🌍 The EU has a drug shipping problem

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Today’s briefing is a 5 min read:

• 🇪🇺 The EU’s drug problem.

• 🇮🇱 POTUS in Israel.

• ➕ Plus: An outage in Guinea-Bissau, an intriguing vulnerability, how the papers are covering China’s latest economic data, and why folks in Hong Kong are googling discounted apartments.

1. 🇰🇵 North Korea: Russia’s foreign minister arrived in North Korea yesterday (Wednesday) for a two-day visit. US intel officials say North Korea has supplied Russia with thousands of crates of weapons in recent weeks.

2. 🇫🇷 France: Seven airports evacuated their terminals and rerouted flights yesterday after receiving a series of phoney bomb threats. France has now raised its threat alert to the highest level.

3. 🇰🇭 Cambodia: A court sentenced an opposition figure to an extra three years in prison on incitement charges yesterday. He had posted a video to Facebook in January discussing the politically sensitive history of the Khmer Rouge regime’s ousting in 1979.

4. 🇲🇽 Mexico: The president (‘AMLO’) says he’ll host his Cuban, Venezuelan, Haitian and Honduran counterparts for a summit on migration this weekend. He recently said up to 10,000 migrants are passing through Mexico on their way to the US each day.

5. 🇿🇦 South Africa: A court is currently determining South Africa’s real Zulu king. The dispute began in 2021 following the death of King Goodwill Zwelithini, whose 50-year reign was the longest in Zulu history.

🇪🇺 EU | Trade

The EU has a new anti-drug plan

A senior shipping industry executive is warning that drug trafficking gangs have infiltrated shipping supply chains to an “extreme” extent.

European authorities have had a busy few years, with annual drug seizures consistently breaking new records. But criminal organisations often stay a step ahead:

• They’ve expanded to smaller ports to avoid detection

• They’ve streamlined their operations, and

• They’ve boosted drug production locally.

So what’s Europe doing? In its latest ‘roadmap’, Brussels introduces the European Ports Alliance, an EU-wide scheme focussed on:

1. Customs – authorities now inspect less than 10% of all cargo

2. Policing – there’s not enough police-customs coordination, and

3. Companies – there’s not enough coordination between shipping firms and law enforcement, either.

Intrigue's take: Most drugs entering Europe essentially hitch a ride on commercial cargo ships, which means any policy aimed at illicit trade will end up impacting lawful trade too.

So that’s really what this latest plan is about: it’s not realistic to inspect every container; better targeting is key, and that means better coordination.

Also worth noting:

• The port of Antwerp, Europe’s key cocaine trafficking hub, is aiming to inspect all “high-risk” cargo by 2028.

📰 How newspapers covered…

China’s latest economic data

*Nomura is a Japanese investment bank.

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Israel-Hamas War

Biden’s trip to Israel was low-key successful

He spent a little less than eight hours in Israel but got a fair bit done, including a Gaza humanitarian aid deal via Egypt’s Rafah border crossing.

• Biden added that if the aid isn’t intercepted by Hamas – a key Israeli fear – Egypt has agreed it’ll let more in.

• In parallel, Israeli officials are saying they won’t allow aid in from Israel’s side of the border until Hamas releases all hostages.

Biden also reiterated that the US backed Israel’s war against Hamas:

• And he said US assessments were concurring with Israel that a stray rocket from “the other team” (not Israel) hit the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza yesterday.

• We’re expecting to see declassified US intel soon, adding to the emerging physical evidence at the site.

• Some outlets have walked back their initial reporting on Israeli culpability, but don’t hold your breath for regional governments to follow suit.

As we foreshadowed, Biden sought to walk a fine line between showing support for Israel without further angering its Arab neighbours, telling Israelis:

• “You can’t look at what has happened here … and not scream out for justice. But I caution this: while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. When we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

UNSC inaction

The US vetoed a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution yesterday that would’ve condemned the Hamas attacks while calling for a ‘humanitarian pause’ to allow aid into Gaza. 12 members voted in favour; the UK and Russia abstained.

• Explaining the US veto, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the resolution made no mention of Israel’s right to defend itself.

• France’s ambassador lamented the US decision, saying there’s no contradiction between Israel’s right to defend itself and the need to protect civilians and respect international law.

Either way, this will fuel scepticism that the UNSC is no longer fit for purpose.

What about Ukraine?

According to the Financial Times, the ‘Global South’ is finding contradictions in the West’s approach to Israel vis a vis Ukraine. An Arab official told the FT:

• “If you describe cutting off water, food and electricity in Ukraine as a war crime, then you should say the same thing about Gaza.”

• Otherwise, the argument goes, you risk undoing 18 months of work to nudge (for the sake of the international order) countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa to take a stand against Russia’s invasion.

Russia clearly has an interest in stoking tensions here:

• A diminished Russia wields less influence in the region but will (along with China) be happy to see US power consumed there.

• Plus, Russia now relies on Iran for some military kit, a fact Iran will highlight to Moscow when seeking support for its approach to Israel.

Final thought: After 18 months on the front pages, Ukraine now risks losing the world’s attention. And that’s partly what a fraying world order looks like: more conflicts, diluting more of the world’s bandwidth, in turn making each conflict tougher to solve, while allowing additional conflicts to flare up.

🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau | Energy

Guinea-Bissau’s capital goes dark

Folks in Guinea-Bissau’s capital (Bissau) have gone without power since early Tuesday after the government missed payments to its energy supplier.

The Turkey-based power company, Karpowership, has supplied the country with electricity since 2019. But with $17M in unpaid payments piling up, it says it can no longer operate its local power station.

Intrigue’s take: We write often about US-China competition and the way it plays out through infrastructure and debt around the world. But this story is a reminder of how things can look from Bissau and beyond, where options are limited.

Also worth noting:

• Karpowership shut off electricity in Sierra Leone’s capital last month due to $40M in missed payments.

➕ Extra Intrigue

Here’s what people around the world were googling yesterday, 18 October:

• 🇨🇦 ​Canadians looked up a senate proposal to establish a ‘Canada universal basic income’.

• 🇭🇰 Folks in Hong Kong checked out the ‘煥然壹居’ (Huanran Yiju) housing project (🇭🇰), which will offer its remaining 28 units at a discount from next Thursday.

• 🇧🇷 Brazilian football fans googled ‘Libertadores Feminina 2023’ for updates on the women’s football league semi-finals.

🗳️ Poll time!

💬 Quote of the day

Cybersecurity researcher Kevin McSheehan seems to have found an intriguing vulnerability: he says a Twitter/X feature that truncates URLs theoretically could’ve allowed foreign intelligence services to hijack the CIA’s instructions for Russians seeking to make covert contact.

It looks like Langley has now fixed the issue.

Yesterday’s poll: Do you agree with oil sanctions relief for Venezuela in exchange for fairer elections?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🖊️ Yes, it's a win-win (25%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⛔ No, Maduro will take the relief then renege on his pledge (72%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (4%)

Your two cents:

• 🖊️ F.T: “At a time when Saudi oil production has been reduced… it’s a chance worth taking to improve the US economy and help lower inflation. If Maduro reneges, we can reinstate and increase the sanctions.”

• ✍️ C.L: “There should be some discussion of sanctions relief and a small incentive with larger relief once the elections are held and determined to have been fair.”

• ⛔ D.E.E: “Regimes take advantage of concessions or weakness, then continue business as usual, because they believe (rightly) that there are few repercussions.”