DEA

Takeshi Ebisawa, a purported leader in Japan’s Yakuza crime syndicate, was charged on Wednesday with trying to sell undercover DEA agents nuclear materials that he believed would eventually make their way to Iran. Why was it the DEA who nabbed Ebisawa? The Yakuza leader first tried to sell them drugs and surface-to-air missiles.What Drew Noomi Rapace to Constellation?The news comes from the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who alleges Ebisawa started sending photos of “rocky substances” along…

A group of a dozen U.S. attorneys general, led by Colorado’s Phil Weiser, are calling on the Drug Enforcement Administration to reschedule cannabis. In a letter sent to the DEA on Friday, the attorneys general said they support the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ recommendation to reschedule cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, citing public safety and advocating for legal businesses. Their pleas echo Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who in December voiced support for a federal rescheduling. Attorneys general…

Donald Trump continued his weekend stump, following-up his appearance in Durham, New Hampshire, on Saturday with another Commit to Caucus rally in Reno, Nevada, at Reno-Sparks Convention on Sunday. The Nevada Republican Party will be hosting a caucus on Feb. 8, which the former president referenced several times during his speech, asking everyone in attendance to make sure they turn out and bring their friends. While his speeches have become rote to anyone watching (a recitation of the song “The Snake,” a metaphor…

Federal investigators from five different agencies have formed a new task force to try and catch criminals using cryptocurrencies and the Dark Web to carry out illegal activity. The new Avengers-style crossover team includes agents from the Department of Homeland Security, federal prosecutors, the IRS’ Criminal Investigation Unit, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. They’re calling themselves the “Darknet Marketplace and Digital Currency Crimes Task Force.” They’re restricting their activities to Arizona for now.Asus…

Quantifying urban resilience in Tirana: power law distributions, self-organizing cities and sustainable population dynamicsPhoto by Michael Silkesjöö on UnsplashHello and welcome!Set-up and IntroI have been thinking about different issues in urban planning for quite a while, and one main question that has piqued my interest is: “what makes a city resilient?” Why do some cities manage to withstand and overcome different challenges whereas others struggle with them a lot more? Or why are there hyperlocal differences (e.g.…

Apple’s tracking device has been criticised due to stalking concerns by several users. At the same time, Apple AirTag has proved to be helpful for multiple users to find lost things -- from wallets to cars. One such incident may be a use case scenario showing that the government agencies may use Apple AirTag to uncover criminality. The popular tracking device has reportedly helped the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). According to a report by Forbes, the DEA recently used an AirTag to track the movements of a…

A new report says that the DEA used an AirTag for surveillance in anti-drug operations last year, in what is believed to be the first instance of a federal agency using the tracker in such a manner.According to Forbes (opens in new tab), border agents intercepted two packages from Shanghai, China, in May of 2022, which were found to contain a pill press that is used to turn powders into tablets. "Believing that they were destined for an illegal narcotics manufacturer", the DEA stepped in, and rather than swipe the goods,…

CAMARILLO —  Officials at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and State Department have known for more than three years that some pharmacies in Mexico are selling counterfeit medications laced with illicit fentanyl — and that American tourists are overdosing and dying from them.A California medical examiner first alerted federal authorities in the spring of 2019, when 29-year-old Brennan Harrell died of a fentanyl overdose after he and a friend bought pills at a drug store in Cabo San Lucas.Afterward, his family…

Analyzing streets’ names in Tirana, Albania using data sciencePhoto by Mario Beqollari on UnsplashHello!This is part two of my story on street names in Tirana (you can find part 1 here: Hidden Patterns in Street Names: a Data Science Story ). In the first part, we looked into overall gender distributions and how they changed based on neighborhood and road type. For this follow-up post, I will be focusing on occupations and the historical period these figures lived in. Let’s get started!The Data and ToolsAs with the first…

Photo by Alexandr Bormotin on UnsplashHello!I have been spending some time recently compiling datasets and reading up on research on my home country of Albania, attempting to understand it from a data-driven lens. In addition to my own anecdotal experiences, I wanted some systematic method of analysing the country’s social, political and lived contexts. One aspect of Albania that recently piqued my curiosity were street names and their patterns. Looking online, I could find no pre-existing dataset that looked at how the…