A court in Melbourne sentenced on Thursday a 49-year-old woman who described herself as the “queen” of a criminal drug smuggling syndicate to 18 years in jail with a 13 years-long non-parole period, according toAustralian Federal Police (AFP).

Albanian authorities said on Monday that they have seized the assets of a media mogul whose wealth is believed to have come from drug trafficking in Turkey and Italy.

A new project that will be led byEuropol and financed by the European Commission will help the EU’s eastern neighbours -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine -- fight organized crime.

Dutch police arrested six men after they discovered six containers that were turned into prison cells and the seventh into a torture chamber equipped with a dentist chair with belts on arms and foot supports, pliers, knives and other utensils meant to cause pain.

A member of a gang that controlled the heroin trade across much of New Jersey was sentenced to 19 years in prison early this week for intimidating a witness during his trial for aggravated assault and illegal possession of a weapon following a 2013 shooting.

Police in Barcelona detained several suspects and searched 40 apartments during a massive operation on Monday morning that targeted drug dealers in the city’s Raval neighborhood.

New eyewitness reports say that the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), an armed insurgent group in Myanmar, is extorting money from vehicles traveling along the Mandalay-Muse highway in the war-torn Shan state in the country’s north.

Violent Albanian crime groups are exerting "considerable control" over the drug market in the UK, while gangs from Serbia and Turkey dominate maritime cocaine trafficking routes, according to a report by the National Crime Agency (NCA) releasedWednesday.

Spanish police said Wednesday they had dismantled an Albanian-Bulgarian network smuggling heroin and other drugs from the Balkans and Turkey to the cities of Barcelona and Tarragona, arresting seven members of the group.

Two people were arrested Sunday when Serbian police found more than 16 kilograms of heroin hidden in a truck crossing into the country at its border with Bulgaria.

Romanian authorities detained two people on Monday for drug trafficking. 

Moldovan authorities have seized 136 kilograms (300 pounds) of heroin along the Moldova-Romania border.

Romanian authorities have seized 333 kilograms of heroin from two trucks they say were headed towards Hungary.

Turkish police have seized 358 kilograms of heroin from a flat in Istanbul.

Croatian authorities seized more than 140 kilos of heroin at a Croatia-Serbia border crossing on Monday.

Customs officers seized more than  30 kilograms of heroin Tuesday, worth more than 40 million lev (US $2.2 million), in Kapitan Andreevo in southern Bulgaria.

Two defendants accused of involvement in Armenia's largest drug bust to date declared their innocence this week at the Goris branch of Syunik Court of Jurisdiction.