Drug trade damaging Central America’s forests, researchers say
Bogota, ColombiaThomson Reuters Foundation Drug trafficking and organised crime are fuelling deforestation in protected tropical forests and national parks across Central America, causing substantial economic losses, researchers said on Tuesday. Traffickers are cutting down trees to build roads and airstrips to transport cocaine and are encroaching ever further into more remote forest areas to evade […]
Asia-Pacific meth drug trade worth up to $US61 billion, UN says
Bangkok, ThailandReuters Transnational crime groups are trafficking vast quantities of methamphetamine made in South-East Asia, the United Nations said on Thursday, putting the value of the Asia-Pacific market for the drug between $US30.3 billion and $US61.4 billion. The explosion in the meth trade, from an estimated $US15 billion in 2013, comes as powerful syndicates exploit […]
Drug cartels’ ties to politics in spotlight as Guatemala votes
Nueva Concepcion, GuatemalaReuters The mayor of Nueva Concepcion, a town on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, stands accused by prosecutors of drug trafficking and money laundering for Mexican cartels that use the coastal route to transport cocaine to the US. Yet Otoniel Lima, who rides around his poor municipality of 130,000 people in an armored […]
ESSAY: RISING SUICIDES IN MEXICO EXPOSE MENTAL HEALTH TOLL OF LIVING WITH EXTREME, CHRONIC VIOLENCE
CECILIA FARFÁN-MÉNDEZ, a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego, says while violence is once again rising in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, even when it was declining, the number of suicides was on the rise…
Argentinian priest transferred due to drug traffickers’ threats
World Watch Monitor An Argentinian priest has been transferred from his parish due to repeated threats from drug traffickers, reports Agenzia Fides. His bishop, Fernando Carlos Maletti, made the decision to transfer Father Eduardo Farrell due to the continued threat of violence in the Sagrado Corazon parish of Merlo-Morena diocese, 40 kilometres west of Buenos Aires. […]