularly in Ingushetia and Dagestan, Khloponin most likely will concentrate on other grave problems that contribute to instability there, including bad governance, corruption and a poor investment climate, said Nikolai Silayev, a Caucasus analyst at the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations.

The St. Petersburg Times

Spanish double-spy for Russia to face closed trial

A Madrid court has agreed to hold a behind-closed-doors trial of a former Spanish intelligence officer accused of selling classified information to Russia, a Spanish newspaper said.

Roberto Flores Garcia, 44, was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of selling secrets to Russia for at least $200,000 from 2001 to 2004. He resigned from his position at the Spanish spy agency CNI in January 2004.

A request for a closed trial has been submitted by Spanish prosecutors because the case contains documents with highly-classified materials, the El Pais newspaper said on Friday.

The alleged double agent, who is still kept in a pre-trial detention center, could be sentenced to as many as 12 years in prison if convicted of treason.

During the investigation, Garcia admitted that he felt "sympathy" for the Russian people and admired "the professionalism" of the Russian secret service in its efforts "to safeguard peace and global security".

Garcia also wrote in a letter to his alleged Russian handler Pyotr Melnikov, who worked at the time under the cover of a consultant at the Russian embassy in Madrid, about his leftist political ideology, and his rejection of U.S. foreign policy.

Alberto Saiz, director of the CNI, said after Garcia's arrest that Spain's national security was never threatened, nor was there a threat to security at NATO and the European Union.

However, the mole allegedly revealed the names of dozens of Spanish spies, possibly including double agents inside Russia who had been working for the Spanish secret service and the seven Spanish spies killed in an ambush south of Baghdad in November 2003.

Some experts believe that another reason for a closed trial could be the desire of the Spanish government to bury the story and avoid any deterioration in their relations with Moscow, which has always denied its involvement.

MOSCOW, January 23

RIA Novosti

United Bank for Africa gets new chief executive

The Board of the United Bank for Africa Plc has announced the appointment of Phillips Oduoza as the Group Chief Executive Designate. Mr. Oduoza has over 22 years experience in banking and financial services, spanning banking operations, relationship management, credit/marketing, technology implementation, risk management, lean banking methods and brand management.

Prior to this appointment, Mr. Oduoza was the bank's Deputy Managing Director South, which is the largest strategic business in the group.

He will resume in his new position on August 1, 2010. In the interim, Mr. Oduoza will be working with Tony Elumelu, the current Group Chief Executive of UBA to ensure that the transition is seamless.

This is coming in the wake of Central Bank of Nigeria's announcement that, "Chief Executive Officers (CEO) of banks shall serve a maximum tenure of 10 years... all CEOs who would have served for 10 years by July 31, 2010 shall cease to function in that capacity and shall hand over to their successors".

Next

US missile kills Abu bomber in Pakistan

Report hints strong al-Qaida ties to RP terrorists

Philippine Daily Inquirer, Associated Press

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan—An alleged Abu Sayyaf demolition expert wanted by the United States for $1 million is believed to have been killed in an American drone strike close to the Afghan border earlier this month, Pakistani intelligence officials said Thursday.

If confirmed, the death of Abdul Basit Usman would represent another success for the US covert missile program on targets in Pakistan. There have been an unprecedented number of attacks this month following a deadly Dec. 30 bombing of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base in Afghanistan.

There had been no previous indication that Usman, who was captured by Philippine authorities in 2002 but escaped months later, was in Pakistan.

If the reports of his death are true, it may indicate stronger ties between the worldwide terror group al-Qaida and Southeast Asian extremist groups than previously thought.

In Manila, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said it was verifying the report.

AFP spokesperson Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr. told reporters military intelligence was still checking if indeed it was Usman who was killed in Pakistan.

Brawner said an intelligence report “sometime last year” indicated Usman was still in Mindanao. “We are still waiting for the report from our intelligence,” he said.

But if the report of Usman’s death was true, it would “to some extent” cripple the capability of the Abu Sayyaf, Brawner said.

MILF welcomes report

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) expressed relief at the report.

“We are happy and we welcome the report. We hope it is true,” Eid Kabalu, MILF civil-military affairs chief, said.

Kabalu said Usman’s death vindicated the MILF, which had been accused by the military of coddling the alleged bomber.

Usman was linked to a series of attacks in Mindanao, including the 2006 bombing in Makilala, North Cotabato, that killed half a dozen people.

In 2002, cohorts sprang him from the Sarangani provincial jail. He escaped along with Pentagon gang leader Alonto Tahir.

Maguindanao tribe

Kabalu said Usman belonged to the Maguindanao tribe, having been born and raised in Ampatuan town.

There were also reports that Usman was involved in extortion activities of the Abu Sofia and the al-Khobar gangs, which have been linked to the Abu Sayyaf.

Kabalu said Usman had never been an MILF member but that his brother, Ustadz Mohiden, belonged to the MILF’s religious committee. Mohiden disappeared in 2004 after government agents seized him, Kabalu said.

“He (Usman) was not a member (of the MILF) but he trained many MILF members in bomb-making,” said Maj. Randolph Cabangbang, spokesperson of the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command.

On most-wanted list

Two military intelligence officers in northwestern Pakistan said Usman was believed killed on Jan. 14 on the border of Pakistan’s South and North Waziristan tribal regions. Another 11 militants were also killed in the strike on an extremist compound.

The US State Department’s list of most-wanted terrorists identifies Usman as a bomb-making expert with links to the Abu Sayyaf bandit group and the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah network.

The State Department has put a bounty of $1 million for information leading to Usman’s conviction, and says he is believed responsible for bombings in the southern Philippines in 2006 and 2007 that killed 15 people.

Home to terrorists

Waziristan and other parts of Pakistan’s border region have long been home to militants from all over the world, primarily Arabs and central Asians.

Up to several hundred Filipino and other Southeast Asian militants traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1980s and ’90s to fight the Soviets and attend al-Qaida-run camps, but they are no longer believed to be in the region in significant numbers.

The apparent presence of Usman in Waziristan may raise fresh questions as to links between al-Qaida in Pakistan and extremists in Southeast Asia, which has seen several bloody bombings and failed terror plots since 2000. Many were carried out by extremists who had returned from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Pakistani officials cited extremist informers as the source of the information on Usman’s death—which could not be independently confirmed. One of them said Usman had been in Waziristan for one year after arriving from Afghanistan.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

Pakistani government officials rarely confirm the identities of those killed in US attacks.

Unmanned planes

Islamabad publicly complains about the US missile strikes because admitting to cooperating with the United States would be politically damaging, but it is believed to provide intelligence for many of them.

US officials, also, do not often talk about the missile strikes or their targets, but they have in the past confirmed the deaths of several mid- and high-level al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

Most of the missiles are fired from unmanned drone aircraft launched from Afghanistan.

Asked about the drone program during an interview with local Express TV, visiting US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said: “I’m not going to discuss operations but I will say this: These unmanned aerial vehicles have been extremely useful to us, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan”.

Shadow aircraft

Gates said he was expanding the program by buying more of the aircraft. He also said the United States was considering ways to share intelligence with the Pakistani military, including possibly giving it US-made drones for intelligence and reconnaissance purposes.

US officials said Gates was referring to a proposed deal for 12 unarmed Shadow aircraft.

AP; Jocelyn R. Uy, in Manila; and Allan Nawal, Inquirer Mindanao

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Imports from US surpass Jordanian exports under QIZ, FTA arrangements

By Abeer Nouman

AMMAN - After peaking at $1.42 billion in 2006, Jordanian exports to the US dropped to $866 million through the first 11 months of 2009 whereas the Kingdom’s imports from the US rose to $1.09 billion during the same period of last year.

The value of Jordanian exports began to decline in 2007 when the total amounted to $1.33 billion and $1.14 billion in 2008.

Jordanian commodities are exported to the US mainly under the Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ) agreement or the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed between Jordan and the US.

Jordan’s main exports to the US include apparel, jewellery and machinery while imports include vehicles, machinery, aircraft, cereals and electrical and medical equipment.

Industry and Trade Secretary General Muntasir Oqla attributed the drop in Jordan’s exports to the US, particularly from the QIZs, over the past two years to the global financial crisis.

“The purchasing power of US consumers declined and this led to a drop in demand on apparel and on buying orders,” he said in a telephone interview, noting that apparel represent the OIZ principal exports.

According to Oqla, fierce competition from Egyptian QIZs also contributed to the decline.

US Embassy Economic Counsellor Natalie E. Brown said: “The decline is related to what is happening globally,” adding that Jordan’s exports under the FTA are increasing compared to those under the QIZ.

“Both the QIZ and FTA programmes are complimentary and are available to exporters today,” the embassy’s economic deputy chief, Ali Lejlic, indicated. “Traders can export their products under either arrangement or both”.

Lejlic added: “Exporters must meet the requirements to be able to export under those arrangements. Exports under the QIZ programme must be from a designated QIZ factory”.

Under the FTA, Jordanian products which have at least 35 per cent value-added content from Jordan can be exported to US markets without customs duties while exports under the QIZ agreement, which promotes regional economic cooperation, requires an 8 per cent input from Israeli or West Bank sources, Lejlic indicated.

By putting together assembly, labour and packaging, products can make up the value added, US Embassy Commercial Counsellor Sheryl Maas explained.

Underlining the FTA signed between the two countries, she said: “The agreement makes Jordan a more attractive market,” noting that there is still room for many opportunities to increase the trade volume between the two countries.

Maas noted that the FTA is advantageous to traders if they start to use it, emphasising the importance of companies learning more about the accord and about its requirements.

Commenting on Jordan-US trade agreements, a Jordanian economist said trade between Jordan and the US increased, in general, in light of the two accords. With regard to the FTA, he said: “Traders faced difficulties in the first few years due to their lack of knowledge with regard to requirements under the FTA,” such as packaging conditions or approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

He added that competition from Egypt’s QIZs affected the exports volume of the QIZs in Jordan.

To create more jobs for Jordanians, the Kingdom and the US agreed last year to establish satellite factories in urban areas, Brown indicated.

Sterling Apparel Manufacturing Company is now operating a satellite factory in Madaba where 250 Jordanians are employed.

In Shobak, Camel Textile Corporation is operating where about 100 Jordanians, almost all women, are working. Other QIZ satellite factories are expected to begin operations in 2010, Brown added.

At present, the QIZ factories employ some 30,000 people, including 9,000 Jordanians.

The Jordan Times

No internet hacking in bank scams: BCA

Aditya Suharmoko 

The recent Bank Central Asia (BCA) savings account losses occurred due to unintentionally duplicating ATM cards and did not involve internet hacking, BCA said.

 

The fiasco has caused a total Rp 5 billion (US$535,000)loss in Toronto in Canada, Australia, Bali and Jakarta in Indonesia, BCA vice president director Jahja Setiaatmadja told a press conference Friday after meeting the central bank.

 

"The losses occurred due to ATM card duplication. There was no hacking or stolen PINs involved," he said.

 

Jahja said BCA internet banking was safe. "The only way to hack e-banking is by accessing someone’s PIN and token [an electronic key to activate transactions]".

 

To protect depositors, BCA has installed an anti-skimming machine, he said. 

But the best way to anticipate scams is by changing PINs often, he added.

 

"Never give your PIN to anyone else, including your spouse," he said.

 

Depositors who have lost money can call BCA on 500888.

 

Jahja said BCA would return their money within 72 hours. "We assure you that your funds are safe".

 

The central bank said the issue affected 200 customers at six banks – BCA, Bank Mandiri, Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI), Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Bank Permata and Bank Internasional Indonesia.

 

BNI suffered Rp 220 million in losses while BRI suffered Rp 49 million.

 

BNI consumer director Darwin Suzandi suggested depositors be careful while entering their PIN at ATMs. "Always cover it with your hand".

The Jakarta Post