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El Chapo Speaks
Disclosure: Some names have had to be changed, locations not named, and an understanding was brokered with the subject that this piece would be submitted for the subject’s approval before publication. The subject did not ask for any changes. "The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom."
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+38 +1
Opium busts in 35 Chinese restaurants
Thirty five restaurants across China have been busted using opium poppies to illegally season dishes, authorities say. Food and Drug Administration officials said on Friday five restaurants were currently being prosecuted. Another 30 ranging from Shanghai dumpling joints to noodle shops in southwestern Chongqing and a popular Beijing hot pot chain, were under investigation.
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+40 +1
Mexico’s Secret Narco Museum
Deep inside Mexican army headquarters sits a crazy collection of bling and weapons nabbed from drug traffickers—and religious iconography praising the Messiahs of the drug wars. Hidden in the smog-ridden north of Mexico City, inside the headquarters of the Ministry of National Defense—or Mexican army HQ—sits one of the most fascinating museums on the planet.
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Mexico's challenge: Stop another 'El Chapo' escape
The saga of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán already has the trappings of a Hollywood thriller: The world's most notorious drug lord escapes a maximum-security prison through a tunnel, tips off authorities to his jungle location because of an attraction to a Mexican actress and gets nabbed after a bloody shootout with Mexican marines. Now comes the still-to-be-written climax: Can Mexico's trouble-plagued judicial system keep Guzmán locked up long...
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Murders in Spain, and a Dublin attack with AK-47s: the deadly 20-year war of Ireland’s drug cartels
Wearing nothing more than a pair of royal blue Superman Y-fronts, Irish boxing contender Jamie Kavanagh was flexing his muscles for the cameras on stage in preparation for the weigh-in when automatic gunfire echoed around the main hall of Dublin’s Regency Hotel. Dozens of people attending Friday’s pre-bout ritual for yesterday’s subsequently aborted WBO fight for the European lightweight title fled for their lives. Young boys were caught...
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FRONTLINE: Chasing Heroin
A searing, two-hour investigation of America’s heroin crisis.
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+38 +1
As heroin epidemic rages, Hep C cases soar
High cost for care, risks of HIV coinfection trouble health officials. By Terry DeMio.
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+29 +1
Legal marijuana is finally doing what the drug war couldn’t
Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn't: taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels' profits. The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. Agents snagged roughly 1.5 million pounds of marijuana at the border, down from a peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009.
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The Actress Who Dazzled El Chapo
After Kate del Castillo tweeted about the drug lord, he asked her to make a movie about his life. Then she took Sean Penn to see him. By Robert Draper.
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+31 +1
Drug Cartels Are Taking Over the Tortilla Business in Mexico
Samuel ran down the steep dirt track lined with blue and pink houses desperate to escape. The 20-year-old took long strides and ran from one side to the other in a zigzag. He begged for someone to open the door of a house so he could hide, but nobody did. That mid-morning, the poor and violent neighborhood of La Laja in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco seemed suddenly deserted. A few moments before, three gunmen had burst into a tortilla shop called Los Mangos...
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Supreme Court Won’t Referee State Disputes Over Pot
The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up a lawsuit filed by two neighboring states of Colorado over its legalization of marijuana. By Pete Williams.
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House bill would discourage crooks from using burner phones
For many criminals, prepaid "burner" phones are a dream tool: they're cheap, commitment-free... and most importantly, don't require ID that could reveal the buyer. House Representative Jackie Speier wants to put an end to that anonymity. She just introduced a bill, HR4886, that would require prepaid phone sellers to verify ID through common sources like credit cards, drivers' licenses or Social Security numbers. In theory...
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+35 +1
Researchers Are Gathering Pee From Nightclub Toilets to Track Drug Use
Collecting wastewater direct from the source can help researchers identify the latest new psychoactive substances. By Gian Volpicelli.
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+25 +1
'El Chapo' chief financial operator captured in Mexico
Authorities have captured a man identified as the chief financial operator behind drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's empire, who they say laundered some $4 billion in the past decade, federal police reported Sunday. "Groups of elite federal police and the Mexican Army arrested Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, nicknamed 'El Rey Midas' ('King Midas') in Oaxaca," the police said in a statement.
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The Indianapolis Pastor Who Outdid “Breaking Bad”
An Indianapolis pastor has pleaded guilty to manufacturing nearly 100 tons of ‘synthetic’ drugs in an extraordinary conspiracy that involved his fundamentalist church, a married couple who are crooked cops, a music producer and a school teacher. By Patrick Hilsman.
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The surprising disappearance of flakka, the synthetic drug that pushed South Florida to the brink
What happened to the drug that had devastated Floridian streets? By Todd C. Frankel.
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Star DEA agent finds himself at center of sprawling probe as drug task force comes under scrutiny
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for years considered Chad Scott a golden boy among its special agents, a prolific narcotics officer who earned countless plaudits for the DEA’s New Orleans. Others knew him as a champion waterskier, a tan, blond boss of the single ski... By Jim Mustian, Faimon A. Roberts III and John Simerman.
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Mexican Drug Boss 'El Chapo' Moved to 'Less-Secure' Prison
Questions arose on both sides of the border about the decision to relocate convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to a region that is one of his cartel’s strongholds, and a Mexican security official acknowledged Sunday that the sudden transfer was to a less-secure prison. The official said that in general the Cefereso No. 9 prison on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, is not as impregnable as the maximum-security Altiplano facility...
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Bounty war: Drug lords raise offer for Philippines leader’s head to $1,000,000
Drug lords have raised the ante for anyone who kills Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, local media report. Over $1 million will be paid for the assassination of the country's new leader, who has recently declared "a bloody war” on drug cartels. The incoming police chief Ronald Dela Rosa said he had received a tip-off from a source saying that raising the reward from 10 million pesos ($216,000) to 50 million pesos ($1,083,845) was the main subject of a meeting between drug lords currently behind bars at the National Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa, Philippines.
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Drug lords in Guatemala are burning down forests the size of Manhattan for cocaine-smuggling planes
Drug traffickers burning down Guatemalan forest to make clandestine landing strips for planes carrying US-bound cocaine have razed an area twice the size of Manhattan this year, officials say. The Central American country has declared a state of emergency over the fires ravaging its forests, which have hit hardest along its northern border with Mexico and Belize -- prime territory for drug gangs. The region, known as Peten, is known for the riches lying in its forests...
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