Excellent Washington Post piece on how al Qaeda bypasses “the global financial dragnet”.

Jason Burke has written a background piece for the Guardian, spelling out just how complex the picture is in Afghanistan, including “criminal gangs” as well as insurgents. A thoughtful piece of writing.

Bloke defrauded the NHS by inventing people he had cured of smoking! £45 per “success”! Involved the Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trust. Ah entrepeneurship!

They’re not mad, they’re not bad, they’re not particularly religious and they arent demographically identifiable either. There is no profile. The red tops, surprise surprise, are wrong. Guardian article, summarising report. keep an eye open for the full text.

Giuseppe Coluccio, suspected ‘Ndragheta drug trafficker now back in Italian jail. Few other details in this piece.

What on earth is a graft czar? Ah. The head of anti-corruption who fled the country after exposing the Anglo-Leasing scandal which involved several ministers [allegedly]. We will hear more from John Githongo now he has returned to Kenya under a new government.

Report from the American Centre for Progress [ http://www.americanprogress.org/] working with the Centre for Democracy and Technology [http://www.cdt.org/]. Few people being prosecuted for online fraud. Paedophilia a bigger priority.

Cocaine and ecstasy up, cannabis down and heroin and crack stable with user population ageing. Department of Health resarch with comments from Drugscope and Transform. Cocaine will probably come down if there are job losses in the City as the “recession” bites: that’s my prediction, not the report’s!

The problem’s in the headline. Its a tool for insurance companies and estate agents. There isn’t actually very much you can do about it yourself. It will raise fear of crime and is unlikely to prevent crime…But we shall see if anything changes. Truth is, there arent all that many resources available to shuffle around. … HOW SAFE IS YOUR AREA? MET LAUNCH ELECTRONIC CRIME MAPPING TRIAL

Latest spam/417 email purports to be from Trading Standards Central offering “prizes”.