Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss police have arrested two people and seized 5.5 litres of the chemical GBL and small quantities of several drugs as part of an international drug ring bust. The operation has been centred around a 31-year-old German chemicals wholesaler who was selling massive quantities of the substance gammabutyrolactone (GBL), sometimes used as a date rape drug because it is odourless and colourless. Mixed with alcohol or in more than small quantities it can be lethal.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The World Anti-doping Agency (Wada) celebrates its tenth year this week as it finds itself faced with the blunt admission by one of the all-time greats of the tennis world, Andre Agassi, that he took the highly addictive drug crystal meth 12 years ago.
Agassi’s autobiography Open, to be released 9 November, contains the admission, but Wada’s statute of limitations is eight years, so Agassi is technically outside the sports and drugs monitoring organization’s reach.
Entertainer Michael Jackson died from an overdose of the powerful sedative propofol, the Los Angeles coroner has said in a preliminary ruling, based on toxicity analyses of the singer’s blood. The drug, which requires close supervision and is used primarily in operating rooms, was administered by his doctor, Conrad Murray, who had been treating him for insomnia for six weeks. News agency AP reports that the coroner’s office is calling it a homicide, but CNN says the coroner’s office would not confirm this. CNN, BBC, Los Angeles Times
A cargo boat that disappeared in European waters in recent days is causing worry in the maritime industry, with speculation that it might be the first case of piracy in the busy international waters around Europe. The Arctic Sea was last heard from 28 July when it made a routine report to British authorities as it passed through the English Channel. Four days earlier the crew had reported they were attacked off a Swedish island and beaten up by a group of men who said they were Swedish police, and they later reported that the group had left in a speedboat. The cargo ship, which carries a Maltese flag and is registered in Russia, was expected to make port in Algeria 4 August, but never showed up. It is carrying timber worth $2 million, according to Russian reports, but media are speculating that it could also be carrying a secret cargo of drugs, which could perhaps explain its mysterious disappearance. Russia Today, The Globe & Mail/AP,
Samantha Orobator of the UK was given a life sentence for drug trafficking rather than the usual death penalty, and it appears she may be able to serve her sentence in the UK, reports the Telegraph, UK. She was charged with carrying 680 grams of heroin when she tried to board a flight from Laos to Thailand in August 2008. While Laos sentences people to death for drugs there have reportedly been no executions since 1989. Orobator became pregnant while in prison, but little information about her situation has been made public.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of adverse reactions to medicines that were reported in Switzerland increased 15 percent to 4,833 in 2008, says Swissmedic, the Swiss body charged with surveillance for therapeutic products. The agency says the number of incidents has doubled since it was created in 2002. It cautions, however, that this reflects greater use of the reporting system, rather than a major increase in problems with medicines.
Lucie Trezzini's funeral mass will take place 16 March in Fribourg
Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss media continue to turn over the murder case of a 16-year-old from Fribourg, beaten and murdered in Argovie 4 March, in an effort to understand why her presumed murderer, a repeat offender, was not considered a high-risk case.
Police in Aargau, where the young woman died, held a press conference 12 March and said the circumstances are now clear and the man, who has confessed to the crime, says he did it because he wanted to return to prison.
Mexican police are staging one of their biggest operations in years to try “to prevent a collapse in law and order just south of the US border,” reports Reuters. Ciudad Juarez, a desert city just south of El Paso, Texas, has been the scene for several months of a bloody war between police and drug cartels working with corrupt police officers. The city is at the heart of a major drug trafficking route.
Laura Zuniga, 23, told police she was planning to go shopping, which explained what she was doing with a group of men in two SUVs who were pulled over, with cash and guns, by police in Mexico who were investigating drug running near Guadalajara. BBC
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has stripped three athletes of their medals and diplomas after reviewing results of drug tests in August in Beijing. Samples from the Games, which under new rules will be held for eight years, have all been returned to Lausanne for storage and another 500 tests will be run in January.
The British government is reviewing a series of measures it wants to introduce to iimprove road safety and reduce the number of highway deaths and serious injuries, respectively 2,946 and 30,000 in 2007. Among the measures: two high-speed offenses could result in a permanent driving ban and limits for drugs-driving would be introduced, with a possible lowering of the accepted alcohol limit.
