‘Three men, including a Houston-area paramedic, were arrested after investigators found nearly 400 pounds of marijuana in an ambulance, KPRC Local 2 reported Friday.
Maumelle, Ark., police said they discovered the drugs after the ambulance broke down near a gasoline station.
“An individual, that was actually an off-duty police officer, called and said that he just felt like things were out of sort,” Chief Sam Williams said.
Officers arrived and found the men and the ambulance.
“They were wearing white shirts and black BDU pants,” Williams said. “The white shirts had some rank insignia of them. It would be fair to say that they were wearing clothing that would resemble medical personnel.”‘
‘Authorities confiscated more than $200 million in U.S. currency from methamphetamine producers in one of this city’s ritziest neighborhoods, they said Friday, calling it the largest drug cash seizure in history.
The seizure reflected the vast scope of an illegal drug trade linking Asia, Mexico and the United States, officials said. Two of the seven people arrested Thursday at a faux Mediterranean villa in the Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood were Chinese nationals.’
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‘At the only hospital in the capital of this tiny West African nation, a 3-year-old AIDS patient named Suleiman receives his daily dose of medication — a murky brown concoction of seven herbs and spices served out of a bottle that once contained pancake syrup.
The boy is told a spoonful a day will make him better. His mother, Fatuma, takes the same concoction, as do several dozen other AIDS and HIV patients here. Adults take two spoonfuls.
“It’s amazing,” Fatuma says. “Two weeks ago, I was very ill, weak and couldn’t eat without vomiting.”
This has become the treatment for HIV/AIDS patients here since early January, when Gambian President Yahya Jammeh announced he had discovered a cure for the disease that has wreaked havoc across Africa. He made that announcement in front of a group of foreign diplomats, telling them the treatment was revealed to him by his ancestors in a dream.’
‘Cannabis extracts may shrink brain tumours and other cancers by blocking the growth of the blood vessels which feed them, suggests a new study.
An active component of the street drug has previously been shown to improve brain tumours in rats. But now Manuel Guzmán at Complutense University, Spain, and colleagues have demonstrated how the cannabis extracts block a key chemical needed for tumours to sprout blood vessels – a process called angiogenesis.
And for the first time, the team has shown the cannabinoids impede this chemical in people with the most aggressive form of brain cancer – glioblastoma multiforme.’
‘A mentally troubled woman accused of drowning her 6-year-old daughter, cutting off her head and throwing the remains off a bridge has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. [..]
Spann told investigators she was using drugs heavily at the time of the killing, officials have said.
Spann’s father, Gary Spann, told The Sacramento Bee in 2005 his daughter routinely called the girl a “devil child,” and she belonged to a cult that worshipped the late rapper Tupac Shakur as the reincarnation of the 16th century political philosopher Machiavelli.’
‘So Wolf began snooping around and found that two chains, Costco and Sam’s Club, sold generics at prices far, far below the other chains. Even once you factor in the cost of buying a membership at Costco and Sam’s Club, the price differences were astounding. Here are the prices he found at Houston stores for 90 tablets of generic Prozac:
Walgreens: $117
Eckerd: $115
CVS: $115
Sam’s Club: $15
Costco: $12
Those aren’t typos. Walgreens charges $117 for a bottle of the same pills for which Costco charges $12.’
‘The Christian Democrat leader, Fred Nile, wants random drug testing for all NSW MPs.
He will be first to volunteer, and wants the Greens MP Lee Rhiannon to be second.
Unaccountably, in 2004 Mr Nile voted for an amendment watering down Rhiannon’s motion to breath-test MPs for alcohol while in Parliament.
Yesterday Mr Nile was tough on drugs in Macquarie Street: “The voting public deserve to know whether the people they elect are capable of making rational decisions and are prepared to devote themselves to the job. There is no room for illegal drug taking in a House of Parliament.”‘
‘A woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive can face federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The ruling was the latest legal defeat for Angel Raich, a mother of two from Oakland suffering from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments who sued the federal government pre-emptively to avoid being arrested for using the drug. On her doctor’s advice, Raich eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster her appetite. [..]
Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision that she was not immune to prosecution and said she would continue using the drug.
“I’m sure not going to let them kill me,” she said. “Oh, my God.”‘
‘Texas lawmakers are fighting to block the governor’s order requiring that sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer, with the House giving final approval to a bill to make the shots strictly voluntary.
Gov. Rick Perry’s executive order has inflamed conservatives who say it contradicts Texas’ abstinence-only sexual education policies and intrudes into family lives. Some critics also have questioned whether the vaccine has been proven safe.
The House voted 118-23 on Wednesday to approve a bill that would keep the vaccine off the list of required shots for school attendance. The measure now heads to the state Senate, where more than half the members are co-sponsoring an identical bill.’
‘A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine that we still need “proof” of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.
The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found that smoked marijuana was effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy.
It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis. [..]
As all marijuana research in the United States must be, the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.’
‘Tracy Morgan of Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock is interviewed on morning television by Robert Holguin of KVIA. The live interview goes wildly out of control when the whacked out comedian takes off his shirt.’
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‘An elite group of Native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan’s borders.
The unit, the Shadow Wolves, was recruited from several tribes, including the Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache. It is being sent to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to pass on ancestral sign-reading skills to local border units.
In recent years, members of the Shadow Wolves have mainly tracked smugglers along the US border with Mexico.
But the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan and the US military’s failure to hunt down Osama bin Laden – still at large on his 50th birthday on Saturday – has prompted the Pentagon to requisition them.
US Defence Secretary Robert M.Gates said last month: “If I were Osama bin Laden, I’d keep looking over my shoulder.”‘
‘The actor Sylvester Stallone has been charged with importing a banned human growth hormone into Australia.
He was stopped by customs officials at Sydney airport last month after the banned substance was allegedly found in his luggage.
Stallone, 60, flew into Australia to promote his latest film, Rocky Balboa.
Customs officials said they found 48 small bottles of the hormone after searching the star’s luggage, and later carrying out a raid on his hotel room.
Human growth hormone is considered a performance enhancing drug and cannot be imported into Australia without a special permit.’
Followup to Customs raid on action man Stallone.
‘An ex-con and former mental patient who won a landmark state Supreme Court decision in 2004 that allowed hundreds of mental patients to stop taking forced medication appeared in an Alameda courtroom Friday on charges that he killed his roommate in September.
Kanuri Qawi, 46, was charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of his roommate, John Laird Milton Sr., 59, whose body was found Sept. 13 in their home on Moonlight Terrace at Dignity Commons, a housing facility for veterans at Alameda Point, the site of the former Alameda Naval Air Station. [..]
The court said Qawi had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and had been medicated against his will between 1995 and 2004.’
‘An abandoned consignment of marijuana with a street value of $20m (£10.3m) was found in California when a policeman went to check on a lorry.
The vehicle was unlocked and the engine warm, but no-one was in the cab.
The patrolman found plastic-wrapped bundles of the drug in the back of the rental vehicle near Los Angeles after smelling marijuana, AP said. [..]
He suggested the engine might have overheated, causing the vehicle to be abandoned along with three tons of marijuana on a slip road in the city of Ontario late on Wednesday.’
‘Within the last five years, pets have finally overtaken farm animals in the pharmaceutical marketplace, claiming 54 percent of spending for animal drugs, according to the trade group Animal Health Institute.
Keeping more than 130 million dogs and cats alone, Americans bought $2.9 billion worth of pet drugs in 2005. Though equal to only 1 percent of human drug sales, the market has grown by roughly half since the year 2000.
“As more and more drugs are being developed for people, more and more drugs are being developed for veterinary medicine. It’s really a parallel track,” says Dr. Gerald Post, founder of the nonprofit Animal Cancer Foundation.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved more than 40 new pet drugs over the past five years.’
‘Authorities in the United States have given preliminary approval to a plan to grow rice genetically modified to produce human proteins.
Rice plants including human genes involved in producing breast milk would be grown in the state of Kansas.
The company behind the proposal, Ventria Bioscience, says the plants could be developed into medicines for diarrhoea and dehydration in infants.
Critics say parts of the rice plants could enter the food chain.’
‘A Chandler man has been arrested after his condominium caught fire while he was cooking methamphetamine in a toaster oven, authorities said.
Jonathan Zaletel, 19, was arrested on suspicion of drug manufacturing, drug possession and criminal damage.
Zaletel was cooking meth at about 7 p.m. Tuesday in the 1200 block of North Alma School Road near Ray Road when his condominium bedroom closet caught fire, authorities said.
He unsuccessfully attempted to stop the fire with water and window cleaner. He then went to Wal-Mart to buy a fire extinguisher.’
‘Officials at the Grossmont Union High School District have sent letters home to parents, notifying them that a number of students have been caught on campus with medical marijuana cards.
District official Catherine Martin said they are concerned over the growing trend and the “apparent ease” with which teens are able to obtain the cards.
In the letters, parents, students and faculty are reminded that even if the cards are valid, it is against the law to have marijuana on school property.
Recently two East County teenagers were suspended for showing up at school high, with a medical marijuana card as their excuse, NBC 7/39 reported.’
‘Illegal drugs can be “harmless” and should no longer be “demonised”, a wide-ranging two-year study concluded today.
The report said Britain’s drug laws were “not fit for purpose” and should be torn up in favour of a system which recognised that drinking and smoking could cause more harm.
The RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs ,set up in January 2005, also called for the main focus of drugs education to be shifted from secondary to primary schools and recommended the introduction of so-called “shooting galleries” – rooms where users can inject drugs. [..]
Current laws, the panel claimed, were been “driven by moral panic” with large amounts of money wasted on “futile” efforts to stop supply rather than going after the criminal networks behind the drugs on British streets.’
‘A 24-year-old man called police to tell them he was trying to break into a church, but he wasn’t having much luck.
Police said the would-be thief’s call prompted them to show up at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, where they found him waiting. The man told them he had hoped to get married in the church and was trying to use a metal shovel to break through the doors. He told them, if anything, he figured they could help.
Officers search the man and found marijuana. He then invited them to his home, where he told them they would find more drugs.
They did: He showed them his stash of marijuana and stolen prescription drugs.’
‘It might have been one of the easiest drug busts in the history of the South Carolina Highway Patrol: A car with 43 pounds of marijuana crashed into a trooper’s cruiser, authorities said.
The easy bust happened after two patrolmen parked their cars in each lane of northbound Interstate 95 near Santee early Sunday morning following a series of wrecks that had tied up traffic, Highway Patrol Capt. Chris Williamson said.
A Chevrolet Malibu going about 70 mph hit one of the cruisers, causing minor injuries to the trooper behind the wheel, Williamson said.”
‘That morning latte or espresso may not be the pick-me-up people think it is, a study has revealed.
University of Bristol researchers say the caffeine eases withdrawal symptoms which build up overnight, but does not make people more alert than normal.
The work, presented to the British Nutrition Foundation conference, showed only people who have avoided coffee for a while will get a buzz from caffeine.
But the British Coffee Association said regular drinkers did feel more alert.’
‘A 68-year-old grandmother convicted of growing cannabis at her Northumberland home has been given a 250 hour community service order.
Patricia Tabram, from Humshaugh, had denied charges of possessing and cultivating the drug when she appeared at Carlisle Crown Court.
She was arrested in 2005 when plants and growing equipment were seized. [..]
After the hearing she said: “I’m going to go on medicating.
“The police can come to my house every week. I’ll give them a cup of tea.
“I’ll give them a decent biscuit, which of course will be medicated and I’ll give them some cannabis so they charge me again and again and again.”‘
‘As authorities stormed into a middle school office to arrest an alleged meth-dealing principal inside, they found an even more surprising scene inside. Sources said 50-year-old John Acerra, of Allentown, was naked and watching gay pornography when they arrived at Nitschmann Middle School in Bethlehem to arrest him on Tuesday.
Acerra also had sex toys, drugs, cash and a pipe in his school office when authorities stormed his office, the sources added.
He remained jailed on $200,000 bail Thursday night, police said.’
Followup to: Principal Accused of Selling Meth
‘A Toowoomba jockey has been caught using a sex aid in an attempt to deceive stewards in a drug test.
Jason Warrington was one of 19 track riders and jockeys who were nabbed in a drug raid at Clifford Park racecourse, Toowoomba, on Tuesday.
Warrington had left the track when he was asked by Queensland Racing stewards to return to provide a urine sample for precautionary drug testing.
Acting chief steward John Hackett became suspicious of Warrington’s actions while the jockey attempted to provide a urine sample.
Hackett caught the jockey squeezing urine from a dildo concealed inside his pants.’
‘A 17-year-old faces a felony charge of injury to a child after police found a videotape that appears to show him and another man teaching his 2- and 5-year-old nephews to smoke marijuana, police said.
The video shows two children being taught to smoke marijuana and the men encouraging them to “get high,” police said. A man can be seen placing a marijuana cigarette into a baby’s mouth and, in another part of the video, a different boy is shown smoking on his own.’
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‘Witnesses to a road crash on a Dutch motorway soon realised why the occupants of a van fled so quickly when police arrived and found hashish worth €15 million ($25.26 million) in it.
A police spokeswoman said the van contained 3000 kg of hashish and was heavily overloaded, although police did not know whether this had caused the crash.
“A van-driver heading to Amsterdam lost control of his vehicle and it tipped over … Witnesses were confused as to why two people got out and ran away even though no one was hurt in the accident,” she added.’
‘Opium production in Afghanistan reached record levels last year, the United States has said.
The US State Department’s annual report on narcotics also said the flourishing drugs trade was undermining the fight against the Taleban.
It warned of a possible increase in heroin overdoses in Europe and the Middle East as a result.’
