Police in central Vietnam have seized more than half a tonne of methamphetamine in one of the largest drug busts in recent years in the communist country where synthetic drug use is on the rise.
Four people were arrested after police stormed a house in central Nghe An Province, where they found 600kg of meth, some of it stuffed in speaker boxes.
The meth shipment was “about to be loaded onto trucks ... for delivery,” said a report from Cong An Nhan Dan, the official mouthpiece of the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, after the bust on Monday.
Dozens of police swarmed a house where the drugs were being stored, occupied by an elderly couple believed to be related to one of the dealers, state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said.
Police said they were investigating the source of the meth and where it was to be shipped to.
The bust follows a weekend seizure of 30kg of drugs in southern An Giang Province, including about 18kg of meth that was stored in packages for tea and vitamin supplements.
Synthetic narcotics manufactured in the lawless “Golden Triangle” region straddling Myanmar, Laos and Thailand often find their way into Vietnam, though homegrown labs have also been reported in recent years.
The one-party state is both a hub for drug use and also a popular thoroughfare for shipments of illicit narcotics.
Opium and heroin are the drugs of choice among older users, but youngsters are increasingly turning to party drugs ,such as ecstasy, meth and ketamine, which have flooded the market.
Last year, seven young people died of suspected overdoses at an electronic music festival in Hanoi.
Vietnam boasts some of the world’s toughest drug laws, and anyone caught with more than 600g of heroin or more than 2.5kg of methamphetamine can face the death penalty.
Monday’s bust comes after two massive seizures last month in Ho Chi Minh City — one a 300kg haul of heroin, another a 300kg haul of meth — both involving Chinese nationals who were taken into custody.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS