A record shipment of cocaine was hidden among bananas in a Germany-bound container in the port of Southampton, British police said. British authorities said they seized 5.7 tons of cocaine at a port in southern England, believed to be the largest seizure of Class A drugs ever in the United Kingdom. The street value of the cocaine seized is believed to be "in excess of 450 million pounds" ($570 million or €526 million), the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) said in a press release. The cocaine was seized on February 8 at the port of Southampton on the south coast of England. The NCA said officers believed the drugs were bound for the German city of Hamburg "for onward delivery." The UK's previous largest cocaine seizure saw 3.7 tons of the drug also found in the port of Southampton in 2022. A huge hit on organized crime The NCA said it would work with European partners to identify criminal networks involved in the illegal operation. "This record-breaking seizure will represent a huge hit to the international organized crime cartels involved, denying them massive profits," said NCA Director Chris Farrimond. "While the destination for the consignment was continental Europe in this case, I have no doubt that a significant proportion would have ended up back here in the UK, being peddled by UK criminal gangs," he added. The NCA estimates that the illicit cocaine market in the UK generates around £4 billion a year for criminal gangs.

On a private residential street in northwest London sits a property which was last sold in 2022 for £11 million ($13.8 million). The row of white townhouses is located in one of the UK capital's most affluent neighborhoods, a stone’s throw away from Regent’s Park and Lord's Cricket Ground. Marketing photographs of one of the properties in the development showcase floor-to-ceiling windows, a spiral staircase across several floors, a cinema and a gym. Now valued at more than £13 million by one property platform, the house is owned by a politician from Bangladesh, a country with currency controls that restrict its citizens, residents and public servants from moving more than $12,000 a year outside the country. The measures also prohibit corporations from transferring funds abroad unless permitted and only when certain conditions are met. Saifuzzaman Chowdhury served as land minister for five years up to January 2024. Since 2016, companies that he owns have built up a UK real estate empire of more than 350 properties worth about £200 million. These figures are based on a Bloomberg analysis of available Companies House corporate accounts in the UK, mortgage charges and HM Land Registry transactions. The properties range from luxury apartments in central London to housing in Tower Hamlets, home to the largest Bangladeshi community in England, and student accommodation in Liverpool. Analysis of nearly 250 of the UK properties show that almost 90% were classified as new-builds when bought, a valuable component in a UK housing market suffering severe shortages. These transactions took place during a period when the UK government had committed to making foreign property ownership more transparent amid criticism of the ease with which Russian oligarchs were able to hide their wealth in the UK. This process became more urgent in the wake of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Chowdhury property deals could revive questions over whether UK legislation to scrutinize such purchases involving politicians are effective, according to transparency advocates. Bangladeshi Politician Buys London Property Empire Properties acquired by companies owned by MP and former Land Minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, sized by the price paid, where known Bloomberg has also identified at least five properties in Manhattan belonging to Chowdhury, bought for a total of about $6 million between 2018 and 2020, according to municipal property records. Chowdhury was re-elected as an MP, but lost his cabinet post after national elections on Jan. 7, which were boycotted by the opposition after anti-government protests were violently put down. He has since become chair of the parliamentary committee for land. In a pre-election declaration of his interests in December, Chowdhury listed his total assets at about 258.3 million Bangladeshi taka ($2.4 million), and those of his wife, Rukhmila Zaman, at about $993,000. He did not include his UK property holdings in the declaration of assets in Bangladesh. His 2022-23 salary as a minister of state is listed as about £10,000. The country’s currency controls are policed by the central bank.   Source: Bloomberg

Alicia Kearns, a UK lawmaker in the House of Commons, recently shared her concerns on social media regarding the ongoing suppression and genocide of the Uyghur Muslim community in Xinjiang, China. While chairing a foreign committee meeting in the UK, Kearns recently heard the personal experiences of Yalkun Uluyol, an exiled Uyghur rights activist, who shared the atrocities faced by his relatives in China. Taking the matter to X, Alicia Kearns mentioned that "@YalkunUluyol shared his story, and that of his family, with the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is a heartbreaking insight into the reality faced by the Uyghur people, one of loss, forced separation, grief, and the ache of the unknown. Genocide is taking place in Xinjiang". During the foreign affairs meeting, Uluyol said, that his last visit to his hometown in China was in 2016, as he could not revisit because of mass detentions. The Uyghur rights activist further mentions that "the first member of my Uyghur family who was taken for re-education was taken in September 2016. Further my father disappeared in June 2018". "In 2020 was able to trace my father to a re-education camp built in my hometown. He was labelled untrustworthy for having relatives abroad. I had no communication with my family back home. So it took me 2 years to trace my father back to a detention camp," Uluyol further said. While spotlighting the strict security protocol forced on the Uyghur community, Uluyol mentioned that "the day I got married, I had shared some photos of myself on a Chinese social media, to share my happiness with my relatives back home. This had resulted in the forceful interrogation of all my relatives back home". He further added that the UK government in April 2021 had voted that China had been committing genocide on the Uyghur people and that same year the foreign affairs committee held its first inquiry. And since then nothing has changed towards the positive. Narrating another incident of atrocities inflicted by the Chinese authorities on his relatives even abroad, the Uyghur rights activist added, "Another time when I had shared a photo of my daughter on the Chinese social media. It resulted in police intimidation of my in-laws abroad. Further, I came to know very late that my father was sentenced to 16 years of prison, for no reason. Just like my uncle Ahmed Yakub who was sentenced a lifetime imprisonment."The Uyghur rights activist further took names of several of his relatives, intellectuals, and other ordinary people who have been sentenced to several years in prison. He further mentioned that some of his relatives and friends back in Xinjiang were sent to production facilities as a condition of release, and some of the captured were released but were kept under strict surveillance. Yalkun Uluyol mentioned that her daughter had passed away recently. But, he does not even know that his father even knew that he had a granddaughter. While giving the conclusion of atrocities that he and his people back home have to bear at the hands of Chinese authorities Uluyol said that "this is just my storyline of witnessing the milestones of worsening conditions in the region. From Mass detentions to state-imposed labor transfers, to unjust imprisonments and transgressional repressions added to the inability to communicate back home. I can dive further into mass imprisonment in labor camps. But nothing has improved as of yet, in terms of human rights violations in my hometown. As it is reflected in my life and hundreds and thousands of other Uyghurs".  Source: Beijing News

One Bangladeshi and 22 Indian crew members are on board a British oil tanker MV Marlin Luanda which reported an outbreak of fire in the Gulf of Aden, following an alleged Houthi missile strike. The incident prompted the Indian Navy to rush its warship to join firefighting operations. The fire broke out on the night of January 26 and the ship has 22 Indian and one Bangladeshi crew members onboard, the Indian Navy said today (Jan 27).   "The fire-fighting efforts onboard the distressed Merchant Vessel is being augmented by the NBCD team along with fire fighting equipment, deployed by INS Visakhapatnam to assist the crew onboard the MV. The MV has 22 Indian & 01 Bangladeshi crew onboard," the Indian Navy wrote on X, formerly Twitter.   The firefighting efforts onboard the oil tanker are being augmented by a team of India's National Biological and Chemical Defence along with equipment, the Indian Navy said. While there was no official word on how the fire broke out, the blaze was reportedly caused by a missile fired by Houthi rebels.

At a press conference in the heart of Silicon Valley, five men in suits posed for a photograph that shed unprecedented light on the world’s most powerful intelligence partnership. The men belonged to the Five Eyes espionage alliance, each representing intelligence services from Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US. Until then, they had never appeared together in public. Their smiles to the camera contrasted against a dark warning shared by one group member, Britain’s head of MI5, Ken McCallum. The UK had seen a sharp rise in aggressive attempts by foreign states to steal the country’s high-tech secrets, he warned. The biggest threat of all: China. According to McCallum, more than 20,000 people in the UK have been approached by Chinese agents online as part of “epic scale” espionage efforts. One alleged Chinese spy created fake profiles on LinkedIn to contact thousands of British officials – offering cash, trips to China and paid speaking gigs as ways of extracting state secrets. Reports of China’s covert spy network in the UK will weigh on the minds of City bosses, as corporations fortify their offices with costly cyber defences to protect their data being stolen by ransomware gangs. While some UK companies are now spending millions of pounds spent on cyber insurance, many remain uncovered. Most vulnerable are Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses, according to Jamie MacColl, a cyber research fellow at defence think tank Royal United Services Institute. “A lot of organisations just don’t view it as an important risk, particularly smaller companies. They might think, you know, a cyber attack is something that happens to someone else, or it’s something that only happens to large corporations,” he says. The coverage gap can be partly blamed on insurance fees. A decade ago, cyber insurance was cheap and easy to buy. Insurance companies cut their prices to spark demand in a nascent market. “Naive insurers entered into the cyber insurance market with not a lot of cybersecurity expertise, wrote policies that had very high limits and no kind of security requirements to get a policy. They all got burnt when ransomware became an issue,” says MacColl. The rise of Russian-backed cyber hackers demanding multi-million pound ransoms from City firms left underwriters lumbered with mounting losses. Some insurers were forced to leave the cyber risk market entirely. Profit-seeking insurers hiked prices and made it harder to qualify for protection, with many companies not meeting the higher minimum security requirements. While costs have since come down as more cyber insurers re-entered the market over the past year, how much these policies will actually cover has also been hotly debated. Where trade secrets are stolen by cyber spies, the answer is typically straightforward. While insurance will often pay for follow-on investigation and compliance costs after a cyber attack, the loss of intellectual property and proprietary information is not usually covered. Insurers can easily determine the value of financial losses from a company’s day-to-day operations being disrupted, but the same can’t be said for trade secrets. “It’s hard to put a value on them. That’s not to say there’s no damage, but it’s harder for insurers to quantify,” says Josephine Wolff, an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University in the US. More complex is who foots the bill in the case of a catastrophic cyber attack. Lloyd’s of London, the biggest and oldest global insurance market in the world, last year began excluding devastating “state-backed” cyber attacks from its standard insurance policies. The new rule stopped insurers selling protection against state-sponsored cyber attacks which are so severe they “significantly impact” a country’s ability to function. It sought to protect insurers from being exposed to enormous costs of systemic cyber warfare, updating war exclusions first introduced to protect earlier risk managers from being crippled by the costs of replacing sunken battleships during the Spanish Civil War. “Think the digital equivalent of a nuclear strike. This remotest of possibilities, like a nuclear strike, is not one that insurers can cover as standard,”  James Burns, head of cyber strategy at insurance company CFC Underwriting, wrote on LinkedIn. The overhaul came after Western powers blamed Russia for the NotPetya hack in 2017, one of the most destructive cyber attacks in history which shut down computer systems of companies in more than 60 countries. After a lengthy legal battle, insurers were left on the hook for billions of dollars in insurance claims. However, it is not clear how the cyber exclusions will actually work in practice. “We haven’t seen a lot of big tests of them yet. We haven’t seen a lot of attacks where insurers have denied big claims and people have gone to court to fight out what it all really means,” says Wolff.     Source: BSS

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched numerous attacks on international ships in the Red Sea, prompting a series of warnings from the US and others. Joe Biden hailed the "united and resolute" response. The United States and Britain on Friday began carrying out strikes against sites used by the Houthi rebel group in Yemen. US officials said targets included logistical hubs, air defense systems and weapons storage locations. US media reported that the strikes involved fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles. The Houthis are backed by Iran and control large swathes of western Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa.   Biden hails 'united' response to 'reckless' Houthi attacks US President Joe Biden said the strikes represented a "united and resolute" response to Houthi attacks on international ships and that the US would "not hesitate to direct further measures" against the militant group. "The response of the international community to these reckless attacks has been united and resolute," he said in a statement released by the White House.  Biden said the US and UK strikes were carried out with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands. "These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes," he said. In a separate statement, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also confirmed the strikes, saying the UK took "limited, necessary and proportionate action in self-defense" in order to "degrade Houthi military capabilities and protect global shipping." "Despite the repeated warnings from the international community, the Houthis have continued to carry out attacks in the Red Sea," he said.   Houthi official warns of retaliation Meanwhile, Houthi leader Abdel Malek al-Houthi vowed retaliation involving dozens of drones. "The response to any American attack will not only be at the level of the operation that was recently carried out with more than 24 drones and several missiles," he said. "It will be greater than that." "We will confront the American aggression," he said. Houthi Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Al Ezzi said in a statement posted by the rebels' Al Masirah broadcaster that the US and UK will pay a "heavy price" for the strikes. "Our country was subjected to a massive aggressive attack by American and British ships, submarines, and warplanes," he said. "America and Britain will have to be prepared to pay a heavy price and bear all the dire consequences of this blatant aggression."   Houthi attacks in the Red Sea Houthi rebels have, in recent weeks, launched numerous attacks on international ships in the Red Sea in reaction to the Israeli military operation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The route through the Suez Canal accounts for around 15% of the world's shipping traffic. The US military said Thursday that Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile into international shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden. This was the 27th attack by the group since November 19. The US and its allies have issued a series of warnings to the Houthis to cease their attacks on ships. On January 3, 12 countries warned the group of "consequences" if they did not halt the attacks. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council approved a resolution demanding an immediate end to Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea.   Source: Deutsche Welle

NATO on Sunday announced that it would be deploying some 600 additional troops to Kosovo to assist KFOR troops in the region after a recent deadly attack on a Kosovar police station amid rumors of a Serbian troop build-up. "The UK is deploying around 200 soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment to join a 400-strong UK contingent already exercising in Kosovo, and further reinforcements will follow from other Allies," announced NATO Spokesman Dylan White. "The decision follows the violent attack on Kosovo Police on 24 September, and increased tensions in the region," White added. He did not, however, refer to Washington's Friday statement warning of a Serbian military build-up on Kosovo's border. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Sunday denied any such build-up of his country's troops, citing instead a "campaign of lies." The move comes in the wake of an attack in the former Serbian region that killed four people, including one Kosovar police officer and three heavily-armed Serbian militants. The attack was the most serious escalation in the region in recent years and has sparked concern of a new chapter to an ongoing conflict. NATO has called for calm and said that dialogue is "the only way to achieve lasting peace." Serbia refuses to acknowledge the independence of Albanian-majority Kosovo, which Kosovo declared in 2008.  Kosovo seeks NATO assistance as ethnic tensions rise

NATO on Sunday announced that it would be deploying some 600 additional troops to Kosovo to assist KFOR troops in the region after a recent deadly attack on a Kosovar police station amid rumors of a Serbian troop build-up. "The UK is deploying around 200 soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment to join a 400-strong UK contingent already exercising in Kosovo, and further reinforcements will follow from other Allies," announced NATO Spokesman Dylan White. "The decision follows the violent attack on Kosovo Police on 24 September, and increased tensions in the region," White added. He did not, however, refer to Washington's Friday statement warning of a Serbian military build-up on Kosovo's border. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Sunday denied any such build-up of his country's troops, citing instead a "campaign of lies." The move comes in the wake of an attack in the former Serbian region that killed four people, including one Kosovar police officer and three heavily-armed Serbian militants. The attack was the most serious escalation in the region in recent years and has sparked concern of a new chapter to an ongoing conflict. NATO has called for calm and said that dialogue is "the only way to achieve lasting peace." Serbia refuses to acknowledge the independence of Albanian-majority Kosovo, which Kosovo declared in 2008.  Kosovo seeks NATO assistance as ethnic tensions rise

China is targeting top British officials to access secrets, the government in London said on Thursday, as it responded to criticisms about its policies towards the Asian superpower. Parliament´s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in a July report called the UK government´s approach to tackling Chinese espionage “completely inadequate” and lacking coordination. The official government response came just days after revelations that a parliamentary researcher was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of spying for China, prompting a denial from Beijing. The domestic intelligence service MI5 also warned the ruling Conservative party that two would-be MPs could be Chinese spies. “The government recognises that Chinese recruitment schemes have tried to headhunt British and allied nationals in key positions and with sensitive knowledge and experience, including from government, military, industry and wider society,” it said in a 48-page response. It accepted “there is more work to be done” to tighten safeguards, particularly against the targeting of current and former civil servants, it added. In a written statement to parliament accompanying the government´s response, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called China “an epoch-defining challenge to the international order”. He defended his policies, which involve pushing for pragmatic engagement with Beijing, particularly on global issues such as tackling climate change and health crises. Some within his own party want him to characterise China as a “systemic threat” to the UK, because of alleged rights abuses against the Uyghur minority and a crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong. Sunak said the ISC criticisms pre-dated more recent updates to policy, including banning tech firm Huawei from the UK 5G network and Chinese involved in civil nuclear programmes. “We are not complacent, and we are keenly aware that there is more to do,” he wrote. But Julian Lewis, the chairman of the ISC, which oversees UK intelligence agencies, said it was “misleading to imply... that our findings are outdated. “Until two months before publication, we monitored all relevant developments and noted them throughout the Report,” he added. “This was not difficult to do given the glacial pace at which the Government´s China policy developed.” Source: The News

The UK's air traffic control service on Monday said that because of a "technical issue" it had been forced to slow takeoffs and landings across the UK.  The National Air Traffic Service (NATS) also said that Britain's airspace was not closed, despite the disruptions.  "We are continuing to work hard to resolve the technical issue," NATS wrote in an update to its initial statement on Monday. "To clarify, UK airspace is not closed, we have had to apply traffic flow restrictions which ensures we can maintain safety." Automatic processing of flight plans failed, NATS says NATS issued two more updates on Monday afternoon, first describing the nature of the problem and subsequently saying that it had been "remedied."  "The flight planning issue affected the system's ability to automatically process flight plans, meaning that flight plans had to be procesed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, henc the requirement for traffic flow restrictions," NATS wrote. "Our priority is always to ensure that every flight in the UK remains safe and we are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing."  With the issue "identified and remedied," NATS said, "We are now working closely with airlines and airport to manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible. Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system's performance as we return to normal operations."  Passengers told to check with airlines about departures NATS advised passengers to "check with your airline on the status of your flight." Delays started to become apparent immediately, airports in the UK and beyond warned passengers to reckon with potential cancellations. The disruption came on a busy travel day, with Monday a public holiday in much of the UK that also falls near the end of school summer holidays. Passengers in several European countries looking to fly back to Britain posted news of delays on social media. News agency Reuters cited one traveler in Budapest hoping to fly to Britain as saying that he had been told to reckon with a wait of 8-12 hours. Delays over Europe  AirNav Ireland, the Republic of Ireland's air traffic control service, said the issue was resulting in "significant delays for flights across Europe that are traveling to, from or through UK airspace."  The European equivalent Eurocontrol warned of "very high" delays because of a "flight data processing failure in the UK."  A spokesperson for Heathrow, London and western Europe's busiest airport, said Heathrow was working with NATS and other airport partners to try to minimize the impact on passengers. London's other major hub Gatwick warned that cancellations were likely.  Scottish airline Loganair had earlier said in a post on the social media site commonly known as Twitter and recently rebranded as X that there had been a network-wide failure of UK air traffic control computer systems.  Although Frankfurt Airport, Germany's busiest, did not immediately comment on the situation on Monday afternoon, its live arrivals board showed two of the next three planes scheduled to fly in from Heathrow as cancelled at the time of publication. Similarly, Cologne/Bonn Airport's arrivals website showed a series of canceled or delayed planes from the UK, including flights from Edinburgh, Heathrow, London Stansted, and even one from Dublin in Ireland.