Alexandria -- Had it not been for a leaked morgue photo of his mangled corpse, tenacious relatives and the power of Facebook, the death of Khaled Said would have become a footnote in the annals of Egyptian police brutality.

Instead, outrage over the beating death of the 28-year-old man in this coastal city last summer, and attempts by local authorities to cover it up, helped spark the mass protests demanding the ouster of Egypt's authoritarian president.

The story of Said's death is in many ways the story of today's Egypt, where an authoritarian regime is being roiled by a groundswell of popular anger. Fear and resentment of the police has been a prominent theme, and when Google executive Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page titled "We are all Khaled Said," the grisly morgue photo went viral and the public had a rallying point.

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ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT - Had it not been for a leaked morgue photo of his mangled corpse, tenacious relatives and the power of Facebook, the death of Khaled Said would have become a footnote in the annals of Egyptian police brutality.

Instead, outrage over the beating death of the 28-year-old man in this coastal city last summer, and attempts by local authorities to cover it up, helped spark the mass protests demanding the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The story of Said's death is in many ways the story of today's Egypt, where an authoritarian regime is being roiled by a groundswell of popular anger. Fear and resentment of the police has been a prominent theme, and when Google executive Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page titled "We are all Khaled Said," the grisly morgue photo went viral and the public had a rallying point.

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- - At youth group's school event

At a time when drug abuse is ravaging Nigerian youths, a non-governmental organisation, Prince Decson Save Child Foundation, is pressing on with what could pass for palliative measures. The group is using seminars, workshops and education to keep youths out of drugs and other social vices.

Recently, Prince Decson Save Child Foundation engaged students at Topfield College, Awodi-Ora, Ajegunle, Lagos, in a progamme aimed at educating on the evil of hard drugs. Tagged, "the effect of dangerous drugs on the Nigerian child," the programme, according to the group, aimed at "building a lasting and strong awareness, in the minds of youths, on the effect of drug abuse."

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As tourists stroll languidly through the narrow streets of Stone Town, the romantic city hums with life. Vendors sell oriental spices and colourful fabrics, while children play soccer between crumbling walls and men hurry in long gowns towards the mosque.

But when darkness descends over the historic town, Zanzibar's capital takes on a different life. Formerly bustling alleys are transformed into dim, shady passages where drug addicts hover to get their longed-for heroin fix. The town's dark secret: the island is a heroin stronghold.

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National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, has attributed the current wave of violent crimes in the South-east and other neighbouring states to the consumption of Indian hemp and other dangerous drugs by secondary school students, a situation it warned would deteriorate if urgent steps were not taken.

The anti-drug law agency noted that while it was grappling with curtailing the influx and intake of Indian hemp by school children, several of them have recently been caught with cocaine.

Speaking on behalf the agency at weekend during the third annual symposium of the Inwelle Study and Resource Centre, Enugu, Mr. Fintan Bassey said a survey carried out by the NDLEA showed that crimes committed by students recently in Enugu were drug motivated.

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Desperate heroin users in a few African cities have begun engaging in a practice that is so dangerous it is almost unthinkable: they deliberately inject themselves with another addict's blood, researchers say, in an effort to share the high or stave off the pangs of withdrawal.

The practice, called flashblood or sometimes flushblood, is not common, but has been reported in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the island of Zanzibar and in Mombasa, Kenya.

It puts users at the highest possible risk of contracting AIDS and hepatitis. While most AIDS transmission in Africa is by heterosexual sex, the use of heroin is growing in some cities, and experts are warning that flashblood - along with syringe-sharing and other dangerous habits - could fuel a new wave of AIDS infections.

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Lagos State, like many others across the country has its own share of social deviants, who indulge in all sort of youthful recklessness. From Oshodi to Oyingbo, Iyana-Ipaja to Lekki, Ojota to Ikorodu and Mile 2 to Badagry, it is common to see youths whose past time is drug abuse. When they are not smoking their lives away with cannabis or other hard drugs, they are reveling in hard drinks, including the local stuff known as paraga.

Worried by this ugly development, particularly with its dire consequences on the future of those involved, Inside Ajeromi, community newspaper, penultimate Sunday began a campaign to sensitise the youths in the state about the danger of drug abuse and the need to keep off the habit.

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The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency on Saturday raised the alarm over the threat to Nigeria's sovereignty by the activities of drug barons.

The Agency warned that drug barons could infiltrate the highest levels of government and stall the drug war if their activities were left unchecked.

The Chairman and Chief Executive of the NDLEA, Alhaji Ahmadu Giade stated this in an address he presented to commemorate the 2010 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug trafficking, in Abuja.

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Over the past three years, United States authorities say, South American drug traffickers have worked to build a base in the West African nation of Liberia, where vast quantities of cocaine could be sent by boat or plane and then reshipped to markets in West Africa and Europe.

As part of the plan, the traffickers met with two senior Liberian officials, offering them millions of dollars in bribes to ensure safe passage for the shipments.

But what the traffickers did not realize was that both of the officials -- one of whom is the son of the country's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf -- were secretly cooperating with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration to help break the foothold of drug rings in the region, a federal prosecutor in New York said Tuesday.

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On the tarmac of Osvaldo Vieira, the international airport of the West African coastal country of Guinea-Bissau, sits a once-elegant Gulfstream jet, which in the normal course of events would have no reason to land in a country with no business opportunities and virtually no economy.

In recent years, however, Guinea-Bissau has emerged as a nodal point in three-way cocaine-trafficking operations linking producers in South America with users in Europe; the value of the cocaine that transits this small and heartbreakingly impoverished country dwarfs its gross national product.

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The alleged double-life of a pretty suburban mother-turned-dope dealer was exposed in a Durban court this week.

Charmaine Bell, a 34-year-old single parent from the "leafy" suburb of Waterfall outside Durban, allegedly ran a thriving dagga business from home until she was raided by police three months ago.

In papers before the court it is alleged that the unemployed mother peddled various strains of marijuana and magic mushrooms, and that individual jars of marijuana labelled "Orange Blossom", "Hot Chocolate", "Tootie Fruity", "Indica" and "Mango" lined her kitchen counter.

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The mother whose two children were removed from her following claims that they were neglected and exposed to "ganja" (dagga) as their parents belonged to a nomadic cult, desperately wants them back.

The young mother, only identified as *Sandra to protect the children, spoke for the first time on Sunday after all her children were taken away by family members following interim court orders.

She first had her son, who is about to turn six, removed from her care some years ago by her mother. This, Sandra said, was in spite of the family advocate recommending that the child should remain with her.

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More than 1,000 South Africans are "languishing in appalling conditions" behind bars in foreign countries - 65 percent of them for drug-related offences.

Of the 1,062 South Africans serving sentences abroad, 177 are in Brazil and 109 in the United Kingdom. Most of those in Brazil are on drug-related offences.

In Botswana and Peru there are 66 South Africans in jail and in Pakistan 42. Most of them jailed for drug offences.

And those are the known cases where citizens have exercised their right to request consular assistance.

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The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has impounded drugs worth over N100million in Kano within the last 3 weeks, and hounded into custody 17 suspected peddlers.

The Commandant of the Anti Drug Agency, Nicolas Walter told Journalists in Kano that the drugs identified as cannabis were seized from suspected drug peddlers in two separate operations, pointing out that it weighed over 4tonnes.

Nicolas Walter who described the seizure as 'unprecedented' in the state came on the heel of growing statistics that shot the state ahead of others in terms of operations, convictions and rehabilitations of peddlers.

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The Complaint Against 3 Men -- the First of Its Kind -- Portrays Northwest Africa As a New Danger Zone.

Three men alleged to be Al Qaeda associates were charged Friday with conspiring to smuggle cocaine through Africa -- the first U.S. prosecution linking the terrorist group directly to drug trafficking.

The three suspects, who were charged in federal court in New York, are believed to be from Mali and were arrested in Ghana during a Drug Enforcement Administration sting. Although U.S. authorities have alleged that Al Qaeda and the Taliban profit from Afghanistan's heroin trade, the case is the first in which suspects linked to Al Qaeda have been charged under severe narco-terrorism laws, federal officials said.

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It took kicks, blows and a cocked AK-47 to raise a doped-up Abdallah Hassan Abdalla from a stupor and, incidentally, save his life. The scene was Mombasa's Mackinon Market. The lead actor in the story of his life was himself; the supporting cast was composed of an angry mob and regular policemen.

What followed next was a beating that opened his eyes to the dangers of heroin use. He could finally break free from a 12-year addiction that revolved around three things: heroin, syringes and himself. He had tried to escape with some money he had snatched from a woman.

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On the Route From South America to Europe, Unstable Guinea-Bissau Is the Ideal Stop for a Drug Smuggler.

The unstable nation, along with other West African countries, makes an ideal stop for cartels smuggling drugs from South America to Europe.

As a senior police official, Edmundo Mendes' job is to arrest the South American cocaine traffickers who use his troubled West African country, with its starry array of remote islands, as a transit point for drug shipments bound for Europe. It hasn't been easy.

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Port Harcourt -- No fewer than 86 drug barons and traffickers of cocaine, heroin and Indian hemp in Rivers State have been convicted and sentenced to prison terms while many other suspects of drug-related offences are currently standing trial at the Federal High Court in the state.

On the whole, 266 suspects were arrested for drug trafficking between June 2008 and 2009, following which 2, 766 kgs. of hard drugs, out of which 620.9 grams was cocaine, 140.4 heroin and 2,763.4 kilograms was cannabis sativa, (Indian hemp).

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The unprecedented flourishing of the business of drug trafficking and peddling in Nigeria has been blamed on the undue cooperation and support allegedly given to drug barons by some unscrupulous police officers in the country.

According to a Psychiatrist, Dr Olafemwa Popoola, this was one of the factors militating against drug war in the country.

Popoola, stated this, during the year 2009 United Nations International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Trafficking, organised by the Ekiti State Chapter of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA)

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The prevalence of HIV among intravenous drug users (IDUs) in Egypt is relatively low, but needle sharing is rife among this group, putting them at risk of contracting the virus, experts say. "Sharing needles and syringes is very high in Egypt.

This is very alarming because although only one per cent of IDUs are HIV-positive, the high percentage of needle sharing may mean that we are sitting on a ticking bomb," Ehab Kharrat, a senior programme advisor for the UNDP HIV/AIDS Regional Programme in the Arab States (HARPAS), said. Different studies of sample groups show that 45-50 per cent of drug users in Egypt share needles, he said. "When the IDUs get the drugs, many of them do not wait to get a clean needle or syringe, so they grab the next available one they find," Midhat el-Arabi, the head of a programme dealing with drug users at the Freedom Drug Rehabilitation Centre, a local NGO, said. "They [addicts] believe that securing the tool [the syringe] first is a bad omen," said 29-year-old Mohamed (he preferred to give his first name only), who stopped injecting himself eight months ago, said. "I used to buy the narcotic first then inject myself with the first syringe I found." "This belief increases the risk of needle sharing and hence the transmission of HIV and other [blood transmittable] diseases," Midhat el-Arabi told Reuters. Mohamed said he knew he contracted HIV five months ago, a few months after he gave up drugs. "I am quite sure I got it from needle sharing.

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