| Photo: CBS News |
| ATF Agent John Dodson says he was ordered to let guns get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels |
Browsing: Global
| Photo: AFP |
| Marisol Valles, 20, was the only person in town willing to serve as police chief. Now she is reportedly fleeing to the U.S. |
The 20-year-old college student who was called “Mexico’s bravest woman” after she was named police chief of a small Mexican town when nobody else would take the job has reportedly fled and is seeking asylum in the United States.
Marisol Valles “received death threats from a criminal group that wanted to force her to work for them,” a relative told AFP on Thursday. However, an official from the town of Praxedis, which is just across the border from Fort Hancock, Texas, denied that their young police chief was leaving town.
Town Secretary Andres Morales told the El Paso Times that Valles had asked for some personal days off to tend to her child, but is expected to be back at work on Monday, reports CBS News. As for the reports of Valles seeking asylum in the U.S., “Right now, those are rumors,” Morales said. (Note to the credulous: this could be a cover story to throw off her would-be assassins.)
| Photo: Screwed US |
| Medical marijuana patient Lance Mackey has won the past four Iditarod races. Drug tests were instituted last year — at the urging of jealous opponents, Mackey believes — but the champ tested clean. Now they’re expanding the drug tests. |
Drug tests are back this year for Iditarod dog-sled mushers under updated rules that could now disqualify participants who smoke marijuana before — not just during — the race.
The Iditarod began testing for illegal drugs for the first time last year, reports Kyle Hopkins at The Tacoma News Tribune. Anchorage-based WorkSafe set up a makeshift drug-testing lab in a city supply room in White Mountain, the next-to-last checkpoint on the trail. Officials pulled mushers aside and forced them to take urine tests during their mandatory eight-hour stay in the village.
The top finishers all tested clean, according to Iditarod officials, including champion Lance Mackey, who believed jealous competitors called for the drug tests in hopes the throat-cancer survivor and well-known medicinal cannabis smoker would test positive.
| Photo: Nepal Mountain News |
| A sadhu smokes marijuana at Pashupatinath, Kathmandu, Nepal at the Shivaratri festival. Hundreds of holy men from Nepal and India gather yearly for the festival, where religious-based cannabis use is common. |
Thousands of holy men — known as sadhus — have been banned from selling cannabis to religious festival-goers at an ancient temple in Nepal.
Hindu devotees are gathering at the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu to celebrate the holy festival of Shivaratri. Sadhus — Hindu holy men who renounce the world around them for spiritual goals — traditionally celebrate Shivaratri by smoking cannabis, reports Joanna Jolly at the BBC.
But those found selling pot at the temple this year will face eviction or even arrest by armed police, temple officials say — even if they are holy men.
Since last week, plainclothes police have been “mingling” with the sadhus to “identify anyone selling drugs.” Meanwhile, religious festival attendees are forced to endure the sight of young, gung-ho law enforcement officers defiling and disrespecting a venerated spiritual tradition dating back thousands of years.
About 20 sadhus have already been arrested and forced to an area outside the city, according to officials.
| Photo: Missing Green Activist |
| Cannabis activist Peter Charles Freeman Miller was last seen on February 23. |
A South African humanitarian and marijuana activist whose cultivation case was recently thrown out of court has been missing for more than 72 hours under suspicious circumstances.
Peter Charles Freeman of the family Miller has been well known as a cannabis and industrial hemp activist in South Africa for a number of years.
Peter was arrested on Friday, February 18 for cannabis cultivation, after which his case was thrown out when he claimed his human rights, using the book The Report.
He told his wife on Tuesday, February 22 that he was under the impression that “somebody wanted to stop him” from his efforts to decriminalize marijuana.
Peter, who served as public liaison officer for NORML South Africa, was last seen at his home in the Reeds Centurion wearing a pair of blue shorts on February 23. The house was found unlocked and the door was open. His keys were left inside the house, and his blue hat was lying on the front patio.
| Photo: Geobent |
| The study’s results won’t come as a surprise to these Seattle medical marijuana activists, pictured here marching on May 2, 2009. |
Sure, you may think it’s pretty well-established that marijuana gives you the munchies. But it isn’t official until rigorous double-blind medical studies prove it, and now that’s happened as well.
A new Canadian study from the University of Alberta has found that small doses of an active ingredient in cannabis, THC, boost the appetites of terminal cancer patients, reports the Los Angeles Times.
There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence concerning pot and hunger, and researcher Prof. Wendy Wismer said she realizes that. But she defended her pilot study as being the first to be conducted under strict controls, and as such, the results are a valuable tool for researchers.
People with advanced cancer said food tasted better when they took THC compared with placebo sugar pills, the study showed, CBC News reports. Cancer patients commonly report decreased appetite and changes in their senses of taste and smell that can lead to weight loss and decreased survival. Thus marijuana-induced munchies can save lives by making food taste and smell better.
| Photo: Grarup Jan |
The first International Hash Fair is being planned for this summer in Denmark, but local police are reportedly appalled at the idea, claiming it will result in an “increase in the number of hash and skunk laboratories.”
Organizers are well-advanced with their plans to hold the hash fair June 24-26 in the country’s second-largest city, Aarhus, reports Politiken.dk. Guests from Denmark and abroad are being invited to study and buy products including fertilizer, grow lights (which a clueless press always seems to report as “heat lamps”), and smoking pipes.
| Photo: UK420.com |
| An employee places filter tips in joints containing marijuana at a Dutch coffee shop. |
Officials in Eindhoven, a city in the south of the Netherlands, have rejected the idea of a pass system for buying cannabis, which would have prevented “drug tourists” from purchasing small amounts of marijuana in local coffee shops.
Local politicians in nearby Den Bosch and Maastricht have already come out against introducing the “weed passes,” the aim of which would be to bar the sale of cannabis to anyone other than Dutch residents, reports Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
Dutch towns including Eindhoven have supposedly been hit by a “wave of violent crime” somehow connected to the supply of cannabis to local coffee shops — at least if you believe those who wish to restrict sales.
| Photo: Canadian Made Cannabis Health Journal |
| This is a bag of Canadian government medical “marihuana.” |
When you get marijuana from the government, is satisfaction guaranteed? A Canadian medical cannabis patient is bummed out by Health Canada’s failure to refund $450 after he cancelled his government marijuana delivery service three months ago.
Lloyd Summerfield, 55, of Scarborough, Ontario, was one of many licensed users across Canada whose cannabis arrived regularly by courier from a grower under contract to the federal government, reports Tom Godfrey at the Toronto Sun. After Summerfield was run over by a taxi in 2006, his doctor prescribed marijuana to help with leg and body pains.
Summerfield said he borrowed $450 from a friend and used it to buy 90 grams of government-licensed cannabis, which was delivered to his apartment by a courier last November.
But he was told by his doctor that the government pot wasn’t strong enough to help him, so we returned the unopened package of marijuana to Health Canada.
| Graphic: Cracked |
| If you get caught selling marijuana in Malaysia they’ll give you more hemp — a hemp rope around your neck. |
If you are going to sell cannabis, please do it somewhere besides Malaysia. Three people, including one couple, were sentenced on Thursday to death by hanging by the high court at Temerloh, Malaysia for trafficking 4.5 kilograms (just under 10 pounds) of marijuana last year.
“Death by hanging is the only sentence provided for offenses under Section 39B (1) of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1952,” said Judicial Commissioner Datuk Akhtar Tahir, reports Bernama, the official Malaysian national news agency.
Tahir said the prosecution had proven a prima facie case against Ahmad Mukamal Abdul Wahab, 37; Suhana Kamarudin, 28; and her husband Shawal Hashim, 37.
Ahmad Mukamal and Shawal reportedly shook their heads when the sentence was announced.
“I am not guilty,” Suhana shouted from the dock. “I have a child and had promised to return,” the young mother said.