Free Republic

Merchants, visitors, residents and workers in downtown Oslo are becoming downright annoyed over open drug-dealing and prostitution on several city streets. Some offenders have taken to having sex in a downtown park, just behind the venerable Akershus Fortress and Castle. A prostitute and her customer didn't seem to be bothered by passing cars or even a photographer from Aftenposten. "It's not very nice that it looks like a bordello in the park and on the side streets," Jan Bredesen told newspaper Aften. He works as a waiter at nearby Gamle Logen, a stately old mansion now used for concerts and...

With Al Gore in the news for battling global warming and Al Gore 3rd in the news for getting toasted, my favorite NYPD detective recalled a story that helps explain how father and son each became a particular kind of loser. The story was told to the detective by a Secret Service agent some years back as they worked security for a dignitary visiting New York. Such details largely consist of just standing there for as long as 12 hours and the talk turned to a day when the Secret Service agent was assigned to then-Vice President Gore. The detective...

NOGALES, Ariz., June 29 — A smuggling tunnel freshly excavated under the border with Mexico was sealed Friday after a joint raid by United States and Mexican authorities. Two houses formed the ends of a smuggling tunnel that was raided Friday. The house in the foreground is in Nogales, Ariz., and the house on the Mexican side is on the other side of the fence. The cramped and wandering tunnel, which connected two homes on opposite sides of the border had no ventilation, but it was outfitted with lights and at least one drainage pump, officials from Immigration and Customs...

Busy At The Northern Border Investigators say that Albanian citizen Ermira Hatija was a leader in an Ecstasy trafficking ring based out of Detroit, Mich. Authorities also believe that Hatija has been involved in human trafficking along the Canadian-US border. This serious crime lets criminals like Hatija profit off the misfortune of others. But when human beings are treated like objects, the price in life can be high. Tragic Traffic Hatija first came onto the police radar in 2003, when police say that she arranged for a 13-year-old-boy and his mother to cross the Canadian-US border on a Wave Runner....

Friday Morning Autopsy Expected To Shed More Light (CBS) LOS ANGELES -- CBS 2 has learned that while searching Anna Nicole Smith's hotel room late Thursday afternoon investigators found two key pieces of evidence -- illegal narcotics and prescription medications. Now, a toxicology report will determine whether one of these drugs or a combination of both substances contributed to her death. An autopsy is scheduled for Friday morning in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Smith, 39, collapsed and was unresponsive while staying at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino, said the attorney, Ron Rale. She was rushed to Memorial Regional...

Law and order is President Calderon's top priority Mexico's human rights record has been severely criticised in a new report by the rights group Amnesty International.The group says that arbitrary detention and torture are systematic and that it is Mexico's poor who suffer most. It also highlights the problem suffered by millions of indigenous peoples at the hands of the authorities. The government's use of soldiers to tackle drugs gangs is criticised but the Mexican government has said that it is working to clean up the abuses. 'Systematic abuses' Amnesty International cites case after case of people who it...

A former US policeman and undercover drug agent has appalled narcotics officials by introducing a Christmas video for drug users on how to avoid arrest and fool the police.Barry Cooper, who is described by former colleagues as perhaps the best drug- enforcement officer in America, will next week begin marketing Never Get Busted Again, which will show viewers how to “conceal their stash, avoid narcotics profiling and fool canines every time”. Mr Cooper, who supports the legalisation of marijuana, made the video because he believes that the fight against drugs in America is a waste of money. The convictions of...

GREENEVILLE - When those prison doors clang shut behind this dirty cop, U.S. District Judge Ronnie Greer wants the good guys to hear something else - praise. The way Greer sees it, the two-year prison term he doled out Tuesday for the former second highest-ranking law enforcer in Cocke County is as much a tribute to the good cop as it is an indictment of the bad. "Very simply put, Mr. (Patrick Allen) Taylor, a message needs to be sent," Greer told the former Cocke County Sheriff's Department chief deputy at his sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court. "Honorable_law enforcement...

A UNITED State Federal judge ordered the detention on Monday of an Ethiopian-born U.S. citizen who was arrested at Detroit's airport last week for carrying nearly $79,000 in cash and articles on suitcase bombs and the Sept. 11 attacks. Sisayehiticha Dinssa, 34, was arrested on Nov. 14 on arrival in Detroit after a dog smelled narcotics on his cash, according to federal prosecutors who had appealed a decision for him to be released on bond as a threat and a flight risk. Dinssa is charged with failing to declare he was bringing more than $10,000 into the United States, a...

A counter-culture arts festival which champions alternative living is being vetted by environmentalists for its contribution to global warming. Burning Man bans the sale of anything but ice and coffee and declares clothing optional. The festival, which is expected to draw nearly 40,000 people to the Nevada desert this week, is described as an "experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance". It has few rules, no structure and features performances, installation art and music, which culminate in the symbolic burning of a large wooden man. A group of San Francisco scientists, calling themselves Cooling Man, have...

Denny Scaffer in Atlanta brought up an interesting question today on his talk show. What was Patrick Kennedy wearing the night of his accident? For someone claiming to have risen from bed thinking he needed to rush to the Capitol to cast a vote, was he wearing his SpongeBob Sqarepants pajamas? Or was he still dressed in the clothes he wore the day before? Inquiring minds want to know.

Afghanistan will encourage its powerful drug lords to invest their illegally earned profits back into the war-shattered country, according to the governor of the nation’s top opium growing region. The offer comes amid warnings of another bumper poppy crop that will fuel a booming narcotics trade that already accounts for 35 per cent of the impoverished nation’s income. "We as a government will provide them the opportunity to use their money for the national benefit," said Helmand Gov. Moham-med Daud during a two-day trip this week to the region by United States Ambassador Ronald Neumann. "They must invest in industries....

More than 70 percent of U.S.-bound narcotics shipments pass through Mexico, yet the U.S. government continues to grant that country special status as a nation in compliance with anti-narcotics trafficking standards and gives it millions of dollars in aid, according to a 2004 congressional report. More than 28 nations have received certification from the U.S. government since 1986, when Congress passed a resolution requiring drug-producing or drug-transient countries to comply with anti-drug laws before qualifying for U.S. financial assistance. In 2002, Congress enacted the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which gave the president authority to designate countries that have failed to...

he US yesterday made the case for offering Serbia incentives to reach agreement in negotiations over the final status of Kosovo, while setting out the possibility of independence for the province if the ethnic Albanian majority accepted compromises to accommodate its Serbian minority. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state, told a Senate hearing the US was neither championing independence nor autonomy for Kosovo. But diplomats said his testimony was a clear signal the US looked favourably on independence, under certain conditions. In what diplomats also called a significant policy statement, Mr Burns made clear the US had no objection to independence...

USS GETTYSBURG, At sea (NNS) -- While on patrol in the western Caribbean Sea, USS Gettysburg (CG 64), with its embarked U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment, completed a major drug interdiction in January. Assigned under the operational control of U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, Gettysburg is deployed as part of a Joint Inter-Agency Task Force conducting counter-narcoterrorism operations in the Western hemisphere. The operation resulted in the seizure of approximately 1.5 tons of cocaine and eight suspected drug traffickers. After boarding and thoroughly searching the vessel, Gettysburg discovered and seized 50 bales of narcotics. Following the seizure, the narcotics...

General Information Document Type: Presolicitation Notice Solicitation Number: S-INLEC-06-R-4042 Posted Date: Dec 16, 2005 Original Response Date: Feb 03, 2006 Current Response Date: Feb 03, 2006 Original Archive Date: Current Archive Date: Classification Code: 58 -- Communication, detection, & coherent radiation equipment Naics Code: 334290 -- Other Communications Equipment Manufacturing Contracting Office Address Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, INL RM MS, 2430 E Street, N.W., South Building SA-4 Navy Hill, Washington, DC, 20520 Description The U.S. Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs intends to issue Request for Proposal S-INLEC-06-R-4042...

In today's Arizona Republic,(Activists seek day-labor work center, January 13,2006), I came across this quite by Steven Montoya, a civil rights lawyer in Phoenix, regarding day laborers' soliciting employment on public sidewalks in Phoenix. "You have a constitutional right to look for a job whether you're here legally or not, but that doesn't mean you can break the law." I'm not a lawyer but if hiring illegal immigrants is illegal and if an illegal immigrant solicits employment, wouldn't that make the illegal immigrant an accessory to the crime of hiring illegal immigrants and breaking the law? Should not the soliciting...

What you think about this article on the comment.

Heroin users need guidance from professionals, not reformed addicts, writes Miranda Devine. It is desperately sad for Nguyen Tuong Van's family that he is to be hanged in Singapore for heroin trafficking next Friday. You can only hope that last-ditch appeals for clemency are successful. However, we should not allow our sorrow for Nguyen's imminent death to cloud our hatred of his criminal act. In much of the public outrage over Singapore's death sentence for the 25-year-old Australian there has been a morally repugnant subtext: that he doesn't deserve to die because he did nothing wrong, or, indeed, that he...

ATLANTA-BASED GANG MEMBER SENTENCED TO 13 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON ICE Agents arrest felon and three other gang members during gang enforcement operation ATLANTA, GA. - An Atlanta-based member of the violent street gang "Sureños 13" (SUR-13) was sentenced last Wednesday in the Northern District of Georgia to 13-years imprisonment on charges of re-entry after deportation, alien in possession of a firearm, and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. ICE agents in Atlanta arrested Cristo Perez-Guevara, on March 28, 2004. This was a joint investigation by ICE, Georgia Bureau of Investigations and the Cherokee County MANS Unit. ICE has filed a detainer...