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A remembrance mural has become the target of "mindless vandalism" for a second time. Spray paint was used between Monday and Tuesday last week to deface the artwork situated on Witham's river walk. The initial incident was reported to Essex Police, but silver spray paint was then used at the weekend to create further damage. A spokesperson from Witham Town Council said it was "just mindless vandalism". Police have been contacted for comment.

In April 2022, Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada decreed that cultivation of the poppy - from which opium, the key ingredient for the drug heroin can be extracted - was strictly prohibited. Anyone violating the ban would have their field destroyed and be penalised according to Sharia law. A Taliban spokesman told the BBC they imposed the ban because of the harmful effects of opium - which is taken from the poppy seed capsules - and because it goes against their religious beliefs. Afghanistan used to produce more than 80% of the world's opium. Heroin made from Afghan opium makes...

An American contractor held hostage in Afghanistan for more than two years has been released in exchange for a convicted Taliban drug lord jailed in the United States, the White House said Monday, announcing a rare success in U.S.-Taliban talks since the militant group took power a little more than a year ago Mark Frerichs, a Navy veteran who had spent more than a decade in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor, was abducted in January 2020 and is believed to have been held since then by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. He was traded for Bashir Noorzai, a Taliban associate convicted...

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek 'masks don't work... wait just kidding' Murthy on Sunday defended the Biden administration's new Covid vaccine mandates - calling them an "appropriate legal measure" to keep people safe.Murthy, a known flip-floper, also "challenged the notion that Biden’s new policies reflect a flip-flop from the idea that vaccination should not be mandated," saying that they were simply responding to a situation 'that's changed due to the Delta variant,' according to Politico."From the beginning, the president and all of us said 'we've got to use every lever we have to fight this pandemic," said Murthy.Of course, given...

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is pressing Vanita Gupta, the nominee for the number three position at the Justice Department, over millions of dollars in stock holdings she has in a chemical company that makes a key ingredient that Mexican drug cartels use to make heroin. Gupta holds between $11 million and $55 million in shares of Avantor, a Pennsylvania-based chemical company, according to financial disclosures she has filed with the Office of Government Ethics. Gupta’s father, Raj Gupta, serves as chairman of the board of Avantor. Gupta is the wealthiest political nominee that President Joe Biden has picked while in...

Canadians are up in arms after Whole Foods banned its employees from wearing poppies in honor of Remembrance Day, the nation’s holiday for fallen soldiers. The Amazon-owned supermarket chain reportedly told employees that pinning the traditional red flower to their work uniforms — which consist of an apron, a coat or vest, a hat and name badge — was against its recently updated uniform policy.

On January 3, 2020, near Baghdad's airport, a U.S. air raid targeted Qasem Soleimani, commander of Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (“IRGC’s”) terrorist arm. He was killed instantly. To understand how important this is, one needs to understand who Qasem Soleimani (1957-2020) was. Soleimani, a one-time construction worker and weightlifter, joined the IRGC after the 1979 revolution and soon headed one of the IRGC’s main cadres. Khomeini assigned Soleimani to suppress a Kurdish movement in Mahabad, Western Azerbaijan. Soleimani's brutality earned him command over a Quds Guard Corps unit in Kerman. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) gave Soleimani opportunities...

Full Title: California desert is covered in spectacular wild flowers after heavy winter rain brings second 'once- in a decade' super bloom in just two years After heavy winter rain closely followed by warm temperatures, California is in the midst of its second 'super bloom' in two years. Seeds dormant for decades under the desert floor have burst open and produced a display even more spectacular than the last. It started with the desert lilies in December and since then a wave of wildflower blooms has been crescendoing across the Anza-Borrego desert, in a burst of color so vivid it...

Spring just arrived, some of the Mexican poppies are starting to bloom and the alyssum that had self-seeded itself under the chairs in my outdoor seating area has been blooming for some time and so have the violets. Now I see the yellow blossoms of the Angelita daisies, so pretty. Many years ago at one of our High on the Desert Gardening and Landscaping Conferences, happening this month, I bought one of these little beauties and planted it in the front of my house. My front yard is kept very natural and wild, mostly planted with native plants or desert...

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S.-NATO coalition in Afghanistan has pulverized 25 Taliban labs used to process opium and its deadly heroin derivative, depriving the narco-jihadists of $80 million in illegal drug proceeds in the first three weeks of an unprecedented counternarcotics air campaign. Since November 20, U.S. troops and their Afghan allies have been targeting the Taliban jihadists’ opium business in their Helmand stronghold, the top-poppy producing province in Afghanistan. Watch a M142 HIMARS conduct an artillery strike on a Taliban narcotics production facility in Helmand province Dec. 8, destroying nearly $1 million in direct Taliban revenues. "In the face...

While Nicholson acknowledged that the Pakistanis had taken military action against other violent extremist groups, he said that Islamabad needed to act against the Afghan Taliban, which has found sanctuary inside Pakistan since 2001. "The offensive operations against sanctuaries would be in other areas that we've identified with the Pakistani leadership on a number of occasions," he said. The general would not say how much time the US would allow for Pakistan to change its behavior before taking additional actions to compel Islamabad to crack down on Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. "As you've heard our president say, as you've...

By about 3 p.m. Friday, a county morgue in east Ohio was already full — and more bodies were expected. Rick Walters, an investigator for the Stark County coroner's office, had just left for two death scenes: a suicide and an overdose. From the road, he called the director of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency to ask for help. He needed more space, he explained — specifically, a cold-storage trailer to act as an overflow morgue. As with much of the United States, Ohio is in the throes of a heroin and opioid epidemic that shows no signs of abating.

Thirty-five restaurants across China, including a popular Beijing hot pot chain, have been found illegally using opium poppies as seasoning, one of the more unusual practices bedeviling the country's food regulators. Five restaurants are being prosecuted while 30 others, ranging from Shanghai dumpling joints to noodle shops in southwestern Chongqing, are under investigation, said the China Food and Drug Administration. Cases of cooks sprinkling ground poppy powder, which contains low amounts of opiates like morphine and codeine, in soup and seafood are not new in China, though it is unclear whether they can effectively hook a customer or deliver a...

It’s rare that any piece of art – let alone modern art – captures the imagination, and the hearts, of the entire nation. In my near 50 years on the planet I can’t think of anything that has come close to the impact of the sea of poppies at the Tower of london. Earlier this week I saw for myself the astonishing spectacle of another sea – the sea of men, women, boys and girls who have queued up in vast numbers to see the poppies with their own eyes. But even the majority of us who have seen the...

Every Memorial Day, I try to read this poem. If you have a moment, please go to the website, My Memorial Day and record a video. It means a lot to the people that have served, or are serving. At the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, they will have Memorial Day rememberances. If you are on Facebook, here is the museum’s Facebook page. Like it. Here is the poem. It was actually written during World War One. But it’s great to remember and dedicate the fallen of any war. Mind you, the idea is not to...

After 10 years of war, Afghanistan remains the world’s leading opium supplier, responsible for 90 percent of the global supply. Opium cultivation rose by 7 percent in 2011 compared with last year. Opium production also climbed 61 percent this year. A crop blight destroyed much of Afghanistan’s opium harvest last year causing a decrease in opium production and creating a simultaneous spike in prices. Higher prices led to much speculation that more Afghan farmers would turn to the crop this year, which has indeed proved to be the case. UN officials estimate that 10 percent of opium harvest proceeds reach...

Fort Bragg Suspect Wanted in Second Murder, Was Growing Opium PoppiesBy Jay Barmann in News on August 31, 2011 2:30 PM Aaron Bassler, suspected of shooting Fort Bragg city councilman Jere Melo last Saturday, remains at large, and now his father has come forward to tell reporters that his son is schizophrenic, and that he was likely responsible for a second murder that occurred 30 miles away on August 11. James Bassler says his son had refused psychiatric treatment, and had moved into the woods after going broke four months ago. Furthermore, investigators have found two small poppy fields in...

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- Until five months ago, Forward Operating Base Jackson in Sangin was an island in a Taliban sea. Patrol bases were ringed by Taliban flags, about 100 to 200 meters out, to dramatize the state of siege. Everywhere beyond the main road was enemy sanctuary. Each spring the fertile land along the Helmand River bloomed red with poppies from horizon to horizon. Thirty-five drug processing labs helped fund the Taliban. In October about 1,500 Marines arrived, took the offensive, pushed into the territory -- and sustained the highest casualties of the Afghan War. During the first three...

A Van Gogh painting worth $50 million stolen from a Cairo museum is still missing, Egypt's culture minister says. Earlier Farouk Hosni had said two Italians had been arrested at Cairo airport, and the small canvas found. But later he said he had been given "inaccurate" information, and the painting was still missing. The painting - known as both Poppy Flowers and Vase And Flowers - was "cut from its frame" at the Mahmoud Khalil Museum on Saturday, Mr Hosni said. Two Italians had been arrested at Cairo airport later in the day, after earlier visiting the museum. The state...

Meg Whitman's poppy campaign carries unfortunate implicationsFlower power has entered the gubernatorial race.Instead of bumper stickers blaring the candidate's name, Republican Meg Whitman is offering female supporters a "free poppy decal to put on your car, computer or window!" The poppy stickers will go to anyone who signs up with Whitman's MEGaWomen coalition, the campaign's effort to rally female voters. . . . The California poppy, the state flower, is a central image in Whitman's campaign, representing "all that Meg values about California: prosperity, renewal, unity," according to the campaign website. . . . But the symbolism behind the flowers...