
Suspect sailors' crack sniffed out by droids
Splendid use of the apostrophe there, sir. That headline could have been seriously ambiguous otherwise. Thumbs up all round, er ...
The US Navy has awarded funds to develop a self-contained remote electronic sniffer unit which could be delivered to the holds of suspect vessels by a robot helicopter to detect "chemical, explosive, and illegal drug residues". The Fire Scout robo-chopper in sea trials Soon with droppable remote drug-sniffer bugs. VIASPACE …
Of American trigger fingers, there will be very few nitrate filled bulk carriers reaching US shores.
As Flocke Kroes notes, the yanks could go direct to source and buy the drugs direct, thereby saving a great deal of time trying to find them later. Then if they should wish they could destroy them at leisure.
I know it is a bit like the King of England paying the Vikings a lot of money (Danegeld) to not come to England to take a lot of money but hey, that's business.
In one of his cartoons, a group of stoners were hassled by a drug sniffer dog being dangled from a police helicopter on a winch. One of them got on his motorbike, and, waving a joint, decoyed the dog (and helicopter) away. He then rode under a bridge, which the dog on the winch then smashed into.