Category Archives: Drugs trade

Fiji declares national HIV emergency as Pacific nation grapples with surge in cases

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Government estimates that one in 60 adults in Fiji now living with HIV, as escalating use of methamphetamine fuels ‘epidemic’

Fiji has declared a national HIV emergency amid a spike in infections as the Pacific nation grapples with a correlating rise in methamphetamine use.

The country’s health and medical services minister, Dr Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu, said in a statement on social media that an outbreak-level response was no longer sufficient to address what he described an “epidemic”.

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People protecting nature and land set up self-defence units amid threat of murder

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Defenders of forests and rivers killed at rate of one every three days in 2025, with 85% of deaths in Latin America

Nature and land defenders were murdered at the rate of one every three days last year, prompting many communities to set up self-defence units, according to the latest annual death toll by the independent watchdog Global Witness.

Organised crime groups or professional killers were implicated in more than a third of the 124 killings of defenders in 2025 as narco-trafficking activities overlapped with intrusions into indigenous territories and environmental crime, such as illegal logging and wildcat gold mining.

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Rubio says US will work with allies to stop drug-trafficking as three killed in latest boat strike

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Rubio visits Ecuador and welcomes cooperation after campaign of unilateral strikes on alleged ‘narco-terrorists’

US secretary of state Marco Rubio gave new clarity on the approach toward combating drug trafficking in Latin American waters, saying the Trump administration was focused on working with allied countries and aligning with their laws but insisting the military will “still blow up ships if need be.”

The public acknowledgment of a shift in US strategy comes a year after Washington began a campaign of unilateral deadly strikes against those it calls “narco-terrorists” operating boats in international waters.

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Notorious Ecuadorian crime gang designated a terrorist group by US

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Trump administration to seek extra funding from Congress to ‘dismantle’ Los Tiguerones over narcotics trafficking

The US has designated Ecuador’s Los Tiguerones gang, which stormed a television station during a live broadcast in 2024, as a terrorist organisation as the Trump administration expands its campaign against narcotics traffickers it says are destabilising Latin America.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made the announcement in Quito, where he met Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa, one of several rightwing allies of Donald Trump whom Rubio is courting as a security partner during a three-nation tour through Latin America that began on Tuesday.

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Home Office could be blocked from deporting trafficking victims to Albania

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Many males are returned even if they have been trafficked but Home Office must now consider new legal guidance

The Home Office could be blocked from deporting many young male trafficking victims to Albania after a major court ruling.

Thousands of Albanian males have been identified as potential trafficking victims in the UK in recent years. Many are sent back to their country even if they are potential or confirmed victims of trafficking, as the Home Office contends they will be safe there.

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Gangs using Airbnb-type rentals as drug stash houses, top Belgian official says

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Flexible short-term bookings used to store and pack drugs and stash weapons and cash, says Ine Van Wymersch

Airbnb-type short-term rentals are being used as stash houses by criminal gangs for money, drugs, weapons and people, Belgium’s lead official in charge of countering drugs has said.

The booming e-commerce sector is helping “enormously” to facilitate organised crime, Belgium’s national drug commissioner, Ine Van Wymersch, said.

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Gangs taking villages on Brazil-Peru border ‘hostage’, say Indigenous leaders

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Delegation sent to Brasília after gunmen from organised crime group enter homes in western Amazon Forest

Indigenous leaders on the Brazil-Peru border say their communities are being “taken hostage” by organised crime groups who are running rampant across the region, destroying Amazon Forest, building roads and trafficking drugs.

Earlier this month, masked men armed with semi-automatic weapons entered homes in Apiwtxa, a village in the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Territory, intimidating people and searching for targets.

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Mexican drug lord ‘El Mayo’ sentenced to life in prison in US federal court

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Case against Ismael Zambada García, who helped co-found and lead the violent Sinaloa cartel, unfolded in New York

The Mexican drug kingpin, Ismael Zambada García, known as “El Mayo”, was sentenced in a US federal court on Monday to life in prison, after a plea deal last year in which he admitted ⁠to shipping vast amounts of cocaine and other substances as leader of the violent Sinaloa cartel.

Zambada is 76 and one of the most high-profile Mexican ⁠drug traffickers to be sentenced in a US court since his fellow Sinaloa leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán ​was sentenced to life in prison in ‌2019. The case unfolded in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

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Five charged in Liberia after more than 200kg of cocaine seized in drug bust

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Shipment discovered at airport in Monrovia and valued at £14.2m had been falsely declared as seasoning cubes

Authorities in Liberia have charged five suspects over one of the largest drug seizures in the country’s history, after police found more than 200kg of cocaine falsely declared as Maggi seasoning cubes.

The shipment, with an estimated value of $19m (£14.2m), was discovered at the international airport in Monrovia on 8 June, but the suspects were not named until a press briefing at the weekend.

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Did US drug agents allow lethal fentanyl to hit New Mexico’s streets?

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Explosive AP story based on whistleblower testimony suggests agents ‘sat back and watched’ in hopes of securing larger drug-trafficking bust

Did the Drug Enforcement Agency break the law and gamble with public safety when it permitted large quantities of fentanyl pills to be trafficked in New Mexico in the hopes of getting a larger drug-trafficking bust?

That is the question at the heart of an explosive story published in the Associated Press, based on information provided by a former DEA agent turned whistleblower; the whistleblower filed a complaint in 2023 that claimed agents had allowed hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills into Albuquerque – a city still reeling from the opioid crisis while many others across the country are seeing overdose rates decline.

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Clashes between armed groups in Colombia kill at least 52

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Rival groups are vying for territorial control of strategic cocaine production and trafficking region

At least 52 guerrilla fighters have been killed in clashes between two rival armed groups vying for territorial control of a strategic cocaine production and trafficking region in south-east Colombia, a faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) involved in the fighting has said.

The clashes, the most violent in recent months, took place in the jungles of the department of Guaviare, near the village of Barranco Colorado.

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One person killed in latest US military strike on alleged drug boat in Pacific

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Nearly 200 people killed in Trump administration’s deadly campaign as strikes draw widespread condemnation

The US military launched another strike Tuesday on a vessel suspected of transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing one man and leaving two survivors.

Video posted on social media by US Southern Command shows a boat speeding through water before exploding into flames. Southern Command said it “immediately notified the US Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors”.

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Pressure on Mexico after two ex-officials surrender to US over alleged cartel ties

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Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum denies any links between her Morena party and organized crime

Pressure is mounting on Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, after two former top officials from the country’s Sinaloa state – both members of her Morena party – gave themselves up to US authorities over alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel.

The state’s former security minister Gerardo Mérida Sánchez crossed the border into Arizona last week and was taken into custody by US marshals, Mexico’s security ministry said. Sinaloa’s former finance minister, Enrique Díaz Vega, was taken into custody in New York.

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Drug gang attacks ‘force hundreds of Indigenous families to flee’ in Mexico

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Violence in Guerrero state has driven as many as 1,000 households from their homes, rights group says

Hundreds of Indigenous families have been forced to flee their homes in the mountains of central Mexico by intense attacks from a local criminal group, including drone bombings, an Indigenous rights organisation said on Monday.

A gang known as Los Ardillos has been carrying out attacks in Guerrero state for years, but they started to intensify last week. Villages were subjected to eight hours of bombings on Saturday, the National Indigenous Congress said, forcing between 800 to 1,000 families to flee to other towns.

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Australia’s use of methamphetamine has doubled in a decade, wastewater monitoring reveals

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Consumption is at a record high along with that of cocaine, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission figures show

Methamphetamine use in Australia has almost doubled in the past decade and stimulants are being taken at record highs, new wastewater monitoring reveals.

On Wednesday evening the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (Acic) released its latest annual report after testing wastewater samples from 64 treatment plants across the country between August 2024 and 2025.

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US military kills two more people in strike on alleged drug boat in Pacific

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Small boat destroyed in video posted on social media as US campaign has killed at least 178 people since September

The US military announced on Friday that it killed two people in an attack on a boat in the eastern Pacific, part of a series of deadly strikes on vessels in recent months which it claims are targeting “narco-trafficking” operations.

The US Southern Command declared in a social media post on X that Gen Francis L Donovan directed Joint Task Force Southern Spear, the counter-narcotics unit that operates in the region, to carry out a lethal strike. The US military posted a video, which it labeled unclassified, showing a small boat being destroyed in an explosion.

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Dozens of Mexican mafia members arrested in California crackdown

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Prosecutors say 43 people indicted on charges including murder, kidnapping, extortion and drug trafficking

More than two dozen members and associates of the Mexican mafia were arrested during an early morning crackdown in southern California, federal authorities said on Thursday.

The FBI and other federal and local agencies executed search and arrest warrants at locations mostly in Orange county, south of Los Angeles, according to the US attorney’s office.

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US and Mexican officials assigned to cartel case killed in car accident

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Director of state investigation agency among those killed in Chihuahua in operation to destroy clandestine drug labs

Two United States officials and another two Mexican officials assigned to combat drug cartel operations died in a car accident in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua on Sunday, a US embassy spokesperson said.

The Mexican officials were the director of the state’s investigation agency and an officer, state authorities said, adding that they were on an operation to destroy clandestine laboratories in the municipality of Morelos.

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Dismay as Hegseth urges Latin American allies to join ‘offense’ against cartels

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Critics sceptical Pentagon chief’s plan for increased military force – amid rising US intervention – will stop drug gangs

Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, has urged Latin American countries to adopt a more aggressive approach against drug cartels, warning that the Trump administration may otherwise act unilaterally in the region.

Hegseth’s remarks come in a context of escalating US intervention in the region, both militarily and in elections, which culminated in the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro – the first US ground military attack on a South American country.

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Who was El Mencho, the former police officer who co-founded an ultraviolent cartel in Mexico?

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Drug lord who was killed by Mexican special forces on Sunday led a cartel known for aggression and military-style arsenal

The drug lord “El Mencho”, who was killed on Sunday by Mexican special forces, was the co-founder and leader of a gang that in recent years had become the country’s most powerful criminal organisation: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

While less internationally famous than the Sinaloa cartel of the now imprisoned Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the CJNG is a household name in Mexico, where it is known for its displays of ultraviolence and its big, military-style arsenal.

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