Colombia Armed Forces Biggest Drug Bust Worth Over $300 Million

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INTERNATIONAL: Colombia's armed forces seize 10 tonnes cocaine on Tuesday from the leftist National Liberation Army worth over $300 million. The Colombian Defence Minister Diego Molano says it is the most important blow in terms of cocaine seizures this year.

It is largest shipment so far this year, and the armed forces has destroyed two drug labs in an anti-narcotics mission in the southeast of the country.The cocaine and the labs were found in a rural zone of the Samaniego municipality, located in Colombia's Narino province near the border with Ecuador.

Despite decades of fighting against drug trafficking, Colombia remains a top global producer of cocaine and faces constant pressure from the United States to lower the size of coca crops, the drug's main ingredient, as well as production of cocaine.

Drug trafficking helps finance illegal armed groups in Colombia amid a long-running internal armed conflict, which has left more than 260,000 dead.Security sources have revealed, aside from the ELN, ex- members of the demobilized FARC guerrillas who reject a 2016 peace deal are involved in drug trafficking, as well as criminal gangs.Colombia's military and police confiscated a record 505 tonnes of cocaine in 2020.

Police Storm Bank to Stop Robbery in Kenya

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Equity Bank’s Ang’awa Branch in Kisumu was the target on Tuesday of a second bank robbery in six years, that ended in a dramatic search of suspects.

A footage shows Police officers climbing through the bank's windows with guns drawn to try and subdue the suspected robbers, while outside the bank a crowd gathered to watch. Police officers engaged the suspected robbers for hours in a shootout.

More than 20 people, including the bank manager, several staff and some customers were still being held in police custody for questioning over the attempted heist.The dramatic encounter began at around 11AM of Tuesday when four suspected robbers are said to have raided the bank premises along Ang’awa Avenue. From the police reports, one of the suspects who had been cornered inside the bank hurled tear gas inside, which sent people in confusion and running for their dear lives.

NASA Launches Suicide Spacecraft to Kick Asteroid Off-Course

^{PHOTO: VARIOUS OF LAUNCH OF ASTEROID-DEFLECTING SPACECRAFT FOR NASA TEST MISSION.}

And…NASA finally launched a spacecraft with one simple mission: Smash into an asteroid at 24,140 kilometres per hour.

The mission of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, is to test whether slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid can nudge it into a different trajectory. Results from the test, if successful, will come in handy if NASA and other space agencies ever need to deflect an asteroid to save Earth and avert a catastrophic impact.

The DART spacecraft lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday at 1:21AM Eastern time from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The rocket has reached space before sending its reusable booster back toward the ocean to land on a SpaceX’s drone ship. It will take about an hour to deploy the spacecraft in orbit, and hours after that it will unfurl solar panels to power the vehicle on its journey.

NASA has hosted a livestream of the launch on its YouTube channel that started at 12:30AM on Wednesday.