The Czech government Monday set the drug possession limits under which the possession of up to 1.5 grammes of heroin, up to one gramme of cocaine and up to two grammes of methamphetamine (pervitine) will not be punishable as of New Year.

Czechs will also be able to legally possess up to 15 grammes of marijuana, according to the Justice Ministry’s proposal approved by the government Monday.

Justice Minister Daniela Kovarova drafted the proposal on the basis of the current court practice.

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (?216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he s

U.S. intelligence from inside Ecuador was used to plan a 2008 bombing by Colombian troops that killed a top FARC guerrilla chieftain inside Ecuadorean territory, the government said on Thursday.

A 130-page report prepared by the Ecuadorean government says U.S. forces then based in the Pacific coast town of Manta helped Colombian troops target Raul Reyes, No. 2 commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

"The strategic intelligence processed at the base in Manta was fundamental in tracking down and locating Raul Reyes as the primary target," the report says. "The Manta pact, aimed at controlling drug trafficking, went beyond its purpose."

The March 2008 bombing, carried out in an Ecuadorean border area called Angostura, triggered a diplomatic crisis in the region. Ecuador and Colombia are just now re-establishing diplomatic ties severed by Quito after the raid.

Opium cultivation in Myanmar has almost doubled since 2006, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced on Monday, warning of a worrisome expansion of its production in the region. "The trend is going in the wrong direction," UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa said in a statement ahead of the presentation of the office’s latest survey on Opium Poppy Cultivation in Southeast Asia.

Myanmar, the world’s main producer of opium in the early 1990s, only produces about a quarter of the amount grown in Afghanistan, the world’s new top producer, the UNODC noted.

But the land dedicated to opium cultivation in the southeast Asian country increased in 2009 for the third year in a row, by 11 percent to 31,700 hectares. Compared to 2006, this represented a 50-percent hike, the office added.

The Czech government today approved the list of hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms, including hemp, coca, mescaline cactus and magic mushrooms, and decided that people would be allowed to grow up to five pieces of such plants and keep 40 magic mushrooms at home, a CTK source said.

The cabinet was today also expected to discuss artificial drugs and a permitted amount of these drugs in people’s possession.

However, it postponed the debate for two weeks, the source said.