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Posts Tagged ‘Somalia’

A First: Fully Armed Chinese Missile Frigate Spotted Off Libyan Coast

March 22, 2011 Comments off

shtfplan.com

Though China abstained from a UN Security Council vote authorizing a no-fly-zone in Libya, and are not among the 16 nation coalition involved in Operation Odyssey Dawn, for the first time in modern day naval history, a Chinese warship sailed in the Mediterranean Sea. The 4000 ton Xuzhou missile frigate sailed to Libya after being deployed of the coast of Yemen, on the other side of the Red Sea.

The missile frigate’s role is not exactly clear, but based on China’s position thus far it is not likely that the ship is part of the US, UK and French led attack. The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s newspaper, earlier pointed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and criticized the US for launching a third attack “on a sovereign nation,” so the chances that China is providing assistance are slim. While China may be flexing some of its military might, they are more than likely in the area strictly to observe operations – for the time being.

Categories: China, Libya Tags: , , , , , , ,

Djibouti evicts US vote group ahead of election

March 18, 2011 Comments off

Djibouti’s government has kicked out an American election monitoring group less than a month before the nation’s presidential election, a vote opposition politicians are boycotting because they say the president is repressing dissent.

Djibouti is a tiny East African nation that hosts the only U.S. military base in Africa. Situated on the Gulf of Aden between Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen, the city-state is a major shipping hub in a volatile region.

The country is nominally democratic, but events leading up to the April 8 presidential election appear to show a hardline approach by President Ismail Omar Guelleh at a time when democracy movements are upending administrations.

Democracy International, a U.S. group that works on democracy and governance programs, was halfway through a two-year, $2.2 million U.S. government-funded contract when it was accused of assisting opposition politicians and barred from the country earlier this month. Read more…

Categories: Djibouti Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Somali pirates threaten to murder more hostages after deaths of four Americans

February 23, 2011 Comments off
the USS Enterprise
Somalia pirates detained after Tuesday’s killings are being held on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. Photograph: Todd Cichonowicz/AP

 

Pirates in Somalia have said they are ferrying ammunition and men to the 30 hijacked vessels under their control, and threatened to kill more captives following the violent end to a hostage standoff that left four Americans dead.

The US military said that 15 Somali pirates detained after the killings on Tuesday could face trial in the United States. The pirates are being held on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off East Africa. The FBI is investigating the killings of Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, of Seattle, and Jean and Scott Adam, of Los Angeles, who had made their home aboard their yacht Quest since December 2004.

Pirates hijacked the yacht last Friday and held the four hostage. When a US warship Read more…

Categories: pirates, Somalia Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

UPDATE 2-Pirates shoot dead four American hostages-US military

February 22, 2011 Comments off

Due to the current instability and uncertainty of the North Africa/ Middle East crisis, one is sure to expect that pirate activity will only increase dramatically.  Keep your eyes on Bahrain, that is the key…

(Adds quotes from pirates in Somalia)

By Phillip Stewart

WASHINGTON Feb 22 (Reuters) – Pirates shot dead four American hostages on a yacht they had seized in the Arabian Sea, and a firefight left two pirates dead and 13 captured, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

The sequence of events was not immediately clear, but the U.S. military’s Central Command said the dead hostages were only discovered after U.S. forces responded to gunfire and boarded the pirated yacht, known as the Quest.

“As they responded to the gunfire, reaching and boarding the Quest, the forces discovered all four hostages had been shot by their captors,” the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement.

“Despite immediate steps to provide life-saving care, all four hostages ultimately died of their wounds.”

The military, which said the incident took place at about 1 a.m. EST/0600 GMT, had been monitoring the Quest since discovering it had been taken over by pirates for about three Read more…

Categories: pirates, Somalia Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Rising world food prices may soon hit Africa hard, but could be a future boon

February 21, 2011 1 comment

Damaged rice is seen in a paddy field destroyed by flood- waters near a village in Manmunai West in Batticaloa district, about 199 miles east of Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Jan. 26. The floods inundated rice paddies, and according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, at least 15.5 percent of the main annual rice harvest could be lost.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Reuters

Johannesburg, South Africa

Global food prices reached a historic high last month, a fact that may cause even the most comfortable of Americans to cinch in their belts and cut back on spending.

But what about the world’s poor?

“Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world,” World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick said Tuesday as he announced the bank’s findings that about 44 million people in developing countries have been pushed into poverty since Read more…

Categories: Food Crisis, world, World Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pirates hijack $200 million crude oil: owners say Somali pirates dangerously disrupting world oil supplies

February 10, 2011 Comments off
The tanker was attacked about 400 miles (650km) south-east of Muscat

A supertanker carrying about $200m (£125m; 146m euros) worth of crude oil has been hijacked off the coast of Oman, the vessel’s Greek operator says.

Athens-based shipping company Enesel said they had lost communication with the Irene SL.

The 333m (1,093ft) vessel was on its way from the Gulf to the Gulf of Mexico when it was attacked.

Although the incident happened hundreds of miles from Somalia, pirate gangs are known to operate there.

A body representing the owners of much of the world’s tanker fleet warned that Read more…

Categories: Africa, Oil, Oman, Somalia Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Climate phenomenon La Nina to blame for global extreme weather events

February 9, 2011 1 comment

Climate phenomenon La Nina to blame for global extreme weather events


Cyclone Yasi over Australia in February 2011. Image credit: NASA

(PhysOrg.com) — Recent extreme weather events as far as Australia and Africa are being fueled by a climate phenomenon known as La Nina — or “the girl” in Spanish. La Nina has also played a minor role in the recent cold weather in the Northeast U.S.

The term La Niña refers to a period of cooler-than-average sea-surface temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean that occurs as part of natural climate variability. This situation is roughly the opposite of what happens during El Niño (“the boy”) events, when surface waters in this region are warmer than normal. Because the Pacific is the largest ocean on the planet, any significant changes in average conditions there can have consequences for temperature, rainfall and vegetation in distant places.

Scientists at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), part of Columbia’s Earth Institute, expect moderate-to-strong La Niña conditions to continue in the tropical Pacific, potentially causing additional shifts in rainfall patterns across Read more…

Categories: Weather, world Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,