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The US Department of Justice will investigate claims that the Obama administration shielded the Lebanon-based Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah from criminal prosecution for its drug-trafficking and gun-running operations, as part of an effort to curry favor with Hezbollah’s patron, Iran. Last week, Politico released an investigative report citing Drug Enforcement Administration and former Treasury Department officials who claimed that the previous administration blocked the prosecution of Hezbollah officials known to be involved in the smuggling of illegal narcotics and weapons – including chemical weapons – in an effort to bring Hezbollah’s patron state, Iran, to the negotiating table. In 2015,...

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said the U.S. is facing “decay” and called President Trump a “spoiled child” after the president said he’s no longer willing to deal on granting permanent legal status to illegal immigrants under the Obama-era DACA program. Mr. Fox, who as president of his country from 2000 to 2006 oversaw a massive exodus of people to the U.S., praised the DACA program that protects hundreds of thousands of them from deportation. “Acting like a spoiled child, won’t get you anywhere in politics!” Mr. Fox said via Twitter. “DACA is not only a program, it’s a way...

A former professional wrestler has come forward to say he witnessed the unsolved 1987 murder of two teens, implicating local law enforcement and high elected officials in the crime.

A former US secret service agent has pleaded guilty to stealing over $800,000 worth of bitcoin during an investigation into online drug marketplace Silk Road. Shaun Bridges, 33, appeared in federal court in San Francisco and admitted to money laundering and obstruction of justice. Silk Road operated for more than two years until it was shut down in October 2013 having generated more than $214m in sales of drugs and other illicit goods using bitcoin, prosecutors said. Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road’s creator, who authorities say used the alias Dread Pirate Roberts, was sentenced to life in prison after a federal...

YANGON, Myanmar — A Buddhist monk has been arrested in Myanmar after authorities found more than 4 million methamphetamine pills in his car and in his monastery, police said Tuesday. The monk was stopped Sunday as he drove in northern Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh. Authorities had been tipped off that the monk was carrying an illegal haul, said Officer Maung Maung Yin. Maung Maung Yin said an anti-drug task force found 400,000 pills in the monk's car. A subsequent search of his monastery turned up 4.2 million pills — worth upwards of $4 million in street value — along...

Over 99 percent of all marijuana and methamphetamine seized at U.S. borders has come from Mexico, a colossal cache of 8.2 million pounds since 2012 and a demonstration of the efforts by drug cartels to feed America's habit, one that is leading to increasing deaths, according to a new report.

U.S. authorities on Wednesday seized a cross-border tunnel that ran the length of four football fields from a restaurant in Mexicali, Mexico, to a newly built house in Calexico, California, following an investigation that netted more than a ton of marijuana and resulted in four arrests. The tunnel was the 12th completed secret passage that U.S. authorities have discovered along California’s border with Mexico since 2006. They have found more than 75 along the entire U.S.-Mexico border in the last five years, mostly in California and Arizona and many of them incomplete.

Twice authorities have intercepted drones being used to deliver contraband into prisons, leaving German states planning new ways of keeping criminal activity away from criminals. But is the law behind the curve on this new technology? The justice ministry in Lower Saxony said that in future it might deploy so-called “drone-trackers”—devices equipped with infrared, night vision and sometimes even radar—at prisons. “We’re aware of this problem and are keeping an eye on it,” said Lower Saxony justice minister Antje Niewisch-Lennartz. Drones have only recently appeared on governments’ radars. At the end of January, a drone carrying a package containing a...

Note: The following news brief is a quote: - In cooperation with various other countries, Dutch authorities have rounded up a big cocaine gang that had links with Hezbollah. Seventeen suspects were arrested on Curacao, the biggest island of the Netherlands Antilles, the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) has revealed. International cooperation between police and judicial services of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles, Belgium, Colombia, Venezuela and the US led to the arrest of the 17 suspects by the Curacao police. They are believed to be part of a drugs and money-laundering organisation with international branches, thought to be responsible...

What could go wrong? Barack Obama released a nuclear terrorist back to Afghanistan this month. Mohammad Zahir was in possession of uranium for use in making an atomic bomb when he was captured. Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage Magazine reported: If Obama has a red line when it comes to releasing terrorists, we haven’t seen it yet. There appears to be no threat that a terrorist can pose and no crime he has committed too severe to prevent him from getting a plane trip out of Gitmo at taxpayer expense. The last releases saw terrorists rated as high risk freed by...

With recent waves of Central Americans seeking to reach the U.S., human smuggling along the Texas border has, at least for the moment, become more lucrative than smuggling illicit drugs for criminal organizations such as the Gulf and Zetas cartels, according to two U.S. intelligence officials. U.S. agents tracking the money flow as part of the anti-smuggling Operation Coyote say that in just over six months, human smuggling has generated nearly $50 million, mostly in the area around the Mexican border city of Reynosa. The revenue has helped sustain the Gulf cartel during a bloody internal split, the officials said....

Drug smugglers pretend to be federal agency TUCSON, Ariz. — It looked like a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service truck. But the U.S. Border Patrol says it was actually the latest in a long line of creative attempts by smugglers to get illegal drugs from Mexico into the U.S. Agents spotted the white truck with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decals along a boundary fence in Douglas, Arizona, on Monday, while responding to reports of possible drug smuggling. When agents tried to contact those inside, the vehicle suddenly stopped and two people fled into Mexico. Agents say they found 3,200...

Government IT projects have a tendency to fall on their rear ends more often than not. After the miserable debacle that was Healthcare.gov last October, I made the case for why the larger than life public face of Obamacare had zero chance of succeeding in original form. Fast forward six months, and after some contractor firings and a public about face consisting of a "tech surge", the website is finally working at nominal levels. That's not to say no one didn't take the fall for the mess of this bungled IT project gone haywire. The former head honcho of the...

A man has been arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle drugs into a prison using a drone, Australian police say. The drone was "hovering in the vicinity of a prison" in Melbourne on Sunday afternoon, police said in a statement. The drone appeared to have "four engines" and was carrying "a small quantity of drugs", police added. Australia's parliament recently held a roundtable on drones and privacy. During the roundtable, Brad Mason, secretary of the Australian Certified UAV Operators Association, said there was "a lot of illegal and unauthorised use of UAVs. "We understand that the regulator is doing its...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl1908.aspx Treasury Identifies Kassem Rmeiti & Co. for Exchange and Halawi Exchange Co. as Financial Institutions of “Primary Money Laundering Concern” 4/23/2013 In First Use of Section 311 Against a Non-Bank Financial Institution, Treasury Acts to Protect the U.S. Financial System from Foreign Exchange Houses Tied to Global Narcotics and Money Laundering Networks and Hizballah WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today named two Lebanese exchange houses, Kassem Rmeiti & Co. For Exchange (Rmeiti Exchange) and Halawi Exchange Co. (Halawi Exchange), as foreign financial institutions of primary money laundering concern under...

North Korean Diplomats 'Sell Millions of Dollars Worth of Drugs' North Korea sent a large amount of illegal drugs to its embassy in an East European country last December and ordered diplomats there to sell it for cash by early April, a diplomatic source here claims. "South Korean intelligence obtained the information from a North Korean agent who defected recently," the source said. "Similar orders were delivered to other North Korean embassies." North Korea has ordered each diplomat to raise US $300,000 to prove their loyalty and mark the birthday of nation founder Kim Il-sung on April 15. Each North...

MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities say they have arrested a Panamanian woman arriving at Barcelona airport with 1.38 kilograms (3 pounds) of cocaine concealed in breast implants. The Interior Ministry said Wednesday that border police noticed fresh scars and blood-stained gauze on her chest as well as pale patches beneath her skin.

Thirty-seven Republican House members are challenging the two-year prison sentence being served by a U.S. Border Patrol agent for his conduct in the arrest of a drug-smuggling suspect, while a dozen other lawmakers are pressing Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to explain his role in the botched “Fast and Furious” weapons investigation. In a letter Thursday to President Obama, the 37 members — led by Rep. Duncan Hunter of California — described the prosecution of Agent Jesus E. Diaz Jr. as “unfair and excessively disproportionate” and suggested it set a “dangerous precedent” that could place other agents and the...

The U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Subcommittee plans to hear testimony Wednesday on the frightening Mexican drug cartels who are attempting to establish strong footholds throughout the United States. GOP presidential candidates are speaking out against the drug cartels and transnational organized crime gangs who use extreme violence and threats at a time when the Obama Administration released its International Organized Crime Strategy. "Make no mistake," Perry said. "What we are looking at south of the border is nothing less than a war waged by these narco-terrorists. They are spreading violence in American cities and selling poison to our...

Aerial surveillance missions such as this one are part of Gov. Rick Perry's multifaceted law enforcement effort, which has operated along Texas' portion of the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border for five years. Unique to Texas, and put in place because of what Perry said was inadequate enforcement by the federal government, the operation is designed to marshal the forces of dozens of state, federal and local entities in a cooperative "boots-on-the ground" offensive in border counties. The Republican governor has repeatedly cited the law enforcement effort as a display piece in his presidential campaign, while warning that drug violence from Mexico...