UNITED KINGDOM
Hundreds charged in raid
More than 450 people were charged and hundreds of thousands of cannabis plants worth millions of US dollars seized in a massive operation throughout last month, police said yesterday. Cannabis production is a cash cow for organized crime, fueling gang violence as groups compete for territory, police said. Operation Mille saw searches and arrests carried out across England and Wales “at a scale and pace not seen before,” said Steve Jupp, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for serious organized crime. “Nearly 200,000 cannabis plants with an estimated street value of between ￡115 [million] to ￡130 million [US$147 million to US$166 million] were seized,” police added in a statement. About 1,000 people were arrested and of those, “more than 450 were later charged,” it said.
PHILIPPINES
Marcos pardons farmer debt
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday wrote off US$1.04 billion in land-related debt owed by more than half a million farmers, a move aimed at boosting food production. The “New Agrarian Emancipation Act” he signed into law waived all property-related debt owed by farmers who had been given land on 30-year payment terms under a 1988 land reform program, but had been unable to pay. “We know these farmers do not have the means to pay this huge debt, so putting it under the government’s tab is the right thing to do,” Marcos said at a signing ceremony at the presidential palace. The writing off of the loans, which were issued by government banks, meant “we are doing everything in order to feed our people,” he added.
ITALY
Fire kills six, injures 80
A fire that broke out in a Milan nursing home early yesterday killed six of the residents and injured about 80 others, firefighters said. The blaze began at about 1:30am, apparently in the room of two female residents, who were among the dead, they said, adding that three other women and a man died in the fire. Among the injured, two were in critical condition, while most of the others were being treated for smoke inhalation, they told Italian state radio. Luca Cari, a spokesperson for the national firefighters corps, said firefighters were investigating the cause of the blaze, which was contained by early morning. Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala, who came to the scene, told reporters that the 100 or so residents of the nursing home who were not injured were being transferred to other facilities in the city.
UNITED STATES
Teen gets life for murder
The first of two Iowa teenagers who pleaded guilty to beating their high-school Spanish teacher to death with a baseball bat was on Thursday sentenced to life with a possibility of parole after 35 years in prison. District Court Judge Shawn Showers sentenced Willard Miller after a sentencing hearing that lasted more than seven hours. Miller and another teen, Jeremy Goodale, had pleaded guilty in April to the 2021 attack on Nohema Graber. Showers acknowledged Miller’s young age, but added that he had “cut Nohema Graber’s precious life short,” devastating her family and the community. “I find that your intent and actions were sinister and evil. Those acts resulted in the intentional loss of human life in a brutal fashion,” Showers said. “There is no excuse.” Before being sentenced, Miller said in court that he accepted responsibility for the killing and apologized to the Graber family. Goodale is to be sentenced later.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
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