Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
A 38-YEAR-OLD Colombian vet appeared in a New York court this week, accused of injecting liquid heroin into puppies to evade border control in a drug smuggling ring.
Andres Lopez Elorez was arrested in Spain on a US warrant and extradited to the United States on Monday. If convicted on conspiracy charges, he risks spending at least 10 years and potentially life behind bars.
His arrest was part of a 12-year DEA investigation and he was remanded into custody, pending trial, US officials said.
Prosecutors say he used his vet skills to surgically implant packets of liquid heroin into the bellies of puppies transported from Colombia to the United States. Once in America, the heroin was surgically removed, officials said.
Ten puppies were discovered in a raid on a makeshift clinic in Colombia in 2005. The New York Times said three of the dogs later died as a result of infections.
“As alleged in the indictment, Elorez is not only a drug trafficker, he also betrayed a veterinarian’s pledge to prevent animal suffering,” said Richard Donoghue, the US Attorney based in Brooklyn.
Dogs are mans’ best friend and, as the defendant is about to learn, we are drug dealers’ worst enemy.
US officials say Elorez was part of a Colombian-based conspiracy from September 2004 to January 2005 that smuggled heroin into the United States using various methods to conceal the narcotics from detection.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
The rates are going back up but the level of service and overall standard of the hotels have gotten worse
yes especially if you are using a pigsback voucher!
That’s impressive
No doubt NAMA hotels probably loose €10,000 per room.
As a regular hotel user, prices are going up, service is going down, hoteliers are their own words enemy.
I would partially agree with you regarding hotels in Dublin City Centre. I don’t blame the staff though. The work most hotels make their staff do, along with the lengthy shifts are questionably legal at best.
In my opinion, many Dublin City Centre hotels are actually damaging the industry with their extortionate prices. Tourists may stay once, but they wont return at those costs!
10000 profit per room and most staff on min wage with little or no rights And as a long suffering hotel worker belive me thats true in most hotels
Sure look at the Callaghan hotel group that tried to force some of their foreign national workers to sign up for a cut in their minimum wage telling them they couldn’t afford to pay them but at same time were spending 10,000 euro a day in the high court trying to stop unions from stopping them… Some evil folk out there that’s for sure.
Sure half the hotels in dublin are owned by banks so no guesses were all the profits are gone into the pokets of the people who caused this in the first place
Hotel workers should join a union.
Dave, what purpose will that serve? A union can only do anything in the public sector and and even at that they do very very little. Unions have long forgotten their purpose and should be abandoned by every single worker in the public sector. Appoint people amongst yourselves to represent you and save yourself the money of funding the most ludicrous organisations in the country.
The argument is simple, they shd say, we took pay cuts, pay freezes etc when the hotels were in trouble.
Now they are making sky high profits and we want everything that was taken from us back + more.
Yeah the top of most unions are tied to the labour party etc, but I’m not sure about going it alone, it makes a big difference to have a union organiser talk to workers, rather than just starting from scratch.
Anyhow now a days you can join a union online, get your workmates to join the same one (in secret), and get a union organiser to meet them somewhere and take it from there.
exactly, and not just Hotels, they’d go about telling you then “ah business is slack, we’re very quiet, tourist trade is down” and so and so forth. Old Old excuses, total lies. They’ve been playing that card now for 5 years in order to cut wages, staff and feed their greedy mouths.
spot on Ashley, they’re ALL corrupt, right down the line
90% of hotels aren’t making any money, fact.
I could name 10 hotels that people think are “flying” but all with net worth of -€5m, there is no comeback from that, they only showed retained profits of €150k max even during the good times.
Hotels that have valued their assets upwards of €30 million but are worth nothing in today’s market, maybe 5-7m at a huge push.
Anyone with access to CRO figures for hotels will know what I’m on about.
Big hotels with golf clubs that are loosing 500-700k per year but the banks are not willing to move in as it will cost that to maintain the properties per year with the golf courses.
I dislike the idea of the average hotel price included! A separate weekend/weekday average would be needed as I know that the average prices listed above for Dublin are certainly not indicative of an average weekend room rate!
Also to add they now use the per person per room trick rather than room rate.
That’s the end of the recession so, we’ve turned the corner, spread the news
Quick everybody get a second car and a huge mortage we on d mend ha
The editor of the Indo’s property pages just got a semi.
I thought he was detached.
no no, we’re still in recession, we need to cut wages more and more, we still need that excuse to line our pockets, it’s our only hope cos we’re greedy :/
Dublin Dublin Dublin… Yawn.. That big green space West of the m50 will soon be called outer space the way this country is going….
Hotels in fields are you suggesting? I’m confused!
The European presidency filled many hotel rooms, it was a one off ! This should be a warning, next year the figures won’t look so good.
You’re hoping aren’t you?
Not that many, sorry to disappoint.
The EU presidency was in 2013 – this survey was taken in 2012.
That’s great news hopefully the rest of the industry picks up to
Articles like this have the potential to be quite damaging to the hotel industry! It’s not so black and white people!
No surprise there still being ripped off
good news though, keep it coming, its greedy stories like this that tell us all NOT to book a hotel room cos we know their workers are underpaid.
My above point is now proven!
have your say