Ecuador

The people arrested last week in connection with the shipment of 104 kilos of cocaine from Ecuador to Thessaloniki in a container of bananas had also previously attempted to import 5 tons of cocaine into Greece from Peru, according to the case file opened by the Narcotics Department of Thessaloniki, which handled the case.

Police in southern Italy said on Tuesday they had seized 2,700 kg of highly pure cocaine hidden in two refrigerated containers containing bananas that had been shipped from Ecuador.

The haul found in the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro would have been worth more than 800 million euros, Italy's Guardia di Finanza police said in a statement.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, GI-TOC, a Geneva-based NGO, published a report on Monday warning that Balkan airports are vulnerable to organised crime and that Belgrade and Skopje airports in particular are regional hubs for illicit activities.

The world's oceans have suddenly spiked much hotter and well above record levels in the last few weeks, with scientists trying to figure out what it means and whether it forecasts a surge in atmospheric warming.

Farmers in northern Greece are desperately seeking help abroad to get their fruit and other crops picked, as local youth disdain farm work and the once-reliable Albanian farmhands now prefer to chase jobs in northern European Union countries.

Croatia's Bureau for the Prevention of Corruption and Organized Crime, USKOK, has filed an indictment against eight Croatian citizens for smuggling hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and selling weapons.

The principal defendant, Petar Cosic, 52, is also accused of the murder of Milan Milovac, 47, who collaborated with the Belgrade drug lord Darko Saric.

A shipment of cocaine with a street value of €600,000 was found on a container ship in Piraeus last Sunday, authorities have announced.

The cocaine, which was wrapped in 20 packages of cocaine, weighed about 17.5 kilograms.

Finns are the happiest people in the world. This is clear from the World Happiness Report published on Monday. Finland has been ranked as the country with the happiest population in the world for the sixth year in a row. Bulgaria is in 77th place.

Conducting 18 projects on Horseshoe Island as part of the 7th National Antarctic Science Expedition, Turkish researchers visited science bases belonging to eight different countries on the continent, which hold important clues about the past and future of the earth.

Juan Vera lost three relatives when a strong earthquake that shook parts of Ecuador and Peru on Saturday brought down his niece's home. The government has offered to pay for the woman's funeral and those of her baby and her partner, but Vera wonders why local authorities allowed his relatives to live in such an old home to begin with.