THOSE NAUGHTY NORTH KOREANS. Earlier I posted on German businessmen busted for selling them nuclear bomb-making supplies. Here’s more:

MUNICH, Aug. 15 — The French cargo ship Ville de Virgo was already running a day late when it steamed into Hamburg harbor on April 3, its stadium-size deck stacked 50 feet high with cargo containers bound for Asia. . . .

But within hours after the ship departed, the story of the manifest began to unravel. German intelligence officials discovered that the aluminum was destined not for China but for North Korea. The intended use of the pipes, they concluded, was not aircraft production, but the making of nuclear weapons.

Then there’s this:

The US State Department lauded Taiwan’s government yesterday for forcing the North Korean freighter Be Gae-hung to unload a batch of controlled chemicals before allowing it to leave Kaohsiung Harbor for North Korea.

State Department Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker said during a regular press briefing that the chemical, identified as phosphorus pentasulfide, could have been used to make chemical weapons if transported to North Korea.

Question for the day: Remember those three freighters that Saddam loaded up with mysterious-but-probably-nasty stuff before the war? What ever happened to those?