Arab spring played a role
Numbers are impressive but it’s the criminal tales that are gripping
Growth in reporting of suspicious financial activity shows significant jump
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland saw a 40 percent increase in 2011 in the number of suspicious activities reports (Sars) to MROS, the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland, the federal office shows in its annual report published Monday 14 May.
Banks and other financial groups, required by law to report suspicious activity, filed 1,625 Sars in 2011. Of these, 91 percent were forwarded after “careful analysis” to judicial authorities, federal or cantonal, for prosecution. The total asset value was more than CHF3 billion, greater than the combined value of Sars from 2009 and 2010 and a record figure.
“In 2011, 1,625 SARs generated a total asset value of just under CHF 3.3 billion (2010: CHF850 million from 1,159 SARs),” the report notes.
Two-thirds of the reports were triggered by media reports (30 percent of information sources) combined with third party information and information from prosecuting attorneys, which “show(s) that financial intermediaries use modern resources and consult external sources in order to gather information for their inquiries, which is then evaluated and condensed into a considerable number of Sars sent to MROS”, the report indicates.
Seven cases of bribery had total assets of CHF791 million each
The huge increase underscores the continuing progress made against money laundering in Switzerland over the past 10 years but it also provides a window to some significant shifts in money laundering globally. The average asset value in 2011 was approximately CHF2 million, compared to CHF731,000 a year earlier. The sudden jump shows a small number of cases, notably bribery in the Middle East and in particular in Egypt, that involve much larger sums than the cases in 2010. Seven cases of bribery had total assets valued at CHF791m each.
Four cases of online gaming had a total assets value of CHF560m each.
Eight cases had a total asset value of nearly CHF200m each, while in 2010 none of the reported cases had a total assets value over CHF100m.
Types of crimes reported are shifting
Fraud remains the largest group of crimes reported, but the numbers are down slightly due to a change in reporting. Computer fraud, mainly phishing, has been retroactively put into a category of its own starting with 2007. MROS says the report “shows that ‘phishing’ remains a topical subject and that financial intermediaries consistently report the account details of financial agents or ‘money mules’ to MROS”.
A second group, money laundering, consists of activities that are not technically money laundering crimes “despite the fact that the modus operandi suggested acts of money laundering. The increase is due not only to one reported case involving numerous business connections, but also to the general increase in the number of SARs in 2011.”
The drugs category consists of reports linked to “the street sale of drugs by nationals of sub-Saharan African states and the financial transactions associated therewith (money exchange, money transmitting)”.
Foreigners bring a wealth of business to Geneva, but the tourists are also part of the attraction for much of the city's petty crimes
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The daily police reports from Geneva police tend to confirm what too many citizens suspect, that petty crimes such as theft and drug-dealing are committed mainly by foreigners.
The latest is almost typical: police Wednesday arrested seven people for crimes ranging from shoplifting to breaking and entering to being in Switzerland without legal entry papers or a means of survival, and all were foreigners.
But there was one unusual twist, a 24-year-old American citizen who lives in Carouge was picked up for shoplifting CHF500 worth of electronic goods near Rive. He admitted to the crime and said he was getting the five items as a birthday present for his brother.
He joined, on the daily report, a Mongolian and a Tunisian who were without papers and no visible means of support, an Algerian who was picked up for theft and no papers, a Frenchman without papers who admitted to a drug habit when police traced an April incident (breaking and entering a car) to him thanks to DNA from blood, a Frenchman for breaking and entering and an Albanian without papers who turned out to have been ordered out of the country without the right to return, by canton Valais.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The good thing about being a police dog is that your job is to play, all the time. And you spend hours learning how to do it well, with your buddy, whom others call your “handler”.
“They don’t work, they play. That’s what dogs do, and police dogs are no different,” Jean-Christophe Sauteral, press officer for Vaud Police told GenevaLunch during a demonstration of police dog training Wednesday 25 April high in the Jura hills near Sainte-Croix.
Police from four countries come together once a year in this area for a week of intensive specialty training for dog handlers and their animals.
The dogs play hard, and their level of discipline is striking.
Each country’s police dog teams have particular skills that they share with the others, says Sauterel. They also simply get to know each other and work together, useful because the police forces call on each other when highly specialized teams are needed.
The Austrian police dog teams are particularly known for their searches for bodies and tracing human blood, says Sauterel. “And the Belgians are the best at working with fires,” he adds. Paris teams have drug-search expertise.
Swiss pioneered Sokks method for training dogs with pure molecules
The Swiss are known for their dogs’ work searching pure molecules, a relatively new field called the Sokks method, where dogs are trained to search for pure molecules, for example those in drug odours, rather than the less reliable training in specific odours. With cocaine, for example, it can become contaminated with other odours and as it degrades, the odours shift. But the underlying molecules remain the same. Switzerland adopted the Sokks method in 2004. Dogs trained with it have shown a 28 percent increase in successful detection, according to Vaud Police.
Canton Vaud has 13 dog handlers, with 5 of them and their dogs on rotating duty, 24 hours a day. The dog teams are used in Vaud on average 5-6 times a day and throughout Switzerland about 40 times a day. The handlers use down time to continue their dogs’ training.
Once a week the dogs and their trainers meet for a day of joint exercises and continuing education for the handlers.
The dogs belong to the police force, but the handlers pick out their own dogs at the kennels when they are two and a half months old, and the dogs are then assigned to the families where they spend the rest of their lives. They train until they are two years old before they are put on duty with their handlers, but they join the police patrols as early as possible, to get them used to unusual situations and noise, for example in stations, markets, restaurants.
Vaud Police’s dog unit (K9) has one Labrador, but the rest are German or Belgian shepherds (Malinois). They are all trained to perform all police dog tasks: tracking, looking for lost objects, defending their masters, searching for explosives, and looking for drugs, for example. One dog has been trained specially to work with special intervention forces, learning to remain completely calm, quiet and still for hours, but ready to instantly move into attack mode.
Five months ago the company was cutting jobs; today it is expanding its Swiss base
BASEL / GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Novartis is pumping CHF500 million into a new plant in Stein, canton Aargau, near Zurich, to replace an older one with a state of the art production facility. Stein will become a platform for launching new pharmaceutical products, the company said Monday 23 April.
The news was presented in the context of Novartis’s commitment to Switzerland, with the company underscoring other projects, such as one in Basel, to expand the size of its workforce in the country. The pharma company has been under heavy pressure since it announced in January that it would cut jobs in Basel and closing its over-the-counter unit in Prangins, next to Nyon. Intensive talks led to a turn-around, with the company announcing 17 January a long-term solution appeared possible that would allow the centre to remain open.
Findings could help development of new drugs for epilepsy, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – “Water isn’t just a neutral environment; it can also interact with the molecules and change their structure” EPFL researchers at the Laboratory of Molecular Physical Chemistry note in a statement about new findings that could lead to progress in drugs for a number of disorders and diseases. “Like a key inserted into a lock, the molecules in drugs bind with and act upon biomolecules. The more precisely we know these molecules’ three-dimensional structure, the better we will understand how their active components work. Biomolecules often exist in aqueous environments; this is the case in the human body.”
The group has shown how the natural antibiotic gramicidin’s 3D structure changes “depending on the number of water molecules surrounding it.”
Their findings were published in the journal Science 19 April.
EPFL in a press release explains the impact the research will have, in concrete terms: “This research, led by senior scientist Oleg Boyarkine, his colleague Natalia Nagornova and professor Thomas Rizzo, will have a considerable impact not only in fundamental research, but also in the pharmaceutical arena. ‘Understanding how drug molecules change shape when they are dissolved in water is a crucial point. This discovery will make it possible to design new, more effective drugs using computers,” the chemist explains. The challenge was to conduct the experiments as accurately and precisely as possible. ‘Even though precise knowledge of the structure of a large molecule is only really possible through theoretical calculations, thanks to spectroscopy and ultra-low temperatures, we can now validate the theory.’”
Photo: Swiss Federal Customs Office
BASEL / GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Lower prices across the border in France thanks to the high Swiss franc don’t always mean the Swiss lose out: the Swiss Customs Office says that in 2011 its revenues rose thanks to import declarations, from CHF28.7 million to CHF39.8m.
Imported border goods remain nevertheless a small part of customs revenues, only 0.2 percent of the CHF23.47 billion, which is more than one-third of all Swiss federal revenues.
The 30 percent increase in declared goods was accompanied by revenues from those who couldn’t resist the temptation to buy more without declaring the goods, as the number of contraband merchandise cases rose by 36 percent.
Customs offices and border guards say that while contraband goods are brought in by amateurs and professionals, they focused on the second group last year and uncovered 5,800 cases, some 400 more than in 2010.
They delivered 2,960 people to the police and discovered 1,477 falsified or illegally used documents and 1,308 illegal arms.
They seized, among other drugs, 208 litres of KO drops, more than triple the quantity found in 2010 and equal to 100,000 doses. It has no smell or taste and is “regularly used in kidnappings and sexual crimes”, notes the federal office.
Seized in Bardonnex, 2011
The most popularly imported illegal drop was Viagra-type erection drugs and the most popular source country was India.
Foods remain high on the list of illegal imports: fruits and vegetables (818 tons), cereal for human consumption (41 T), spirits (32 T), Wine (24 T), Meat and meat products (28.5 T), Olive and other consumable oils (20 T), Milk and cheese products (3 T).
BASEL, SWITZERLAND – Novartis will be cutting close to 2,000 jobs in the US, in New Jersey, as the result of an expected fall in demand for a relatively new medicine and the expiry of the patent for another, the company announced Friday 13 January in Basel. The sales force will lose 1,630 jobs and another 330 will go in related administrative posts. Staff will be informed of the specifics in April and the job cuts will be made in the first half of 2012.
The restructuring that lies behind the job cuts will result in CHF160 million in exceptional charges in the first half of 2012 in addition to an exceptional charge of CHF900m in the second half of 2011 following a “reassessment of the future sales potential of Rasilez/Tekturna in light of the Altitude results”.
Preparations were underway to restructure the company’s general medicines business with the patent expiring for the hypertension market leading medicine Diovan (valsartan) in the US in September 2012. The restructuration is being speeded up, the company says, after Altitude clinical studies were recently called to a halt, ending trials for Rasilez/Tekturna (aliskiren), another hypertension drug.
Novartis notes that the
“study was halted following the recommendation from the Data Monitoring Committee overseeing the trial. The study was investigating Rasilez/Tekturna in a high-risk population of patients with type-2 diabetes and renal impairment. As a precautionary measure Novartis Pharmaceuticals ceased all promotion of Rasilez/Tekturna-based products for use in combination with an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB). Novartis Pharmaceuticals, in consultation with health authorities, is now recommending that hypertensive patients with diabetes should not be treated with Rasilez/Tekturna in combination with an ACE-inhibitor or ARB. Patient safety is the highest priority for Novartis and we are in continuing dialogue with health authorities worldwide to establish the most appropriate next steps.”
Novartis announced in November that it is cutting 1,000 jobs in Switzerland, some 350 of them in Prangins, near Nyon.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Lausanne police Wednesday pulled in 44 of the 91 residents questioned at the Venne refugee centre, the Etablissement vaudois d’accueil des migrants (EVAM), in the city after a dawn raid that continued until 14:00. Authorities seized a quantity of drugs: 232 grams of cocaine, 22 g of heroin and 60 g of marijuana. They also seized CHF42,ooo and a smaller amount of euros in addition to 20 fake CHF100 bills.
The raid involved 158 police officer and several sniffer dogs. It was organized after investigations indicated that several residents were involved in the drug business and theft in the region.
Stolen goods uncovered included 216 cell phones, with one resident alone have 23 of them; 28 laptops, digital cameras and iPods, watches and jewelry.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Italian “Ndrangheta” organized crime group as well as Russian mafia have been increasing their operations in Switzerland, Swiss federal police said Thursday 23 June.
Human trafficking from eastern Europe is also on the rise. Police have been working more closely on a national level to reduce the amount of drug trafficking from Europe, which remains high, although several thousand kilos of cocaine and several hundred thousand francs related to drugs have been seized.
The comments are part of Fedpol’s annual report covering organized crime in Switzerland in 2010. The solution, says Fedpol, lies in coordinating work closely on the international level, particularly as the role of the Internet grows.
The mafia activity linked to Italy is mainly in border areas and in particular in Piedmont, Lombary and Bade-Wurtemberg. The Internet is being used by these groups to plan operations, often working with hackers, and Switzerland is used as a transit centre but also as a money-laundering centre.
Recent criminal activity shows that they are operating with “the greatest possible discretion”, developing ties to financial establishments in ways that make it extremely difficult to trace their operations.
A key factor in dismantling human trafficking, linked to prostitution, is witness protection and Switzerland has developed a programme that will go into effect once parliament passes a related law, which is expected to occur in coming weeks.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The two women, ages 34 and 37, whose bodies were found shortly after 08:30 Tuesday 31 May in the Geisendorf Park in Geneva (between rue de la Servette and rue de Lyon), were known to Geneva’s narcotics agents, police say. The two were stretched out on the ground, with no sign of the involvement of a third party, and police say they may have died from an overdose. An investigation has been opened.
They two bodies were discovered by passersby.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Police in Zurich arrested an unusual-looking drug runner Wednesday at Kloten Airport, a man disguised as a missionary, complete with flowing robes. The Romanian man, whose costume was impeccable, nevertheless raised the suspicions of a customs officer who checked his bag and didn’t find a Bible.
The 37-year-old man was x-rayed and several balls of cocaine were spotted in his digestive tract. He was carrying 500 gr of the substance.
A second arrest for drugs was made at the airport Wednesday. A Portuguese man traveling from Brazil to Spain was carrying 2 kg of cocaine in his carry-on bag.
Javier Sicilia, a well-known Mexican poet who writes for a news magazine called Proceso, Sunday 8 May asked for five minutes of silence after a rally in Mexico City’s main square, where people yelled “Enough is enough” in the fight against Mexico’s drug war.
An estimated 150,000 people attended the rally to call on the government to change its strategy in this war.
The violence and the number of victims in the fight against the drug cartels has increased in recent weeks, even though the government argues that almost all the dead are members of drug cartel gangs. Sicilia’s 24-year-old son was found dead last month along with six other people, and authorities have recovered more than 350 bodies from graves and pits around the country, described as “collateral damage”.
The five minutes of silence were to commemorate the city’s more than 35,000 victims of violence in Mexico’s war against drugs in the four and a half years since the president, Felipe Calderón, ordered the military in to fight the cartels.
Links to other sites: BBC, New York Times
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A drug bust this past weekend in Geneva resulted in five people arrested and 10 kilos of cocaine seized.
According to information first presented by the Tribune de Genève, and confirmed by Geneva prosecutor, Adrian Holloway, a Spanish national and four Colombians were arrested for their alleged involvement in the trafficking network.
According to Holloway, a forty-year-old Spaniard driving a car with Vaud license plates was detained in the early hours of Sunday 17 April at the Mategnin border with France. He was reportedly carrying 10 kilos of cocaine in the car.
The man was being followed very closely by another driver, a Colombian national, who was then arrested by authorities. The individual is suspected of being the leader of the trafficking gang.
Two more men were arrested in Geneva and one woman was arrested in Fribourg in connection with the bust, all Colombian nationals allegedly tied to a drug trafficking network in their country of origin.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva’s new head of criminal police services, François Schmutz, says that the amount of heroin on offer in Geneva has risen substantially, compared to 10 years ago. The price is considerably cheaper, he points out, making Geneva an attractive destination for buyers, 70-80 percent of whom come from outside the canton.
Heroin in other French-speaking cantons in Switzerland is CHF70-100 a gram, while in France it is 1.5 times that. The per gram cost in Geneva is just CHF28, Schmutz told Le Temps newspaper in the first interview he has given.
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Some CHF7,000 in cash, 1.5kg of marijuana and 93 packets (85 grams) of cocaine were seized by authorities in canton Vaud Tuesday 22 February when they accompanied staff from the Nyon refugee centre, Établissement vaudois d’accueil des migrants (EVAM), on a search of the premises.
Forty-seven of the 101 single men who live in the centre were checked during the search, which EVAM is allowed to carry out, without advance warning, under Swiss law.
Police note in a statement issued after the 14:00 search that it was undertaken after complaints from people in the area and following several incidents at the centre earlier this year. Violence has broken out on occasion, including one incident where 90 residents of the centre were involved in a fight, apparently over money, in early January. One man was knifed during the brawl.
The deaths of four men, thrown from a bridge near Acapulco, Mexico Friday 18 February, appear to signal that the drug cartel wars in Mexico have shifted into a more violent gear.
Earlier this week, US special agent Jaime Zapata was killed and his partner injured during a border shootout, but even their brazen murders have paled next to the grizzly bridge deaths.
Zapata and his partner, run off the road while driving north from Mexico City to Monterrey in a US government vehicle, identified themselves as US diplomats before they were shot in an incident that “Republican Ben Quayle, from the border state of Arizona, described [the attack] as ‘a wake-up call for all of us in the US’,” reports news agency AFP.
MSNBC reports of the Acapulco bridge deaths that “the four were among 12 people killed Friday in and around Acapulco, which has seen a spike in violence since rival factions of the Beltran Leyva cartel began fighting over territory after leader Arturo Beltran Leyva died in a battle with Mexican marines in December 2009.”
The men are presumed to have been alive, with hands and feet bound and duct tape over their heads, when they were tossed off the bridge.
Swiss border guards and sniffer dog during a car check for drugs (photo, ©2011 Photopress /EZV/Peter Klaunzer)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva will have added a total of 77 border guards in two years by mid-2012, with the federal government approving the recruitment of an additional 24 Thursday 3 February. The new recruits will begin training in July 2011 and join the Geneva team in mid-2012.
Another group of recruits began training in January, reinforcing a group of 29 who were added to Geneva’s team in 2010.
Border guards and customs officers are both part of the Swiss Federal Customs Office, with the unarmed customs officers responsible for checking goods (trade). The border guards are responsible for checking for smuggling in and out of the country, including drug smuggling, but they also trace persons, vehicles and stolen property, search for document fraud, and work with police units that survey immigration and traffic.
Smuggling has taken a new turn since the Schengen Accord came into effect for Switzerland in 2008, allowing the free movement of people within the area, which includes most of the European Union and Switzerland. Many customs posts closed, without the need for regular passport checks, making it easier for citizens to cross borders, but also for smugglers and criminals. Geneva is an entry point for Italian and French criminals.
British NGO Reprieve has been tracking a UK company Dream Pharma that it says has exported enough drugs to four US states to kill more than 100 prisoners under American lethal injection death row programmes. Reprieve has started a debate in the European Parliament over the need to ban exports of such drugs to back up the parliament’s October 2010 resolution against capital punishment. The group says it has proof, from legal documents, that Dream Pharma supplied drugs used to execute Arizona prisoners and the drugs scheduled to be used in killing a prisoner in Georgia, USA 25 January.
Links to other sites: Death Penalty News, India Times, PR Newswire
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Nez Rouge helped 24,000 people make it home safely during the 2009 holiday season after they were unable to drive due to alcohol, drugs and exhaustion.
The group kicks off its volunteer operation for the 2010 holiday season Friday 10 December in most parts of Switzerland and a week later in the rest of the country.
If you can’t drive, don’t: phone Nez Rouge at 0800 802 208.
The group consists of local sections and you can also phone their local numbers directly, so print out the numbers and keep them handy if you plan to party during the holiday season. You can always pick up your car later, as long as you’re alive because you’ve called Nez Rouge.
Geneva – 022 710 27 77: 10 and 12 December, then from 17 December to 31 December
Morges-Lausanne – 021 702 55 10: 10 and 12 December, then from 17 December to 1 January
Eastern Vaud – 021 964 60 68: 10 and 11, 17 and 18, then 23 to 31 December
In France, the night of 31 December only, in Haute-Savoie
The violence continues in Mexico where soldiers killed 25 suspected cartel members in the Tamaulipas state, near the US border.
According to Mexico’s Defense Department, soldiers rescued three men that had been kidnapped and seized 25 rifles, four grenades, 4,200 rounds of ammunition and 23 vehicles.
Links to: The LA Times, Voice of America
Additional details:
Manuel Noriega, 72, former Panamanian dictator, finished 20 years in a US prison only to be extradited to France, where his trial opens today on several charges, including money laundering. He is accused of using three French banks to launder money for a Colombian drug cartel. His lawyers have reportedly taken his case to the International Red Cross (ICRC), pleading that he should be released but that in any event La Sante, the prison in Paris where he is held, is “too dirty and dilapidated” for him. He faces up to 10 years in prison in France if found guity.
Links to others sites: Irish Times, Le Monde (Fre)
A state of emergency has been declared in Jamaica, as a major gun battle ensued in the capital of Jamaica, Kingston, with security forces raiding the home of a drug lord, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who has refused to cooperate with extradition orders. He is wanted by the US on drug and gun-running charges. Forces loyal to Coke attacked a police station Monday and it appears that the fighting is spreading from the Tivoli Gardens, where Coke has supporters.
Links to other sites: BBC, Jamaica Gleaner, Yahoo news video
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Customs officials at Cointrin International Airport found 125kg of khat (qat) in the suitcases of three people arriving from London, a man who is Estonian but resident in London and two Hungarian women.
The stimulant is legal in some countries but illegal elsewhere, including in most of Europe. The WHO has listed it as a drug of abuse since 1980. The three said they were transporting the khat for Africans and had been instructed to wait for phone calls once they reached Geneva. The man was carrying 45kg and the two women 80kg of the substance, say police.
The three were imprisoned, charged with drug trafficking.
Police say two-canton sweep nets alleged drug dealers, cocaine, money
Cocaine bust in Lausanne - Photo Lausanne police
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Three people arrested, 2.5 kilos of cocaine at 80 percent purity, false identity documents and almost CHF60,000 in cash were seized during a police investigation that lasted several months and involved cantons Vaud and Geneva.
The police operation began in 2009 when a Lausanne-based drug dealer was arrested for possession of cocaine and several thousand francs at his residence. Soon after, police were able to establish that his two main suppliers lived in Geneva.
British fashion designer Alexander McQueen took a mix of cocaine, tranquilizers and sleeping pills before he hanged himself 11 February, an inquest in the UK has determined. McQueen suffered from what his psychiatrist called a mixed anxiety and depressive disorder. He had been checking the Internet for ways to commit suicide before his death, which came on the eve of his mother’s funeral.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The police operation called “Figaro” has logged 1,200 hours in its first week, with 300 people brought in for questioning and 35 arrests, according to city police. The operation is designed to clean up the city centre in Geneva following a sharp increase in petty crimes in 2009. Most of those stopped were questioned about thefts and drug sales.
The greater police presence, notably with more foot patrols, covers four districts: Pâquis, Eaux-Vives, Rive and the area around Cornavin train station.
Background, GenevaLunch
Links to other sites: TSR (Fre), Tribune de Geneve (Fre)
Swiss army soldiers: no getting out of line on the train home
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Army will be sending its police into train stations and onto Swiss trains regularly, to keep a closer eye on its soldiers, most of whom are part of the citizen militia. The military police, who will not intervene with civilians unless there is an imminent danger, will work closely with existing police forces: primarily the CFF rail company security teams and cantonal police. The increased surveillance of soldiers is partly a public relations exercise, with growing complaints from the public about unacceptable behaviour of soldiers on public transport systems: soldiers travel for free when in uniform, en route to or coming home from duty.
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
