Cancer mum is jailed for drugs

A Bolivian woman has been jailed for a year for smuggling cocaine to pay for a hysterectomy.

Maria Vargos Rios (39) swallowed nearly half a kilogram of cocaine in pellets worth €32,348.

When she was caught at Dublin Airport she was passing blood because of womb cancer and had to be brought to hospital.

The court heard she has three children in Bolivia and was smuggling the drugs to pay for their care and her cancer treatment.

Rios, from Santa Cruz, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to importation of cocaine at Dublin Airport on July 21, 2012. She has been in custody since her arrest.

Judge Martin Nolan ordered she be deported to her home country on release.

Sixty killed in Polish freeze

More than 60 people have died of the cold weather in Poland since October, police say, as they appealed for residents to dress warmly and look out for elderly and homeless people.

Another 41 have been killed by carbon monoxide inhalation from coal or other ways of heating their homes since temperatures started falling.

The interior ministry said the death toll from sub-freezing temperatures that set in in December was 49 people so far, compared to 19 in the whole of December last year. Another 15 people died of cold in October and five in November.