Two tonnes of cocaine found floating in sea near Sicily

Italy’s tax and customs police have made a record seizure after discovering nearly two metric tonnes of cocaine floating in the sea off eastern Sicily, with an estimated market value of over €400 million ($440 million). The drugs were stored in around 70 waterproof packages, containing 1,600 bricks of drugs, tightly sealed and held together by fishing nets, according to a statement from the Guardia di Finanza. The packages were so large that they were spotted from the air by a naval surveillance plane, according to police. The statement also revealed that the ‘peculiar packaging methods and presence of a luminous device to allow tracking’ suggested that the drugs had been deliberately placed in the sea by a cargo ship to be recovered and taken to the mainland.