Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said the cocaine lab was “first rate”
Related Stories
Honduran police have for the first time uncovered a cocaine lab in the country.
Officers found an installation full of barrels of chemicals and tools used to process the drug in a mountainous area north of the capital, Tegucigalpa.
Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said the “first rate” facility was probably being run by Mexican gangs.
The discovery could indicate that Mexican cartels, who are increasingly moving into Central America, are also making cocaine themselves.
It would also signal a shift northwards for cocaine production, traditionally dominated by Colombia.
The drugs laboratory was found on a coffee plantation in a remote area of Honduras known as Cerro Negro, about 175km (100 miles) north of the capital.
‘Resounding blow’
It is thought that it may have been run by a drugs cartel from Mexico, operating in Honduras to produce cocaine to be smuggled into the US.
Local people said they had seen helicopters land and heard people talking with a Mexican accent.
Mr Alvarez likened the facilities to the best in Colombia and called the operation a “resounding blow” to drug-trafficking in the country.
No arrests were made in the raid and no drugs were found, he added.
Although Colombia, Peru and Bolivia remain the world’s biggest producers of cocaine, Central America is an important corridor for trafficking drugs north into the United States market.
A recent US state department report said that “the geographical location, limited resources, and weak law enforcement in… areas of the Atlantic coast make Honduras vulnerable to drug trafficking organizations (DTO) operating from South America and Mexico”.
Mexican drug cartels, which control much of the estimated $13.6bn drug-trafficking trade into the US, are increasingly operating in Central America.
This has fuelled fears that the region could suffer a similar wave of gang violence that has left more than 34,000 people dead since 2006 in Mexico.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Facebook users will be able to report abuse to friends as well as site moderators.
Related Stories
Facebook users who are being bullied or abused can now report the problem to friends, as well as site moderators.
The option to contact a “trusted friend” has been added to the website’s safety centre.
Facebook said that the system was designed to help people solve online problems “face to face”.
The changes were unveiled at the White House where President Obama and his wife Michelle hosted an anti-bullying conference.
Facebook’s director of European policy, Richard Allan, said: “Often the best way of sorting offensive content is for friends to flag those things to each other.
For more serious concerns, Facebook can put users in touch with police or charities that can help them, said Mr Allan.
“In the real world you have a sense of when you need to escalate something to the right organisation.
“If someone is calling you names, it might not be appropriate to go directly to the police,” he said.
Facebook has come under fire in the past for appearing slow to respond to concerns about online safety.
The UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) waged a long-running campaign to have a “panic button” installed on the site.
Among Ceop’s concerns was that Facebook’s response centres may have insufficient staff to cope with reports from its 500 million global users.
Facebook has never revealed how many people it employs to handle complaints of bullying or abuse.
Richard Allan defended the current setup: “We are keen to always have the most efficient procedures and best people in place.
“It is not as simple as a ratio of reports to people. When we pick up a pattern of activity, we can create a system to monitor that,” he said.
As well as trusted friend reports, Facebook has also revamped its safety centre, simplifying the language and improving its guides for adults and young people.
The changes were unveiled during a White House anti-bulling conference.
Ahead of the event, President Obama and his wife Michelle recorded a video message, posted on Facebook, saying that bullying is “not something that we have to accept”.
Facebook recently teamed-up with the Samaritans to launch a reporting system for users concerned that their friends may be at risk of committing suicide.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Prince Andrew has been criticised for the company he keeps. But should public figures be held to account for their friends and acquaintances?
You’ve probably got one too. The friend you can’t take anywhere. The one who always says or does the wrong thing.
You can’t just drop them. They’re your friend, after all. But deep down, you worry that sooner or later they’re going to get you into trouble.
To many the issue will be a familiar one. But it takes on an extra level of significance when you’re the Duke of York and the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment.
Prince Andrew has faced a storm criticism over his friendship with US tycoon Jeffrey Epstein, who was jailed for sex offences. He has also been attacked for lunching at Buckingham Palace with a member of the former Tunisian regime and accused in Parliament of taking a holiday with a Libyan gun-smuggler.
His private secretary insists any suggestions of impropriety are “without foundation”.
The philosophy of friendship
Mark Vernon, philosopher and author of The Meaning of Friendships
In a democracy you run everything fairly – one person, one vote.
But to have a friend is to treat someone in a special way.
It’s a good thing to treat everyone in the same way. But it’s also a good thing to have friends who are special to you.
We use very ugly words to describe this conflict – nepotism and corruption.
But very often there isn’t the clear boundary between public and private that we like to imagine.
But the prince is one of a slew of public figures to have his choice of acquaintances held up to public scrutiny.
The social circles of leading politicians fell under the spotlight in 2008 when both then-shadow chancellor George Osborne and Lord Mandelson, at the time the EU’s trade chief, denied any impropriety when it emerged they had enjoyed the hospitality of Russian millionaire on his yacht.
Cherie Blair, the then-prime minister’s wife, was attacked for her closeness to the fitness guru Carole Caplin – especially after it emerged that Ms Caplin had introduced the Blairs to Peter Foster, a convicted con-man who helped the couple buy two flats. The couple insisted they knew nothing of his criminal record.
It’s not just within UK politics that friendships are so sensitive. In his 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama’s closeness to Rev Jeremiah Wright threatened to derail the former’s bid for the presidency after footage emerged of racially inflammatory sermons delivered by the pastor.
President Obama has also come under fire for his associations with convicted fraudster Tony Rezko and William Ayers, a member of the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground, which carried out a domestic bombing campaign.
His predecessor-but-one Bill Clinton was also widely condemned over his decision in 2001 to pardon the fugitive financier, Marc Rich, whose wife had donated money to Mr Clinton’s presidential library.
All of the above examples suggest a friendship can easily become a handicap for a public figure. Even where there is nothing dubious in the friend’s history, an unrevealed business can throw up the mirage of a conflict of interest.
“There’s always a conflict between behaving decently in your private capacity and properly in your public capacity”
Matthew Parris Times columnist and former Conservative MP
But the Times columnist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris wonders whether it is really realistic to expect public figures to fully vet the backgrounds of their acquaintances before accepting them as friends.
He fears that such expectations will push an increasingly risk-averse political class – already drawn from a narrow social stratum – even deeper into insulation from the real world, with all its flaws, failings and foibles.
“Politicians can’t win,” he says. “If they’re very callous and drop any friends who might embarrass them, we’ll criticise them for being cold and calculating. But if they don’t, we go on about how they’ve committed a gaffe.
“There’s always a conflict between behaving decently in your private capacity and properly in your public capacity.
“To behave appropriately as a public person will very often mean you behaving inappropriately as a private person. I’m inclined to be sympathetic to those who put their private obligations first.”
And it’s not just the obvious public figures whose lives are under scrutiny – royals, politicians, judges, and clergy. Everyone from headteachers to sport stars can find themselves in trouble for an inappropriate friendship, or a suspected conflict of interest.
When private collides with public, however, there will always be those who believe a public figure’s primary responsibility must always be to the latter.
Why politics and friendship don’t mix
Oona King, Labour peer and former MP
It’s not just difficult to balance a normal social life with a political career, it’s almost impossible.
You inevitably become more guarded, and stick closer to the politicos who “understand”. Slowly you lose your “normal” friends – the ones who keep you normal.
In terms of striking a balance between duty to the public and duty to your friends, the public virtually always come first.
The public probably get the politicians they deserve, because our system forces politicians to “do” politics day and night. It forces them to give up friends and family.
The result is a country run by people who don’t put family first, and forget the meaning of friendship. I’d like to see the system change.
Kevin Maguire, political commentator and associate editor of the Daily Mirror, warns that as far as MPs are concerned, it is extremely difficult to determine where friendship ends and nepotism begins.
For this reason, he says, politicians’ networks and circles need to be accountable.
“You talk to the most humble backbencher and they tell you that they get invited to all these fantastic, lavish receptions – it’s not because they’re wonderful people, it’s because they’ve got influence,” he says.
“If they’re just hanging out with fabulously wealthy people it means they’re only being exposed to that section of society’s point of view.
“I don’t mind them being friends with teachers or local government workers or people who do real jobs. But we could do with fewer old Etonians and bankers having influence over our politics.”
However high their expectations of their leaders’ social activities, the general public may well be gaining a first-hand understanding of what it is like to be under scrutiny.
Psychotherapist Lucy Beresford says having one’s friendships dissected in public is traumatic enough for the famous and powerful.
But she warns that, in an age where all our connections are itemised and accessible to all on social networking sites, who we choose to be friends with puts us in the firing line as never before.
“With things like Facebook, we think that we’re in control of the information that gets put out there,” she warns.
“But then someone comes along and says: ‘You’re a friend a Joe Bloggs, he’s a bad person – therefore you’re a bad person too.’
“In extreme cases it could be quite destabilising. But on the other hand, it could be quite positive if it acts as a wake-up call.”
Your loyalties to that embarrassing friend of yours may be tested further than you expected.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Blue wrote the song just before Christmas last year 
Report this comment
