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...hardly news that Afghanistan's huge opium crops supply more than 90% of the world's heroin. But now U.N. officials say Afghanistan is also the world's biggest producer of another drug - hashish. In its first attempt to calculate how much cannabis is grown in the country, the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime says in a report released in Kabul on Wednesday that Afghan farmers earned up to $94 million last year from selling 1,500 to 3,500 tons of hash - the resin extracted from cannabis crops...
According to the report, rank-and-file militiamen receive $15,000 for their role in hijacking a ship. They get much more if they bring their own weapons or a boat. But pirates who have fled Somalia for Nairobi say that figure is much inflated. Ahmad, for example, says he might get a $10,000 share but his bosses would withhold as much as half of that to pay for his expenses. "The big fish are the guys who lead us, the ones who invest in the equipment, the boat, those things," he says. "Whether we die or not, they...
...inequities are easy to see among the suspects who were arrested on piracy charges and are now being held in Kenyan prisons. They are generally illiterate young men who have no say in the operations they join and don't even know how much ransom is paid for the ships they hijack. All of the financial negotiations are conducted well above their pay grade. "These guys, you can call them ragtag people," says Nyawinda, their lawyer. "They don't have a leader as such. When I go visit them in jail, one may know Swahili more than the others. Whoever...
...Vatican official - a Spanish priest - whom I like and respect told me that as he walked down the street this week, someone shouted "Porco!" ("Pig!") at him from a passing car. Other priests say they can no longer hug children in their parishes. This is just one of the unfortunate outcomes of the sex-abuse controversy that has enveloped the Roman Catholic Church...
...abuse victims on that U.S. trip. But Benedict's leadership on the sex-abuse crisis - and beyond - now hinges on an earlier chapter in his career. In 1980, an admitted child-molester priest was transferred to the Munich archdiocese, which was then headed by Ratzinger. Though Church officials say the future Pope personally approved of his transfer to Munich for psychiatric counseling, they insist Ratzinger knew nothing of the green light for the abusive priest - who would eventually be convicted of other sex crimes - to return to his pastoral duties just weeks later. (See Father H's story: a German...