Eideard

The historic seizure of 15 tons of pure methamphetamine in western Mexico, equal to half of all meth seizures worldwide in 2009, feeds growing speculation that the country could become a world platform for meth production, not just a supplier to the United States.

The sheer size of the bust announced late Wednesday in Jalisco state suggests involvement of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, a major international trafficker of cocaine and marijuana that has moved into meth production and manufacturing on an industrial scale…

Jalisco has long been considered the hub of the Sinaloa cartel’s meth production and trafficking. Meanwhile, meth use is growing in the United States, already the world’s biggest market for illicit drugs.

The haul could have supplied 13 million doses worth over $4 billion on U.S. streets.

The Sinaloa cartel, headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, is equipped to produce and distribute drugs “for the global village,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, the regional representative of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

“Such large-scale production could suggest an expansion … into Latin American and Asian markets,” Mazzitelli said…

There were no people found on the ranch or arrests made…

Golly. There’s a surprise.

Abortion rates are higher in countries where the procedure is illegal and nearly half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe, with the vast majority in developing countries, a new study concludes.

Experts couldn’t say whether more liberal laws led to fewer procedures, but said good access to birth control in those countries resulted in fewer unwanted pregnancies.

The global abortion rate remained virtually unchanged from 2003 to 2008, at about 28 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, a total of about 43.8 million abortions, according to the study. The rate had previously been dropping since 1995.

About 47,000 women died from unsafe abortions in 2008, and another 8.5 million women had serious medical complications. Almost all unsafe abortions were in developing countries, where family planning and contraceptive programs have mostly levelled off.

If the holier-than-thou Kool Aid Party gets its way, we can continue adding numbers of American women to that sum.

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A Florida lawmaker is pushing to repeal a state law that makes it illegal to cohabitate with someone who is not their spouse, and makes it a crime punishable by a $500 fine and up to 60 days in jail.

According to 2010 U.S. Census figures, at least 544,907 Floridians reported being an “unmarried partner” — meaning they live in an intimate relationship with someone they are not married to, and thus are in defiance of Florida statute 798.02…

Last week, state Rep. Ritch Workman filed legislation — HB 4021 — to repeal that provision, as well as a related one that bars people from “living in open adultery…”

“What you do in your bedroom is your business, not the business of my great state,” said Workman, a Republican from Melbourne, adding that the statute is rarely enforced. “Quite frankly, I just want it gone…”

Actually, over 100 couples were arrested and charged under the law in the last year. Which illustrates how backwards Florida is – if nothing else.

Workman, himself married with two children, stressed that his legislative initiative is not anti-marriage or anti-family.

Rather, he described it as a practical move to remove statutes that are no longer realistic in today’s society. Workman said most legislators, even those who are more conservative in Florida, don’t want to discuss cohabitation and adultery.

“And I say ‘Great, let’s not talk about it,’” he said. “Let’s talk about an unenforceable and unenforced law that needs to be off the books.

Go back to our post a few days ago about the failure rate of Bible Belt marriages compared to educated parts of the country.

The wedding of Inna Zyskind and Pavel Kogan last week was one of the happiest days of their lives.

Friends and family watched as they exchanged vows and rings under a canopy in their quirky designer outfits. Then more than 1,000 guests attended an open-air festival in Tel Aviv, with street performers and musicians, partying long into the night.

The couple’s only regret is that their marriage is not legally recognised in Israel. In fact, it was organised by activist groups as part of a colourful protest against religious restrictions on who can marry.

Inna, who was born in Russia, was able to move here and become an Israeli citizen under the state’s law of return for Jews. But she is not recognised as truly Jewish by Israel’s orthodox rabbinical establishment. And in Israel, only religious marriages, not civil ones, are allowed…

“This was our demonstration,” says Pavel. “We’re secular people. We want to break the religious monopoly over this part of our life in Israel. We should be allowed a civil wedding…”

RTFA for detail, anecdotes, none of which should come as a surprise. Celebrating love and marriage, trying to live a civilized life in the 21st Century – in a nation that tries to cram people’s lives into tiny ideological boxes leftover from the Talmud – can be an exercise in futility.

To be expected in any land legally ruled by a culture which rejects history, science, secular knowledge.

Mayor Nash

Be careful before starting a Boy Scout troop in Gould, Ark. Or a Harry Potter fan club. Or a baseball team. The City Council adopted an ordinance last week making it illegal to form any kind of group without its permission.

That is a clear violation of the Constitution, legal scholars agree. But it is also a sign of just how nasty politics has gotten in Gould, a farming town of 1,100 some 70 miles southeast of Little Rock, where members of the Council have struggled with a local political group that seeks to influence how the town is governed. The mayor, Earnest Nash Jr., also happens to be a member of the political group, the Gould Citizens Advisory Council.

Even by the standards of small-town dramas, Gould’s situation is bleak. The town faces nearly $300,000 in unpaid taxes, and there have been frequent clashes among the mayor, the advisory group and the City Council over how to repay it. Those clashes — and a perception by the City Council that the citizens’ group is seeking too much influence — led to the ban on new organizations…

Last week, the Council overrode the mayor’s veto of two other controversial measures. One required that the citizens advisory council cease to exist. The other made it illegal for the mayor to meet with “any organization in any location” either “inside or outside Gould city limits” without the Council’s permission.

The advisory council, which calls itself a nonpartisan group that educates voters and raises money for public causes, says it will continue its work. But the City Council, in one ordinance, accused the group of “causing confusion and discourse among the citizens” by harshly criticizing local officials at public meetings.

As a result, the City Council said, “No new organizations shall be allowed to exist in the City of Gould without approval from a majority of the City Council…”

In the meantime, Mr. Nash said he would continue to do his job exactly as he always had.

“Technically, what I’m doing I guess is illegal,” he said. “But if I’m going to get arrested for meeting with citizens or letting them form their own groups, that’s a pretty good reason to go to jail.”

No doubt Congress wouldn’t mind passing similar legislation if very many voters decided to go their own way outside the limits of our 2-Party country club commedia della politica.

Well, not really, not now

News International announced on Thursday that it is closing the News of the World after this Sunday’s edition, with no end in sight to the political and commercial fallout from the phone-hacking scandal after 72 hours of mounting crisis.

Sunday’s edition of the paper will be the last, News International chairman James Murdoch told News of the World staff on Thursday afternoon.

Murdoch told employees at the 167-year-old title: “The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed to when it came to itself”…

It is the first national newspaper to close since Rupert Murdoch shut News International mid-market tabloid Today in 1995.

The News of the World was Rupert Murdoch’s first UK newspaper acquisition in 1968 and its profits helped him build his publishing and broadcasting empire in this country and the US.

A spokesman for the company would not comment on whether News International will continue to publish a tabloid title on a Sunday. I imagine they will.

Murdoch told staff some of them would be leaving the company and said that was a matter of regret. He paid tribute to their “good work”.

There will be no adverts in Sunday’s edition and any money already received will be donated to good causes…

Labour MP Tom Watson, who has been highlighting the phone-hacking scandal at the paper for two years, said: “Rupert Murdoch did not close the News of the World. It is the revulsion of families up and down the land as to what they got up to. It was going to lose all its readers and it had no advertisers left. They had no choice.”

RTFA for the details. More and more of the truly dirty details are still coming out – which is an essential part of the decision by the Murdochs – Daddy Rupert and James – to bail before the tsunami crushes them altogether.

NOT on the way to deliver newspapers for Rupert

T-Mobile is considering joining Ford by pulling its advertising in News of the World following Monday’s allegations that the newspaper hacked Milly Dowler’s phone after she went missing.

A T-Mobile spokesman told the Telegraph: “We’re currently reviewing our advertising position with News of the World, following the recent allegations, and await the outcome of the ongoing police investigation.”

It is also understood that Currys and PC World are reviewing their options.

On Tuesday afternoon, it emerged that car manufacturer Ford has pulled its advertising in the News of the World. They…said in a statement: “Ford is a company which cares about the standards of behaviour of its own people and those it deals with externally. We are awaiting an outcome from the News of the World investigation and expect a speedy and decisive response. Pending this response we will be using alternative media within and outside News International Group instead of placing Ford advertising in the News of the World…”

A spokesperson from Halifax bank told the Telegraph on Tuesday they would be “reviewing and considering their options with regards to future advertising” in the News of the World, following Npower and Ford’s decision to consider places ads in the Sunday tabloid…

Twitter and Facebook were from Monday busy with users urging advertisers to boycott the News of the World. Many threatened specific companies that they would withdraw their custom unless those companies dissasociated themselves from the newspaper. There was also a Facebook page campaigning for a boycott.

Murdoch’s tradition of opportunism, sleaze and sensationalism — as a substitute for journalism — appears to be reaching a potential qualitative change among advertisers. Who do you want your brand to be associated with, after all? Reputable journalists, hard copy or online? Or creeps who hack into a kidnapped girl’s cellphone hoping for an extra special headline?

Face it. The only aspect of “ethics” that can impress a thug like Murdoch is a reduction in profits.

A ban on early broadcasting of election results that dates from the 1930s puts Canada on a collision course with social media like Twitter and Facebook, making a scofflaw of anyone who tweets too soon.

Canada goes to the polls on May 2 and critics say the ban — which was introduced in the days when radio was king — is totally unenforceable in an age when millions of people have access to the Internet.

As the law stands, nobody can even tweet election results from Eastern Canada before polls close in the Pacific province of British Columbia up to three hours later. Canada has six time zones…

Newspapers cannot update their websites with early results, broadcasters must stagger their reporting to be sure results go only to parts of the country where the polls have already closed and violators face fines of up to C$25,000.

“This will be unenforceable by Elections Canada, and if they intend to fine everyone on Twitter who breaks the rules they will have a good financial year,” said Eric Grenier of the popular ThreeHundredEight.com political website.

Grenier told Reuters he would play it safe and not start issuing results until the final poll had closed, although it’s not clear whether U.S.-based bloggers will do the same.

RTFA. Have fun on Election Day. I don’t know anyone voting for either wing of the stodgy, corrupt establishment.

A jury awarded a pair of Los Angeles police officers $2 million Monday after determining that LAPD supervisors had retaliated against the officers for complaining about alleged traffic ticket quotas.

Howard Chan and David Benioff, both veteran motorcycle officers with the department’s West Traffic Division, sued the department in 2009, alleging that they had been punished with bogus performance reviews, threats of reassignment and other forms of harassment after objecting to demands from commanding officers that they write a certain number of tickets each day, according to the suit.

Ticket quotas are illegal under state law, since they can pressure police to write spurious tickets to meet the goal. The line between setting a quota and pushing officers to increase their productivity is a delicate one for field supervisors, who are often under pressure themselves to generate more citations.

“We’re very hopeful that this will put an end to fleecing motorists on the west side of Los Angeles,” said Benioff’s attorney, Gregory Smith. “Quotas are a direct violation of the vehicle code, and this case was about these officers being asked to break the law…”

Chan and Benioff said that supervisors ranked them against other officers based on the number of tickets they wrote and cars they impounded, which is also a violation of state law…

“You can’t violate the law to enforce the law,” Councilman Dennis Zine said. “You can’t mandate the number of tickets.

Illicit, illegal policies by police departments are all too common. Hardly any driver in the U.S. is ignorant of some local speed trap – or something like my favorite sleazy local practice of bumping up demands for tickets at the end of the fiscal year to balance the budget.

Here are a couple of conscientious coppers who lead a dangerous life as it is on the streets of L.A. – with the integrity to refuse to spend their time harassing ordinary motorists over comparatively minor offenses. So, they get their chops busted by desk jockeys.

Most Americans probably aren’t aware of the growing scandal involving one of the leading UK newspapers owned by that idol of journalism, Rupert Murdoch. It’s called illegal wiretapping.

Ian Edmondson, left, and Neville Thurlbeck

The former news editor and current chief reporter from the News of the World are in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting mobile phone voicemail messages…

“They remain in custody for questioning after being arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977, and unlawful interception of voicemail messages, contrary to Section 1 Ripa [Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act] 2000,” the briefing added…

The arrests are the first salvo in Operation Weeting, whose tasks include establishing whether there are grounds for bringing further prosecutions in the phone-hacking scandal.

Edmondson and Thurlbeck will probably be released later this afternoon after the search of their homes is complete.

The two men have been implicated in the long-running scandal through documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the newspaper…

Only one reporter, the former royal editor Clive Goodman, has been convicted of a crime as part of the scandal. He and Mulcaire were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007.

No other reporters or executives were questioned by the initial police investigation. It was only after a series of high court cases brought by the actor Sienna Miller, the football pundit Andy Gray and others that the Metropolitan police were forced to reveal material found on Mulcaire’s computer, during a 2006 raid of his home.

Last Friday, a high court judge ordered NoW to make available Mulcaire’s notes to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, who is in charge of the hacking cases, ordered “rolling disclosure” to all claimants.

Hundreds of thousands of emails will now be handed over to alleged victims.

Rupert’s NewsCorp says they’re cooperating willingly with the police investigation. Five years after the initial arrests and denials that anyone remaining at the newspaper could possibly have been involved in the illegal electronic snooping on celebrity mobile phones.

UPDATE: Senior Journalist James Weatherup is a 3rd arrest in this case.