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.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
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