Interview with Kirk Dawes, the ex-cop who mediates between Birmingham gangs. Good to know that mediation is an option. Worrying to know that government funding is under threat. Leads to me wondering whether we need mediators to work between governments and “international terrorist groups”?? Job spec anyone?

Fortune article courtesy of CNN on Putin and his St. Petersburg associates. Basically the article grudgingly admits that Yeltsin and his mates were an economic disaster and Putin’s boys have improved things. Now, however, their nationalism may start to scare off further investment. They have cleaned out the oligarchs, but the oligarchs were in bed … HOW PUTIN AND HIS EX-KGB PALS TOOK OVER THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY

Big Brothel: a Survey of the Off-street Sex Industry, commissioned by the Poppy Project. Lots of statistics. Depressing reading.

An unpleasant little story. Allegations that a doctor was killed after operating on a Mafia Don on the run.

Not sure that this is organised crime or terrorism yet, but it’s distinctly problematic! A harbinger of things to come and a new phase in the development of Latin American conflict? Who is funding what here?

Short article from Moscow Times that I suspect has mammoth implications. Investigative Committee of Prosecutor’s Office in Russia may move to Ministry of Justice and absorb investigative branch of Ministry of Interior. Suppose this is someone flying a kite. But watch this space.

Vicious turf war sparks civil challenge. Where’s Yul Brinner and the boys when you need them? Police figures for number of mobsters given. No-one expects much to change, since the police have no criminal law basis to smash the gangs.

Sunday Times journalists posed as lobbyists. What then happened will eventually reach a court somewhere or other.

Unfortunately, we only have the newspapers to rely on, but the trial seemed to me one of a series in which the charges were an exaggeration of the evidence. But I suspect there’s going to be a retrial, because no government agency is going to be able to accept that the ban on liquids etc … “ASTONISHMENT” AT TERROR VERDICTS

UNODC Report that synthetic drugs like ecstasy and amphetamines on the rise in East and South East Asia and the Middle East. Full text at: http://www.unodc.org/documents/scientific/ATS/Global-ATS-Assessment-2008-Web.pdf