1. terror warning on Borneo, Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR - THE United States embassy in Malaysia issued a warning on Friday that criminal and terrorist groups are planning attacks against foreigners in Sabah state on Borneo island. The embassy said there was ‘present concern’ over resorts in isolated areas in eastern Sabah including the diving island of Sipadan where foreign hostages were snatched in 2000. ‘There are indications that both criminal and terrorist groups are planning or intend acts of violence against foreigners in eastern Sabah,’ the embassy said in a warden notice posted on its website. ‘The Abu Sayyaf group, based in the southern Philippines, has kidnapped foreigners in eastern Sabah in the past,’ it said. The advisory identified the destinations of Semporna, Mabul and Sipadan and called on citizens to ‘please avoid or use extreme caution in connection with any travel in these areas or locations.’ The US travel advisory on Malaysia already warns of the threat of criminal and terrorist attacks in Sabah but the information in Friday’s statement was more specific on the areas being targeted. — AFP
2. lawyer’s office in Malaysia ‘Allah’ case ransacked
Burglars ransacked the offices of lawyers representing Christians fighting for the right to use the word “Allah” to refer to God in this Muslim-majority country, officials said Thursday. Lawyer S. Selvarajah said that staff arrived at work in the morning to find several locks and steel grill doors to enter the 2nd and 3rd floor offices cut, drawers ransacked and papers strewn on the floor. He said his partner’s laptop was missing. A mobile phone service provider’s shop and tuition center on the first floor were not broken into, he said. “Only our office has been targeted,” he said. “It looks like it is an intimidation tactic … We anticipated something will happen. We are definitely upset about this,” he told The Associated Press. The incident adds to the tension building up since attacks since Friday night on nine churches, one of which was partially gutted….Petaling Jaya police chief Arjunaidi Mohamed confirmed the break-in, saying police were investigating. He said it should not immediately be linked to recent church attacks. “It has nothing to do with the churches,” he said.
3. $500 tip leads police to $66 million in fake bills
Malaysian police have arrested a Lebanese man allegedly carrying fake currency with a face value of $66 million after he tipped a hotel staff with a $500 note, news reports said Friday. The largest U.S. note currently in circulation is a $100 bill. But police found bundles of $1 million, $100,000 and $500 notes in the man’s hotel room in Kuala Lumpur, the New Straits Times and The Star newspapers reported….This is not the first time the man has been in trouble with the law in Malaysia, the reports said. A Malaysian court charged him last week with cheating over the sale of office supplies in 2005 in a separate case. Cheating, or fraud, carries a maximum penalty of five years.
4. the drug link to al qaeda — planes, West Africa, South America, Europe….. Lebanon?? SE Asia??
TIMBUKTU (MALI) - A FLEET of rogue jet aircraft has been regularly criss-crossing the Atlantic Ocean between cocaine producing areas in the Andes and some of West Africa’s most unstable countries, according to a report submitted by a US Homeland Security official. But that 2008 report, a copy of which was recently obtained by Reuters, was ignored, [INCOMPETENCE MEME] and the problem has since escalated into what security officials in several countries describe as a global security threat. [NATURALLY] The clandestine fleet, which has since grown, is believed to be flying cocaine and possibly weapons to an area in Africa where factions of Al-Qaeda are allegedly facilitating European drug smuggling. [AND FROM EUROPE TO WHERE???]
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been held responsible for car and suicide bombings in Algeria and Mauritania. Gunmen and bandits with links to AQIM have also stepped up kidnappings of Europeans, who are then passed on to AQIM factions seeking ransom payments. The aircraft hopscotch across South American countries, picking up tonnes of cocaine and jet fuel, officials say. They then soar across the Atlantic to West Africa and the Sahel, where the drugs are funnelled across the Sahara Desert and into Europe. Officials in the United States and three West African nations say that at least 10 aircraft have been discovered using this air route since 2006, though they say the real number could be considerably higher.
5. Jordan jails Lebanese man for cocaine smuggling — linking South America and Lebanon now with drugs. this stuff happened last year, and these things happen all the time — small time stuff — and these stories help shape the narrative when discussed at the appropriate time.
A Jordanian military tribunal on Wednesday sentenced three people, including a 42-year-old Lebanese, to 15 years’ hard labor for smuggling 11 kilos of cocaine into the country. “Two men, a Jordanian, 25, and a 42-year-old Lebanese, as well as a Brazilian woman, 27, brought 11 kilos of cocaine from Brazil to Jordan in order to take it to Lebanon,” a court official told AFP. “They were arrested at Amman’s international airport in January last year.” The state security court acquitted another 25-year-old Brazilian woman because of lack of evidence, the official said. He gave no further details, but estimated the value of the drugs at around 11 million dinars (15.5 million dollars). The verdict can be appealed within 30 days. Last year, the same court jailed two Peruvian women for smuggling hundreds of cocaine capsules into Jordan in their stomachs.(Naharnet-AFP)
6. because they distract from stuff like this: Oh OOPSIE! who is that helping to traffic drugs? GASP: the US, UK and Canada! but since an Iranian says so, this can be safely ignored by The West, even though the UN praises Iran’s work fighting drug trafficking
A senior Iranian anti-drug official has accused the US, Britain and Canada of playing a major role in Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade. On the sidelines of an anti-drug conference in Tehran, deputy head of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters Taha Taheri said that Western powers are aiding the drug trade in Afghanistan. “According to our indisputable information, the presence of the United States, Britain and Canada has not reduced the dug trade and the three countries have had major roles in the distribution of drugs,” IRIB quoted Taheri as saying on Thursday. Iranian officials have always criticized Western countries over their policies towards Afghanistan, where poppy cultivation has drastically increased since the US-led military occupation of the country in 2001. Taheri added that drug catalysts are being smuggled into Afghanistan through borders that are controlled by US, British and Canadian troops. Some 13,000 tones of drug catalysts are brought into Afghanistan every year as the war-torn country is the producer of 90 percent of the world’s opium. The UN office on drugs and crime said last month that the 2009 potential gross export value of opium from Afghanistan stood at $2.8 billion. Iranian police officials maintain that drug production in Afghanistan has had a 40-fold increase since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001. “More than 340 tones of drugs have been seized all over Iran in the past nine months,” IRNA quoted the commander of the drug squad, General Hamid Reza Hossein-Abadi, as saying earlier this month. The UN has praised Tehran for its commitment to the fight against drug trafficking.
7. NATO forces discover weapons caches in South Afghanistan and drugs in Kandahar
KABUL, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) discovered six weapons caches in an operation in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province, an ISAF press release said Friday. The weapons caches, discovered on Thursday, contained a large amount of weapons and IED making materials, including 340 pounds of home-made explosives, 17 hand grenades, an RPG launcher, and numerous small arms and ammunition, the press release added. Most of the materials were destroyed on site, it further said.
In another operation in of southern Kandahar province, Afghan National Police and ISAF forces seized 1,000 pounds of hashishm when searching a building in the province’s Arghandab district, ISAF press release said. The drugs were destroyed on site. The southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the stronghold of Taliban militants, have been the scene of skirmishes and Taliban-led insurgency over the past several years.
