Eideard

Another example of how NOT to dress for a casual stroll through customs

A stunning model proved to be more than meets the eye after she was arrested by Italian police trying to smuggle more than £250,000 of cocaine into the country inside breast and buttock implants.

The 33-year-old woman, identified only by the initials MFM, was held by officers as she tried to distract them with her plunging neckline and tight-fitting outfit at Rome’s Fiumicino airport. But her plan backfired as they were so captivated by her looks they pulled her over for questioning and discovered the drugs when she failed to explain why she had been to South America.

The woman had flown to Rome from Sao Paolo in Brazil and a search by female officers revealed the fake breast and buttock implants she was wearing had also been used to hide 5.5lbs of cocaine…

”She had tried to distract them with a plunging neckline and tight outfit but they stopped her for questioning because she was so alluring and her story about why she was in South America just fell apart.

‘She actually became quite aggressive and was taken away for more detailed questioning by two female officers and that’s when the drugs were found hidden in the plastic breast and buttock implants.

‘The extremely pure cocaine crystals were found moulded into the implants that she was wearing…’

Commenters almost everywhere seem to agree it was a nutty attempt to sneak the drugs through – by making this babe look even more curvaceous. I would think that NOT attracting attention makes more sense than focusing the eyeballs of customs coppers on her bosom and butt.

Manuel Segovia

The language of Ayapaneco has been spoken in the land now known as Mexico for centuries. It has survived the Spanish conquest, seen off wars, revolutions, famines and floods. But now, like so many other indigenous languages, it’s at risk of extinction.

There are just two people left who can speak it fluently – but they refuse to talk to each other. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in the tropical lowlands of the southern state of Tabasco. It is not clear whether there is a long-buried argument behind their mutual avoidance, but people who know them say they have never really enjoyed each other’s company.

“They don’t have a lot in common,” says Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist from Indiana University, who is involved with a project to produce a dictionary of Ayapaneco. Segovia, he says, can be “a little prickly” and Velazquez, who is “more stoic,” rarely likes to leave his home.

The dictionary is part of a race against time to revitalise the language before it is definitively too late. “When I was a boy everybody spoke it,” Segovia told the Guardian by phone. “It’s disappeared little by little, and now I suppose it might die with me.”

Segovia, who denied any active animosity with Velazquez, retained the habit of speaking Ayapaneco by conversing with his brother until he died about a decade ago. Segovia still uses it with his son and wife who understand him, but cannot produce more than a few words themselves. Velazquez reputedly does not regularly talk to anybody in his native tongue anymore.

Suslak says Ayapaneco has always been a “linguistic island” surrounded by much stronger indigenous languages.

Its demise was sealed by the advent of education in Spanish in the mid 20th century, which for several decades included the explicit prohibition on indigenous children speaking anything else. Urbanisation and migration from the 1970s then ensured the break-up of the core group of speakers concentrated in the village. “It’s a sad story,” says Suslak, “but you have to be really impressed by how long it has hung around…”

The name Ayapaneco is an imposition by outsiders, and Segovia and Velazquez call their language Nuumte Oote, which means the True Voice. They speak different versions of this truth and tend to disagree over details, which doesn’t help their relationship. The dictionary, which is due out later this year, will contain both versions.

I’m of the opinion there needs to be a certain minimum of community and voluntary continuing of that community for a language to last, to sustain something beyond history, record.

Thanks, Cinaedh

Spanish police say they have seized more than 800kg (1,760lbs) of cocaine from a lorry disguised as an official backup vehicle for the Dakar rally.

The lorry was infiltrated into the race, which now takes place in South America, and loaded with cocaine before being shipped to Spain, police said.

The final destination for the drugs was the Spanish island of Ibiza, home to a major drugs trafficking ring…

The vehicle was sent from Bilbao in Spain to Argentina where it was loaded with the cocaine during a stage of the famous auto and motorcycle rally, held from 1-16 January.

It then followed the race to its conclusion before being shipped back to Bilbao, where it was seized by police when it arrived on Friday.

“The vehicle had been totally transformed to adapt it to its supposed participation in the competition as a support truck, with publicity and logos of the event painted on its side,” a police statement said.

The police said they also seized 15,000 ecstasy pills, hashish, guns and 47,000 euros in cash.

Pretty smooth stunt, actually. No doubt there’s already a movie deal in the works.

You can vary the plot between “superior police analysis” or a “paid mole” turned up the drug smuggling operation. Or even a mechanic at the Dakar Rally happening upon the truth.