UNITED NATIONS — A shipment containing 16 kilograms of cocaine was seized last week at the U.N.’s mail intake center, a New York Police Department spokesman said Thursday.

Paul Browne, NYPD’s chief spokesman, said the drug was in a white bag evidently masquerading as a diplomatic pouch that raised suspicions when it was being scanned because it was stamped with what looked like a poorly concocted version of the U.N. logo. Browne said there was no name or address on the shipment sent from Mexico City through Cincinnati.

U.N. security officials called the NYPD and Drug Enforcement Administration, which confirmed the substance inside the shipment intercepted Jan. 16 was cocaine, the police spokesman said. U.N. undersecretary-general for safety and security Gregory B. Starr told reporters Thursday evening that “there is nothing to indicate that this had anything to do with anybody at the United Nations.” Starr said the drug was actually stashed in two bags that were stamped with the sky-blue U.N. logo of a world map in an apparent effort to masquerade as diplomatic pouches, which are not supposed to be inspected. Inside the bag, the drug was hidden in hollowed-out notebooks, he added.

The U.N. official showed journalists a photograph of the bags that were seized, and compared them with a real diplomatic pouch used by the U.N., which is somewhat larger and made of a different material.

The publisher of a Jewish newspaper who suggested that Israel assassinate Barack Obama in a weekly column, has apologized. Andrew Adler made the controversial statement in the Atlanta Jewish Times, a paper which serves the Jewish community in Atlanta, U.S. He claimed ordering an assassination of President Obama could be one of three ways to protect the people of Israel.

‘Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this is almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles? ‘Another way of putting “three” in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives…Jews, Christians and Arabs alike? ‘You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.’

‘I very much regret it, I wish I hadn’t made reference to it at all,’ he said to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.’ Mr Adler admitted that he had been an ‘idiot’ for writing it and said he had put his ‘pen in my mouth’, according to ABC.

The secret service has said that Adler’s comments would be followed up but would not say if a formal investigation had been launched.

I guess this guy hasn’t heard of the National Defense Authorization Act.