COLOMBIA
Narco-sub captured
The navy on Monday said it had intercepted a narco-submarine off the nation’s Pacific Coast on Saturday morning, as drug traffickers produce record amounts of cocaine destined for Europe and the US. The 15m-long homemande submersible was carrying almost 800kg of cocaine in small packages the size of bricks, navy spokesman Captain Wilmer Roa said. The packets were stamped with images of scorpions and Mexican flags. “In reality, this was a small” seizure, Roa said. “We’ve caught submarines with almost 3,500 kilos” of the drug. Last year, the navy captured 10 narco-subs, Roa said that last year Colombia’s navy captured 10 narco-submarines.
AUSTRALIA
Morrison quits politics
Former prime minister Scott Morrison yesterday said he was leaving politics to pursue a business career, calling time on a contentious career. The veteran politician announced he was stepping down as representative for a Sydney suburb next month, after 16 years in parliament. Morrison said he would “take on new challenges in the global corporate sector.” The conservative leader led Australia during the devastating 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic, when he shut the nation’s borders to the rest of the world. An avid supporter of the fossil fuel industry, Morrison once brought a lump of coal into parliament to show that lawmakers had nothing to fear from the black combustible rock. He repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that arson was a bigger cause of wildfires than climate change.
PHILIPPINES
No Duterte probe: Marcos
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday said his country would not help the International Criminal Court (ICC) in investigating his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. “Let me say this for the 100th time, I do not recognize the jurisdiction of ICC in the Philippines. I consider it as a threat to our sovereignty,” Marcos told reporters. “Therefore, the Philippine government will not lift a finger to help any investigation that the ICC conducts.” Marcos’ remarks come days after former senator Antonio Trillanes, who in 2017 filed a supplemental complaint against Duterte in the ICC, told local media that investigators of The Hague-based tribunal visited the Philippines in December to gather evidence. Trillanes said an arrest warrant against Duterte might be issued within the first half of the year, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported. Marcos said the government is “making sure” that the court investigators “do not come into contact with any agency of government.”
PAKISTAN
Dad kills son over flag
A father killed his son after the pair disagreed about which political party flag to display in the lead-up to the general election on Feb. 8, police said. The argument broke out when the son, who recently returned from working in Qatar, hoisted the flag of former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party at the family home on the outskirts of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. “The father prohibited his son from hoisting the PTI flag at home, but the son refused to take it down and abandon PTI,” district police official Naseer Farid said. “The argument escalated, and in a fit of anger, the father fired a pistol at his 31-year-old son, before fleeing the house.” The son died on the way to the hospital. Police are searching for the father, who was affiliated with the nationalist Awami National Party and had previously displayed their flag.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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