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

A banner reading "Buy Canadian", in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on goods from Canada, is held aloft by a pair of hockey sticks in front of a house

A banner reading "Buy Canadian", in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on goods from Canada, is held aloft by a pair of hockey sticks in front of a house in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada March 5, 2025.

REUTERS/Ed White
US and Canada hold last-minute talks to avoid new tariffs Washington and Ottawa are down to the wire with talks to reach an agreement by 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, when President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 50% tariffs on over $20 billion of Canadian goods. The proposed tariffs would hit Canadian exports to the US — everything from hockey [...]
The DRC’s deadliest Ebola outbreak ever
Natalie Johnson
On Monday, public health officials said the virus had killed 2,325 people, exceeding the death toll of every previous Ebola outbreak in the country. For weeks, the outbreak has also spread faster than any earlier outbreak. And the full toll may be even higher: WHO officials recently said the outbreak had begun months before authorities declared it [...]
A staff member holds a dummy as staff and customers take shelter at a storage room, during an air raid exercise at a PX Mart supermarket as part of the civil defence drills in Taipei, Taiwan

A staff member holds a dummy as staff and customers take shelter at a storage room, during an air raid exercise at a PX Mart supermarket as part of the civil defence drills in Taipei, Taiwan. July 10, 2025.

REUTERS/Annabelle Chih
Over the weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked his country’s Independence Day by announcing the creation of a “massive” volunteer civil defense force. Calling India’s existing civil defense capacity “outdated,” Modi said the country of 1.4 billion people must protect the new targets of modern warfare, including refineries, the [...]
A princess among men
Will Fitzpatrick
No, the change wasn’t a publicity stunt for the newly announced Princess Diaries 3. On Saturday, Liechtenstein’s hereditary prince announced that the tiny country of around 40,000 people would end male-only succession and adopt firstborn inheritance, opening the door for the first woman to lead the monarchy since the House of Liechtenstein was [...]