Category World News

Taipei, Taiwan — More than 3,300 people in Taiwan have been evacuated from their homes as Tropical Storm Fung-Wong closes in on the island, bringing heavy rain and strong winds, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

The slow-moving storm was about 140km (87 miles) southwest of Taiwan on Wednesday morning, according to its Central Weather Administration, with winds measuring 72km/h (45mph) and gusts of up to 101km/h (63mph).

Fung-wong, downgraded from a super typhoon, is expected to make landfall in Taiwan on Wednesday evening and move northeast over the island, the weather bureau said.

Earlier this week, the storm caused 18 deaths in the Philippines due to floods and landslides, according to The Associated Press news agency; however, it has since slowly weakened as it approached Taiwan.

Schools and workplaces across southern and eastern Taiwan were nevertheless shuttered on Wednesday, and all domestic flights were cancelled in anticipation of Fung-Wong ‘s arrival.

Parts of Taiwan have already seen heavy rain and flooding before the arrival of Fung-wong, with one community in the north receiving 783.5mm (3 inches) of rainfall as of Tuesday evening.

The bulk of Taiwan’s evacuation order has been issued for Hualien County on the island’s rugged east coast, which is prone to landslides and earthquakes. The region usually takes the brunt of Taiwan’s typhoon damage.

At least 19 people were killed in Hualien in September when a barrier lake in the mountains overflowed during another typhoon, sending 60 million tonnes of water and debris into a nearby community.

Barrier lakes are formed from a combination of rainwater and landslides, and they cannot be easily dismantled if ground conditions are deemed too unstable. The same barrier lake has been under observation all week, according to Taiwan’s Forestry Bureau.

A video shared by CNA shows an overflowing creek surging through a nearby village of about 300 people in Hualien County on Tuesday, where high floodwaters easily pushed around a car caught up in them. A second video shows a road on a low-lying plain completely washed out by fast-moving water.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has ordered a halt to intelligence sharing with United States security agencies as President Donald Trump’s administration continues to launch missiles at boats in the Caribbean.

“An order has been given at all levels of the public security force’s intelligence services to suspend communications and other dealings with US security agencies,” Petro said on X on Tuesday, adding that the suspension “will remain in force as long as the missile attacks on boats continue”.

The Colombian leader also shared a post with unconfirmed media reports that the United Kingdom has made a move similar to Bogota’s over legal concerns related to the ongoing US attacks that have so far killed at least 75 people.

Petro has called for Trump to be investigated for war crimes over the strikes, which the US says are targeting drug boats and which have affected citizens of Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The leftist leader has long been a critic of US drug policy and has accused the Trump administration of going after peasants growing coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, instead of targeting major drug traffickers and money launderers.

On Sunday, Petro said he met with the family of a Colombian fisherman who was allegedly killed in one of the strikes.

“He may have been carrying fish, or he may have been carrying cocaine, but he had not been sentenced to death,” Petro said during a summit between Latin American and European Union leaders hosted by Colombia on Sunday. “There was no need to murder him.”

The Trump administration has accused Petro of being soft on traffickers and has criticised the Colombian president’s decision to spare Colombian rebel leaders involved in the drug trade from extradition to the US.

This is also not the first time that Trump and Petro have clashed. In September, the Colombian president left the US within hours of Washington revoking his visa for what it said were his “reckless and incendiary actions” while in New York attending the United Nations General Assembly.

Earlier in the day, Petro had addressed a crowd protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza outside UN headquarters, where he called on US soldiers to “disobey the orders of Trump” and “obey the orders of humanity”.

Responding to his visa being taken away, he said: “Revoking it for denouncing genocide shows the US no longer respects international law.”

More recently, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Petro, his family and the South American country’s interior minister, Armando Benedetti, accusing him of failing to rein in Colombia’s cocaine industry and of shielding criminal groups from accountability.

Petro’s announcement on Tuesday came as a US aircraft carrier arrived in the Caribbean Sea, fuelling speculation the Trump administration is considering escalating its military action in the region, which has primarily targeted the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a longtime US rival.

The Pentagon confirmed that the Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group, which includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier, had arrived in the Caribbean with at least 4,000 sailors and “tactical aircraft” on board.

Se da orden a todos los niveles de la inteligencia de la fuerza pública suspender envío de comunicaciones y otros tratos con agencias de seguridad estadounidenses. Tal medida se mantendrá mientras se mantenga el ataque con misiles a lanchas en el Caribe. La lucha contra las… https://t.co/IZRWiL4s6t

A former South Korean prime minister and the country’s one-time spy chief have been arrested in connection with the short-lived imposition of martial law by former President Yoon Suk-yeol in December 2024, local media report.

In separate arrests, former Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn was detained on Wednesday on charges of inciting an insurrection, and Cho Tae-yong, the former head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), was taken into custody for several violations of NIS law, including dereliction of duty, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports.

According to Yonhap, Hwang posted on Facebook following the declaration of martial law, calling for the arrest of the country’s National Assembly speaker and for the eradication of those involved in alleged electoral fraud.

Former intelligence chief Cho, once a close confidant of disgraced President Yoon, is accused of knowing and failing to report plans for the imposition of martial law to the country’s National Assembly.

“The NIS Act obliges its director to report to the National Assembly, as well as to the president, if a situation that has a significant impact on national security arises,” Yonhap reported.

Prosecutors said that Cho, a career diplomat, failed to report on plans for martial law, despite “understanding its illegality”. At a hearing on Tuesday, Cho denied all of the charges against him, Yonhap said.

Hwang and Cho’s arrests come after prosecutors on Monday added another indictment against the former 64-year-old president Yoon, who was removed from office in April, and is now detained while awaiting trial for his failed attempt to impose martial law.

The latest indictment accuses the former president of attempting to provoke a military conflict between South Korea and North Korea by covertly sending drones into North Korea in an effort to legitimise the state of martial law he declared.

Prosecutors argue that the drone deployment over North Korea in October 2024 led to the leak of military secrets when one of the unmanned aerial vehicles crashed near North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, Yonhap added.

State Prosecutor Park Ji-young told reporters that the special counsel team had “filed charges of benefitting the enemy in general and of abuse of power” against the former president.

Yoon’s move to impose martial law plunged South Korea into political crisis after armed soldiers were sent to parliament in a bid to stop lawmakers rallying against and outlawing his martial law bid. Yoon’s bid to seize power failed, and he was detained in January, becoming South Korea’s first sitting president to be taken into custody.

The United Kingdom has sentenced a Chinese woman to 11 years and eight months in prison for a years-long scheme to launder investment scam proceeds into Bitcoin, luxury property, and other assets now worth about 4.8 billion British pounds ($6.3bn).

Zhimin Qian, 47, was sentenced by the Southwark Crown Court in London on Tuesday, in a case that saw UK police seize a record-breaking 61,000 Bitcoin as part of their investigation.

Qian, who is also known by the alias Yadi Zhang, was found guilty of money laundering and possessing illegally obtained cryptocurrency.

Will Lyne, the Metropolitan Police’s head of Economic and Cybercrime Command, described the case as “one of the largest and most complex economic crime investigations ever undertaken by the Met”.

“This is currently the largest cryptocurrency seizure by law enforcement in the UK and is the largest money laundering case in UK history by value,” he said in a statement.

UK authorities allege that Qian helped mastermind an investment scam in China between 2014 and 2017 that defrauded 128,000 people out of roughly £4.6bn, according to sentencing remarks from Judge Sally-Ann Hales.

Much of the funds were later recovered by police in China, but Hales said that a “sizeable amount was siphoned off and used by” Qian, and transferred into 70,000 Bitcoin stored on a laptop wallet.

Qian fled China in 2017, spending the next seven years on the run, and travelling between the UK and other countries without an extradition agreement with China.

Qian and an accomplice, who has since been sentenced, came to the attention of UK authorities in 2018, when Qian tried to buy three London properties worth 40.5 million pounds ($53.2m) but failed “know your customer” regulations, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Qian disappeared from the UK in 2020, but not before police seized items from a safe deposit box, including a laptop smuggled from China.

Hales said that documents found during the search “give an indication of the level of the defendant’s monthly expenditure, and the grandiose ambitions she held for her future using the proceeds of her criminal conduct”.

Qian returned to police attention last year, when she began to use a dormant wallet with the help of a second accomplice, Senghok Ling, 47, a Malaysian national based in the UK.

When police arrested Ling and Qian in April 2024, the pair was living a “lavish” lifestyle in the UK, according to Hales. At the time, Qian was found in possession of 62 million pounds ($81.4m) worth of cryptocurrency, a large quantity of cash, and two false passports.

Ling was separately sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison.