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The data was lost in 2006 by a female agent, known only as ‘T’, but was only confirmed by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) on Saturday.

MI6 claims that its data handling procedures have been updated and improved since the loss.

‘T’ had been carrying the storage device in her handbag, which she left on a transit coach in Columbia.

The loss put dozens of agents’ and informants’ lives at risk, and Soca had to relocate the individuals in case the device fell into the wrong hands.

Soca was given £416 million (A$856 million) in resource funding in 2006, but would not comment on how much money it lost due to the mislaid device.

“This simple act of forgetfulness with unencrypted data caused huge problems and costs for the intelligence community,” said Nick Lowe, northern European head at data security firm Check Point.

“Our February 2009 industry survey showed that less than 50 per cent of UK public and private sector organisations use any form of data encryption.”

A Soca spokesman said that, when the agency was set up in 2006, it was an amalgamation of a number of former agencies, and that it took a while to establish a standard data handling procedure.

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The state has been scrambling to assist the unemployed with mixed success. The California unemployment insurance fund is insolvent and being bailed out with billions of dollars in federal money. The Employment Development Department’s obsolete computer system and telephone call centers are swamped with hundreds of thousands of claims.

A few minutes later, the same voice told the startled passengers that the plane was heading for Fort-de-France, Martinique, because the detour the plan needed to take to reach its destination was too long and the fuel was insufficient.

The stopover in that French territory in the Caribbean would be only to refuel the plane. Exhaustion was becoming an issue among the passengers. But the central question, spoken in undertones, was the identity of the “terrorist” passenger, because if the “gringos” say it, “it must be because he must be a terrorist.”

Looking at those of us sitting in the back of the plane, two passengers said no terrorist could be there because “nobody there looks like a Muslim.”

Again in the air, and preparing for another four hours of travel, a man who identified himself as the copilot came to me. Trying to look discreet, he asked if I was “Mr. Calvo Ospina.” I told him yes.

“The captain wants to sleep, that’s why I came here,” he said, and he invited me to accompany him to the back of the plane. There, he told me that I was the person “responsible” for the detour. I was astonished.

The box held vials of swine flu virus, although a different strain than the H1N1 variety that has caused about 150 deaths in Mexico and infected people in the United States, Canada, Spain and Britain.

A technician was transporting the container on Monday night to the Swiss national flu centre in Geneva, where scientists are developing a flu test for humans, police said.

One woman was hurt when the box exploded in reaction to the dry ice used to keep the samples cold.

After consulting virus specialists, the police decided to stop the St. Gallen to Geneva train before it entered the station in Lausanne.

A “furious” Mayor Bloomberg denounced the dunces who dreamed up the stunt – and the NYPD officials and bureaucrats who never told him about it.

By day’s end, an obscure City Hall deputy named Marc Mugnos, who makes $60,000 a year, was taking the fall for not telling Bloomberg that the low-flying planes were coming. He was reprimanded.

But there was plenty of blame to go around.

Louis Caldera, the director of the White House military office who sent Air Force One and the fighter jet on an “aerial photo mission,” got slammed by an angry President Obama.

“I approved a mission over New York,” Caldera said in a hastily prepared statement. “I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.”

Obama was not on the flight.

Sources said the chief reason for the panic-inducing flight was to create souvenir pictures of Air Force One flying over the Statue of Liberty to be given out – like a presidential tie clip – to family, friends or supporters.

Air Force One has done flyovers of historic sites and monuments like Mount Rushmore and the Golden Gate Bridge for PR glam shots – at taxpayer expense.

Told to stay quiet about mission

Caldera did not state a reason for the “mission” in his apology, but he insisted that “federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey.”

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said the department was told of the “aerial photo mission” last Thursday but was ordered to stay quiet about it. But they did alert 911 operators at 7 a.m. to tell callers it was an authorized military mission, he said.

Juliano Verbard, who was serving a 15-year term for rapes and sex assaults on children, and two of his jailed followers were hauled on board a chopper hijacked by three accomplices, senior regional officials said.

Verbard’s flight was France’s 11th helicopter jailbreak since 1986, and is bound to revive questions about security in its jails.

“It’s a great first for the island, one that Reunion could well have done without,” said prefect Pierre-Henry Maccioni, the French state’s representative and police chief in the territory.

“We would never have imagined anyone would use a helicopter to escape on a island where there’s very little chance of getting away abroad,” he explained, adding that an emergency manhunt had been launched.

The helicopter landed on waste ground a short distance from the jail and the gang escaped in a van that had been waiting for them, officials told AFP. The two crew members were unhurt and are assisting police.

The hijackers had chartered the chopper pretending to be tourists, before seizing control and directing the pilots to Domenjod prison, where it hovered just above an outdoor walkway and took on the escapees.

“One of them put a gun to my temple while another threatened to set fire to a bottle of petrol he had in his hand with a cigarette lighter,” the pilot told local broadcaster Antenne Reunion.

Verbard, 27, was the guru of the self-styled “Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary”, a cult with no connection to mainstream Catholism on the island of Reunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, some 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) from the African mainland.

He escaped with two followers, the father and son duo Alexin Jismy Michel, 51, and Fabrice Michel, 24, who were jailed for their part in the kidnap of a boy, 12-year-old Alexandre, whom Verbard had decided would be his successor.

He was jailed in February 2008 for attacks on children aged nine and 13, whose mother was the sect’s treasurer. He was also convicted of Alexandre’s kidnap and is under investigation in another alleged paedophile case.

At the time of his trial, psychiatrist Gerard Toulfayan described Verbard as “a extremely powerful manipulator with great intelligence.”

Verbard launched his cult in 2002 after convincing scores of followers that the Virgin Mary appeared to him every month. Adepts paid 20 euros (26 dollars) each for the honour of taking part in an appearance ceremony.

According to Verbard, Mary called him her “Lily of Love”.

Authorities attempted to dismantle the sect after Verbard, while on the run from police, was implicated in the kidnap of Alexandre, a boy that the cultist claimed was destined to become his successor at the head of the group.

Spectacular helicopter escapes have become an embarrassment for French penal authorities and, unlike Reunion’s Domenjod, jails in mainland France now often have protective nets over their exercise yards.

Since 1986, there had been 10 escapes from French jails in helicopters, most recently in July 2007 when gangster and murderer Pascal Payet managed to get out of Grasse prison in a hijacked chopper.

The Army’s solution is the Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System (ARSS), a small, unmanned helicopter equipped with a powerful .338-caliber rifle. An autopilot system handles the tricky business of flying while the operator lines up the kill shot on a remote monitor.

China, Russia and Taiwan said it would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus amid a surging global concern about a possible pandemic.

World stock markets fell as investors worried that the deadly outbreak could go global and derail any global economic recovery. Airlines took the brunt of the selling.

The virus was suspected in up to 103 deaths in Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak with more than 1,600 cases suspected, while 20 cases were confirmed in the United States and six in Canada.

In Luxembourg, European Union Health Commissioner Andorra Vassiliou urged Europeans to postpone nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico “unless it is very urgent for them.”