German Politician Calls for Ban on Greta Thunberg Over Pro-Palestinian Protest Involvement

[Jonathan Fairfield]

Myanmar police seize over 26 million Methamphetamine tablets

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Police in Myanmar's largest city said Tuesday that they've seized more than 26 million stimulant tablets with a street value of over $100 million, in what appears to be the country's biggest such seizure ever.

Counter-narcotics police officer Myint Aung said officers seized 26.7 million stimulant tablets on Sunday after an inspection of a parked vehicle in Yangon's northern suburbs. The pills, identified by police as amphetamine hydrochloride, were packed in 89 bags, he told The Associated Press.

Myanmar is also a major source of methamphetamine, a related stimulant, much of which is trafficked to neighboring Thailand, where abuse of the drug is rampant.

Police said stimulant pills are worth about 5,000 kyat ($4) apiece, so the total street value of the haul would be 133.5 million kyat ($107 million).

Myanmar, also known as Burma, is the world's second largest producer of heroin after Afghanistan and has been infamous for decades for drug production in the Golden Triangle area, where its eastern border meets with northern Thailand and western Laos.

-- (c) Associated Press 2015-07-28

[Jonathan Fairfield]

$110m in Methamphetamines Seized in Rangoon, Tachileik

By LAWI WENG / THE IRRAWADDY

RANGOON — Burmese authorities reportedly seized more than $110 million worth of methamphetamine tablets over the weekend in two separate drug busts near the Thai-Burma border and in the commercial capital Rangoon.

The larger of the two hauls came on Sunday in Rangoon’s Mingaladon Township, where authorities became suspicious of a small abandoned shipping truck and searched the vehicle, finding it packed with nearly 27 billion methamphetamine tablets worth an estimated 133 billion kyats (US$110 million), according to state-run daily The Mirror.

Deputy police chief Khin Maung Thein from the Myanmar Police Force’s anti-narcotics unit confirmed the massive seizure, but declined to say whether any suspects had been detained in connection with the drug bust.

“It is too early to say who has been detained,” he told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday. “If we make information about this available to the public, all those traffickers [still at large] will escape to the border. We will make information about this [available to the] public later.”

Read more: http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/110m-in-methamphetamines-seized-in-rangoon-tachileik.html

[Tchooptip]

Twenty six million methamphetamine tablets ... It will not be easy to convince the judge it was for personal use.