| ||||||
|
Arts & Entertainment Books Comics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project  Travel & Food Columnists
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Travel stories, go to the
Travel home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Travel Daily Planet Wanderlust Travel Food Feature Travel Food Feature Travel Advisor - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Nipple-ring blues
- - - - - - - - - - - -
April 3, 2000 |
Daily Planet is a collection of short news items -- one each weekday -- that evoke and illuminate the far corners of the world. To read previous items, visit the Daily Planet archive. Send all tips to DailyPlanet
According to Reuters, she strolled through Istanbul's Ataturk Airport last week with 6.6 pounds of heroin carefully bound to her chest, and might have carried the junk all the way back to Britain had her "intimate body piercing" not set off a metal detector. When airport police body-searched the undoubtedly panicked McKinnon, they discovered both her piercings and the heroin, estimated to be worth 300,000 pounds in Britain (almost $500,000). Turkey is a popular pickup point for drug traffickers who smuggle narcotics into Europe from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was McKinnon's first visit to the nation, and if she's lucky, it will be a short one. If convicted, she could spend the next 30 years in a Turkish prison, though many first-time smugglers get off easier. Either way, tough times are ahead for McKinnon, and it's all because of that saucy little body decoration. As Turkey's mainstream newspaper Hurriyet said, "Her piercing did her in." Ouch.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon | |||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
