Priest who blessed Morales found with cocaine

Reuters - The Aymara priest who blessed Bolivian President Evo Morales at an inauguration ceremony four years ago has been arrested in possession of 530 pounds (240 kg) of cocaine, police said Thursday.---...More

Pa. police: Priest caught buying cocaine

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Roman Catholic priest from northeastern Pennsylvania is facing drug possession charges after police say he was caught buying cocaine in Philadelphia. Philadelphia police said Friday that 50-year-old James B. Shimsky, a priest in the Diocese of Scranton, was arrested last month---...More

Child Brings Cocaine to Day Care

NEWARK, New Jersey - New Jersey police say a 4-year-old boy shared cocaine with his friends at day care because his father told him it was candy. Newark police say 25-year-old Shaheed Wright of East Orange put several baggies of cocaine inside his son?s jacket after police nearly caught him with it. The boy shared the drugs with three other 4-year-olds at his day care center. A teacher spotted a girl with a baggie in her mouth and called authorities after seeing the white powdery substance.---...More

Most US Money Laced With Cocaine

Traces of cocaine taint up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, a new study finds.

A group of scientists tested banknotes from more than 30 cities in five countries, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan, and found "alarming" evidence of cocaine use in many areas.

Despite the high percentage of cocaine-contaminated bills, one researcher points out that the amount of cocaine found on most notes was so small that consumers should not have any health or legal concerns about handling paper money.
U.S. and Canadian currency had the highest levels, with an average contamination rate of between 85 and 90 percent, while Chinese and Japanese currency had the lowest, between 12 and 20 percent contamination.

The findings were presented yesterday at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C.

Study leader Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth said that the high percentage of contaminated U.S. currency observed in the current study represents nearly a 20 percent jump in comparison to a similar study he conducted two years ago.

"To my surprise, we're finding more and more cocaine in banknotes," Zuo said.
Scientists have known for years that paper money can become contaminated with cocaine during drug deals and directly through drug use, such as snorting cocaine through rolled bills. Contamination can also spread to banknotes not involved in the illicit drug culture, because bills are processed in banks' currency-counting machines.

"I'm not sure why we've seen this apparent increase, but it could be related to the economic downturn, with stressed people turning to cocaine," Zuo said.
Such studies are useful, he noted, because the data can help law enforcement agencies and forensic specialists identify patterns of drug use in a community.
Previous studies that have reported on cocaine traces on money have had several drawbacks, Zuo said. Some only sampled a small number of bills, while others destroyed the money in the process of testing.

Zuo and his colleagues used a modified instrument that allowed for faster, simpler and more accurate measurement of cocaine contamination than other methods, without destroying the currency.

The amounts of cocaine found on U.S. bills ranged from .006 micrograms (several thousands of times smaller than a single grain of sand) to more than 1,240 micrograms of cocaine per banknote (about 50 grains of sand).
The scientists found that larger cities like Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit had among the highest average cocaine levels. Washington, D.C., ranked above the average, with 95 percent of the banknotes sampled contaminated with the drug. The lowest average cocaine levels in U.S. currency appeared on bills collected from Salt Lake City.

Despite the high percentage of cocaine-contaminated banknotes, Zuo points out that the amount of cocaine found on most notes was so small that consumers should not have any health or legal concerns about handling paper money.

"For the most part, you can't get high by sniffing a regular banknote, unless it was used directly in drug uptake or during a drug exchange," Zuo said. "It also won't affect your health and is unlikely to interfere with blood and urine tests used for drug detection.

Cocaine haul found hidden in frozen sharks

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico's navy has seized more than a tonne of cocaine stuffed inside frozen sharks, as drug gangs under military pressure go to greater lengths to conceal narcotics bound for the United States.

Armed and masked navy officers cut open more than 20 shark carcasses filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a container ship in a container port in the southern Mexico state of Yucatan, the navy and Mexican media said Tuesday.

"We are talking about more than a tonne of cocaine that was inside the ship," Navy Commander Eduardo Villa told reporters after X-ray machines and sniffer dogs helped uncover the drugs. "Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.

Drug gangs are coming up with increasingly creative ways of getting drugs into the United States -- in sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture -- as Mexico's military cracks down on the cartels moving South American narcotics north.

President Felipe Calderon has sent 45,000 troops and federal police across Mexico to try to crush powerful smuggling cartels. But traffickers armed with a huge arsenal of grenades and automatic weapons are far from defeated, worrying Washington as violence spills over into U.S. states like Arizona.

Some 2,750 people have died in drug violence in Mexico this year, a pace similar to that of 2008, when 6,300 were killed.

Led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, smugglers from the Pacific state of Sinaloa are fighting a turf war with rivals. Guzman seeks to control Mexican and Central American smuggling routes into the United States.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Patricia Zengerle)

53 pounds of packed cocaine found on Texas beach

SABINE PASS, Texas – Beachcombers found more than seashells while strolling on a Texas beach: two dozen neatly wrapped packages of cocaine. Jefferson County Sheriff's Lt. Troy Tucker said drug smugglers have been known to use freighters and the cocaine may have been kicked overboard to avoid detection.

The sheriff's department was working with federal agencies Wednesday to try to determine the source of the 53 pounds of cocaine, worth about $500,000.

KFDM-TV reported the cocaine was found Tuesday west of Sea Rim State Park, in the Sabine (suh-BEEN') Pass area.

It was found by people looking for debris, such as metal, that washes ashore. Their names weren't released.

Odd News:MP in jungle cocaine search drama

LONDON (Reuters) - A British MP trekking in Colombia was held at gunpoint in the jungle and forced to eat coffee whitener from a jar in his backpack after soldiers mistook it for cocaine.

Michael Fabricant was on a walking holiday in South America with a friend when they were stopped by a group of gun-toting men in camouflage uniforms.

The soldiers found a container full of coffee whitener in their bags and immediately suspected it was drugs.

"In order to demonstrate that it wasn't cocaine, I had to take a whole pile of it and throw it down my throat," the Conservative member for Lichfield in Staffordshire told BBC television.

"They waited a few minutes to see whether I collapsed or went delirious and said something completely ridiculous like 'Gordon Brown's got a great personality'.

"Because I didn't say anything too weird, they came to the conclusion that it wasn't the case and they let me go."

His explanation for putting powdered whitener in Colombian coffee, regarded as among the best in the world, will be familiar to many Brits abroad.

"You have to be a little bit careful about what you eat," he said.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; editing by Steve Addison)

Stupid News - Dallas police find cocaine in car used by officers

Stupid News - Dallas police find cocaine in car used by officers

DALLAS - Police didn't have to go far to find $400,000 worth of cocaine — it was in an undercover car they'd been driving for two months.
An officer cleaning the car at a patrol station Wednesday discovered the nearly 50 pounds of cocaine carefully hidden in hydraulically controlled compartments.

"These compartments have recently been more and more popular with drug operations," said Deputy Chief Julian Bernal, commander of the narcotics division.

Dallas police put the two-door 2004 black Infiniti into police service on May 7 after seizing it at a drug house. It had been found at a drug house earlier this year along with a 1999 Honda.

Bernal said the narcotics division searched both the vehicles and found nothing unusual after the seizure. The Honda was sold at auction.

Bernal said police plan to contact the person who bought the Honda to find out if drugs are hidden in that car, too. And, they are also trying to find out who owned the cocaine they have been secretly driving around with.