The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, is seeking an arrest warrant for Myanmar's military leader, Min Aung Hlaing, for crimes against humanity over the deadly crackdowns against the country's Rohingya minority that drove hundreds of thousands to flee to Bangladesh. Khan said that "after an extensive, independent and impartial investigation" his office had concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe that the Myanmar junta chief "bears criminal responsibility for the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution of the Rohingya committed in Myanmar and in part in Bangladesh".

A panel of three ICC judges must now rule on the prosecutor's request. More applications for arrest warrants will follow, the prosecutor's office said. Tun Khin, a prominent Rohingya activist and the president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, welcomed the news as "huge step forward in the quest for justice". Almost 1 million Rohingya remain in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, in one of the world's biggest and most densely populated refugee camps, which is plagued by insecurity.

Three Americans detained in China were released after the Biden administration negotiated a prisoner swap. Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and John Leung are on their way back to the US, a spokesperson for the National Security Council (NSC) said in a statement. The exchange was reportedly months in the making, and included the release of at least one Chinese citizen in US custody.

President Biden raised the issue of Americans wrongfully detained in China directly with President Xi Jinping earlier this month when the two met during the Apec summit in Peru, according to an American official familiar with the negotiations who spoke to the BBC. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also urged for their return during his visit to China in August. The US released Chinese citizen Xu Yanjun, 42, who was convicted in the US on espionage charges two years ago and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Colombian authorities working with dozens of other countries have seized 225 tonnes of cocaine in the space of six weeks, a global record for any single anti-narcotics operation, finding some of that haul on a "narco submarine" travelling on a new drug trafficking route to Australia. In the six-week Operation Orion, law enforcement agencies and other organisations from 62 countries halted six semi-submersible vessels stuffed with cocaine and confiscated 1,400 tonnes of drugs in total, including more than 1,000 tonnes of marijuana.

The interception of 225 tonnes of cocaine marks a significant dent in the operations of Latin America's cartels given that the UN estimates 2,700 tonnes are produced globally each year and Colombia's record for annual seizures was the 671 tonnes confiscated in 2022. More than 400 people were arrested in the 45-day crackdown which also halted illegal shipments of weapons and caught migrant traffickers. The Colombian navy attributed the historical success to unprecedented cooperation between agencies from the US, the EU and Australia.

The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said the Baltic Sea is now a "high risk" zone as he met Nordic and Baltic leaders days after a suspected sabotage attack on undersea cables. Kristersson declined to speculate on who may have been responsible for the severing of two fibre optic telecoms cables in the Baltic last week. A Chinese ship - the Yi Peng 3 - that sailed over the cables about the time they were severed has remained anchored in the Kattegat strait between Sweden and Denmark since November 19. China's foreign ministry has denied any responsibility in the matter.

Speaking from the summit, in Harpsund, the Swedish prime minister's country retreat, Kristersson told the Guardian: "We are aware that there is a high risk for different types of activities on the Baltic sea that are dangerous." Earlier this month, before the suspected attack on the two undersea cables between Sweden and Lithuania and Finland and Germany, Kristersson's government vetoed plans for 13 offshore windfarms in the Baltic.