cash spot-checks would be carried out on a “very regular” basis at the airport to snare criminals.

POLICE today carried out a search operation at Edinburgh Airport with sniffer dogs deployed to track down criminals smuggling cash abroad. The operation by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) saw specially trained dogs check passengers in the airport’s departure area as they prepared to take flights from 6am today. The crackdown was mounted in a bid to detect money being taken out of Scotland to avoid tax, or to be hidden in foreign bank accounts. Around...

massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison in Honduras, killing more than 350 inmates, many of them trapped and screaming inside their cells.

A massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison in Honduras, killing more than 350 inmates, many of them trapped and screaming inside their cells. It was one of the world's worst prison fires and was apparently started by one of the inmates late on Tuesday night at the jail in Comayagua, about 75 km (45 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa. By the end of it, 359 people were dead, said Danelia Ferrera, a senior official at the attorney...

The Doyle brothers spent time together in Spain, where Barry was inducted into the company of the Dublin and Limerick thugs living it large on the Costa.

PEOPLE WHO knew Barry Doyle say he had it all. He was a good- looking young man who excelled at sport, a good student who was skilled with his hands when he chose to put them to good use. He was from Portland Row on the deprived mean streets of Dublin’s north inner city, and was educated just a few hundred yards from his home, at O’Connell’s CBS on North Richmond Street. As a student he played Gaelic football and was regarded as a hugely...

drug gang threatened to kill an officer per day

 2,000 police are hunkering down in hotels in Mexico's most violent city of Ciudad Juarez after a drug gang threatened to kill an officer per day if their chief refused to resign. Eleven police officers, including four commanders, have already been killed in the city across from El Paso, Texas, since the start of the year. The city's mayor this week ordered police to use several local hotels as temporary barracks to protect themselves...

NYC authorities hunt for leader of Folk Nation gang blamed for bloodshed

 It’s one of the more colorful street gang names around: Six Tre Outlaw Gangsta Disciples Folk Nation — or Folk Nation, for short. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn allege that a particularly violent faction of the gang was behind at least four murders, three attempted murders and other mayhem that harmed innocent bystanders and terrorized the Ebbets Field Apartments housing complex, located where the storied ballpark once stood. 0...

Amy Winehouse coroner 'not qualified'

 The family of singer Amy Winehouse have said they are "taking advice" following news that the coroner who oversaw her inquest has resigned. Camden Council has confirmed that Suzanne Greenaway had stood down because she had not been a lawyer in the UK for the required five years. The council said she had been appointed "in error" by her husband Andrew Reid, the coroner for inner north London. Ms Greenaway ruled that Winehouse, 27,...

The great Asian gold theft crisis

 Two small faces pull the curtain back in a side room and peer round to see who is at the door. After they run back inside, their mother, Mrs Rashid, unlocks the front door. Five weeks ago, she came home one evening to find the door ajar. The downstairs floor of her house was relatively untouched but upstairs the bedrooms had been ransacked – drawers opened, wardrobes emptied, clothes and belongings scattered everywhere. "It was such...