Category: Tech Updates

Australian police said Monday they shot a fugitive wanted for killing two officers, ending a seven-month manhunt for one of the country’s most-wanted criminals.

Desmond Freeman fled into dense bushland in August last year after shooting and killing two police officers who came to search his rural home in Victoria state.

Hundreds of police have pursued Freeman through the region’s rugged terrain over the past seven months, pouring resources into one of Australia’s largest manhunts.

Police tracked Freeman to a caravan parked on a “very remote” property in rural Victoria, police commissioner Mike Bush said, shooting him after he refused pleas to surrender.

“Everything I know at this point tells me that this shooting was justified,” Bush told reporters.

“There was a standoff. There was an opportunity for him to surrender peacefully, which he did not.”

The state coroner would now confirm the identity of the body and cause of death, he added.

“While the man is yet to be formally identified, police believe it is likely to be” Freeman, police said in a statement.

Two local residents told AFP Freeman had been shot at a property in Thologolong, near the border of New South Wales and Victoria states.

The property’s owner had been away for several weeks, they said.

“The place is off the grid entirely. I honestly don’t think it’s a place you just stumble across. You have to know where it is,” said Thologolong resident Jasmine Teese.

Three people have been charged in the United Kingdom,after they allegedly attempted to traffic nearly $100 million worth of cocaine in a container of bananas, authorities said, marking the latest instance of the illicit drug being concealed in a shipment of the tropical fruit.

Joshua Berry, 28, Daniel Dumitru, 37, and Andrew Smyth, 46, were all arrested in Southhampton, England, where they are next scheduled to appear in court on April 17, according to the country’s National Crime Agency.

Berry was the last of the three to face charges in the case and appeared at his first court hearing on Friday, the agency said. Dumitru and Smyth were each taken into custody and charged almost two weeks ago.

Their arrests are part of the crime agency’s investigation into an enormous cocaine haul that was seized at Southhampton Docks earlier this month. Officers with the border agency discovered more than 2,000 pounds — approximately 1 ton — of cocaine inside a shipping container filled with bananas that arrived at the Southhampton port from Panama, although authorities said it originally set sail from Nicaragua. The drugs carried a street value equal to about 75 million British pounds, or roughly $98.9 million.

The three men who have been charged could face maximum penalties of life in prison if they are convicted, according to U.K. sentencing guidelines.

“This is a massive amount of cocaine which was destined for the streets of the UK,” said Saju Sasikumar, a National Crime Agency branch commander, in a statement. “Seizing these drugs deprives the crime group behind the importation of huge profits that cannot be ploughed back into further offending.”

The choice to hide cocaine inside a shipment of bananas is not an unusual one. Authorities around the world have said in recent months that the substance had been seized from shipments of the fruit, including in Russia, Norway, the Dominican Republic, Greece and Bulgaria, in addition to the U.K.

Spanish police on Tuesday said they had uncovered a sprawling, technologically sophisticated and “maze-like” underground tunnel used to smuggle tons of hashish from Morocco to Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta and Europe.

Police said in a news release on Tuesday that the structure was hidden beneath a warehouse and extended over three levels, including a descent shaft and a chamber for drug storage. Police said the group operating the tunnel had installed pumping and soundproofing systems that “kept the infrastructure operational without arousing suspicion.”

The bottom of the tunnel, which led directly to Morocco, resembled “a maze typical of a mine,” equipped with trolleys “that moved on a rail system of complex construction and characteristic of perfectly designed feats of engineering.”

The bales of hashish were prepared and stored on the middle level, from where they were lifted “thanks to a system of cranes and pulleys designed to move heavy loads”, the police said.

The entire structure is 19 62 feet deep, but investigators cannot determine how long the tunnel is “because it is flooded,” the officer responsible for the operation, Antonio Martinez, explained at a press conference.

The tunnel, measuring about four feet high and nearly three feet wide, was “well-equipped” and “purpose-built” by “an extremely powerful organization” that contacted other groups to transport the drug in speedboats and fishing vessels, he added.

Authorities released video of the bust, showing officers raiding the tunnel and seizing evidence.

Police began their investigation in February 2025, seizing more than 17 tons of hashish and $1.6 million in cash in various operations in Ceuta and mainland Spain over several months.

A majority of the vessels that have passed through the Strait of Hormuz during the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran have ties to the Iranian regime, according to a new analysis from Lloyd’s List Intelligence. The information comes after President Trump’s assertion last week that Tehran gave him the “present” of allowing eight oil tankers through the key waterway.

Since March 1, a day after the U.S. and Israel launched their joint attacks on Iran, 71% of all ships that have managed to transit the strait are either owned by Iran, coming or going from Iranian ports, or part of the so-called shadow fleet linked to Iranian oil shipments, the maritime data company said Wednesday.

Even among ships that are compliant with sanctions, such as Greek bulk carrier cargo ships that have transited the strait, most have some ties to Iran.

Shadow fleet vessels have accounted for 88% of all transits over the last week, an increase from 83% the week before, the Lloyd’s data show.

Just 11 oil tankers have transited the strait in either direction over the last week, according to tracking data from the Joint Maritime Information Center, an international military partnership among 47 nations, including the U.S.

Chinese ships have accounted for only 10% of transits despite seemingly warmer relations between Tehran and Beijing throughout the war. On Monday, two ultra-large container ships owned by China’s largest shipping company, COSCO, managed to cross the strait after initially being turned back by Iranian forces. A third Chinese ship, the bulk carrier Lotus Rising, which was also turned back from the strait last week, appeared to pass close to Iran’s Larak Island on Wednesday.

Lloyd’s analysts have said the regime is using the island, right in the center of the Strait of Hormuz, like a “toll booth” to collect fees from passing vessels.

Dutch authorities on Thursday showed off a recovered priceless gold 2,500-year-old helmet from Romania that was stolen last year during a brazen heist in the Netherlands.

Flanked by balaclava-clad police officers, a spokesman for Dutch prosecutors unveiled the 5th-century BC golden Helmet of Cotofenesti and two of the three gold bracelets stolen in January 2025.

Dutch police officer Corien Fahner said: “the Cotofenesti helmet and two Dacian gold bracelets have been returned and we are delighted to be able to announce this.”

The search for the third bracelet is ongoing, said Fahner.

The theft had sparked outrage in Romania and prompted a huge police search.

A gang of robbers used firework bombs to break into the Drents Museum in the northern Netherlands in January 2025, and smashed display cases inside.

Three men are on trial for the theft but have largely remained silent in court.

An undercover officer posing as a criminal mastermind reportedly offered another suspect 400,000 euros ($420,000) to tell him where the booty was hidden.

Police had also offered a reward of 100,000 euros for information leading to the helmet’s recovery.

“People are devastated”
The theft and the search for the Dacian artefacts has gripped the Netherlands and regularly makes headline news.

“This is a dark day,” Harry Tupan, general director of the Drents Museum, said at the time. “In its 170-year existence, there has never been such a major incident.”

In the aftermath of the theft, then Romanian prime minister Marcel Ciolacu voiced outrage that “priceless objects” had been stolen and was considering claiming “unprecedented damages”.

“You have no idea what the impact of this is on the Romanian community,” Romanian cultural journalist Claudia Marcu, who has lived in the Netherlands since 2003, told public broadcaster NOS.

“When I heard about the theft I thought: for the Dutch this would be like (Rembrandt’s) ‘The Night Watch’ being stolen. People are devastated.”

The Dutch government had set aside 5.7 million euros ($6.5 million) for a likely payout following the brazen theft.

The pieces were on loan from a Bucharest museum, whose head was promptly sacked for lending the works out in the first place.

Dutch museums and galleries have been targeted by thieves in the past — including in November when works by artist Andy Warhol were taken, as well as a Van Gogh stolen from a museum in 2020.

The heists have prompted calls for better security to protect valuable artworks.