Oh for the 80’s again: Cocaine production is at its highest level on record, with demand rebounding post-pandemic and new trafficking hubs emerging, a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found. The U.N.’s Global Report on Cocaine 2023 says new hubs for trafficking in the multibillion-dollar industry have emerged in West and Central Africa in the last two years. New improvements and innovations in cultivation of the coca bush and conversion from coca plant to cocaine have also helped production boom — rising by 35% between 2021 and 2022 to record levels. That’s great, but I couldn’t find an 8-ball if my life depended on it.
Sad, but good, news: The remains of a United States Air Force pilot have been identified almost 80 years after he helped save the lives of seven airmen during World War II, officials announced this week. Lt. William B. Montgomery, a 24-year-old from Ford City, Pennsylvania, died in the summer of 1944, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense that focuses specifically on recovering missing American military personnel. DPAA confirmed that Montgomery was accounted for in January, nearly eight decades after investigators declared his body non-recoverable while conducting land surveys in the years that followed the war. Welcome home Brother, Welcome Home.
Don’t need no stinkin’ legislature: On Tuesday, Uncle Joe announced an “executive order” with the aim of increasing background checks and “reducing gun violence”. Gun vendors like pawn shops and weapons stores are already required to run background checks. So another “law” to enforce all the other laws we already have. Here in Hawaii, the governor issues “Emergency Proclamations”. (Yes, it’s still an emergency). Just another way to get around the people and their “representatives” and do whatever they want without following that pesky old Constitution thingy.
Homeland “security”: Connecticut State Police are “assisting” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in a raid in Tolland Thursday morning. The raid is underway at Electric Blue Cafe, an adult club on Route 195, right off Interstate 84. So, making the country safe from strippers?
Real life: Indian actor Aman Dhaliwal was held hostage and attacked by a man holding a tomahawk (axe) at a gym in California on Thursday, a video of which has gone viral on social media. The video shows the attacker, in a blue hoodie, clutching the arm of the actor – the tomahawk in the same hand – shouting out loudly for water. As the attacker turns his attention away from Mr Dhaliwal, the 6-foot-tall actor seizes the moment and tackles the man to the ground, the video shows. Unlike his movies, the Hindi actor did not break into a song and dance after the action sequence.
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