Cocaine

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Researchers at San Diego's Scripps Research Institute have developed what they say could be the first effective treatment for cocaine overdoses. Their technique, which uses synthetically produced antibodies to bind cocaine and remove it from circulation, has so far been tried only in mice, but the team hopes to start human trials soon -- if they can produce enough of the antibodies in an economically viable manner. Immunologists Jennifer B. Treweek and Kim D. Janda of Scripps have in the past been working on so-called active vaccine against cocaine and nicotine.

Authorities said a two-month-old girl discovered dead in a Koreatown apartment on Saturday may have been addicted to cocaine. "The father indicated that his wife was a longtime rock cocaine addict," said Los Angeles Police Department Southwest Division Sgt. Wolfgang Hundertmark. He added that statements by relatives suggested that the child became addicted before birth. "As it stands, paramedics have listed the probable cause of death as cardiac arrest pending the results of an autopsy," Hundertmark said.

WASHINGTON - A Justice Department lawyer warned the Supreme Court on Tuesday there may be thousands of crack cocaine defendants sentenced to long prison terms under a law that Congress repealed two years ago as racially biased and unfair. Deputy Solicitor Gen. Michael Dreeben urged the court to tell sentencing judges to use the new law, not the discredited old one, when setting prison terms for those convicted of crack offenses but not yet sentenced when the law was passed. But by the end of an hourlong argument, it was not clear the Supreme Court would heed the request.

The man who killed his ex-wife and eight members of her family while dressed as Santa Claus on Christmas Eve had trace amounts of cocaine in his system at the time of the shooting, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said Friday. The cocaine was only a contributing factor and not a primary reason for the actions of Bruce Jeffrey Pardo that night, said Ed Winter of the coroner's office. Pardo dressed up as Santa Claus and attacked the family at its Covina home last December. He later committed suicide.

A local chiropractor accused of involvement in a huge cocaine smuggling ring was described at a bail hearing in Fresno as a devout father and devoted healer, who is being used as bait to capture his fugitive brother. "The man is a genius. The man is like a god to me when it comes to taking care of the human body," lawyer Charles Garry said of Thomas Enrique, 39, of nearby Clovis. Garry, who represented the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, said federal Drug Enforcement Agents were using Enrique in an effort to capture his brother, John Reilly Enrique, who has been a fugitive since 1982 and is presumed living in Guadalajara, Mex. The brothers have been indicted for their roles in a Mexico-California drug ring, which allegedly imported 1,300 pounds of cocaine valued at tens of millions of dollars between 1981 and 1988, Assistant U.S. Atty.

Last of four parts Reporting from Calexico, Calif., and Badiraguato, Mexico T he towering iron gates opened onto a palm-lined driveway that led past the family church, a twisting water slide and two man-made lakes, one stocked with fish, the other with jet skis. With its soaring twin bell towers, each topped by a cross, the estate in the emerald hills outside Culiacan, Mexico, had an almost surreal grandeur. It reminded Carlos "Charlie" Cuevas of Disneyland, without the smiles.

A Colombian woman accused of running a female-dominated drug trafficking ring that distributed thousands of kilograms of cocaine in the United States since 1986 has been extradited from Brazil to face federal charges in New York and Los Angeles. Known among her associates as La Senora, Mery Valencia, 44, operated a sophisticated crime organization from her home base in Cali, Colombia, U.S. authorities said.

While it was interesting to read how Ted Demme's wife, Amanda, has chosen to grieve for her husband, the most telling thing was what was not there ("In the Wink of an Eye," Jan. 12). Reporter Gina Piccalo states that Amanda at first "asked that there be no sentimentality, no pitiful tales of life after Ted. And please, she said, no use of the word 'widow.' " Apparently she also insisted on no use of the word "cocaine." Demme may have used cocaine rarely; the coroner found only a small amount in his system.

Singer Rick James, the Grammy-winning King of Funk of the 1980s, was arrested with his 21-year-old girlfriend Friday for allegedly imprisoning and torturing a 24-year-old woman with a hot cocaine pipe over three days at James' Hollywood Hills home, police said.

WASHINGTON — Nearly two years ago, President Obama signed into law a "fair sentencing" act to reduce the long prison terms meted out to people who were caught with small amounts of crack cocaine. But the law did not make clear whether it should apply to cases that were pending when the measure was signed. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the lighter sentences apply to hundreds of cases in the pipeline when the law was signed on Aug. 3, 2010. The issue is complicated because the Justice Department and Atty.

The coroner's investigation into the death of Whitney Houston came to a close Wednesday with a final autopsy report that described the singer submerged face-down in hot water in the bathtub of her Beverly Hills hotel suite with a unidentified white powdery residue left in a spoon on the bathroom counter. The report released Wednesday confirmed that the 48-year-old singer drowned in a bathtub, with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors. It concluded that Houston's death was accidental.

Singer Whitney Houston appears to have suffered a heart episode before accidentally drowning in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel suite, according to coroner's officials who listed cocaine use as a contributing factor. The autopsy results were released Thursday after weeks of intense speculation over how the 48-year-old pop star died. The case marks another high-profile Hollywood death connected to drug use, coming less than three years after Michael Jackson died suddenly at his Holmby Hills mansion.

The Los Angeles County Coroner's office reported Thursday that singer Whitney Houston's death at the Beverly Hills Hotel was an accidental drowning.  Cocaine use and heart disease were contributing factors in her death, officials said Thursday. “She may have had a heart attack” that rendered her unconscious, leading to her drowning, said Ed Winter , deputy chief of coroner investigations. Cocaine's negative effects on cardiac health are well-established.

A jailer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling cocaine into the Men's Central Jail with intent to sell it to inmates, authorities said Tuesday. Remington Orr, 24, who is not a deputy but has worked for the last four years as a custody employee, was arrested late Monday as he was preparing to enter the Men's Central Jail with the drug, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for Sheriff Lee Baca. "Obviously, if anybody tries to do this they will be caught, arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Whitmore said.

Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd said he probably pitched under the influence of cocaine "at every ballpark" during his 10-year career. "There wasn't one ballpark that I probably didn't stay up all night, until 4 or 5 in the morning, and the same thing is in your system," Boyd said in an interview with Jon Miller of WBZ radio in Boston. "It ain't like you had time to go and do it while you were in the game, which I have [done] that. " Boyd was 78-77 with a 4.04 earned-run average in his career.

Singer Whitney Houston appears to have suffered a heart episode before accidentally drowning in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel suite, according to coroner's officials who listed cocaine use as a contributing factor. The autopsy results were released Thursday after weeks of intense speculation over how the 48-year-old pop star died. The case marks another high-profile Hollywood death connected to drug use, coming less than three years after Michael Jackson died suddenly at his Holmby Hills mansion.

Actor Dan Haggerty, best known as television's Grizzly Adams, was sentenced Thursday to 90 days in County Jail and three years' probation for furnishing cocaine to two undercover police officers last year. However, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz allowed Haggerty, 41, to remain free pending appeal of his conviction. In a split verdict last month, a jury found Haggerty guilty on one count but found that the officers entrapped him into selling them the drug on the second occasion.

There was something odd about two sacks that showed up this month in the United Nations mailroom, even if they did have what appeared to be the distinctive U.N. seal, with its globe framed by olive branches. It was blue, but a shade lighter than usual, and the sacks did not include the words "United Nations. " What's more, the sacks had no return address, or even an addressee. Package handlers at a U.N. mail room ran the bags through an X-ray screener. Inside were 14 hollowed-out textbooks, each containing a little more than 2 pounds of cocaine, New York police told The Times on Friday.  U.N. security officials notified the New York Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency, which seized about 35 pounds of cocaine with a street value of $440,000, said NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne.

Their time together was so brief. Michelle Mitchell was at a sober-living home here, trying to halt a two decade-cycle of crack cocaine and prostitution. Her daughter Miracle, a bundle of energy in pink Velcro sneakers, tornadoed through the kitchen. A curvy woman with a dusting of freckles, Mitchell bear-hugged the 5-year-old. Studying Miracle was like peering into a mirror: same brown eyes, mahogany skin, wide smile. A teasing nature that belied a childhood full of indignities.