BANGKOK, Thailand - The downfall of a meth syndicate laundering tens of millions of dollars of drug money through Thai gold shops, oil and construction firms has cast rare light on the staggering scale of Asia's narco profits -- and the ruses used to hide them.
Thailand is Southeast Asia's meth "superhighway", with drugs from remote Myanmar labs pouring through the border destined for the local market or overseas as far as Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Prices have dropped as the drug labs ramp up production of yaba -- the tiny caffeinated pink or green pills guzzled by Southeast Asian truck drivers to clubbers -- and the more expensive and highly addictive crystal meth known as "ice".
Millions are hooked on drugs in Thailand, where prisons are stuffed with petty dealers and addicts.
But the drug lords remain beyond reach, hidden behind a web of middlemen and complex money laundering schemes.
Authorities say they are finally ready to change the game by going after drug money sloshing through Thai banks, construction businesses and cryptocurrency accounts.
"We have found an irregular flow in the banks of 170 billion baht ($5.4 billion) -- it may not all be drugs," Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin told reporters this week.
"But we are confident there is at least 12 billion baht ($388 million) in drug-related assets -- drug money is being turned into gold, zinc (panels), steel rods and oil."
Thailand's get-tough message follows the recent unspooling of several networks, who bought oil with drug profits and traded it on international markets as well as transforming dirty money into construction materials for sale such as steel pipes, roofing and machinery.
The main group was allegedly controlled by Daoreung Somseang, a Thai woman already in custody in a Bangkok prison on trafficking offences.
Police allege she still ran a drug empire which spanned the country using gold shops and construction companies to clean at least $100 million cash through 113 accounts to move the money.
It is a cycle of drug production, trafficking and laundering that generates untold billions and turns a secondary economy of cryptocurrency, supercars and plush overseas properties.
"It's impossible to guess the real amount these drug networks are making," Lieutenant-General Wissanu Prasarttong-Osoth, assistant to Thailand's police chief, told AFP.
FILTHY RICH BUT LOW-KEY
But the Daoreung's dexterity in laundering shows the "scale and sophistication of the networks", according to Jeremy Douglas of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
"This one is not even a super-syndicate... it's mid-sized but is still moving a massive volume of money."
On Friday, Thai authorities were set to burn seized drugs worth $1.7 billion -- another batch worth $800 million was incinerated in Myanmar -- during an annual parade of law enforcement successes across the region.
But the record amounts are just a sliver of the money on the table for Asia's meth lords, who emerge from drug crackdowns by raising production and piercing borders with corruption.
The UNODC estimates they are making between $30-$60 billion a year and are the biggest meth producers in the world.
The meth is produced in the "Golden Triangle" -- cutting across northern Thailand, Laos, China and Myanmar -- where armed rebels are the law and drug lords lease jungle labs under their protection.
The market-leading syndicate is believed to be the "Sam Gor" group, dominated by Chinese gangsters who control at least 40 percent of Asia's meth -- sending their signature tea packets stuffed with "ice" across the Asia-Pacific region.
Asian organized crime is more stealthy than its violent and showy Latin American peers, operating in anonymity across countries with long, porous borders, corruptible police, and large domestic markets of drug users.
To unwind the money trail, Thailand has been working with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), whose skills were honed in the fight with the Latin American cartels.
But crime experts warn police must be ready to follow the money wherever it leads if they are to get close to the heads of the criminal chain.
The UNODC's Douglas added: "The message is you can't just stop at the drug seizure."
Agence France-Presse
LOS ANGELES - Justin Bieber and his wife Hailey Baldwin are opening up in an intimate series for Facebook Watch in which they discuss their marriage, their problems and their lives together. "The Biebers on Watch" launched on Monday with the first of 12 episodes shot by the couple in and around their Toronto home where they are currently under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The first episode sees the couple taking a boat out onto a lake near where Bieber grew up and talking frankly about the challenges and rewards of being married.
"There's a lot of things I need to work on. Forgiveness things, jealousy things, insecurities that I didn't even realize I had until I chose to spend my life with you. Realized there were blind spots in my life that I didn't realize I had," Bieber told Baldwin.
The series is being shot on GoPro cameras, Facebook Watch said.
Bieber, 26, and Baldwin, 23, met in their early teens, attended the same church and started dating again seriously about two years ago. The Canadian singer and the model married privately in 2018 and held a second wedding for friends and family in September 2019.
The series follows a 10-part documentary on YouTube earlier this year where Bieber emerged from a long period out of the public eye to chronicle the making of his first album in four years, "Changes."
Bieber shot to worldwide fame as a 13 year-old, got hooked on drugs, hit the headlines for a string of arrests and bad behavior, and abruptly pulled out of his "Purpose" world tour in 2017 citing the need for rest.
He has since spoken frankly of his struggles with drugs, depression and fame. (Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by David Gregorio)
-reuters-
SYDNEY - Australian police have arrested two men for allegedly smuggling 645 kilograms (1,422 pounds) of ecstasy hidden inside hundreds of aluminium barbecues, the culmination of a six-month investigation spanning three countries.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Australian Border Force (ABF) said it had charged a 30-year-old man from Queensland and a 33-year-old Canadian national over their involvement in the criminal enterprise. At well over half a ton, the haul of MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, is the biggest shipment by weight seized in Australia this year.
The investigation remains ongoing and is expected to lead to further arrests, the ABF said. Police didn't disclose the names of the two men held, who each face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted.
The case began in July when police in the Cyprus Drug Law Enforcement Unit tipped off ABF counterparts about a potential large shipment of MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, in a container shipping from Limassol and bound for Sydney. The investigation also involved the United Kingdom National Crime Agency, the ABF said.
On searching the container, the police found 200 aluminium barbecues, many with false base plates concealing multiple packages of the drug.
Officers swapped the MDMA for an inert substance and delivered the barbecues to a warehouse in Sydney, where it sat for more than three months.
Starting in late October, the barbecues were gradually shipped to another warehouse, also in Sydney, where the Australian suspect began to prepare the drugs for distribution, the ABF said.
The Canadian suspect arrived in Sydney last week to visit the warehouse and was arrested in Brisbane on Monday.
"It will be alleged in court that he acted as a liaison for the criminal group responsible for importing the MDMA," the ABF said.
The Australian suspect was also arrested on Monday, while about A$300,000 ($204,000) in cash and 3.5 kg of cocaine were also seized.
The arrests come as the ABF invests heavily in new technologies allowing officers to see further into shipping containers than ever before, ABF Regional Commander for New South Wales, Danielle Yannopoulos, said in the statement.
"Just this year we've found illicit substances in professionally manufactured car parts, fridges, furniture, and even an excavator," she said.
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CLEVELAND — Three leading American drug distributors and an Israeli drugmaker blamed for a deadly US opioid epidemic settled a bellwether civil lawsuit with 2 Ohio counties Monday, just hours before they were to go on trial, a federal judge announced.
The $260 million deal set the basis for a broader potential multi-billion dollar payout to some 2,700 addiction-ravaged communities nationwide that had signed on to the Cleveland lawsuit, the first in a federal court to address the causes of the crisis.
Officials from Ohio's Summit and Cuyahoga counties -- which include the cities of Akron and Cleveland -- said they would be able to almost immediately begin boosting funds to address the massive fallout from the crisis.
The addiction epidemic has placed huge burdens on hospitals and emergency services, and on families supporting addicts and caring for children with addicted parents or parents who have died.
"Cuyahoga County has seen thousands of people die over the last several years. It's a tragedy. Summit County is no different," said Cuyahoga prosecutor Michael O'Malley.
"Our hearts go out to the families who have been touched by this," said Ilene Shapiro, the chief executive of Summit County.
"Whatever we can do to help these families rebuild and get as healthy as they can and move forward is what we are trying to do."
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DEATHS
The settlement involved the 3 leading US drug distributors, some of the largest companies in the country -- Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and McKesson Corp.
It also included Israel's Teva, one of the world's largest generic drug manufacturers.
Pharmacy chain Walgreens opted out of the deal and will go to trial at a later date, said Federal District Judge Dan Polster. A small Ohio distributor also settled in a separate deal.
A trial would have examined allegations that the makers of the prescription painkillers and pharmaceutical distributors pushed billions of pills into communities without due care over 2 decades, making it excessively easy for patients to become addicted and creating a permanent demand.
The companies reaped tens of billions of dollars in profits while overdose deaths soared above 400,000 over 2 decades -- more than 70,000 in 2017 alone.
Plaintiffs had amassed large amounts of evidence showing that the companies knew they were fomenting an epidemic of addiction.
The deal, though, does not require the companies to admit wrongdoing.
"While the companies strongly dispute the allegations made by the two counties, they believe settling the bellwether trial is an important stepping stone to achieving a global resolution and delivering meaningful relief," the giant distributors said in a statement.
The prospects of more litigation sent the shares of the 3 distributors tumbling. AmerisourceBergen fell 3.4 percent, McKesson lost 3.2 percent, and Cardinal Health lost 2.2 percent.
Teva gained 8.8 percent on the relatively small cash payout it will make to the two countries, $20 million.
Walgreens meanwhile lost 1.5 percent as it planned to fight in court.
TALKS CONTINUE
Talks continued with the broader group of plaintiffs for a settlement likely worth tens of billions of dollars in cash and in-kind payments, mainly free drugs for treating addiction.
Negotiations for a global deal worth a reported $48 billion -- but only $18 billion in cash -- broke down Friday amid differences between some states and smaller communities over the total value and how the money would be distributed.
Officials from 4 states who had backed the tentative deal on Friday called the 2-counties agreement "an important step," but said a global settlement could take weeks.
"The global resolution on the table will distribute funds fairly between states, counties and cities while also ensuring that these companies change their business practices to prevent a public health crisis like this from ever happening again," said the attorneys general of North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Major drug manufacturers and distributors have already struck deals worth billions of dollars with states and local governments around the country to compensate them for the costs of the epidemic.
A study by the Society of Actuaries estimated that the opioid epidemic cost the US economy at least $631 billion from 2015 to 2018.
In August, Purdue Pharma, the producer of OxyContin, one of the leading painkillers driving the addiction epidemic, reached a deal with 29 states and territories to compensate them.
Purdue said the deal would cost it $10 billion and force it into bankruptcy, but critics in states and localities that opposed the deal say it is worth much less, and demanded the family that built Purdue, the Sacklers, pay billions more out of their own fortune.
In an Oklahoma trial in August, drug maker Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $572 million to compensate the state.
The company then reached a separate deal in the Cleveland case to pay the 2 counties $20.4 million.
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NEW YORK — In a windowless hangar at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, dozens of law enforcement officers sift through packages, looking for fentanyl -- a drug that is killing Americans every day.
It's a laborious job, with more than 2 million items of mail, the vast majority of it innocuous, arriving at the postal sorting center from around the world every day.
"We're looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack," says a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent, standing amid piles of parcels and letters in the vast, fluorescent lamp-lit warehouse.
The US Postal Service facility has become one of multiple fronts in America's war on opioid addiction, which kills tens of thousands of people every year and ravages communities across the nation.
Sixty percent of all mail arriving in the United States from abroad comes through the center at JFK, and officers spend day and night checking suspicious looking packages for deadly narcotics.
They are mainly hunting for illegally made fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin and up to 100 times stronger than morphine -- but which is sometimes legally prescribed to ease pain.
According to US government data, about 32,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2018. That accounts for 46 percent of all fatal overdoses.
The majority of fentanyl seized here, whether original or an "analog" product that has similar effects but a slightly different chemical formula, has been bought on the so-called "dark web," from sites usually based in China or Hong Kong.
HOME DELIVERY
Users, often looking for an ever more euphoric high, generally pay with cryptocurrencies, a simple credit card, or PayPal, according to Ray Donovan, the New York chief of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
"They don't need to leave their houses. They can order fentanyl directly from China and have it shipped to their doorstep," Donovan told AFP.
CBP agent and division chief Robert Redes has worked at JFK airport for more than 15 years.
Surrounded by thousands of letters and packages, he recalls when an innocent looking musical birthday card arrived from Toronto in March 2018.
Three grams of fentanyl -- enough to kill 1,500 people -- were hidden inside.
The discovery led to the arrest of a 34-year-old man in Pennsylvania who had bought the synthetic opioid online.
A search of his apartment unearthed a stash of Xanax, LSD, ecstasy, marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Because officers are more suspicious of packages coming from China, traffickers often go through an intermediary based in a third country, explains Donovan, who led the capture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Mexican drug lord sentenced to life in jail in July.
It is impossible to check all the mail that arrives at JFK so with the help of trained sniffer dogs, and based on intelligence they have received, officers inspect about 1,000 packages considered high-risk every day.
LASER TECHNOLOGY
Suspicious parcels are X-rayed or examined using laser technology. Sometimes they are opened with a knife -- carefully, since inhaling just a few milligrams of fentanyl can prove fatal.
Fentanyl purchased on the internet is often extremely pure, says Redes. It is cut and then sold on the streets.
"We're dealing with rather small quantities," as opposed to seizures of heroin or cocaine, which are measured in kilograms, he says.
"But it doesn't take very much fentanyl to result in overdoses and even deaths."
A laser spectrometer is the officers' best weapon. It is connected to a database that can identify 450 types of narcotics without opening the package.
Traffickers frequently flood the market with new "analogs," however, meaning officers need to constantly update the digital drug library, says Redes.
Unlike private competitors such as FedEx or UPS, the US Postal Service has limited electronic tracking of mail. Only 40 percent of incoming correspondence is tracked, complicating the work of agents.
A federal law requiring 100 percent tracking of international packages will come into force by the end of next year.
The US government has even launched a competition offering $1.5 million in prize money to anyone who can invent technology that makes it easier to detect opiates in the mail.
"It may seem overwhelming. (But) it's technology that's really going to win the day," says Redes.
FAST AND CHEAP
For New York's special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan -- who has seen cocaine, crack, heroin and now fentanyl ravage communities in her more than 20 years investigating the drug trade -- fentanyl is the "perfect product" for traffickers.
It takes about 4 months to turn poppies grown in Mexico's Sierra Madre range into refined heroin, Brennan says at her Chinatown office.
Compared to making heroin, manufacturing a kilogram of fentanyl in a laboratory requires less labor and is much faster, because Mexico's unpredictable weather is not a factor.
It also costs about 10 times less: anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000, says Brennan.
Fentanyl is so powerful that half a million pills can be made from just one kilo. They are then sold on the streets of the United States for $8-10 each.
According to the DEA, a kilo of fentanyl purchased in China for between $3,000 and $5,000 can generate revenue of more than $1.5 million in the United States.
Fentanyl, a powerful painkiller approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for a range of conditions, has been central to the American opioid crisis which began in the late 1990s.
The epidemic was sparked by doctors, encouraged by the pharmaceutical industry, overprescribing opioid pain medication oxycodone, sold by Purdue Pharma under the brand name OxyContin.
Drug overdoses are so frequent in part because users who purchase on the street don't know what they are buying, says Brennan.
"They are getting pills that say they are oxycodone but are fentanyl. Sometimes sellers don't know what they are selling," she told AFP.
PRINCE
Purdue -- owned by the Sacklers, one of America's richest families -- filed for bankruptcy last month in a settlement aimed at warding off thousands of state and federal lawsuits related to the opioid emergency.
Powerful opioids like oxycodone had been intended to be used for pain relief for serious illnesses such as cancer, because of how addictive they are.
Between 8 and 12 percent of patients are addicted by the end of the treatment, and many start to purchase black market opiates or illicit drugs such as heroin, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The danger was tragically illustrated in 2016 when music icon Prince died at age 57 after overdosing on the opioid hydrocodone, which had been mixed, apparently without his knowledge, with fentanyl.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported more than 400,000 deaths from opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2018, with an explosion in the death rate between 2013 and 2017.
MEXICO AND CHINA
China was the first country to manufacture illegal fentanyl for the US market, but the problem surged when trafficking through Mexico began around 2005, according to Donovan.
It was led by major cartels such as El Chapo's Sinaloa group that were seeking to make up for losses endured when Colombian traffickers began skipping Mexico to export cocaine to Europe, Australia, Russia and China on their own.
The Mexican cartels began to produce more poppies in an attempt to manufacture heroin as strong as that found in Colombia.
They failed though, so they started to import fentanyl from China and mix it with heroin to make it stronger and give it a competitive edge.
After El Chapo was first captured in Mexico in 2014, his sons and other traffickers started building more fentanyl labs and smuggling the drug to the US as their profits soared, says Donovan.
To reduce costs and evade Chinese laws, they then began to import only the chemical precursors of fentanyl, going on to make the finished product themselves in their clandestine labs.
President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a "public health emergency" in October 2017 and accused China of fueling it.
Against the backdrop of a trade war with Washington, Beijing changed its policy in May and designated all analogs of fentanyl as controlled substances.
But the list does not include many of the precursors needed to make it, allowing Mexican traffickers to fill the void, the DEA's chief for North and Central America, Matthew Donahue, told Congress in July.
He called the manufacture of fentanyl precursors by Mexican cartels themselves "an alarming development."
BORDER SEIZURES
Back at the postal center at JFK airport, seizures of fentanyl are down these days; authorities say most of it is entering the US at official border posts with Mexico.
Mixed with fillers, heroin, methamphetamines or cocaine, or in the form of small blue pills resembling OxyContin tablets, it is hidden in vehicles or trafficked by pedestrians crossing on foot.
CBP's executive director for cargo and conveyance security, Thomas Overacker, recently acknowledged that officers can only inspect about one percent of private vehicles and 16 percent of commercial trucks that enter the US from Mexico.
Seizures are soaring nationwide, however.
Last year, the CBP intercepted 985 kilos (2,170 pounds) of illegal fentanyl and its analogs, compared to less than one kilo in 2013.
When the fentanyl reaches New York, it is mostly distributed by Dominican crime syndicates, according to the DEA's Donovan.
They then hand over profits to Chinese money laundering gangs associated with the Mexican cartels, and which are increasingly present in Mexico, highlighting the global nature of drug trafficking networks.
US authorities have been fighting the drug trade for half a century, but in fentanyl, they are facing the deadliest drug yet.
As well as cracking down on traffickers, the government recognizes that it must also focus efforts elsewhere, such as treating addiction.
The National Institutes of Health has devoted almost $1 billion to tackle the opioid crisis.
"The fight against drug abuse is a generations-long struggle. It will not be completed overnight," Donahue told the congressional hearing.
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WASHINGTON - Three Chinese citizens have been charged with distributing fentanyl in the United States, where addiction spurred by the synthetic opioid drug has ravaged communities, US prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Deyao Chen, Guichun Chen and Liangtu Pan are accused of selling nearly 3,000 packages of controlled substances in the US and internationally between April 2016 and March 2017.
The drugs were sold on websites located in China and mailed to the United States, where they were distributed via the US Postal Service by a Pennsylvania former deputy sheriff named David Landis.
Drugs sold by the three defendants had been found in the systems of five people in the United States who overdosed and died, according to a Justice Department statement.
Deyao, Guichun and Liangtu, who share the alias "Alex," took online orders from China and then mailed the drugs to Landis for distribution.
The three Chinese nationals have not been arrested and are believed to be in China, a spokesman told AFP.
Landis has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing, the statement read.
Their indictments come amid a quarrel between Washington and Beijing about fentanyl trafficking -- a substance 50 times stronger than heroine, which, along with other synthetic opioids, caused 32,000 US deaths in 2018.
President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on China over the summer as a response to what he saw as their failure to stem the flow of fentanyl into the US. The two countries have since pledged to work together to fight the proliferation of the drug.
"China is supplying the United States with the most potent and deadly fentanyl and other synthetic opioids on the market today," US Attorney William M. McSwain said in the statement.
"International suppliers beware: you cannot hide behind a computer or evade our detection by drug trafficking from a far-away place," he warned.
Beijing has rejected responsibility for the US addiction crisis.
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Justin Bieber was discovered at age 13. Within a couple of years, he was a pop superstar and had begun amassing millions of dollars and fans. That kind of fame at such a young age was perilous and led him to make “terrible decisions,” he said Monday in a lengthy and personal Instagram note posted to his 118 million followers.
“I started doing pretty heavy drugs at 19 and abused all of my relationships,” Bieber, now 25, wrote. “I became resentful, disrespectful to women, and angry. I became distant to everyone who loved me, and I was hiding behind, a shell of the person that I had become. I felt like I could never turn it around.”
Bieber went on to say that he was raised in an unstable home and that being overwhelmed with praise so young not only gave him an inflated sense of self but also robbed him of the ability to learn basic life skills.
“Have u noticed the statistics of child stars and the outcome of their life?” he wrote. “There is an insane pressure and responsibility” put on these children, whose “brain, emotions, frontal lobes (decision making) aren’t developed yet.”
“Humility comes with age,” he added.
Bieber has credited his marriage last year to model Hailey Baldwin (now Hailey Bieber), 22, with helping him gain perspective, and he did so again Monday, calling their union “an amazing, crazy, new responsibility.” (Bieber dated actress and singer Selena Gomez on and off for years, starting around 2011 through early 2018.)
The post was probably in part a follow-up to a video Bieber posted on Instagram last week of an emotional performance he gave at his Los Angeles church. “God is pulling me through a hard season,” he wrote in that post. “Having trust in Jesus at your worst times is the absolute hardest.”
“Jesus loves you,” he wrote Monday.
Bieber has not performed much this year or put out much music since his fraught last tour for his fourth studio album, “Purpose” (2015). In the summer of 2017, he canceled its final 14 shows. “I got really depressed on tour,” he told Vogue this year. “I’m still processing so much stuff that I haven’t talked about. I was lonely.”
Bieber has dealt with legal and other issues over the years. In 2014, he was arrested on charges of driving under the influence and with an expired driver’s license, and resisting arrest without violence. Police said that he had admitted to having beer, marijuana and prescription drugs in his system. He was able to avoid jail time. Around that time, videos emerged of him using racist language, which Bieber apologized for.
He isn’t the only child celebrity turned adult superstar to use social media recently to talk about dealing with the spotlight.
Last month, on Twitter, Miley Cyrus, 26, defended herself against rumors that she had cheated on Liam Hemsworth, the actor who filed for divorce from Cyrus in August. While doing so, she said that after years in the public eye, she had nothing left to hide. “It is no secret that I was into partying in my teens and early 20s,” she wrote. “My biggest song to date is about dancing on molly and snorting lines in the bathroom.
“At this point, I had to make a healthy decision for myself to leave a previous life behind,” she went on. “I am the healthiest and happiest I have been in a long time.”
2019 The New York Times Company
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SHANGHAI - Chinese state media on Friday hit back at claims by US officials that China was failing to crack down on the flow of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances into the United States, saying that responsibility for opioid abuse lay with users.
The United States was "pushing responsibility" for fentanyl abuse to China and ignoring that Beijing had implemented strict controls on the highly addictive synthetic opioid, reported The People's Daily newspaper, published by the ruling Communist Party.
US officials say China is the main source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances that are trafficked into the United States, much of it through international mail. Beijing denies that most of the illicit fentanyl entering the United States originates in China.
"Some people in the United States need to understand, the source of the illness lies within one's body," the newspaper said in an article which bore the pen name "Zhong Sheng", usually used to express its views on foreign policy.
"You can't be rushed to see the doctor, and you can't just scold others once you're ill," it said, adding that the United States had not done enough to fight the epidemic of opioid abuse.
The US Treasury on Wednesday imposed sanctions on three Chinese men accused of illegally trafficking fentanyl. US President Donald Trump accused Beijing of reneging on pledges to stem a flood of the drug into the United States.
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LONDON - Britain will face shortages of fuel, food and medicine if it leaves the European Union without a transition deal, jamming ports and requiring a hard border in Ireland, official government documents leaked to the Sunday Times show.
The Times said the forecasts compiled by the Cabinet Office set out the most likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit rather than the worst case scenarios.
They said up to 85 percent of lorries using the main channel crossings "may not be ready" for French customs, meaning disruption at ports would potentially last up to three months before the flow of traffic improves.
The government also believes a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic will be likely as current plans to avoid widespread checks will prove unsustainable, the Times said.
"Compiled this month by the Cabinet Office under the codename Operation Yellowhammer, the dossier offers a rare glimpse into the covert planning being carried out by the government to avert a catastrophic collapse in the nation's infrastructure," the Times reported.
"The file, marked "official-sensitive" — requiring security clearance on a "need to know" basis — is remarkable because it gives the most comprehensive assessment of the UK’s readiness for a no-deal Brexit."
The United Kingdom is heading towards a constitutional crisis at home and a showdown with the EU as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly vowed to leave the bloc on Oct. 31 without a deal unless it agrees to renegotiate the Brexit divorce.
After more than 3 years of Brexit dominating EU affairs, the bloc has repeatedly refused to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement which includes an Irish border insurance policy that Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, agreed in November.
Johnson will this week tell French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Westminster parliament cannot stop Brexit and a new deal must be agreed if Britain is to avoid leaving the EU without one.
The prime minister is coming under pressure from politicians across the political spectrum to prevent a disorderly departure, with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn vowing this week to bring down Johnson's government in early September to delay Brexit.
It is, however, unclear if lawmakers have the unity or power to use the British parliament to prevent a no-deal departure - likely to be the United Kingdom's most significant move since World War Two.
Opponents of no deal say it would be a disaster for what was once one of the West's most stable democracies. A disorderly divorce, they say, would hurt global growth, send shockwaves through financial markets and weaken London’s claim to be the world’s preeminent financial center.
Brexit supporters say there may be short-term disruption from a no-deal exit but that the economy will thrive if cut free from what they cast as a doomed experiment in integration that has led to Europe falling behind China and the United States. (Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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NEW YORK - Once one of the world's most powerful and notorious criminals, Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was sentenced to life imprisonment Wednesday -- the mandatory punishment for a host of crimes spanning a quarter-century.
Guzman, the 62-year-old former co-leader of Mexico's mighty Sinaloa drug cartel, was convicted in February in US federal court on a spate of charges, including smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States.
The much-anticipated hearing in New York capped a dramatic legal saga and saw Guzman -- wearing a gray suit, lilac shirt, purple tie and trademark mustache -- somberly take in his punishment.
"There was no justice here," Guzman declared in Spanish, expressing no regret as he delivered what were likely his final public words before he is taken to a supermax federal prison to live out his days.
When entering and before leaving the courtroom, he touched his heart and blew a kiss to his wife Emma Coronel, who was barred from all contact with him during more than two years of pre-trial detention.
The charges against Guzman, which include money laundering and weapons-related offenses, carried a mandatory life sentence.
US Federal Judge Brian Cogan tacked 30 years onto the sentence and ordered the drug lord to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture -- a sum based on a conservative estimate of revenues from his cartel's sales in the United States.
So far, US authorities have not recovered a dime.
'OVERWHELMING EVIL'
In the Brooklyn courtroom, Guzman said prayers from supporters had given him "strength to endure this great torture," which he called "one of the most inhuman that I have ever experienced... a lack of respect for my human dignity."
Complaining bitterly that he was unable to hug his twin daughters, who did not attend the hearing, Guzman said "the United States is no better than any other corrupt country that you do not respect."
Guzman -- whose moniker "El Chapo" translates to "Shorty" -- is considered the most influential drug lord since Colombia's Pablo Escobar, who was killed in a police shootout in 1993.
During his three-month trial in New York, jurors heard evidence from 56 government witnesses, who described the cartel boss beating, shooting and even burying alive those who crossed him, including informants and rival gang members.
Prosecutors won their request to tack on a symbolic extra 30 years in prison for the use of firearms in his business, which Cogan said he imposed because the "overwhelming evil is so severe."
A Colombian woman who prosecutors say survived a hit the kingpin ordered tearfully read a statement in court Wednesday, saying the escape cost her "a high price -- I lost my family, my friends, I became a shadow without a name."
'ALCATRAZ OF THE ROCKIES'
Guzman launched his career working in the cannabis fields of his home state of Sinaloa. He will likely spend his remaining years at the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" -- the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
Current inmates include convicted "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, the British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and the Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is awaiting execution.
Since his 2017 extradition from Mexico, Guzman had repeatedly lamented the conditions of his solitary confinement at a Manhattan high-security prison, notably that his windowless cell was constantly lit.
Speaking to AFP prior to the proceedings, Guzman's lawyer William Purpura said: "I think he is in a good state of mind right now," adding his client was "looking forward to his appeal."
His attorneys now have 14 days to appeal his sentence.
But Richard Donoghue, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, vowed Guzman would remain in US prison for good.
"Never again will Guzman pour poison over our borders making billions while innocent lives are lost to drug violence and drug addiction."
SEPARATING MYTH FROM MAN
The sentencing was met with mixed reactions on Guzman's home turf, where some credit the drug lord with building beneficial public infrastructure like roads and schools.
In Sinaloa's capital Culiacan, 46-year-old Lupita Ramos told AFP Guzman "was also a good person who helped people in need."
Miguel Angel Vega, a journalist and drug trafficking expert, said the US incarceration of Guzman, who spectacularly escaped twice from Mexican prison, would do little to end the violence plaguing the region.
"The Sinaloa cartel is not 'El Chapo,'" he said. "In Culiacan there are 20 Chapos."
New York's special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan did acknowledge that removing El Chapo from the equation did not diminish the Sinaloa cartel's heavy influence on drug pathways into the US.
Still, New York's head special agent for Homeland Security Investigations Angel Melendez said the sentencing marked "the end of the line."
"The sentence separates the myth of El Chapo from the man Joaquin Guzman," Melendez said. "It's a reality, he'll never be able to escape."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MANILA — Korean rapper B.I announced Wednesday his plan to leave K-pop boy group iKON following a report that accused him of attempting to buy illegal drugs.
In a statement posted on his Instagram account, B.I, whose real name is Kim Han-bin, admitted to being involved in illegal drugs and apologized for his actions.
"I would like to sincerely apologize for stirring up trouble due to my tremendously inappropriate actions," wrote the 22-year-old iKON leader, as translated by K-pop news site Soompi.
"It is true that I wanted to rely on something that I shouldn’t have had any interest in due to going through a hard and painful time. However, I was too scared and fearful to do it," he said.
"I intend to humbly self-reflect on my mistake and leave the team," B.I added.
iKON's talent agency, YG Entertainment, also announced B.I's departure from the group as well as the termination of his contract, according to K-pop Herald.)
Korean media outlet Dispatch reported early Wednesday that B.I attempted to purchase marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) in 2016.
The police did not summon nor contact B.I for investigations, according to the report.
iKON debuted in 2015 as a 7-member group with the song "Rhythm Ta." Their other singles include "Love Scenario," "Killing Me," and "Goodbye Road."
The boy band performed in Manila last February for the launch of Samsung's Galaxy S10 phone. They also had their first solo concert here last November.
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SEOUL, South Korea - K-pop and drama star Park Yoo-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.
Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.
Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around 5 times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.
Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.
Park's contract with his management agency had been cancelled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park's management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.
Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.
A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes, and secret chat about rape led at least 4 other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.
The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka on Wednesday began interviewing 47 applicants for two positions as hangmen, officials said, as Amnesty International urged Colombo not to bring back capital punishment.
President Maithripala Sirisena announced in February that Sri Lanka would end a 43-year moratorium on executions this month in a Philippines-inspired war on drugs.
An official said 47 male applicants would be interviewed on Wednesday and Thursday, after the government advertised the vacancies in February.
But the successful candidates may face a delay in carrying out their new role.
"Since there is no living person in Sri Lanka who has carried out an execution, we need to send the new recruits abroad for training," the official, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP, adding that Colombo was also yet to identify a country to provide training.
"The rope (used for hangings) has not been used at all since it was imported (in 2015), it will have to be tested and certified."
Rights group Amnesty International meanwhile said resuming hangings would not end drug-related crime and that innocent people could be executed due to flaws in Sri Lanka's criminal justice system.
Sirisena has said he was inspired by the anti-drug war in the Philippines and was keen to replicate the success of his counterpart Rodrigo Duterte. Sirisena has since deployed security forces in his battle against drugs.
In a nationally televised event in Colombo, Sirisena pledged to end the spread of narcotics within two years.
Restoring capital punishment is a centerpiece of his anti-drugs policy.
Criminals in Sri Lanka are regularly given death sentences for murder, rape and drug-related crimes but until now their punishments have been commuted to life in jail.
Sri Lanka's last judicial hanging was in 1976, but an executioner was in post until his retirement in 2014. Three replacements since have quit after short stints at the unused gallows.
On Monday, Sirisena witnessed the destruction of nearly 800 kilos of cocaine seized between 2016 and 2018.
In February, police seized nearly 300 kilos of heroin worth $17 million, the island's biggest haul, at a Colombo shopping mall. In 2013, police seized 260 kilos of heroin brought into the country hidden inside tractors imported from Pakistan.
Sri Lanka's biggest drug haul, by weight, was in December 2016 when police seized 800 kilos of cocaine. Six months earlier, authorities discovered 301 kilos of cocaine inside a shipping container.
Authorities believe the Indian Ocean island is also being used as a trafficking transit point.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MONTREAL, Canada - Smoking cannabis has made me "a better mother," says Karine Cyr.
The mother of 2 leads a group of like-minded Canadian women challenging norms and rejecting stigmas around parenting and pot since Ottawa legalized its recreational use last October.
They are tired, she says, of having to hide their use of the mind-altering drug from family, neighbors and others, and have set out to educate their peers about its benefits.
"People are not informed. They still think that when we use cannabis, we sit in front of our television eating pizza like teenagers," Cyr says.
"When I consume cannabis, I do housework, I play with my children. I am more patient with my children, more present. It helps me to be a better mother, a better person."
Doctors disagree. But her message has resonated with hundreds of members of her Des fleurs ma chere (Flowers my dear) Facebook group, which she created to share experiences and thoughts about pot.
The group includes "entrepreneurs, psychologists, models, photographers ... they are women from all walks of life," said "ganja yoga" instructor Cynthia Petrin, herself a member.
Another similar Facebook group, "Mother Mary," based in Montreal, has some 5,000 members.
Sitting in her living room, the smell of marijuana lingering, Jordana Zabitsky, in her 30s, said she started "Mother Mary" in a bid to push back against "mommy shaming."
"I'm expected to work full time. I'm expected to be with my kids full time. I'm expected to have a clean house. I'm expected to have my bills paid on time. I'm expected to have my winter tires on on time," she says.
"I have so much on my shoulders -- I am only one person. The cannabis allows me to accomplish my daily tasks so much better!"
Canada's health ministry warns parents against consuming cannabis because of the risks of second-hand smoke, while warning it also "may reduce a person's ability to pay attention (to their child), make decisions or react to emergencies."
But Cyr argues that cannabis is a far better alternative than prescribed opioids or anti-depressants to treat anxiety or depression in new mothers.
"Moms feel lonely and do not know where to turn. They feel ashamed and afraid," echoed fellow pot proponent Annie-Claude Bertrand.
'FEMALE VIAGRA'
Cyr began using cannabidiol (CBD) oil, made from a non-psychoactive compound in cannabis plants, after her second pregnancy to relax.
She refused to take opioids prescribed by her doctor that made her feel like a "zombie."
"I wasn't sleeping, I had big sleep disorders, (but) the first time I took CBD oil, I slept through the night like I used to," she said.
According to the government statistical agency, 12 percent of Canadian women have used cannabis, compared to 19 percent of the total Canadian population.
And several studies show that the drug's popularity among women in both Canada and the United States -- where several states have legalized it -- is growing fast.
Marketers have even taken notice and started targeting their products specifically to women and young mothers.
For women, said Zabitsky, who admitted to consuming "micro-doses" during her first pregnancy and daily when she was pregnant with her second child, "the top question is, 'Can I use cannabis during pregnancy?'"
"Right before I went into labor, I smoked a really big joint, and it was fantastic. All my doctors knew," she says, assuring that her 3-year-old and 1-year-old children are healthy and "too smart" for their respective ages.
Doctor Antoine Kanamugire, however, says marijuana is not recommended during pregnancy because "THC, the psychoactive substance, will cross the placenta, so the baby will get 10 to 30 percent of the dose consumed by his mother."
"Cannabis can greatly influence the development of the central nervous system and the immune system of the fetus," said the author of "The 21 Unspoken Truths About Marijuana."
Cannabis also passes into breast milk.
Those warnings, however, have not dissuaded Zabitsky and the other mothers in her group, who note that a century of prohibition has had the effect of throttling research into cannabis.
In her living room, she unveils THC-infused butter, sweets, soaps and skin creams for her guests, while touting cannabis as good for women's libido.
"It's like Viagra for women," she says with a smile.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BANGKOK - Seizures of high-purity crystal methamphetamine have surged more than tenfold in Thailand over the past 2 years, statistics show, a stark indicator of the growth in industrial-scale production of the stimulant in neighboring Myanmar.
Thailand is a major trafficking route for crystal meth manufactured in Myanmar's Shan and Kachin states, where police say Asian organised crime groups have allied with local pro-government militias and armed rebels to set-up "super labs".
The drug syndicates have distributed the meth across the Asia-Pacific region, from South Korea to New Zealand and most countries in between, authorities say.
Some 18.4 tonnes of crystal meth, also known as ice, was seized in Thailand in 2018, according to preliminary statistics from the country's Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) reviewed by Reuters. The final data is expected to be released publicly next month.
That is up from 5.2 tonnes in 2017 and 1.6 tonnes in 2016. It's more than treble the amount captured across all of Southeast Asia five years ago.
Myanmar's illicit labs also pump out tablets of meth mixed with caffeine, commonly know as "yaba", or crazy pill, in the Thai language. The tablets are popular with low-paid workers in grueling jobs and poor recreational drug users across Southeast Asia.
Thai authorities seized 516 million meth tablets in 2018, more than double the previous year and 4-and-a-half times the 114 million pills captured in 2016.
Niyom Termsrisuk, secretary general of the ONCB, told Reuters that, despite the rising seizures, prices for meth are falling, suggesting far more is eluding authorities than being stopped.
The average price of a meth tablet was 200 baht ($6.33) in 2013. The latest data, for 2017, showed a yaba pill can be bought for as little as 80 baht ($2.50), he said.
By flooding Thailand and other countries with meth, organised crime groups have "generated new users" by enticing them with lower prices, Niyom said. The users then become dependent on the highly addictive drug, creating a bigger market for the product.
"2018 A DISASTER"
Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle - which encompasses northern Myanmar and parts of Laos and Thailand - has long been a hub of illicit drug trafficking.
While opium cultivation and heroin refining has fallen in the past decade, methamphetamine production has more than filled the breach.
"It's hard to say anything other than 2018 was a disaster for the meth supply coming out of Myanmar," said Jeremy Douglas, the Asia representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Law enforcement agencies were overwhelmed while "health authorities are seriously under-resourced and have limited capacity to offer treatment", he added.
Regional police and analysts told Reuters that organised crime groups exploit the semi-lawless northern Myanmar borderlands, doing deals with the multitude of ethnic armed gangs and state-sponsored militias who control territory there.
The ONCB's Niyom said 8 tonnes of crystal meth had been captured en route to southern Thailand and the border with Malaysia in 2018. From there, "it was on its way to other markets", he said.
In the past year, police have intercepted boats laden with meth that left the Malaysian city of Penang. Syndicates also use "motherships" that pick up the drugs in the Andaman Sea and distribute them as far afield as Australia and New Zealand.
Meth from Myanmar has also been found smuggled in shipping containers in the Philippines and Malaysia.
According to regional anti-drugs police, who spoke on condition of anonymity, chemists are brought in from Taiwan and China to run the meth labs in Myanmar, while the precursors and lab equipment mostly come from China.
Last month, Myanmar's military intercepted state-of-the-art laboratory equipment near Muse, a city in Shan state on the Chinese border.
Regional police say the crystal meth produced in Myanmar is the purest they have seen.
According to an ONCB briefing document reviewed by Reuters, 99.92 percent of the crystal meth seized in Thailand in the first 6 months of 2018 was 90 percent pure or higher.
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WELLINGTON - New Zealand police and customs officials said on Friday they seized 190 kg (418.9 pounds) of cocaine with a street value of up to NZ$36 million ($25 million) that arrived in Auckland in a shipment of bananas, the country's largest-ever drug bust.
A 41-year-old man was arrested in neighboring Australia in connection with the seizure, New Zealand authorities said in a statement. Police put the street value of the cocaine at between NZ$28 million and NZ$36 million ($19 million-$25 million).
The haul followed an Australian investigation into an organized crime group. Officials there said a potential shipment of illicit drugs was heading to Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, after leaving Balboa, Panama, on Aug. 4.
The shipment arrived in Auckland on Aug. 20. Authorities inspected the container and found 5 duffel bags on top of banana boxes that contained 190 blocks of cocaine, each weighing around a kilogram.
The joint investigation between New Zealand and Australian authorities concluded in the past 24 hours with the arrest of the unidentified man in Sydney, the statement said.
Police said the drugs were destined for Australia.
"This seizure has stopped what would have been a very significant amount of harm," New Zealand's Minister of Customs Kris Faafoi said in a separate statement. ($1 = 1.4650 New Zealand dollars)
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OTTAWA, Canada - Nearly a century of marijuana prohibition came to an end Wednesday as Canada became the first major Western nation to legalize and regulate its sale and recreational use.
The change was praised by pot enthusiasts and investors in a budding industry that has seen pot stocks soar on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges, but sharply questioned by some health professionals and opposition politicians.
"We're not legalizing cannabis because we think it's good for our health. We're doing it because we know it's not good for our children," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on the eve of the reform.
"We know we need to do a better job to protect our children and to eliminate or massively reduce the profits that go to organized crime."
The Cannabis Act, which fulfills a promise Trudeau made in the 2015 election campaign, makes Canada only the second nation after Uruguay to legalize the drug.
Its implementation will be scrutinized and dissected by Canadians ahead of the next election in 2019, as well as other nations that the prime minister has said may follow suit if the measure proves a success.
Trudeau himself admitted in 2013 to having smoked pot five or six times in his life, including at a dinner party with friends after being elected to parliament.
He has also said that his late brother Michel was facing marijuana possession charges for a "tiny amount" of pot before his death in an avalanche in 1998, and that this influenced his decision to propose legalizing cannabis.
But Trudeau's office told AFP he "does not plan on purchasing or consuming cannabis once it is legalized."
In total, Statistics Canada says 5.4 million Canadians will buy cannabis from legal dispensaries in 2018 -- about 15 percent of the population. Around 4.9 million already smoke.
Stores in St. John's in the Atlantic island province of Newfoundland were due to open their doors to pot enthusiasts as of 12:01 am local time (0231 GMT) on Wednesday.
"I'm going to have a lot more variety than the black market dealers, so you have a lot more choice at our store. The prices are very comparable," Thomas Clarke, owner of THC Distribution store, told public broadcaster CBC just prior to the big event.
A new industry is born
Under the new regulations, Canadians at least 18 or 19 years old (soon to be 21 in Quebec) will be allowed to buy up to 30 grams of cannabis, and grow up to four plants at home.
A patchwork of private and public cannabis retail stores and online sales have been set up across the 13 provinces and territories, ramping up to 300 storefronts by year's end, the government predicts.
Sales of derivatives like edibles will be legalized next year.
To meet demand, hundreds of growers have been licensed, some taking over horticulture and floriculture greenhouses.
This new industry has attracted billions in funding, as well as interest from alcohol and soft drink makers such as Constellation Brands and Coca-Cola, respectively, which have expressed an interest in developing cannabis-infused drinks.
Cannabis sales are forecast to boost economic growth by up to Can$1.1 billion and provide a Can$400 million tax revenue windfall for the government, according to Statistics Canada.
Public health officials contend that smoking cannabis is as harmful as tobacco, but welcome what they call the opportunity that legalization affords for open dialogue.
Some doctors, however, remain wary. Diane Kelsall, editor in chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, called legalization "a national, uncontrolled experiment in which the profits of cannabis producers and tax revenues are squarely pitched against the health of Canadians."
Police, meanwhile, are scrambling to prepare for a predicted uptick in drug-impaired driving.
It's unclear as yet if the new framework will succeed in undercutting the black market, as prices for illicit pot have plunged in the last year to an average of Can$6.79 per gram, and most sellers had planned to charge more.
Bill Blair, a former police chief in Toronto who is Trudeau's pointman for pot legalization, remains optimistic.
"For almost a century, criminal enterprises had complete control of this market, 100 percent of its production and distribution and they profited in the billions of dollars each year. I suspect they're not going to go gently into the night," he told AFP.
"But the fact that some individuals want to cling to a prohibition model that has led to the highest rates of cannabis use of any country in the world is a little shocking to me," he said.
According to a recent Abacus Data poll published on Monday, 70 percent of Canadians accept or support legalization.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
