Charlie Sheen ‘Bombarded With Rehab Offers’ | Showbiz Spy - celebrity news, rumors & gossip: "CHARLIE Sheen didn’t enter a rehab facility until Saturday — because he needed to decide which one to go to.
The actor’s manager, Mark Burg, says he was bombarded with offers of help to get clean — and only made his decision yesterday.
“[He] is currently in rehab,” Burk told people magazine. “He was bombarded by every rehab in the country looking for his wallet and publicity, and he has been deciding where to go. With the help of friends and family, he finally agreed to go and went into rehab on Saturday.
“Charlie knows he has work to do and he is looking forward to regaining his sobriety.
“Charlie hopes to be back at work in the near future but there is no time frame. Regaining his sobriety is what is most important.”"
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Sheen gives $30,000 cheque to porn star: "Actor Charlie Sheen 
reportedly wrote a $30,000 cheque to a porn star in the middle of his 36-hour party following which he was admitted to the hospital.
According to the sources, Sheen took out his cheque book during a conversation with a porn star in which he asked her to join the 'porn family' he wants to create, reports tmz.com.
It has previously been reported that Sheen was throwing money around like crazy during the binge - offering to spend $1 million to rent out a neighbour's mansion for four months."
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Golden Voice Ted Williams checks out of rehab - before completing treatment for addiction | Mail Online: "homeless addict given a second chance at a career as a voiceover artist has checked out of a drug rehabilitation centre after just two weeks.
But there are now fears that Ted Williams could be attempting to kick-start his high-profile, high pressure career before he has kicked his addictions.
Mr Williams - nicknamed Golden Voice because of his silky delivery -"
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Allen Stanford Deemed 'Unfit' for Trial - TheStreet: "The court finds Stanford is incompetent to stand trial at this time based on his apparent impaired ability to rationally assist his attorneys in preparing his defense,' U.S. District Judge David Hittner said in his ruling in Houston. 'The court's finding that Stanford is incompetent, however, does not alter the court's finding that Stanford is a flight risk.'
Stanford's trial, which was originally scheduled to begin this week, has been postponed per Hittner's orders that Stanford, 60, be released to a private hospital, run by the U.S. prison system, to receive treatment for his addiction to anti-anxiety medication.
Hittner also ordered that Stanford be evaluated after suffering a number of injuries in a 2009 jailhouse assault. Hittner has recommended that Stanford be sent to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons medical facility for the evaluation and a competency exam."
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Middle class women twice as likely to be heavy drinkers | Mail Online: "Middle-class women are more than twice as likely to drink heavily as those on lower incomes, official figures show.
Some 43 per cent of women whose household income exceeds more than £1,000 a week drink excessively at least one night a week, compared with just 17 per cent of those whose average income is £200.
It is an even starker contrast than the overall figures for both sexes, which show that 45 per cent of high-earners drink more than the recommended daily allowance at least once a week, compared with 22 per cent of lower-earners"
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Experts say the new minimum prices on alcohol sales are not enough - Wales News - News - WalesOnline: "ALCOHOL
price measures will not break a binge-drinking culture that fuels violence and health problems, experts have said.
They have warned that Government plans to ban retailers from selling booze below the rate of the tax they pay on it will do little to curb the problems that plague Cardiff city centre at night.
One alcohol campaigner claimed supermarkets and off-licences will still be able to offer alcohol below cost price.
But crime prevention minister James Brokenshire said the shake-up would tackle the worst cases of discounting and reduce violent crime."
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Smugglers hid cigarettes from Eastern Europe to avoid £10m tax duty jailed | Mail Online: "The court heard that Peter Vyse worked alongside three members of a Southern Italian organised crime syndicate called Albino, Maurizio and Angelo Prudentino.
The Prudentinos were described as being 'at the top of the pyramid', of the smuggling network, with Vyse heading its UK arm.
Vyse travelled regularly to Greece and Romania to co-ordinate with suppliers and producers of contraband tobacco.
The cigarettes, branded with famous names such as Royal, were traced back to factories in Moldova and Ukraine, both of which border Romania.
From her base in Athens, Thurston set up three fake food importation companies, which were used to provide a cover for the shipments.
Once they had arrived in Britain, huge quantities of cigarettes were sent to a warehouse in the village of Denaby Main, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, and distributed from there.
But the smuggling organisation was smashed in a series of coordinated arrests on June 17 2008, following a secret surveillance operation by customs officials.
Mr Jory told the court the gang avoided paying £2m in duty on the five consignments seized, but said the true figure was closer to £10m because there had been at least 10 previous shipments."
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Investigation reveals true dangers of counterfeit tobacco | Glasgow and West | STV News: "Counterfeit tobacco
sold in a Scottish market has been found to contain more than 30 times the lead levels of genuine tobacco, an investigation has discovered.
High levels of toxins, including arsenic and cadmium, were also found in the products being sold by tobacco gangs.
More than half of all hand-rolled tobacco smoked in the UK is either fake or smuggled with no tax being paid, according to the makers of documentary BBC Scotland Investigates: Smoking and the Bandits.
Organised crime gangs cost British taxpayers £4bn in lost revenue a year through the illegal tobacco trade, it reports.
The programme charts how counterfeit tobacco from China is ending up in the UK, where it is sold in places such as markets and shops.
Roy Ramm, former commander of Scotland Yard, said: 'This is as international as organised crime gets. You know, the links around the world are exactly the same for this as they are for drugs trafficking, arms trafficking, people trafficking."
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BBC News - RBS sells Priory rehabilitation centres for £925m: "Royal Bank of Scotland is to sell care homes operator Priory Group, which has treated many celebrities including Lily Allen and Robbie Williams.
It is to sell the mental health and rehabilitation services group to private equity firm Advent in a deal valued at £925m ($1.48bn).
Advent had expressed an interest in purchasing the Priory last September.
RBS acquired the Priory Group when it bought ABN Amro in 2007, but it has been considered a non-core asset."
British nuclear physicist's daughter Shivaun Orton faces death for heroin haul in Malaysia | Mail Online: "Dressed in orange prison robes and handcuffed to a fellow suspect, this is the daughter of a British nuclear scientist facing the death penalty in Malaysia for drugs trafficking.
Shivaun Orton, 41, and her husband were arrested after police found £16,000 of cannabis, amphetamine, ecstasy and heroin during a raid on their home.
If found guilty, she could become the first British woman to be hanged since Ruth Ellis in 1955. But yesterday she insisted she was innocent. She said that while her Malaysian husband Abdul Harris Badileh was a womanising drug user, she had been kept as a virtual prisoner at their home 12 miles from a beach resort they own."
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Number of Scots jailed for drugs soars in ten years - The Daily Record: "umber of prisoners jailed for drug offences has soared by 74 per cent in the last decade.
A report by Scotland's Chief Statistician found 1463 crooks were sent to jail for committing a drug related crime in 2009-10.
But in 2000-01, the equivalent figure was 839.
The increase in the last 12 months alone was 10 per cent. It comes after justice minister Kenny MacAskill brought in legislation to limit jail terms of three months or less.
Although the numbers jailed for drug related crime increased, the number jailed for handling offensive weapons, crimes of dishonesty, common assault and motor vehicle offences all decreased.
The Prison Statistics Scotland 2009/10 report found Scotland's imprisonment rate per 100,000 population was 158. That is higher than the rest of the UK, as well as Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Holland and Belgium.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: 'These statistics continue the trend of recent years that, despite the fact recorded crime is at a 32-year low, more people than ever before are being locked up in Scotland."
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Fighting drugs, addiction -with classical music: "In one of the world's deadliest cities, where drug gangs murder a dozen people a day, a former heroin addict is changing lives with violins and trumpets rather than assault rifles.
Alma Rosa Gonzalez is helping poor children learn classical music and give them an outlet that might stop them falling prey to the gangsters who are terrorizing this city of about 1.5 million on the Texas border.
'Just to see a gang member bringing his child to school carrying an instrument means the kid's life has changed, he won't be the same as his father,' said Gonzalez, a social worker who started the youth orchestra program in 2005."
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"Veronica Treviño stares straight at the camera as she answers questions from an unseen interrogator. She speaks loudly, without hesitation, and with little expression.
Who does she work for? 'The Zetas [a drugs cartel]' What is her group doing in the north-eastern city of Tampico? 'Heating up the turf of the Gulf cartel [a rival trafficking gang].' What actions does that include? 'Killing taxi drivers, police officers, innocent people and children.'
The video of Treviño's confession, presumably under pressure from the Gulf cartel, was posted on the internet at the end of November.
It was followed a couple of days later by uploaded photographs of her severed head in an icebox.
Organised crime in Mexico has traditionally been an almost exclusively male world, but there is growing evidence of a rapid increase in the number of women involved with the cartels and the violence surrounding them."
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Report shows cartel arrests didn't slow drug trade :: Lifestyles :: Post-Tribune: "On a sleepy boulevard of motels and fast-food joints near the Mexican border, police stopped a car with a broken tail light. In the trunk, an officer found a trash bag containing 48 pounds of narcotics, and in the driver's pocket, scraps of paper scrawled with phone numbers.
Almost four years later, a grave Eric Holder called his first news conference as attorney general and announced where those phone numbers had led — to a sweeping investigation called Operation Xcellerator, which produced the largest-ever federal crackdown on Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, with 761 people arrested and 23 tons of narcotics seized."
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The Associated Press: Gunmen kill 4 in attack on 2 Mexico rehab centers: "Mexican police say armed commandos attacked two drug rehabilitation centers in this border city across from El Paso, Texas, killing four people and wounding five.
Municipal police spokesman Adrian Sanchez says the attacks occurred Sunday afternoon. Three were killed in one center and one was killed in another.
Gangs have killed dozens in drug rehabilitation centers in the last two years across Mexico, including nine last summer in Durango in the north and 19 in Chihuahua city, capital of the border state Ciudad Juarez is located.
Cartels run the centers in some cases to recruit addicts, leaving them open to attacks from rivals.
Warring drug cartels have turned Ciudad Juarez into on of the world's most violent cities."
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Reacting to what it called complaints from law enforcement and a surge in medical emergencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration said on Wednesday that it would ban several chemicals used to make so-called synthetic marijuana products, which resemble herbs or potpourri but mimic the effects of the drug when smoked.
So-called synthetic marijuana products are sold in smoke shops and online under names like K2.
In a notice published in the Federal Register, the agency said it would use its emergency powers to ban possession and sale of five synthetic cannaboids whose effects mirror that of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which gives marijuana its potency. Those chemicals are used to coat a variety of products which are marketed as incense, but have become popular as smokables for those seeking a legal high.
Under the action, the five cannaboids will be listed as Schedule I substances, the most restrictive category, for at least a year while the government studies whether they should be permanently banned.
The temporary action will take at least 30 days to take effect, meaning the products will not immediately be illegal. But on Wednesday, the acting agency administrator, Michele M. Leonhart, made it clear that she believes they are an imminent public safety threat.
“Makers of these harmful products mislead their customers into thinking that ‘fake pot’ is a harmless alternative to illegal drugs, but that is not the case,” she said in a statement.
The products, which began to appear in the United States in 2008, are sold in smoke shops and online under names like K2, Blue Dragon and Black Mamba Spice, and are marked with warnings saying “not intended for human consumption.” But according to the drug agency, those warnings are being ignored, leading to a variety of bad reactions, including agitation, vomiting, seizures and hallucinations.
Tony Newman, a spokesman for the Drug Policy Alliance, which seeks to liberalize the drug laws, said the ban seemed to be the wrong approach.
“The D.E.A. says that prohibiting synthetic marijuana will ‘control’ it — yet we know from history that prohibition is the complete opposite of drug control,” Mr. Newman said, adding that regulating and setting age limits would be a better approach than “relegating it to the black market.”
Fifteen states have sought to control the THC-like chemicals, the drug agency said. But the products are still easily available; one online retailer on Wednesday was advertising Blue Dragon as “perfect for someone who gets drug tested and doesn’t want to test positive.” And, on Polk Street in San Francisco a packet of three grams of K2 was bought for $25.
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is using its emergency scheduling authority to temporarily control five chemicals (JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200, CP-47,497, and cannabicyclohexanol) used to make “fake pot” products. Except as authorized by law, this action will make possessing and selling these chemicals or the products that contain them illegal in the U.S. for at least one year while the DEA and the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) further study whether these chemicals and products should be permanently controlled.
A Notice of Intent to Temporarily Control was published in the Federal Register today to alert the public to this action. After no fewer than 30 days, DEA will publish in the Federal Register a Final Rule to Temporarily Control these chemicals for at least 12 months with the possibility of a six-month extension. They will be designated as Schedule I substances, the most restrictive category, which is reserved for unsafe, highly abused substances with no medical usage.
Over the past year, smokable herbal blends marketed as being “legal” and providing a marijuana-like high, have become increasingly popular, particularly among teens and young adults. These products consist of plant material that has been coated with research chemicals that mimic THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and are sold at a variety of retail outlets, in head shops and over the Internet. These chemicals, however, have not been approved by the FDA for human consumption and there is no oversight of the manufacturing process. Brands such as “Spice,” “K2,” “Blaze,” and “Red X Dawn” are labeled as incense to mask their intended purpose.
£2.5m cocaine smugglers jailed for 14 years (From Basildon Recorder): "Colombians Fredy Paz Preciado, 30, and 37-year-old James Quinones hid on the container ship for 12 days over Christmas last year.
The ship set sail from Colombia on December 15, stopping at Rotterdam, before travelling on to Tilbury.
The pair were discovered en route to Tilbury when a crew member heard a knocking from one of the hatches leading to the ship’s hold.
The men were found below in the tiny area where they had been living – along with packages containing 50 kilos of cocaine.
In preparation for their escape from the ship once it docked at the Essex port, both men were wearing wetsuits under their clothes and had bags, mobile phones and GPS co-ordinates to get back to Rotterdam.
When they were arrested, they claimed they had stowed away to flee their homeland.
They denied any knowledge of the drugs, but forensic tests by the UK Border Agency confirmed sticky tape on packaging around the cocaine matched tape found on their bags."
Binge drinkers have a risk of heart disease twice that of people who consume the same amount of alcohol but more steadily, researchers say.
The study compared 10,000 male drinkers from "booze-bingeing" Belfast and "moderate" France over 10 years.
It concluded that downing lots of alcohol in one or two sessions is worse than drinking more regularly in a week.
Experts said the British Medical Journal work reinforced what was known but was a wake-up call for bingers.
Amy Thompson, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This reinforces what we already know - that drinking high levels of alcohol can be harmful to your heart.
"It's important to avoid binge drinking and it's better to have a small amount of alcohol regularly rather than large amounts in one go. If you do drink, it's important to keep within the recommended limits."
The official advice in the UK is that women should not regularly drink more than two to three units (about two glasses of wine or one pint of beer) a day and men should not regularly drink more than three to four units a day.
In the study, some 9% of the middle-aged men in Belfast were binge drinkers, consuming at least three pints of beer or five glasses of wine in one sitting, mostly on a weekend, compared with 0.5% of those in France.
The French men tended to drink less alcohol in each sitting but drank more regularly.
Three-quarters of the French men drank daily, compared with 12% in Belfast.
The researchers found the men who were binge drinkers had nearly twice the risk of heart attack or death from heart disease compared with regular drinkers over the 10 years of follow up.
Professor Jean Ferrières, from Toulouse University Hospital, who carried out the research, believes the irregular pattern of drinking is to blame.
Another reason for the higher risk of heart disease in Belfast, said the authors, could be that more men there tended to drink beer and spirits than wine - the opposite of what the men in France tended to drink.
Euro Weekly News | Killer drugs linked to 8 Malaga deaths | Costa del Sol | News | The Largest English Language Newspapers in Spain: "POLICE fear that a ‘bad’ batch of cocaine may be responsible for the deaths of eight people in Malaga. Tests have revealed all eight that died had consumed cocaine, and are investigating if there is a dangerous batch of the killer drug being sold in the Costa del Sol.
The victims died between October 30 and November 12, and were aged between 31 and 45.
All of them died in Malaga city, except one who was found in Torre del Mar, east of the city.
The reports from the Malaga Institute of Legal Medicine reveal that victims had taken drugs ranging from cannabis, benzodiazepine, trankimazin, to valium, among other; but they all had taken cocaine prior to their death."
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