- It may be landlocked in the center of Europe, but that
doesn’t mean Austria doesn’t like to party. No, they don’t have the all-day
party reputation of the nation geographically ignorant people too often confuse
them with, Australia, but Austrians are clearly big fans of all manner of
illegal drugs and that’s why Austrian police have arrested 50 people and seized
cocaine, heroin, marijuana and amphetamines following a three-year
investigation into a suspected drug-smuggling ring. While the world at large
may not think of Vienna as the place to party in central Europe, local police
announced a collection of detainees that includes 10 suspected couriers, who
transported drugs to the city from the Netherlands, Nigeria and Cameroon, and
three organizers, extradited to Austria from the Netherlands. This was a multi-dimensional
criminal outfit, as the arrested group also included two people who confessed
to robbing a bank in Austria. The drug seizure that accompanied the arrests
should put a serious dent in Europe’s party scene for the immediate future, as
authorities say they seized 37.5 pounds of cocaine and 8.8 pounds of heroin as
well as marijuana and amphetamines worth some 100,000 euros ($104,500). They
also uncovered evidence that the ring smuggled a total of 123 pounds of heroin
and cocaine with a street value of at least 6 million euros ($6.3 million),
proving without a doubt that even landlocked central European nations know how
to have a good time and enjoy a quality high………
- A man who is occasionally cited as one of the most
punchable faces in Hollywood promises that he - or at least his current TV
character - will be “less of a dick” going forward. Benedict Cumberbatch has
spoken about the upcoming fourth season of “Sherlock,” which begins tomorrow in
both Europe and the United States, picking up where Season 3 left off, when
Sherlock Holmes was briefly exiled from the United Kingdom before returning as
a “Did you miss me?” message from Moriarty spread across the country. As part
of the promotional process for the fourth season, Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman,
Amanda Abbington and creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss discussed what lies
ahead for the show and when Cumberbatch suggested his character would be “less
of a dick,” the cast joked it should be a tagline for the series. The official
word was also that the new season would grow darker throughout, although “not
in an entirely unfunny way,” according to Gatiss. Cumberbatch added that
Holmes, “is becoming, in a very clear way, responsible for his actions. But I
think he understands that it’s a slow, slow process that began in the very
first instance when he met John [Watson].” According to Cumberbatch, his
character found the “needed missing part of the jigsaw that is him,” which was
the catalyst for a friendship that “has been a humanizing element all the way
through.” Given the persistent rumors that the new season could also be the
show’s last, fans should clearly savor the ride and enjoy this new version of
Holmes………
- Those are dwell at or below the poverty line tend to have great
empathy for those below them on the socioeconomic ladder. Tempe, Arizona artist
Alexi Devilliers is a man who admits that he makes less than $20,000 a year,
yet he’s one of the people making a concerted effort to reach out to the city’s
homeless community - when he’s not busy with his own art. He spends much of his
time in his backyard shed creating robots composed of canned foods, scrap metal
and other random parts he can find, turning discarded household items and
decorations into the money needed to help Phoenix’s Justa Center. "This is
what generates the funding to keep feeding the people for the last seven
years," Devilliers said. With the money he makes from his art, he and his
family live, but he also pays for more than 100 home-cooked meals for elderly
homeless people at the center. "[We're at] 40,000 meals and
counting," Devilliers said. "The robots pick up the cost of the food;
I cook it and I serve it." On Saturdays, Devilliers wakes up around 5 a.m.
to prepare the meals by hand and delivers them to those in need in the area
around the Justa Center, located at 1001 W. Jefferson Street. The facility is a
day resource center for seniors 55 and older who are homeless in the greater
Phoenix area and helps its clients find appropriate housing, employment and
other needed services. It runs solely on financial support from people such as
Devilliers, who also has a wife and young son to support. Helping out the
center is something of a self-sustaining cycle when it comes to his art, as the
empty cans used for the meals he makes generate additional material for new
robots………
- Does Russia do anything by the rules or do Vlad Putin and
his crew refuse to acknowledge that rules even exist in any realm? At the end
of a week in which the Obama administration announced punitive sanctions
against Russia for its involvement in hacking aimed at influencing the outcome
of the recent American presidential election, four Russian skeleton athletes
have been provisionally suspended by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton
Federation for alleged doping rule violations at the 2014 Winter Olympics in
Sochi. The federation announced in a statement that it took action after being
informed by the International Olympic Committee that investigations had been
opened into the four athletes, without naming them publicly. This all comes in
the wake of the publication earlier this month of a second report by World
Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren into Russian doping. McLaren
laid out vast state-backed cheating in Russian sports, including swapping
athletes' tainted samples for clean urine through the testing laboratory at
Sochi. There was already plenty of forensic evidence of manipulation of samples
at the 2014 Winter Games, but laying out
once more how sealed doping bottles were opened with special tools by intelligence
agents and tainted urine was replaced with clean urine to beat the drug-testing
system never hurts your case. "It has been a hard time for all of us in
sports after the publication of the McLaren Report," IBSF President Ivo
Ferriani said in the statement. "The IBSF is fully committed to ensure all
necessary steps will be taken to gain back the integrity of sport.” The odds of
this being the last time Russian athletes are suspended based on what happened
in Sochi are probably lower than the odds that Russia will operate a clean
program in all of its sports going forward……..
