Eideard

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Soldiers in Mexico have seized $15.3 million in cash, believed to belong to the country’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.

The security forces said they found the money when they searched a car in a well-to do neighbourhood of Tijuana, on the US-Mexico border. They said the money was being taken to a safe house used by Shorty Guzman and his gang, the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

It is the second largest cash seizure since Felipe Calderon became president.

Defence Ministry spokesman Gen Ricardo Trevilla said the find was made during a “surprise operation” in the Cumbres de Juarez neighbourhood of Tijuana, in Baja California state.

He said the soldiers found $15.35m in cash, 3kg of cocaine, four weapons, and jewellery inside the car…

He did not say what led the troops to the cash. No arrests were made.

No arrests were made? No idea who the car belonged to? No search of nearby houses?

Are we to think the drogas drop a car full of cash and coke blocks away from easy access?

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, cola wars rivals for a century, are now locked in a bottle battle.

PepsiCo Pepsi’s new bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business.

Two years after Coca-Cola Co. unveiled a bottle made partly from plant materials, PepsiCo says it is introducing a better one. The Purchase, N.Y. company says it has developed the world’s first plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources, cutting the use of petroleum. Coke’s PlantBottle is made of up to 30 percent plant sugars…

Beverage companies are trying to design bottles to counter environmental concerns. The bottled water industry is using lighter plastics, dropping the average weight of the 16.9 ounce “single serve” bottle by a third over the past eight years, according to the International Bottled Water Association.

That means less fuel consumed to transport the beverages.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle is available in nine countries and is expected to reach more than a dozen other markets this year. More than 2.5 billion PlantBottles have reached the marketplace, a number Coca-Cola says equates to saving about 3 million gallons of gasoline.

The technology will also appear in Heinz bottles, under a partnership with the ketchup-maker, and possibly in bottles for Honest Tea, a Maryland company Coca-Cola just acquired. The PlantBottle is made partly with natural sugars found in sugarcane ethanol from Brazil. Odwalla, a Coca-Cola juice brand, plans to switch to the PlantBottle within the next few weeks.

Before someone brings it up – yes, I know that glass is one of the easiest after-use commodities to recycle. And we’re not about to run out of sand to make glass bottles either. But, either road, glass production in the traditional manner consumes a boatload of energy. And that, too is a commodity which must be paid for by consumers.

Thirteen soldiers in Mexico have been charged with drug trafficking after they were allegedly found in possession of almost a tonne of the synthetic drug methamphetamine and 30kg of cocaine…

The military commander in Tijuana, Gen Alfonso Duarte, said the accused had been transporting the drugs by land from the capital, Mexico City, to Tijuana.

The Mexican Ministry of Defence said it would not tolerate such acts and announced that the men would be brought before a military court. [That means they didn't get their cut.] According to the United Nations’ 2010 World Drug Report, the US methamphetamine market is predominantly supplied from Mexican-based criminal groups.

The report says that the number, size and sophistication of meth laboratories in Mexico has increased dramatically over the past five years, as well as the amount of methamphetamine trafficked into the US.

Certainly Congress should convene a special hearing to determine whether or not US-based initiatives are defeated by economics like this. Can American motorcycle gangs afford to stay in business with foreign competition like this?

A Miami man who attempted to smuggle a cache of cocaine concealed in Easter eggs pleaded guilty to the crime Monday. Esteban Galtes, 23, was taken into custody at Los Angeles International Airport after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers searched his luggage and found dozens of pastel-colored, egg-shaped candies.

The Easter eggs might not have aroused so much suspicion if Galtes hadn’t been transporting them just two days before Christmas.

“Drug traffickers are always trying novel ways to conceal their contraband,” said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles. “But cocaine camouflaged as Easter candy is one of the more unusual tactics we’ve come across. Obviously two days before Christmas, this defendant didn’t expect his trip would end with federal officers conducting an Easter egg hunt,” he said in a December statement.

Officers found more than 14 pounds of cocaine, the majority camouflaged as Easter treats, as well as some stashed under the cardboard bottom of a paper shopping bag.

He can receive up to 40 Easters in the slammer as payment for his business venture.

Too many people with too much time on their hands.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Twenty-three suspects, including nine American Airlines employees, have been arrested for allegedly transporting nearly $20 million worth of cocaine on flights into and out of Puerto Rico.

Most of the commercial flights carrying suitcases stuffed with illicit drugs came into San Juan, which was a transshipment point for drugs bound for cities on the U.S. mainland, authorities said.

The drug trafficking organization headed by defendant Wilfredo Rodriguez Rosade had been operating since 1999, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, which participated in the long-running investigation.

In a September 9 indictment unsealed Tuesday, Justice Department officials also moved to seize $18 million worth of property owned by the suspects, including seven homes, three businesses and an apartment complex.

All but one of the arrests occurred in Puerto Rico. The lone arrest on the U.S. mainland was in Miami, Florida.

Over the years these gangsters brought in 10 tens of coke. No one at American Airlines noticed.

Lotta sharp people involved in the War on Drugs, eh?

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Mexico has decriminalised the possession of small amounts of cocaine, heroin and marijuana, as part of an attempt to focus a police crackdown on drug producers and traffickers.

The new law, which also covers LSD and methamphetamine possession, will also offer addicts free treatment, in order to tackle the domestic demand for drugs.

A predictable jive statement was issued by the government to keep the moralists happy – “This [new law] is not legalisation, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty,” said Bernardo Espino del Castillo of the attorney-general’s office.

The law, which was enacted on Friday, sets maximum “personal use” amounts for the listed drugs. Anyone found possessing those narcotics within the limit will not face criminal prosecution…

Those stopped and found in possession of drugs under the new limits will be encouraged to seek treatment, but those caught for a third time will face a mandatory health programme.

Under the previous law, possession of any amount of drugs could lead to a jail sentence, but authorities rarely prosecuted addicts found carrying small amounts…

But police often sought bribes from those they suspected of carrying drugs, under the threat of a stiff prison sentence.

Mexico has in recent months aimed to separate drug addicts and casual users from drugs traffickers.

Too bad the United States is incapable of the least amount of differentiation. Between right-wing hypocrites and Bible Belt shams, the Land of the Free remains a War-on-Drugs sandwich – with something like a 21st Century approach either side of our country – stuffed with ignorance and a special sauce of Liberal cowardice in the middle.

Daylife/AP Photo

Claims Coke will not make children fat or rot their teeth have landed Coca-Cola in trouble with Australia’s consumer watchdog, which has ordered the soft drink company to correct its advertising.

Coca-Cola South Pacific last year ran advertising titled “Motherhood & Myth-Busting,” featuring popular Australian actress Kerry Armstrong and claiming Coke was “kiddy-safe.” As well as claiming Coke did not make children fat or harm their teeth, the full-page print ads sought to combat public perceptions that Coke was packed with large amounts of caffeine.

The company also said in the ads it was time “to state the facts and to help you understand the truth behind Coca-Cola.”

But the powerful Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Thursday ordered them to correct its claims.

“Coke’s messages were totally unacceptable, creating an impression which is likely to mislead that Coca-Cola cannot contribute to weight gain, obesity and tooth decay…”

CCSP had agreed to publish corrective advertisements in major newspapers in every major Australian city, as well as on the company’s own website, Graeme Samuel said.

Har! I remember working as a line mechanic at the firm that invented aerosol products [a tale for another time] when first I learned the stunt of dissolving rust and other oxide products from metal – by immersing the metal bits in Coke for a few days. Dissolved all the crud.

Federal agents have arrested a man on charges of drug trafficking after finding a statue of Jesus made of cocaine at a Texas border crossing…

According to the criminal report filed by U.S. officials Tuesday, Bernardino Garcia-Cordova offered a woman $80 to transport two religious statues across the border and deliver them to him at a bus station in Laredo, Texas.

A drug-sniffing dog alerted Border Patrol agents of the presence of drugs in a box that contained two religious figurines. One of those statues, a Jesus figure weighing 3 kilograms, was found to be made of cocaine.

Worth more than a cheese sandwich, I’ll bet.