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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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