A Thai woman swallowed more than 1,200 ecstasy pills wrapped in plastic and tried to smuggle them into the Indonesian resort island of Bali, officials said Monday.

Customs officials said Ueamduen Sophawat, 24, appeared nervous and was found to have a hard stomach during a body search at Bali's international airport as she arrived Thursday on a flight from Bangkok.

She was taken to hospital and 1,280 ecstasy pills were found in her stomach, Bali customs chief I Made Wijaya told a press conference.

thejakartaglobe.com

Federal authorities are trying a new tactic to find underground drug smuggling tunnels near the Mexico border in San Diego, after finding two tunnels last month and seizing 50 tons of marijuana.

Authorities are now going door to door, asking business owners to help them look for signs of underground tunnel construction and existing tunnels.

Sophisticated Passageways

About four blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border, in San Diego's Otay Mesa, there are about 600 generic-looking warehouses. Federal authorities plan to visit them all.

npr.org

Debunking the myth that cocaine use is ubiquitous in Ireland should be first step in future drug policy, writes Eilis O'Hanlon.

Scrooge's advice to the poor at Christmas was that they should die, in order to decrease the surplus population.

What follows isn't a very festive thought either, but I must admit that when I heard Dr Chris Luke, a leading consultant in emergency medicine, say on Six One News last week that 500 people would die in the next decade as a result of cocaine use, my first reaction was a bit like Ebenezer's: Why don't they just get on with it then and decrease the surplus population of drug users? What am I supposed to do about it, after all? What is anybody supposed to do about it?

independent.ie

aced with a poor education system and dismal job prospects, boys and girls as young as 11 are lured into acting as mules, peddlers, lookouts — even executioners — for drug cartels offering easy money.

wsbt.com

Russia is once again prepared to take custody of the Tajik-Afghan border. This was stated by head of the CIS Department of the Foreign Ministry of Russia Maxim Peshkov, formerly a Russian ambassador to Tajikistan.

According to him, it can be done "with regard to the situation in Afghanistan and the growing threat of terrorism." He said that the issue is currently under review and "if the Tajiks invite us to protect their borders, there is no reason to deny this request."

pravda.ru

The Obama administration has called Mexican drug cartels "the single greatest organised crime threat to America". But why are the cartels fighting each other with American guns?

Jim Pruett still has the boulder that suspected weapons traffickers dumped through the glass front of his Houston gun store last month.

bbc.co.uk
msn.com
independent.co.uk
huffpostfund.org
Top 12 dealers of guns seized in Mexico

A recording leaked to the Mexican press features a senior leader of the La Familia drug cartel urging members to stand fast in the wake of the death of their figurehead and painting the criminal group as rebels with a cause.

"It had to happen one day so don't despair, this is not over," Servando Gómez Martinez, alias La Tuta, says of the death last week of the group's "spiritual leader", Nazario Moreno, also known as the Doctor. "We will stay united and we will achieve what the Doctor wanted and what he inculcated into us with so much love."

guardian.co.uk

A small drone used by Mexican federal police was flying in its country's airspace before malfunctioning, forcing controllers to crash it across the Texas border in El Paso, a Mexican government official told The Associated Press.

The unmanned aircraft was on routine patrol before it crashed Tuesday night in an El Paso yard, said the Mexican government official, who spoke Friday on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

msn.com