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Vietnam seizes 1.4 tons of ketamine as police bust country’s biggest synthetic drug factory

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Police in Vietnam busted the country’s biggest synthetic drug factory, seizing 1.4 tons of ketamine in the coastal tourist city of Nha Trang, the government said.

A six-month operation to uncover the drug ring culminated last Saturday when 200 officers raided three linked facilities in the southern city and arrested 11 people, including a Taiwanese national who was the alleged mastermind.

“This is the largest synthetic drug manufacturing facility ever dismantled in Vietnam,” said Nguyen Van Vien, director of the department of drug-related crime investigation, according to a statement published on the government’s official news portal on Wednesday.

It featured “an exceptionally large-scale, modern production line, with advanced technology”, he said.

Among those arrested were four Vietnamese nationals, four Chinese citizens and three Taiwanese, including the 51-year-old alleged ringleader Chang Chun Ming, who police had monitored since his entry into Vietnam last August with a large shipment of glass tubes, the news portal said.

Chang rented a 1,300-square metre (14,000 square feet) plot of land in November in a remote area of Nha Trang, a city popular with Chinese tourists, and allegedly recruited among others two fellow Taiwanese nationals with expertise in drug manufacturing.

Activities were mainly conducted at night and the semi-finished product was later moved to another facility for purification.

The drugs produced had extremely high purity but none had yet been distributed or sold in Vietnam or abroad, the government statement cited police as saying.

A Vietnamese court sentenced 27 people to death in December after finding them guilty of trafficking more than 600 kilograms (1,320 pounds) of narcotics including heroin, ketamine and methamphetamine.

Communist Vietnam has some of the toughest drug laws in the world and courts routinely hand out death sentences for drug convictions.

Anyone caught with more than 600 grams (21 ounces) of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine can face the death penalty.

Vietnam is close to the “Golden Triangle” drug-producing region where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet, with Vietnamese police saying business hub Ho Chi Minh City in particular is increasingly becoming a hub for traffickers as transport infrastructure has improved in recent years.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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Trump reportedly told members of his Cabinet that Elon Musk will pull back from DOGE ‘soon’

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  • President Donald Trump told the Cabinet that world’s richest man Elon Musk will leave his administration post “soon,” specifically within the coming weeks, according to a Politico report. Musk’s involvement in the government has caused public sentiment around his company’s to deteriorate; a departure from the executive branch would allow him to return to his businesses. The White House publicly rejected the reports, calling the news “fake.” 

President Donald Trump has alerted those in his inner circle, including some members of the Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping away from his role as the figure-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) within weeks, according to a report by Politico.

While Trump emphasized that he was pleased with Musk and the efforts of DOGE, both have reportedly mutually decided that it was time for Musk to transition into a supporting role in Washington so he can return to his businesses, according to three anonymous Trump insiders. 

“I think he’s been amazing, but I also think he’s got a big company to run…And at some point he’s going to be going back. He wants to,” Trump told reporters Monday.

Musk, categorized as a special government employee (SGE), has been busy slashing federal spending and is slated to end his stint in the White House in late May, when he reaches the 130-day SGE working caps. The report comes more than a month after a senior political advisor close to Trump told Politico that Musk was “here to stay,” and would exceed his 130-day timeline. 

One senior administration official told Politico it’s likely that Musk will hold an informal advisory position and continue to make occasional appearances at the White House. Another said in the same report anyone who believes Musk will leave Trump’s eye is “fooling themselves.”

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an X post Wednesday the Politico report was “garbage,” and the two have agreed that Musk will leave the White House as a special government employee when he completes his work with DOGE.

Additionally, White House spokesman Harrison Fields told Fortune the report is “fake news.”

“This is exactly why President Trump and DOGE have terminated millions of dollars in wasteful, government contracts to so-called news organizations that have diminished their credibility with the American people,” Field said, referencing Politico’s ties to USAID budget cuts.

Musk has sparked frustration among those close to and within the Trump administration who view the world’s richest man as a political liability. Most notably, Musk publicly backed and bankrolled a conservative judge who lost a bid for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by a wide margin Tuesday, indicating public sentiment around the billionaire. 

Last week, Trump began paving the way for Musk’s exit from Washington, telling Cabinet members Musk would be beginning his transition out of the executive branch, according to an insider who was not in the meeting, but briefed on what was said.

Throughout Musk’s political endeavors, his businesses have taken a toll, specifically Tesla. Last month, Musk publicly admitted that he was running his businesses with “great difficulty,” while juggling his federal duties. 

After the Politico report came out, however, the EV maker’s stock jumped, signaling that Musk could turn his focus back to Tesla after the company endured a tough stretch.

Tesla has been the chief victim of Musk’s political activism, and while his departure from DOGE likely won’t do much to boost demand in Europe, it should help put a floor under demand in the U.S.

Tesla stock has dropped more than 5% over the past month, and plunged more than 31% year-over-year. Additionally, shares fell 36% in the first quarter, its largest quarterly slip since 2022.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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DOGE could worsen America’s child care crisis with cuts to programs: ‘You could almost feel the wave of panic’

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Some free measles vaccine clinics in Texas are closing due to federal funding cuts

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  • Texas healthcare officials are cancelling 50 planned vaccination clinics as measles spreads throughout the state. The decision comes as the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services have cut funding, which was originally allocated to communities during the pandemic.

Cuts to federal funding have forced healthcare officials in Texas to shutter 50 planned vaccination clinics in Dallas, one the state’s most populated areas, as a measles outbreak continues to grow across the state.

Many of those clinics had been planned for areas where vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella were low. The shots would have been freely offered to families.

The decision follows $11.4 billion in funding cuts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. That money, originally, was allocated to community health departments during the pandemic. Last week, however, HHS said it would “no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

While COVID is not as big of a concern these days, Texas has 422 confirmed cases of measles at the moment. While none are in Dallas, health officials are trying to protect that city, given how fast the disease can spread.

Due to the cuts, 11 full-time and 10 part-time staffers at the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department have been let go, which officials say could impact their ability to fight the spread of the disease. The majority of those workers either gave vaccines or were epidemiologists and lab staff involved with measles surveillance and prevention.

(Clinics in West Texas, where many of the cases are, will continue for now.)

The cuts come a month after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic and the nation’s top health official, said his agency would continue to fund Texas’ immunization program and that ending the outbreak was a “top priority” for him and his team.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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