Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

What We're Watching: Colombia nabs top druglord

What We're Watching: Colombia nabs top druglord

Dairo Antonio Usuga David, alias "Otoniel", top leader of the Gulf clan, poses for a photo while escorted by Colombian military soldiers inside a helicopter after being captured, in Turbo, Colombia October 23, 2021.

Colombian Defense Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
Make us preferred on Google

Colombia nabs top drug kingpin: Colombian security forces have arrested Dairo Antonio Usuga, the most-wanted drug kingpin in the country since Pablo Escobar. Usuga – known by his alias Otoniel – is head of the notorious Gulf Cartel, and will likely be extradited to face a slew of charges in the US, which had a $5 million bounty on his head. While some say Otoniel's capture is a big win for Colombia, others say that rather than striking a blow to narco-related violence, the strategy of taking down kingpins creates more power struggles within cartels, in turn leading to more violence and bloodshed. This was the case following the 1993 death of Escobar and the 2016 arrest of "El Chapo" Guzmán in Mexico. Still, if Otoniel spills the beans on his operations in exchange for a lighter sentence in America, that could provide critical intelligence for Colombian and US drug enforcement to better target other narcos at a time when large swaths of rural Colombia are now ruled by gangs, contributing to regional instability.

More For You

Coke trade booms despite crackdowns
Will Fitzpatrick
Over the past year, the Trump administration has unleashed a massive military campaign against suspected drug traffickers in South America and the Caribbean, including dozens of lethal airstrikes on alleged smuggling vessels. Despite these tactics, which human rights lawyers and activists have questioned, “massive” amounts of cocaine continue to [...]
Serhii Kusnetzow, a former Ukrainian army officer charged by German federal prosecutors with being a co-perpetrator of a war crime over the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline blasts, attends his trial in Hamburg, Germany.

Serhii Kusnetzow, a former Ukrainian army officer charged by German federal prosecutors with being a co-perpetrator of a war crime over the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline blasts, attends his trial in Hamburg, Germany, October 14, 2026.

Markus Scholz/Pool via REUTERS REFILE
Nord Stream sabotage trial begins in GermanyA Ukrainian former special forces officer is accused of war crimes for leading the September 2022 sabotage of the massive undersea pipeline, which once carried Russian gas to Germany. The officer’s lawyers say Nord Stream was a legitimate military target following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and [...]
The GOP’s Musky scent
Musk’s cash splash – which makes him the largest known midterm donor – is meant to help Republicans head off a so-called “Blue Wave” of Democrat support that could cost the GOP not only the House, but possibly the Senate as well. It signals that Musk intends to remain a fixture of Republican politics, despite his rocky exit from the Trump [...]
Boxes of perished goods are seen outside an Intermarche supermarket in Paris the day after a cyberattack targeted refrigeration systems at French supermarket chains, causing food losses and fires at several stores, France, October 13, 2026.

Boxes of perished goods are seen outside an Intermarche supermarket in Paris the day after a cyberattack targeted refrigeration systems at French supermarket chains, causing food losses and fires at several stores, France, October 13, 2026.

REUTERS/Lucien Libert
Supermarket cyberattacks turn the heat up in France Hackers set their sights on an unusual target in France this week: supermarkets. On Monday, attackers used remote software to raise the temperature on fridges and freezers to around 122 degrees Fahrenheit, spoiling food and sparking fires. While the full scale of the attack remains unconfirmed, [...]