World News for Students of English

25-08-2015 07:00

If suspected of carrying drugs to smuggle out of Peru, the military now has permission to shoot down the aircrafts. The country’s Congress unanimously passed the legislation in an effort to clamp down on flights carrying cocaine.

According to the United States, Peru is the world’s top cocaine producer, and it’s estimated most of the country’s cocaine is sent abroad in small planes. The US State Department estimates that small planes moved 180 tonnes of cocaine from Peru in 2014.

Congressman Carlos Tubino said Peru can’t allow traffickers to continue to defy its laws. He puts the number of narcotics flights at 600 per year.

But the control of drugs trafficking isn’t a simple task. And though measures have been taken to stop the so-called drugs flights, cocaine also leaves the country on boats, in suitcases and in the stomachs of drugs smugglers on commercial flights.

Difficult words: smuggle (to move abroad illegally), unanimously (without opposition), effort (action by which you try to do something), clamp down (to stop something), trafficker (a person who moves something illegally), defy (to not follow).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com