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Article #1: [|8 Longshoremen Charged with Smuggling Cocaine] Summary: // Eight dockworkers at ports in New York and New Jersey helped smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine that was eventually sold on the streets of New York City. The longshoremen used their access to secure areas of the ports to unload drugs from Panama without detection from law enforcement authorities, said Preet Bharara the United States attorney in Manhattan.The 11 people charged in the drug ring were charged with one count each of conspiracy to distribute and conspiracy to import cocaine, crimes that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. To unload the narcotics, prosecutors said, the longshoremen placed the containers where authorities could not see them. After breaking customs seals to remove the drugs, the longshoremen would replace them with new ones, prosecutors said. //

Article #2: [|Follow the Dirty Money] Summary: // Years after the transactions occur, any effort to prove what was known at the time is practically impossible. The bankers simply say they didn’t know where the money came from. Naturally, prosecutors look for ways to get around trying to prosecute those sorts of cases, and instead make deals. The bankers also provided secret safe deposit boxes abroad, and arranged for currency to be shipped in safes to places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where large cash deposits are not recorded. More important, it put a slew of bankers behind bars and got their tongues wagging, so much so that we learned where Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian general, had hidden his fortune in payoffs from Colombian cartel leaders. //

Article #3: [|U.S. Student Became Mexican Drug Kingpin] Summary: // The authorities in the United States and Mexico say Mr. Valdez, who is 37, moved to Mexico after being indicted in the 1990s on charges of dealing marijuana, and rose quickly to become a violent leader in the Beltrán-Leyva gang, at the helm of a corps of gunmen engaged in almost constant warfare with other cartels. Last week, Mr. Valdez was captured by dozens of federal police officers after a firefight at a rustic house in the mountains northwest of Mexico City. He had eluded the authorities for years despite having multimillion-dollar bounties on his head, and his capture was considered a major blow to the remnants of the Beltrán-Leyva organized crime group, law enforcement officials said. //

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