Video footage has emerged of Michaella McCollum-Connolly and Melissa Reid being questioned at Lima International airport.

Ireland has the highest use of new synthetic drugs in Europe, with consumption levels three times the EU average, according to the UN.

PASHTUNABAD — a poor, wind and flyblown suburb of Quetta — is the type of Pakistani town where commanders in the Afghan Taliban lived after being kicked out of their country in 2001.

Turnover of cross-border organised crime is about €710bn a year — more than six times the total of official development aid — and stopping this “threat to peace” is one of the greatest global challenges, a UN agency has said.

IRELAND has the highest mortality rate from drugs in the EU and the third highest across the whole of Europe, according to the UN.

AROUND 140,000 people are being held in conditions of effective slavery in Europe after being smuggled by human traffickers, according to the United Nations.

A dramatic rise in opium prices could cause more Afghan farmers to grow the illegal crop this year, thwarting efforts to stem the practice, the UN said today.

IRELAND has the fifth-highest number of cocaine-related drug deaths out of 22 European countries, according to a UN report.

Drug use has doubled in Afghanistan over the last four years with nearly 3% of adults now addicted to heroin and opium, a UN report said today.

Film star Nicolas Cage won a UN award last night for his humanitarian work and has been appointed a goodwill ambassador for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

THE seventh biggest seizure of cocaine in Europe in 2007 was made in Ireland, according to a new UN report.

A UN anti-drug drive has backfired by making drug cartels so wealthy they can bribe their way through tracts of west Africa and central America, the UN crime agency chief has said.

DUBLIN has the sixth-highest murder rate in Europe, figures have revealed.

A UNITED NATIONS expert yesterday said huge stockpiles of heroin will soon hit the European market.

PRODUCTION of the raw crop that produces cocaine soared by more than a quarter in Colombia last year, mocking a multibillion-dollar US effort to eradicate it.

Production of the raw crop that produces cocaine soared by more than a quarter in Colombia last year, mocking a multi-billion dollar US effort to eradicate it.

Opium cultivation in rebel-controlled areas in southern Afghanistan is expected to grow this year, a UN report said today.

EUROPE is facing a growing cocaine threat as traffickers exploit a chaotic west African coast to transit massive quantities of the drug into the continent.

A “cancer of insurgency” in southern Afghanistan could drive the 2007 opium poppy harvest to record levels, the UN drug agency chief warned.

Opium poppy cultivation was down 22 per cent worldwide in 2005, a United Nations report said today, part of a generally favourable, albeit inconclusive, trend in efforts by governments to contain illicit drug use.

IRELAND is ranked towards the top of the European drug league for cocaine and ecstasy use, according to a UN report.

A US congressional committee has drafted a Bill that threatens to withhold tens of millions of pounds from the United Nations unless the world body launches wide-ranging reforms, possibly setting the stage for a funding battle like the one that plunged the UN into financial crisis a decade ago.

BUMPER opium crops in Afghanistan will result in a glut of cheap heroin and could trigger another epidemic in Ireland, drug experts warned yesterday.

IRELAND is being flooded with massive quantities of cheap ecstasy, garda and criminal sources have told the Irish Examiner.

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan increased over the past year and the country is at risk of becoming a haven for drugs cartels and terrorists, the UN has warned.

A United Nations survey has reportedly found that young Irish people are the fourth-biggest ecstasy and amphetamine users in the world.