Plane carrying 90 people crashes off Lebanon

Sabotage is unlikely, says the nation's president. The Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed in the Mediterranean soon after taking off from Beirut.

By Borzou Daragahi

Los Angeles Times

3:50 AM PST, January 25, 2010

Beirut

Lebanon's president said sabotage was "unlikely" in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane off the nation's Mediterranean coast early this morning.

The plane, carrying eight crew members and 82 passengers including the American-born wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon, crashed shortly after takeoff from Beirut amid a ferocious lightning storm.

There has been no word of survivors, but the Associated Press reported that at least 23 bodies had been recovered.

"As of now, an act of sabotage is unlikely," Lebanese President Michel Suleiman told reporters. "The investigation will uncover the cause."

According to AP, weeping relatives streamed into Beirut's airport to wait for news on their loved ones. One woman dropped to her knees in tears; another cried out, "Where is my son?"

Andree Qusayfi said his 35-year-old brother, Ziadh, was traveling to Ethiopia for his job at a computer company, but was planning to return to Lebanon for good soon.

"We begged him to postpone his flight because of the storm," Qusayfi said, his eyes red from crying. "But he insisted on going because he had work appointments."

Zeinab Seklawi said her 24-year-old son Yasser called her as he was boarding.

"I told him, 'God be with you,' and I went to sleep," Seklawi said. "Please find my son. I know he's alive and wouldn't leave me."

A statement posted to the company website said the crew of Addis Ababa-bound Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 lost contact with Lebanese air traffic control shortly after it took off at 2:35 a.m. local time

"The control tower was assisting the pilot of the plane on takeoff and suddenly lost contact for no known reason," Lebanese transportation minister Ghazi Aridi told reporters.

According to a statement issued by the Lebanese army, eyewitnesses saw the Boeing 737-800 catch fire before plunging into the seas five miles off the coastal town of Nehmeh. Lebanese naval and air force units along with ships attached to the longstanding U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon immediately began relief and rescue operations, the army said.

Marla Sanchez Pietton, wife of the recently appointed French ambassador to Lebanon, was a native of the United States, friends said. According to the airline, the passengers included 51 Lebanese, 23 Ethiopians, two Britons and individual citizens of France, Canada, Syria, Iraq, Russia, Turkey and Syria.

The airline said investigators have already been sent to the scene. Images broadcast on local television showed ships and a helicopter at sea, presumably near the crash site.

Agence France-Presse reported that weeping families of the passengers could be seen arriving at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport to await news.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri declared today a day of mourning for those who perished in the crash.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-lebanon-plane-crash25-2010jan25,0,1431488,print.story

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Immigrants often see peril in reporting domestic abuse

Language barriers, cultural differences and lack of information keep many women tied to abusive spouses. Help is available.

By Anna Gorman

January 25, 2010

Indian immigrant Rumi Jaggi said she didn't report the abuse in part because of cultural expectations that she would stay married. R.M. said she didn't leave her husband because she spoke only Mandarin and relied on him to pay the bills. Concepcion Arellano said she endured abuse because she feared deportation.

Though Los Angeles County law enforcement agencies and community organizations have made advances in responding to domestic violence in immigrant communities, attorneys and advocates say many victims still face obstacles in reporting abuse and seeking help.

Language barriers, financial dependence and lack of information keep victims from coming forward. And those here illegally worry about being sent back to their native countries.

Many victims do not know that they may be eligible for special visas for victims of crime and domestic violence.

"There is so much fear of contacting authorities for fear of being deported," said Olivia Rodriguez, executive director of the Los Angeles County Domestic Violence Council. "That is paramount with most domestic violence victims who are not here legally or are in the process of becoming citizens."

Her council recently started a task force on immigration and plans to create a resource manual for immigrants who are victims of domestic violence. The Mexican Consulate also has developed a network of agencies to provide counseling, legal representation and shelter. Advocacy groups, lawyers and ethnic media are also trying to raise awareness.

"The main problem is the lack of knowledge," said Juan Gutierrez Gonzalez, consul general at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. "That is the greatest challenge. We need to repeat again and again that the people should not tolerate this."

Some shelters won't accept victims who cannot understand English, but others have multilingual staff and cater to specific ethnic groups. And several agencies, including the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, have translators available for victims who don't speak English.

For some South Asians, there is a stigma associated with going to a shelter, and few shelters make accommodations for religious-based diets, said Saima Husain, coordinator of the anti-violence unit at the South Asian Network. There is also a worry about bringing shame on their families if they leave their husbands, she said.

Jaggi, 34, who gave a nickname rather than her legal first name, said she met her husband in Bombay and married him six months later. She was attracted to him in part because he didn't expect her to act like a traditional Indian woman, accepting that she worked in a theater and had male friends. But Jaggi said the abuse began just months after they wed. "That was the beginning," she said. "I had one mark or another all the time."

When she told her parents she wanted to leave, Jaggi said, they weren't supportive. "Marriage is sacred," she said.

The couple immigrated legally to the U.S. in 2006 but Jaggi said the situation didn't improve. Even though she spoke English, Jaggi said, she was new to the country and didn't know where to turn. But early last year, she decided she had to leave. Through a friend, she learned about South Asian Network and sought help there.

"One thing that has pushed me through all this is that I want to live," said Jaggi, whose divorce was final last year. "That has gotten me through a lot as a survivor."

R.M., 48, from China, said she left her husband in 2005 after more than two years of abuse. R.M., who didn't want her full name used out of fear, came to the U.S. in 1999. In 2003, she said, he began accusing her of being with other men and he starting hitting her, often in front of their youngest daughter.

"Daytime it was OK, but at night I had nowhere to hide," she said through an interpreter. "I didn't fall sound asleep because I worried about my life."

R.M. said police, responding to calls from neighbors, came twice. "I was so scared but I still relied on him, so I told police it wasn't serious," she said. "I didn't know English. I didn't drive. I didn't have work experience."

But in May 2005, she said, a friend helped her contact the Center for the Pacific Asian Family, which operates a crisis line, an emergency shelter and a transitional housing program for domestic violence victims and their children. There, she found people who spoke her language and immediately felt at ease.

R.M., who hasn't spoken to her husband since the day she left him, said she is thankful to be safe and to have a job, but she said she still doesn't speak English well and is struggling to become more independent and support her daughters.

Arellano, 36, came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1990 and met her husband soon after. Their relationship was smooth at the start, but then the abuse started, she said. She left but returned because he wouldn't let her take their daughter.

"I put up with it for years," she said in Spanish.

Arellano said she didn't speak English and didn't know that help was available. She finally got away from her husband -- but at a price. She said he took their daughter to Mexico for two years.

Finally, in 2007, Arellano said, she got custody of her daughter and a restraining order against her husband. Their divorce was final last year.

The commissioner in family court said that Arellano's ex-husband used the threat of deportation against her. Her attorney, Ana Storey with the Legal Aid Foundation, said that's a common tactic among perpetrators.

"A mother is going to choose keeping her mouth shut to stay with her children," said Storey, who is now helping Arellano with her immigration case.

Arellano, who has a new partner and a new baby, said other immigrant women should come forward as soon as the abuse begins. "From the start," she said, "they should look for help and not wait until things get worse."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dom-violence25-2010jan25,0,5094725,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Anti-Semitism hit high in '09

An Israeli report released Sunday says 2009 saw the most anti-Semitic incidents in western Europe since World War II.

The report by an Israel- led umbrella of organizations dedicated to combating anti-Semitism outlined hundreds of violent incidents in Britain, France and Holland.

It said the number of incidents in the first three months of 2009 in western Europe surpassed that of all of 2008. That followed Israel's invasion of Gaza, which evoked harsh reactions.

In France, for example, there were 631 anti-Jewish incidents in the first half of 2009, of which 113 were violent, according to the report. Worldwide, eight people were killed in attacks last year.

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky pledged to dispatch representatives from the semi-governmental organization to combat what he said was growing anti- Semitism at European universities.

The Israel-based agency deals with immigration and Jewish issues.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14260089

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Revealing a blueprint of genocide

JERUSALEM - The neat lines and red rectangular sketches look like any typical architectural design. But the handwritten initials H.H. - belonging to the infamous Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler - indicate what the drawings represent: wooden barracks, gas chambers and crematoriums.

Just ahead of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem is displaying the blueprints of the notorious camp in Nazi-occupied Poland that has become a symbol of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. It is the first time the plans will be on display for a wide audience.

Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi camps where millions of Jews and other minorities were forced to work as slaves. Many died of starvation or exposure. Also, many Jews were herded on arrival into gas chambers, the bodies burned in crematoriums and their ashes buried in pits. In all, about 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to attend the exhibition's opening today shortly before flying to Poland to participate in the official commemorations at Auschwitz, where 1.1 million Jews were murdered in just over three years.

The camp's name has become synonymous with the Holocaust because it reflected the meticulous German effort to rid Europe of its Jews - a plan dubbed the "Final Solution."

The blueprints illustrate the cold planning behind the plot. They include designs of the iconic watchtower entrance to the adjacent Birkenau camp, where trains transported Jews to their deaths, as well as pathway where the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign was placed.

The sign, whose cynical Nazi slogan means "Work Sets You Free," was stolen last month and returned last week. The offices of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Hess and doctor Josef Mengele are seen in the blueprints.

"It is one thing to kill someone when you are angry, but to sit down and make plans for the biggest extermination camp that the world has ever known and to plan it as if they were planning a parliament or a school or something is just mind-boggling," said Martha Weiss, a 77-year-old Auschwitz survivor who was among a small group of survivors invited to see the display ahead of its opening.

"Sometimes when I listen to myself I think, `My God, this couldn't have happened. I must have dreamt it.' But unfortunately, it is all true and I lived through it and I was lucky to survive."

The administrative documents at Auschwitz were kept in an archive next to the main camp. The Nazis burned the archive shortly before the camp's liberation in an attempt to cover up their crimes. But some documents, kept in a separate building, survived and fell into Soviet hands, where they remained until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 2008, a set of documents, including 15 original plans of the camp, were found in an abandoned Berlin apartment. It is unclear how they arrived there. The German newspaper Bild obtained the blueprints and published them last year after authenicating them.

Bild presented the blueprints to Netanyahu in Berlin last August.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14260188

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Affordable housing freeze locks out needy

But the 60-unit Glenoaks Gardens complex has been put on hold, along with hundreds of other affordable housing projects across California, all victims of the state budget crisis. With California delaying payments on voter-approved bonds, developers have been unable to get the bridge loans from commercial lenders they need to build the projects.

"We had expected to break ground in fall 2009," said Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and CEO of Los Angeles Family Housing of North Hollywood, developer of Glenoaks Gardens. "(But) it's been delayed as we work out scenarios to resolve the state's financial crisis.

"This will put another of our projects behind schedule."

Proposition 46, passed in 2002, and its successor, Proposition1C, were supposed to provide $5 billion in bond funds to support affordable housing or shelters for needy residents.

But in December 2008, with the state in the throes of a budget crisis, the board responsible for doling out bond money suspended cash awards to recipients, according to officials and affordable housing advocates.

Since then, more than $1.3billion in bond fund payments have been delayed or frozen, according to state housing officials, holding up more than 400 affordable housing projects.

At least half of those developments are in Southern California.

"There are probably thousands of people around the state who cannot afford market-rate housing who are left out in the cold," said Paul Zimmerman, executive director of the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing, based in Los Angeles. "This has created a crisis in our ability to build affordable housing."

The move halted construction of 50,000 affordable rental homes and units in nearly 800 developments across the state, with more than 93,000 jobs lost in construction, according to the association.

They would have added to the 35,000 affordable rental apartments now in Los Angeles County, Zimmerman said.

State housing officials said they hope bond sales can resume this spring.

"As we continue to do more bond sales, we can free up more cash for affordable housing," said Chris Westlake, deputy director of the state Housing and Community Development Department. "Our hope is we get a substantial amount of money to fund our prior commitments, fund new projects, spur job creation and provide safe, affordable housing."

L.A. Family Housing - one of the largest builders of affordable housing in the San Fernando Valley, with 265 units rented to low-income tenants - saw a need for a unique complex built for mostly special-needs residents.

So it bought a former do-it-yourself car wash at 8925 Glenoaks Blvd., and drew up plans for 60 studio apartments accompanied by a community room, job center, computer lab and mental health and counseling offices. Rents were to range from $380 to $645 per month.

The Glenoaks Gardens project was to cost $20 million, with $6million in state bond-funded loans paid after construction of the project. To bridge the gap, a bank was to supply a short-term construction loan.

But banks were unwilling to loan the money because of the state's dubious position, Klasky-Gamer said, so L.A. Family Housing is juggling other potential funding sources to complete its supportive housing project for the disabled.

If all goes well, she said, Glenoaks Gardens could open next year.

"It's really beautiful," Klasky-Gamer said. "I'm disappointed in the delay."

Advocates for the disabled said the delay couldn't have come at a worse time. They say older apartments simply aren't available to people with physical or mental disabilities.

"It's almost beyond comprehension how people with special needs are able to live in Southern California. The cost of housing is so high," said Steve Miller, executive director of the Tierra del Sol Foundation, a Sunland-based nonprofit that provides jobs and support for the disabled.

"So housing is desperately needed for special-needs residents."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14260303

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From the Wall Street Journal

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OPINION

The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved

The FBI disproved its main theory about how the spores were weaponized.

The investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks ended as far as the public knew on July 29, 2008, with the death of Bruce Ivins, a senior biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Md. The cause of death was an overdose of the painkiller Tylenol. No autopsy was performed, and there was no suicide note.

Less than a week after his apparent suicide, the FBI declared Ivins to have been the sole perpetrator of the 2001 Anthrax attacks, and the person who mailed deadly anthrax spores to NBC, the New York Post, and Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. These attacks killed five people, closed down a Senate office building, caused a national panic, and nearly paralyzed the postal system.

The FBI's six-year investigation was the largest inquest in its history, involving 9,000 interviews, 6,000 subpoenas, and the examination of tens of thousands of photocopiers, typewriters, computers and mailboxes. Yet it failed to find a shred of evidence that identified the anthrax killer—or even a witness to the mailings. With the help of a task force of scientists, it found a flask of anthrax that closely matched—through its genetic markers—the anthrax used in the attack.

This flask had been in the custody of Ivins, who had published no fewer than 44 scientific papers over three decades as a microbiologist and who was working on developing vaccines against anthrax. As custodian, he provided samples of it to other scientists at Fort Detrick, the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and other facilities involved in anthrax research.

According to the FBI's reckoning, over 100 scientists had been given access to it. Any of these scientists (or their co-workers) could have stolen a minute quantity of this anthrax and, by mixing it into a media of water and nutrients, used it to grow enough spores to launch the anthrax attacks.

As the so-called Amerithrax investigation proceeded, the FBI ran into frustrating dead ends, such as its relentless five-year pursuit of Steven Hatfill, which ended with an apology in 2007 and Mr. Hatfill receiving a $5.8 million settlement from the U.S. government as compensation. Another scientist, Perry Mikesell, became so stressed by the FBI's games that he began to drink heavily and died of a heart attack in October 2002.

Eventually, the FBI zeroed in on Ivins. Not only did he have access to the anthrax, but FBI agents suspected he had subtly misled them into their Hatfill fiasco. A search of his email turned up pornography and bizarre emails which, though unrelated to anthrax, suggested that he was a deeply disturbed individual.

The FBI turned the pressure up on him, isolating him at work and forcing him to spend what little money he had on lawyers to defend himself. He became increasingly stressed. His therapist reported that Ivins seemed obsessed with the notion of revenge and even homicide. Then came his suicide (which, as Eric Nadler and Bob Coen show in their documentary "The Anthrax War," was one of four suicides among American and British biowarfare researchers in past years). Since Ivins's odd behavior closely fit the FBI's profile of the mad scientist it had been hunting, his suicide provided an opportunity to close the case. So it held a congressional briefing in which it all but pronounced Ivins the anthrax killer.

But there was still a vexing problem—silicon.

Silicon was used in the 1960s to weaponize anthrax. Through an elaborate process, anthrax spores were coated with the substance to prevent them from clinging together so as to create a lethal aerosol. But since weaponization was banned by international treaties, research anthrax no longer contains silicon, and the flask at Fort Detrick contained none.

***

Yet the anthrax grown from it had silicon, according to the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. This silicon explained why, when the letters to Sens. Leahy and Daschle were opened, the anthrax vaporized into an aerosol. If so, then somehow silicon was added to the anthrax. But Ivins, no matter how weird he may have been, had neither the set of skills nor the means to attach silicon to anthrax spores.

At a minimum, such a process would require highly specialized equipment that did not exist in Ivins's lab—or, for that matter, anywhere at the Fort Detrick facility. As Richard Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins, explained in a private briefing on Jan. 7, 2009, the lab didn't even deal with anthrax in powdered form, adding, "I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it." So while Ivins's death provided a convenient fall guy, the silicon content still needed to be explained.

The FBI's answer was that the anthrax contained only traces of silicon, and those, it theorized, could have been accidently absorbed by the spores from the water and nutrient in which they were grown. No such nutrients were ever found in Ivins's lab, nor, for that matter, did anyone ever see Ivins attempt to produce any unauthorized anthrax (a process which would have involved him using scores of flasks.) But since no one knew what nutrients had been used to grow the attack anthrax, it was at least possible that they had traces of silicon in them that accidently contaminated the anthrax.

Natural contamination was an elegant theory that ran into problems after Congressman Jerry Nadler pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller in September 2008 to provide the House Judiciary Committee with a missing piece of data: the precise percentage of silicon contained in the anthrax used in the attacks.

The answer came seven months later on April 17, 2009. According to the FBI lab, 1.4% of the powder in the Leahy letter was silicon. "This is a shockingly high proportion," explained Stuart Jacobson, an expert in small particle chemistry. "It is a number one would expect from the deliberate weaponization of anthrax, but not from any conceivable accidental contamination."

Nevertheless, in an attempt to back up its theory, the FBI contracted scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California to conduct experiments in which anthrax is accidently absorbed from a media heavily laced with silicon. When the results were revealed to the National Academy Of Science in September 2009, they effectively blew the FBI's theory out of the water.

The Livermore scientists had tried 56 times to replicate the high silicon content without any success. Even though they added increasingly high amounts of silicon to the media, they never even came close to the 1.4% in the attack anthrax. Most results were an order of magnitude lower, with some as low as .001%.

What these tests inadvertently demonstrated is that the anthrax spores could not have been accidently contaminated by the nutrients in the media. "If there is that much silicon, it had to have been added," Jeffrey Adamovicz, who supervised Ivins's work at Fort Detrick, wrote to me last month. He added that the silicon in the attack anthrax could have been added via a large fermentor—which Battelle and other labs use" but "we did not use a fermentor to grow anthrax at USAMRIID . . . [and] We did not have the capability to add silicon compounds to anthrax spores."

***

If Ivins had neither the equipment or skills to weaponize anthrax with silicon, then some other party with access to the anthrax must have done it. Even before these startling results, Sen. Leahy had told Director Mueller, "I do not believe in any way, shape, or manner that [Ivins] is the only person involved in this attack on Congress."

When I asked a FBI spokesman this month about the Livermore findings, he said the FBI was not commenting on any specifics of the case, other than those discussed in the 2008 briefing (which was about a year before Livermore disclosed its results). He stated: "The Justice Department and the FBI continue working to conclude the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks. We anticipate closing the case in the near future."

So, even though the public may be under the impression that the anthrax case had been closed in 2008, the FBI investigation is still open—and, unless it can refute the Livermore findings on the silicon, it is back to square one.

Mr. Epstein is currently completing a book on the 9/11 Commission.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011421223515284.html#printMode

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From the Washington Times

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U.S.: Bin Laden tape no need for alarm

by Nicholas Kralev

U.S. officials on Sunday dismissed a purportedly new audiotape by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as an attempt to stay relevant by claiming responsibility for the Christmas Day aborted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.

The officials said they could not immediately authenticate the minute-long recording released to Al Jazeera, the Arabic TV news channel, but indicated that there was no reason for heightened alarm about new attacks.

"The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes of September 11," bin Laden said on the tape. "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine."

Mr. Abdulmutallab is a Nigerian Islamist who officials say admitted to receiving training and explosives to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based group inspired by bin Laden's much larger network.

"God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support for the Israelis continues," bin Laden said.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said there was little significance to bin Laden's message beyond reminding his audience that al Qaeda remains a "catalyst" for terrorist attacks, and he is "trying to continue to appear relevant" by claiming to be in control of an affiliate group's activities.

"The latest audiotape verifies what we already know," he said. "By keeping the pressure on core al Qaeda in the area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, bin Laden is left to try to jump on the bandwagon when an al Qaeda franchise attempts a strike, as happened on Christmas Day."

White House adviser David Axelrod said on CNN that the message "contains the same hollow justification for the mass slaughter of innocents."

Speaking on Fox News, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "Nobody's had a chance to authenticate that tape."

"Everybody in this world understands that this is somebody that has to pop up in our lives over an audiotape because he's nothing but a cowardly murderous thug and terrorist that will some day — hopefully soon — be brought to justice," he said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David also dismissed the message and its attempt to link Israel with attacks on the United States.

"This is nothing new. He has said this before," Mr. David said. "Terrorists always look for absurd excuses for their despicable deeds."

IntelCenter, a U.S.-based group that monitors militant messages, said the phrase "Peace be upon those who follow guidance," which can be heard on Sunday's tape, has appeared at the beginning and the end of previous bin Laden messages released before al Qaeda attacks.

The last time a public message from bin Laden was released was on Sept. 26, when he demanded that European countries withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

The Associated Press also reported that on-scene investigators in Detroit never discussed turning Mr. Abdulmutallab over to military authorities on Dec. 25. The FBI looked for help from its own local expert counterterror interrogators, rather than seek bureau personnel to fly in from Washington or elsewhere.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress that Mr. Abdulmutallab should have been questioned by a special group of terror investigators, rather than the FBI agents who responded to the scene. Several prominent lawmakers have argued that he should have been placed immediately in military custody.

"Badly burned and bleeding, the suspect tried one last gambit as he was taken from the plane: He claimed there was another bomb hidden on board," the AP quoted officials as saying. "There was no second bomb, federal agents learned after a tense search."

Mr. Abdulmutallab, 23, tried to trigger a powder explosive in his underwear when the plane from Amsterdam was preparing to land in Detroit, but he was restrained and stripped bare by fellow passengers and crew. Officials have said he spoke openly and in detail about his training in Yemen and the preparations for the attack.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/25/bin-laden-tape-no-need-for-alarm-us-says//print/

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From Fox News

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Navy Overtakes Pirates to Help N. Korea Ship

Sunday , January 24, 2010

MANAMA, Bahrain  — 

The U.S. Navy says it overtook a suspected Somali pirate skiff that tried to attack a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden.

A Navy statement issued Sunday says a security team aboard the merchant vessel Napht Al Yemen 1 repelled the Jan. 20 pirate attack without U.S. help.

The USS Porter stopped and boarded the pirate skiff later that day.

The commercial ship is Yemeni owned but sails under a North Korean flag.

The incident marked a rare example of the U.S. military aiding North Korea, a reclusive rogue nation.

Piracy is among the fastest ways to make money in Somalia, a nation plagued by war and no functioning government.

Somali pirates seized 47 vessels last year. They currently hold about 200 crew members hostage.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,583767,00.html

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