ITR - News from Mallorca & Iberia from Heather Carter ITR for InTouchRadio.net (UK & GLOBAL)

News from Mallorca & Iberia from Heather Carter ITR for InTouchRadio.net UK - GLOBAL

UP IN SMOKE

PALMA
GUARDIA Civil triumphantly set alight 3'175 kilos of seized hashish hauls at Mallorca’s Son Reus incinerator yesterday.
Other narcotics which have been confiscated so far this year on the island were added to the pyre, the final weight of which amounted to no less than twenty tonnes. The success of drugs raids since January has been such that it led central government delegate in the Balearics, Ramon Socias yesterday to congratulate regional Chief of Staff of the Guardia Civil, Basilio Sanchez Rufo on his handling of the drugs crackdown. During his presence at the incineration event, Socias said that the hashish which was currently being torched was largely the result of Operation Alcotan, in which a catamaran had been apprehended by security forces off the southern tip of Ibiza earlier this year. Spanish Guardia Civil had undertaken an exhaustive chase of the vessel which had set out from a North African destination and which was suspected of being a carrier of narcotics.

Scientists Uncover Deadly Virus Threat to Rare Mallorca Toad

LONDON
A BREEDING programme designed to safeguard the future of a rare breed of Mallorca toad has infected the species with a highly-contagious disease, which could threaten its existence.

The potentially deadly chytrid fungus, which affects the toads’ ability to absorb water into its skin, was passed on to the Mallorcan Midwife Toads by a South African species of frog during the captive breeding programme.

A study by scientists from London’s Imperial College and reported in Current Biology journal revealed that measures the screen the toads did not pick up the fungus before they were released back into the wild in 1991.

Four colonies of the amphibians are infected by the fungus.