‘Police say a burglar has stolen narcotics from three pharmacies by walking in during business hours, climbing into the space above the ceiling and hiding there until the store closes. [..]
In the first two instances, Denver Police say the suspect hid in a false ceiling inside a bathroom. Police say he also hid in a false ceiling in the most recent incident. Police say the man is extremely patient, in some cases hiding up to eight hours. They also say he seems to be pretty knowledgeable about prescription drugs as he picks and chooses what he steals.
Police say the burglar has not been violent so far, but that could change.’
‘An Italian university student’s cellphone screensaver photo got him busted on marijuana charges.
The student allegedly made the mistake of taking a picture of himself standing among a patch of marijuana plants and using it as his screensaver photo, ANSA reported Tuesday. Then, as luck would have it, he dropped the waist pouch he used to carry the phone and it was picked up by a retiree who turned it over to police.
When the police called him in, the student allegedly broke down and confessed he owned the pot crop, the news agency said. He took the police to the spot where he was growing his illegal crop and was promptly booked.’
‘Firefighters battling a blaze at a home in the Oakland hills this morning discovered a marijuana-growing operation, authorities said.
The two-story home at 4969 Stoneridge Court was being renovated so the entire second floor could be used to grow pot, fire Capt. Melinda Drayton said. Firefighters found more than 50 plants when they arrived at the home, which was otherwise unoccupied, around 3 a.m.
The fire “appears to have started from electricity being used for the cultivation operation,” Drayton said. “I’m not going to say (the electrical wiring) was illegal, but it looked like it was not up to code.” [..]
“This is becoming very common,” Drayton said of home marijuana-growing operations. She said electrical systems often pose a danger when they are altered for anything other than normal residential use.’
‘A pair of former Northeastern University freshmen are facing charges after prosecutors said one leaned out his dorm window Sunday and loudly told a woman in the dorm opposite his that he and his roommate were selling pot.
Oops. Two police officers happened to be nearby.
“If you’re looking for weed, my roommate Ferrante has some for sale,” Michael Emery said out the window, according to the Suffolk district attorney’s office.
Two plainclothes Boston officers in the building overheard the conversation and went to a second-floor room where they arrested Emery, 18, and Matthew Ferrante, 18, after finding about four ounces of marijuana; drug paraphernalia, including a scale; and several bottles of alcohol, prosecutors said.’
‘A man who police earlier said had a machete at Sir Goony’s Family Fun Center on Brainerd Road was back in his familiar haunts – General Sessions Court – on Tuesday.
Paul Ralph Vandiver earlier said he was just out looking for his pet racoons who had gotten out at the time he had the machete.
On Tuesday, he was found on Lee Highway with bags of half-empty paint spray cans in each hand that he said he uses to spray cardboard boxes.
An officer said Vandiver had gold spray paint on his hands and his mouth. Police say he has been continually arrested for huffing paint.’
‘Police are putting out an urgent warning to the public to avoid vials of a deadly drug that were stolen from a veterinary office overnight.
Several 100-milliliter vials of Euthasol, used to euthanize animals, were stolen from a veterinary clinic, according to Bourne Police Sgt. Christopher Farrell. Police declined to name the clinic, but said it was on the Cape side of the canal.
The break-in was reported when employees opened up this morning, and the missing medication, a liquid with extremely high concentrations of Phenobarbital, was discovered.
“It’s deadly. That’s the only way to put it,” Farrell said. The liquid was contained in small brown glass vials with red caps and is labelled Euthasol.’
‘Pro wrestler Chris Benoit suffered brain damage from his years in the ring that could help explain why he killed his wife, son and himself, a doctor who studied Benoit’s brain said Wednesday.
The analysis by doctors affiliated with the Sports Legacy Institute suggests repeated concussions could have contributed to the killings at Benoit’s suburban Atlanta home. [..]
The level of brain damage Benoit had can cause depression and irrational behavior, Cantu said.
Benoit’s brain showed the same degenerative processes that doctors working for the institute found in the brains of three men who had played pro football and committed suicide, Cantu said. There were abnormal protein deposits caused by trauma to Benoit’s brain, Cantu said.
There’s no evidence that steroid use causes such protein deposits, Cantu said, though he noted the issue has not been exhaustively studied.’
Followup to Benoit wrestle hold killed son.
‘A man has been charged with a cheesy snack attack on his dad, police said. The weapon? A bag of Cheetos. Patrick Hamman, 22, of Des Moines, was arrested on a charge of domestic assault after he threw a bag of Cheetos at his father, Michael Hamman, hitting him in the face Sunday night.
The bag hit his father’s glasses, causing a cut to the bridge of his nose, police said.
The police report said “Michael’s T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust.”
Police said Patrick, who lives with his father, admitted that he was on methamphetamine at the time of the argument.’
‘Computers inside pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s network are spamming the internet with e-mails touting the company’s flagship erectile-enhancement drug Viagra, along with ads for knockoff Rolexes and shady junk stocks.
But the e-mails are not part of Pfizer’s official marketing efforts.
Pfizer’s computers appear to have been infected with malware that has transformed them into zombie computers sending spam at the behest of a hacker. Oddly enough, they are spamming the public’s inboxes with ads for the company’s own product.
“There is a disaster inside this company, and they don’t know it,” says Rick Wesson, CEO of Support Intelligence — a small San Francisco-based security company that alerted Wired News to the problem.’
‘A little rabbit is happily running through the forest when he stumbles upon a giraffe rolling a joint. The rabbit looks at her and says, “Giraffe my friend, why do you do this? Come with me running through the forest, you’ll see, you’ll feel so much better!” The giraffe looks at him, looks at the joint, tosses it and goes off running with the rabbit. [..]’
‘A Japanese prison is scrambling to eradicate marijuana plants that keep sprouting up on its exercise ground, officials said Tuesday.
The marijuana plants started sprouting at Abashiri Prison on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido about a year ago, said prison official Takeshi Okamura. He said officials plucked out as many as 300 marijuana plants and treated the ground last year, but several more sprouted again this year.
Prisoners reported them to the guards.
Officials believe the plants are wild.
“Apparently, somebody knew how to tell marijuana from other plants,” Okamura said.’
‘A Double Bay man got more than he bargained for when he took his highly agitated kitten to a veterinary clinic after it had been accidentally locked in a cupboard overnight – only to discover it was high on cocaine and benzodiazepines from a wild weekend dinner party. [..]
The eight-month-old Himalayan cat arrived at the Double Bay clinic on a Monday morning with dilated pupils and a racing heart. The owner said it had trouble walking and was easily startled, said a report in this month’s edition of the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. [..]
The vets rang the owner’s wife, who admitted the cat could have licked “plates of cocaine”, which had been served at a dinner party two days earlier. A drug screen then revealed the cat also had benzodiazepines in its system.’
‘The China Daily is reporting that a bull elephant from Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan has recovered from a serious heroin addiction it picked up as a victim of illegal elephant trading. The elephant, nicknamed “Big Brother”, was fed heroin-laced bananas in order to make it easier to control him and his herd, which they led westward to Dehong, near China’s border with Myanmar.
According to the article, Big Brother developed a strong need for heroin after a few weeks of being drugged and would drool and twitch if not given regular doses. When the elephant smugglers arrived in Dehong they were arrested by the Dehong Forest Police. The China Daily explains what happened when the police tried to get Big Brother home:
“While driving the herd back to Xishuangbanna, Big Brother started drooling and bellowing and even tried to run away. The police were surprised to learn from one of the traders that it was suffering from withdrawal symptoms and could pose a danger to people, if not fed drugs immediately…’
‘Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city’s sewer plant.
The test wouldn’t be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.
Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking. [..]
She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.’
‘This bong threat was legitimate.
The FBI has confirmed that a suspicious package that idled one of the largest ferries in the Washington state fleet for about an hour Wednesday morning was actually a water-pipe typically used for smoking marijuana.
“Someone found a bong,” said David Gomez, FBI assistant special agent in charge. [..]
State Patrol Sgt. Craig H. Johnson would only say the device was a “nonhazardous, nonexplosive item,” adding investigators carried it off the ferry for further examination.
No arrests were made and no identified individuals were being sought, but “we’d like to find the person who left it there,” Johnson said.’
‘The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus.
Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.
Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine which has been embraced by thieves and rapists. [..]
The use of scopolamine by criminals appears to be confined to Colombia, at least for now, and it’s not clear why the drug is such a rampant problem in Colombia. [..]’
‘A submarine-like vessel filled with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine was seized off the Guatemalan coast, U.S. officials said.
Four suspected smugglers were operating the self-propelled, semisubmersible vessel when it was located and seized on Sunday evening by officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, the Border Patrol said in a news release Wednesday.
When the suspects realized they had been spotted by drug-surveillance aircraft patrolling the eastern Pacific, they scuttled the vessel but were unable to escape.’
‘Tied to a lamppost, he stands with his head and upper body covered in tar and feathers. A makeshift placard hung around his neck with a piece of string announces the reason for his treatment.
It is a very public humiliation, and a medieval one. Almost ten years since Northern Ireland’s Troubles officially ended, this remains the crude face of justice on the streets of south Belfast. [..]
Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands.
Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.’
see it here »
‘It didn’t take the sleuthing skills of a Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes to figure out who was peddling marijuana to teenagers in Market Square.
Police said 28-year-old Eric Hardcastle’s tattooed eyebrows, head and cheeks made him easy to identify.
Late Monday night, a teenager reported being approached by a man with a heavily tattooed face with three baggies of marijuana for sale. Officers said they found Hardcastle — who has a row of arrows over each brow, a tattoo on his forehead and scalp and matching markings on each cheek — soon afterward at a convenience store. [..]
Despite his run-in with the law, Hardcastle said he likes Portsmouth, where he landed two weeks ago after riding with a trucker.
“I want to make it here,” he said.’
‘A Fair Lawn school custodian is alleging in a lawsuit that his co-workers laced his pizza with the hallucinogen LSD in an attempt to poison him at an office party in 2005.
Dominick A. Rao, a janitor with the district since 2000, was served pizza out of a different box than the other custodians, his attorney, Richard Mazawey, told the Record of Bergen County for Monday editions.
“He said he felt like his body and system were melting from the inside out, like he was living in a kaleidoscope,” Mazawey told the newspaper.’
‘A 23-year old Serb was found dead and half-eaten in the bear cage of Belgrade Zoo at the weekend during the annual beer festival.
The man was found naked, with his clothes lying intact inside the cage. Two adult bears, Masha and Misha, had dragged the body to their feeding corner and reacted angrily when keepers tried to recover it.
“There’s a good chance he was drunk or drugged. Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage,” zoo director Vuk Bojovic told Reuters.’
‘The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday issued a public health advisory warning that breastfeeding mothers’ taking codeine could in rare cases kill their babies due to an overdose of morphine released to the breast milk.
The risk is associated with morphine, a metabolite of codeine. Some women who can rapidly metabolize codeine and release high levels of it into their breast milk, which could poison their babies.
The FDA advisory was issued after the federal agency noticed a fatal case of codeine-derived morphine poisoning in a 13-day old breastfed baby, which was reported last year in the August 2006 issue of Lancet, a British medical journal.’
‘A dairy farmer hoping to induce a woman he impregnated to miscarry gave her a soda containing a cattle hormone sometimes used to force abortions in cows, police said.
William Stanley Sutton III, 25, added ProstaMate last week to a soda he gave to 21-year-old Lauren Ashley Tucker, according to documents charging Sutton with reckless endangerment, assault and poisoning. [..]
ProstaMate is a hormone given to cows in the breeding process to bring all cows into heat at the same time. It can also be used to stimulate an early term abortion in a heifer that gets pregnant too young or a cow that mates with an undesired bull.’
‘When a little green plant cropped up suddenly in Helge and Helga Nilsson’s garden a couple of months ago, they thought nothing of it. In fact, thinking it was rather pretty, they nurtured it as it grew until it was one-and-a-half metres tall.
The couple, from Löddeköpinge, near Lund in southern Sweden, did not know the name of their plant until they saw a television report about drugs which showed footage of cannabis plants. Helga Nilsson reacted immediately.
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“Lord, Helge – we’ve got one of those in the garden,” were Mrs Nilsson’s words to her husband after seeing the report, according to Sydsvenskan.
The couple asked the Lund Botanical Gardens for advice, and now plan to remove the plant, although the couple say they will be sorry to see it go.
“It’s really quite decorative,” Mr. Nilsson said’
‘A teenager was taken to hospital after overdosing on espresso coffee.
Jasmine Willis, 17, developed a fever and began hyperventilating after drinking seven double espressos while working at her family’s sandwich shop.
The student, of Stanley, County Durham, was taken to the University Hospital of North Durham, where doctors confirmed she had overdosed on caffeine.
She has since made a full recovery and is now warning others about the dangers of excessive coffee drinking.
Ms Willis, who had thought the coffees were single measures, said the effects were so severe that she began laughing and crying for no reason while serving customers at the shop.’
‘Take your breasts off at the door and sit down.’
(3.6meg Shockwave)
‘A man confessed to breaking into a Porter County probation office and stealing two urine samples, including his own, police said.
Joseph Klinkman, 23, of Valparaiso faces a burglary charge for Tuesday night’s break-in. The theft was discovered Wednesday morning at the Porter County PACT office, which operates programs for prisoners, ex-offenders, victims and witnesses.
A judge had ordered Klinkman to undergo programs through PACT because of an earlier drug possession charge. [..]
“He’d been in a few hours before and gave a urine sample,” Balon said. “He saw they were testing for a drug he didn’t think they were testing for. He panicked.”‘
‘A painkiller used by 60,000 Australians has been ordered off the shelves after the deaths of two people.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration yesterday announced the urgent recall of the drug Prexige, used to treat osteoarthritis and acute pain. Patients using the drug, also known by its chemical name lumiracoxib, are advised to stop taking it immediately and ask their doctor for an alternative prescription.
The TGA made the decision after receiving reports of eight people who suffered serious liver reactions, including two deaths and two liver transplants. Six of the reports occurred since the beginning of July.’
‘There’s a “new” over-the-counter drug available in the US that’s apparently flying off the shelves. It’s called alli (note the way trendy lower case!) and I use the term “new” loosely because it’s apparently a lower strength version of a prescription-only drug (Xenical) that’s been around for a while.
So what does this incredibly popular wonder drug do? Well, not to go all Bill Clinton on you, but it depends on what your definition of “do” is. You see, there’s (1)what the drug company markets it as, (2)the medical description of what it does and (3)the biggest effect you’re actually going to notice.
The drug company markets it as a weight loss pill. They say it will give “safe, effective weight loss”. Because it’s FDA approved it must be good. What could possibly go wrong?’
This is a repost, but the translations of the drugs warning information amused me.
‘A West Bend mother faces charges including child abuse after police said her 2-year-old daughter ate LSD-laced candy that her mother left out.
According to the criminal complaint, 23-year-old Donielle Maki bought 10 hits of LSD on Tuesday that came in the form of Sweet Tarts.
It says Maki took the LSD home with her, put her daughter to bed and passed out on the couch.
The complaint said when Maki woke up the next morning, her daughter was holding one of the LSD-laced Sweet Tarts in her hand and said, “I like these, Mommy.”
That’s when Maki grabbed them from the toddler’s hand, the complaint says, and saw that only eight of the 10 candies were left.’
