Canada has joined Colombia as a leading exporter of synthetic or designer drugs, flooding the global market on an almost unprecedented scale

 Canada has joined Colombia as a leading exporter of synthetic or designer drugs, flooding the global market on an almost unprecedented scale, police say. The RCMP have seized tonnes of illicit synthetic drugs that include Ecstasy and methamphetamine being shipped abroad after being “cooked” in make-shift labs in apartments, homes and businesses in the GTA. Police are now seizing more chemicals...

Recession causes 2,000 heart attack deaths

 Since 2002 the number of people dying from heart attacks in England has dropped by half, the study conducted by Oxford University found. But within that, regional data revealed there was a 'blip' in London that corresponded to the financial crash in 2008 and continued through 2009. Heart attack deaths have dropped due to better prevention of heart attacks in the first place with fewer people...

Ex-Navy man detained in U.S. for alleged drug smuggling in Japan

 former U.S. Navy serviceman has been detained in the United States after Japanese police issued an arrest warrant for him on suspicion of leading a group that smuggled drugs into Japan in 2004 through the military mail service, Japanese investigative sources said Wednesday. Tokyo has been seeking his extradition, and a U.S. court has been deliberating whether to transfer him based on a bilateral...

Gangster gets four years for drug stash

 A CAREER criminal branded as “extraordinarily dangerous” has been jailed for four years after being caught with heroin worth £50,000 during a police raid. Detectives believe that Ronald Aldred was peddling the Class A drug in Edinburgh and West Lothian after recovering the stash kept at his Kirkliston home. The 44-year-old was jailed for 12 years in 2002 as the ringleader of a gang that took...

Fury erupts over bikie 'war' claims

 A GOLD Coast nightclub owner says it's time to clear the air on "sensationalised" reports of bikie gang violence in Surfers Paradise. But the club owner blasted police for allowing bikies to parade through the Glitter Strip wearing gang patches. "The police at Surfers Paradise should hang their heads in shame as they are the ones unable to control these sorts of incidents," the club owner...

Arrest made after prison van escape in West Midlands

 Detectives hunting an "extremely dangerous" murder suspect, who escaped from a prison van following a "well-orchestrated armed ambush", have arrested a man. Officers from West Midlands Police detained the suspect on Monday just hours after Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke ordered an inquiry into how John Anslow was able to be sprung from custody. The 31-year-old escaped after a gang of three...

Drugs mule sentences cut in new sentencing guidelines

 People who smuggle drugs will face more lenient sentences if they have been exploited, under new guidelines. The change in approach on "drug mules" is in the first comprehensive rules on drugs offences from the Sentencing Council for England and Wales. The council said judges should distinguish between those who have been exploited by gangs and criminals heavily involved in the drugs trade....

Caught with six kilos of cannabis and you could still avoid jail

 Sentencing guidelines issued today say that offenders who play a “limited” role in gangs could face community orders for intent to supply Class A drugs. Dealers caught with 6kg of cannabis, valued at £17,000 and enough to fill 30,000 joints or keep an average user in supply for 17 years, could also avoid prison. The sentences on drug “mules” will be cut substantially, while workers in small...

Drug Users Could Avoid Jail Under New Guidelines Published By The Sentencing Council For Judges

 Friends socially sharing drugs and those using cannabis for medicinal purposes could escape jail under new guidelines for judges. Drug runners and small-time dealers caught with heroin, cocaine or thousands of pounds worth of cannabis could also avoid prison. Instead, low-level operatives caught with 6kg of cannabis, 20 ecstasy tablets, or five grams of heroin or cocaine are likely to receive...

An unflinching look at drugs

 From the farm fields and jungle labs where drugs such as crack cocaine, ecstasy and hashish get their start to the front-door steps where recreational users and addicts alike have their drugs delivered, National Geographic Channel (channel 260) explores the world of Drugs Inc. The series premieres on the channel at 9pm today and includes eight unflinching new episodes that examine the business...

Sydney police investigate drive-by shooting

 Police say they are yet to determine the exact target of a drive-by shooting in Sydney's south-west, the eighth shooting since last Monday. Officers responded to reports of a shooting on Pelman Avenue in Greenacre about 4.20am today. A search of the area found six spent cartridges on the street but no damage to property. Acting Deputy Commissioner Alan Clarke says it is too early to say whether...

DRUGS lord who enjoyed a jet-set lifestyle was last night starting an 11-and-a-half-year jail sentence.

  Darlington man Paul Brett was at the head of a well organised empire that tried to flood the area with more than £1m of cocaine. The gang was disrupted after an 18-month undercover operation – the biggest in Durham Police history – culminated in raids last year. Brett, 25, was jailed along with five others from Darlington, Teesside and Merseyside. Detective Chief Superintendent Jane...

Two air passengers met by police over heated bust up after teenager 'reclined his seat'

 A furious row broke out between two passengers on a packed jumbo jet after one reclined his seat as the man behind was about to eat. The pair almost came to blows at 40,000ft as shocked travellers looked on. It started when an 18-year-old sitting in economy class moved his seat back to sleep. Air rage: The drama happened on board an Emirates 517-seat Airbus A380 - the world's biggest commercial...

Gold treasure trove and millions in cash seized from Colombian drug dealers in Spain

 A National Police operation has seized more than 4 million € in cash and a treasure trove of gold ingots from a group of drug traffickers based in the north west of Madrid which was finalising a deal to sell off half a ton of cocaine. Three suspects from Colombia have been arrested, who also face charges of money laundering. The Interior Ministry said in a press release on Tuesday that the...

Thornton Heath man in South American jail after being caught with £20k of coke

 A young man has been jailed in South America for attempting to traffic drugs just three weeks after sneaking out of his Thornton Heath home without telling his mother. Former Stanley Technical School pupil, Nishit Patel, 21, left his home in Attlee Close, in secret on Christmas Day before flying 4,500 miles to Guyana. The next time his mum, part-time Tesco worker Amita, heard from him was...

there is an area in your brain where you may hold a reservation and that could, in all likelihood, cause you to return to your drinking. I wish that I might reach this place in your consciousness, but alas, I do not have the skill."

Twelve Step people who study A.A.'s Big Book are, of course, familiar with Bill Wilson's medical mentor, Dr. William Duncan Silkworth. Bill called him the benign "little doctor who loved drunks." Silkworth, a psychiatrist, had treated thousands of alcoholics and was director of Towns Hospital in New York where Bill had several times sought help. Though Silkworth had explained the disease of alcoholism...

Recovering alcoholic Matt Maden: I began drinking at 10 and now I'm facing death at 26

 Matt Maden, now 26, has been living on borrowed time since he was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis five years ago. Despite his desperate need he has only a 20 per cent chance of getting an organ because of the growing demand. ‘It’s really scary living with the knowledge that the odds are so heavily against you,’ he said. His condition was detected when he spent two weeks in hospital in an alcohol-induced...

Money spent on nicotine patches 'goes up in smoke', says survey

 Those who go cold turkey have just as much chance of quitting the habit long-term, the study published on Monday added. A total of 787 adult smokers trying to quit were followed over five years by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health. One in three relapsed with the numbers spread equally between those going ‘cold turkey’, those using nicotine patches, gums or sprays, and those combining...

Once powerful Mexican drug lord Benjamin Arellano Felix pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday to drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering charges

 . Arellano Felix, 58, was the head of the feared Tijuana cartel run by his brothers and operated on the Mexico-U.S. border near San Diego until his capture in Mexico in early 2002. He was extradited to the United States last April, and prosecutors said his guilty plea marked the demise of the violent cartel that dominated smuggling on the California-Mexico border in the 1980s and 1990s. "Arellano...

Drug smuggling bid foiled

 Customs at the airport foiled an attempt by one Egyptian expatriate arriving from Cairo to smuggle 1,000 narcotic pills into the country. The concerned officers said the suspect had kept the contraband hidden in his shoes when they discovered it. He has since been handed over to Drug Prosecution. In a statement following discovery of the illicit drug, the Director General of Customs Ibrahim...

Drug smuggling compartment specialist sentenced to 24 years

A California man who specialized in building secret compartments in vehicles used to smuggle drugs received a 24-year sentence in what prosecutors said was one of the first cases against a specialist who worked for drug dealers but didn’t directly handle the drugs. Alfred Anaya, 40, a native of San Fernando, CA, was sentenced to 292 months in federal prison and forfeiture of $3.2 million. Anaya,...

Mexico: Reporter Gunned Down In Los Zetas Stronghold

 Raúl Régulo Garza Quirino, a reporter for the weekly La Última Palabra in Cadereyta, in the northeastern state of Nuevo León, became the first Mexican journalist to be killed in 2012 when he was gunned down after a car chase on 6 January. Garza was also a Cadereyta municipal employee. “We hope the number of Mexican journalists killed in the space of a decade does not reach the grim total of...

the secret of the Costa del Sol got out to the world, in a big, big way

 .The mid-Andalusian coastline began to lure Northern European types, weary of their long, dark winters and eager to bask in the region's ever-present sunshine. First came the super-rich and famous (think Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Laurence Olivier), after Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg opened the aristocratic Marbella Club in 1954. The demi-rich and B celebs followed, and gradually...

Undercover agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, working with their Mexican counterparts, helped transfer millions of dollars in drug cash and even escorted a shipment of cocaine via Dallas to Spain

 The covert activities were undertaken as part of an operation to infiltrate and prosecute a major Colombian-Mexican narco-trafficking organization moving cocaine from Colombia to Mexico and the United States. The undercover operation, detailed in Mexican government documents obtained by the New York Times, first came to light via a Monday dispatch by Times reporter Ginger Thompson. The documents...

Alleged Imperial Gangster pleads not guilty to gun charge

 reputed member of the Imperial Gangsters pleaded not guilty Monday to a gun charge linked to a shooting last month. Armando Jose Velasquez, 24, of East Chicago, is charged in federal court with being a felon in possession of a firearm. At Velasquez's detention hearing, U.S. Attorney David Nozick said the government plans to include Velasquez in the racketeering indictment that swept a dozen...

The Goodfellas gangsters may live again at AMC

 "Goodfellas" might be becoming a made man again. AMC is developing a series adapted from the acclaimed 1990's film's source material, Nicholas Pileggi's nonfiction book "Wiseguy," about the rise and fall of a mid-20th century gangster.  Pileggi wrote the 1990 film adaptation, which was directed by Martin Scorsese ("Taxi Driver," "Hugo"), and has signed on to co-write the TV...

Goon squad gang tied to several shootings in past four years

 The Goon Squad — a gang that Waterford Township police say is connected with the Dec. 23 Rolladium shootings — has been associated with shootings around the Pontiac area in recent years. The Rolladium roller rink situation involves three armed men spraying gunfire inside the rink, striking five patrons at 1:44 a.m. Waterford police found that the shooting stemmed from issues involving rivalry...

Apache Junction man arrested in I-10 road rage incident

 Tempe police have arrested a man involved in Saturday's road rage incident in which a driver was shot, but they are still investigating who is responsible for shooting the victim. The investigation revealed that a group of motorcycles and a champagne/tan-colored SUV were traveling westbound on Interstate 10 from Wild Horse Pass Boulevard. Witnesses reported that a gray Jeep was attempting to...

Spanish Home Sales Decline for the Ninth Straight Month as Economy Shrinks

 Spanish home sales declined in November for a ninth month as the economy contracted and unemployment surged. The number of transactions fell 14.4 percent from a year earlier, the National Statistics Institute in Madrid said in an e-mailed statement today. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, the People’s Party leader whose government took over from the Socialists on Dec. 22, has said he will restore...

The mother of an Internet-obsessed 11 year old boy in China knifed her son after growing distraught by his Web-gaming addiction

The mother of an Internet-obsessed 11 year old boy in China knifed her son after growing distraught by his Web-gaming addiction, which saw him regularly steal money from her, according to the Shanghaiist blog which cites a Chinese news story. The boy, who has been identified by the alias of Dongdong and lives with his parents in central Chinese province Hubei, is reported to have started using...

Customs inspector associated with variety of known criminals

 If she were to be judged based solely on the company she kept, Marilyn Béliveau would be in deep trouble. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of her ongoing trial is the fact that while she was under investigation, the Canada Border Services Agency inspector associated with a variety of known criminals. While testifying during her trial in December, Béliveau, 32, explained that a few of those...

Backpacker held over 'drug fuelled' Costa Rica murder

  Alfred Alexandros Mill Saunders, 20, was arrested in Costa Rica after allegedly being found emerging from a tent where a Czech woman had been subjected to a knife attack. He is understood to be the son of a leading London psychoanalyst. Local police said Mr Saunders, thought to be from west London, had blood stains on his face and clothes when he was detained by the manager of the isolated...