This week 60 Minutes focuses on cocaine trafficking , a world record attempt and music in Afghanistan.
The High Seas
This Sunday, 60 Minutes goes inside the multi-billion dollar cocaine war, that stretches all the way from South America to Australia. In the past 3 years, our Federal Police have intercepted nearly two tonnes of cocaine on the lucrative Pacific route. Small yachts are loaded up with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the illegal drug on the coast of Ecuador, before making the long journey here. The innocent-looking yachties breeze into our eastern waters, mostly undetected, before offloading their cargo to local dealers. Tara Brown tracks the smugglers from South America to Vanuatu and Tonga, where a boat holding 200 kilos of cocaine and a rapidly decomposing corpse was discovered shipwrecked on a remote island reef.
Reporter: Tara Brown
Producer: Stephen Rice
Breathe
Stig Severinsen can hold his breath for 22 minutes. That’s right, 22 minutes! He’s the world record holder but he’s not done yet. Now, Stig is using his unique powers to free dive in the most hostile of places. This Sunday on 60 Minutes, watch as Stig swims the length of three Olympic swimming pools, under metre thick ice, in freezing water, on one breath, with only one way out. It’s an extraordinary feat. But still he’s not done. Stig wants to remove his wetsuit and try it again in nothing but a pair of speedos. What happens next, could kill him.
Reporter: Peter Stefanovic
Producer: Steven Burling
Musical Uprising
Someimes miracles do happen and Charles Wooley has just seen one in, of all places, war-torn Afghanistan. As the west is withdrawing its troops and the Taliban are gearing up for a comeback, the country is bracing for an uncertain and violent future. But there is resistance against the Taliban from a most unlikely source: young girls, orphans of the 12-year war, are fighting back with beautiful music. Risking the wrath of the music-banning mullahs, these courageous kids have formed a youth orchestra. They’re the soul of Afghanistan’s only music school and they stage the world’s most dangerous concerts. In the middle of it all, a clarinet teacher from Bondi Beach and a music professor from Monash University.
Reporter: Charles Wooley
Producer: Howard Sacre
Sunday at 7:40pm on Nine.