A quick followup: the problem is not with org but with emacs. The default emacs 24.3 in Ubuntu 13.04 is fine; the latest two emacs snapshots are not. This has been verified with emacs -Q in all cases.
Very strange... Sorry for the noise but be aware if you track Emacs developments. -- : Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 24.3.50.1, Org release_8.1.2
