Author: Darren Mike Watkins

Over 585 kilograms (about 1,290 pounds) of cocaine was seized in Greece’s northern port city of Thessaloniki, local police announced on Friday. In one of the largest seizures of the drug on Greek soil, Thessaloniki police chief George Papadopoulos said in a news conference that five people, including four foreigners, were arrested. The operation was conducted in cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), according to Papadopoulos. He added that a major trafficker of drugs from Latin America to Greece and wider Europe, an unnamed 50-year-old man, was among those arrested. Source : aa

The water came in a rush – tearing through planted rows of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower before crashing into the tractors and farm equipment. Within hours, much of María Inés Catalán’s 41-acre (17-hectare) organic farm in Hollister, California, had disappeared under several feet of water. She had escaped just in time, as the flood waters gurgled into her trailer home. Now, three months after a series of storms, Catalán and her family are still counting their losses. Their dog, Flor, didn’t make it, nor did the bees that Catalán had been tending for two years. The farm’s entire spring harvest –…

Resolving Serbia-Kosovo disputes has become more important for the EU as the war in Ukraine rages It is a fact that the situation in the Western Balkans, due to nationalist tendencies and the intervention of foreign powers, recently carried serious risks of a military flare-up, especially between Serbia and Kosovo. The EU, aware of the danger it has to face together with the war in Ukraine and a new military flare-up in the Balkans, decided to act before “the fire starts”, bringing Serbia and Kosovo to the dialogue table, with very good results, after achieving the two of them to…

(9/3 – 50) Kazakhstan is gearing up for snap elections of the lower house of parliament on March 19, and there is a sense of anticipation in the air. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who came to power in 2019, called for snap elections in the wake of the deadly street protests in January 2022. The elections are part of the president’s ambitious reform agenda, Jana Kazakhstan (New Kazakhstan), which aims to usher in a new era of political liberalization. The parliamentary elections are stage two of Tokayev’s program, following his re-election winning 80 percent of the votes last November. The coming…

last contacted his family in October 2022. At that time, he had already been serving a sentence in Russia for a year and a half on charges of drug trafficking. In 2019, he, like hundreds of young Tajiks, left to work in Moscow. Zulfikor was going to earn money, return to Tajikistan and start a family. But then there was a trial and a sentence of 6 years in prison. One of his relatives told CABAR.asia that during the first year and a half of his imprisonment, Zulfikor talked to his family on the phone every month. “He always said that he should…

At the end of last week, specialists from the National Research Institute for the Development of Communications in Moscow presented a “friendship rating” with 14 post-Soviet countries in Russia. In the rating of the institute, countries were evaluated according to 68 indicators: foreign policy, economic, media communications, communications in education, science, culture, youth relations, religious dialogue, and others.On a 100-point scale, Belarus (88.4 points) is recognized as the closest country to Russia. The second place was taken by Kyrgyzstan with 60.6 points. Uzbekistan, scoring 59.3 points, took third place in the ranking of “the closest and friendliest” countries to Russia.According to the results of…

Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes of Ward 3 has recommended that violent criminal cases involving felons with guns be referred to the United States Attorney’s Office for federal prosecution. Those cases are currently being handled locally. Stokes said in a Tuesday council meeting not long after speaking with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the council should take a broad approach. “I feel they want to help the city with the crime issues,” Stokes said. “The constant issue that we run into is our police is significantly understaffed, which leads to what some consider as…