BAJA CALIFORNIA, Mexico — Wearing a cap, a beige T-shirt, and glasses, Jose* doesn't look like an international drug smuggler. But he is. Jose, who asked not to be identified by his real name, could be any early-30s millennial, dressed down to look more like a helpful clerk in a used bookstore than someone participating
Former Olympic kayaker Nathan Baggaley has been jailed for 25 years for trying to smuggle up to $200 million AUD ($147 million USD) worth of cocaine into Australia in 2018. Two-time Olympic silver medalist Baggaley, 45, was arrested alongside his 39-year-old brother Dru after Dru and another man travelled hundreds of kilometres offshore from northern
Ed Buck, a wealthy donor to Democratic candidates, was convicted Tuesday of charges stemming from the deaths of two Black men whom he lured into his apartment and then supplied with meth during so-called “party and play” sessions as part of an apparent fetish. After an explosive federal trial that reportedly included videos and photos
Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. Painted in bland neutral tones and outfitted in IKEA basic, the modest office space that opened last week in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, is almost self-consciously boring. Curious visitors might even mistake it for a dentist’s office. That’s the idea. It’s a
Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. Before Richard Wershe Jr. was dubbed “White Boy Rick” by the press and known as a notorious drug dealer, he was a teenager living in Detroit’s East Side and working as the youngest known FBI informant in U.S. history. But now, the
Every Thursday since last September, some local grunge-beatnik revivalists have organized an outdoor open mic near my friend Sonya’s apartment. We’ve tried to go every week, so, naturally, we’ve only been like five times. For a while, we were just too “busy.” Sonya was finishing a social work master’s, and for about a year, I’d
CHIHUAHUA, Mexico — For Benito, a 28-year-old Raramuri, it was almost fated. A couple of weeks before he started training to win the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon, a friend proposed an easier goal: to run only 20 miles carrying a “mochila,” a backpack full of weed or poppy—for 35,000 pesos (US $2,000). The marathon prize
CHIHUAHUA, Mexico — For Benito, a 28-year-old Raramuri, it was almost fated. A couple of weeks before he started training to win the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon, a friend proposed an easier goal: to run only 20 miles carrying a “mochila,” a backpack full of weed or poppy—for 35,000 pesos (US $2,000). The marathon prize
Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. When wildfire threatens the heart of California’s weed-growing “Emerald Triangle,” local grower Robert Steffano fires up “The Wookie.” That’s not some new strain of cannabis. The Wookie is a 1990 BMY-Harsco Military M923A2 cargo truck that weighs more than 21,000 pounds. Steffano bought
Salmon frantically jumping around on a fish farm in Germany may have been on cocaine, according to a report released by German environmental officials. Officials from the State Environmental Agency of North Rhine-Westphalia (also known as Lanuv) noticed the strange and erratic behavior from the Atlantic Salmon in June of 2020 while overseeing a species