Daily News Channel
The Liberty Sun, a U.S.-flagged cargo ship bound for Mombasa, Kenya, was attacked Tuesday night by Somali pirates, according to the company and senior U.S. military officials. “The pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at the vessel, which sustained damage,” said a statement from New York-based Liberty Maritime Corporation, which owns the vessel.
Right-wing extremist groups may be using the recession and the election of the nation’s first African-American president to recruit members, a Department of Homeland Security report contends. Though the nine-page report said it has “no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,” it said real-estate foreclosures, unemployment and tight credit “could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.” The report, prepared in coordination with the FBI and published April 7, was distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement officials under the title “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” It compares the current climate the 1990s, “when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.” It cites proposed restrictions on weapons as likely to increase membership in extremist groups and expresses concern the groups might try to recruit veterans.
Julie Quiroz, a 14-year-old U.S.
As the Defense Department weighs options to prevent a repeat of the drama that unfolded on the seas this weekend, those who patrol the waters say pirates must be rooted out before they leave land. Pentagon planners are preparing a variety of options for dealing with Somali pirates, and a United Nations resolution gives them the authority to conduct operations inside Somalia. “The ultimate solution for piracy is on land,” said Vice Adm.
The celebrating over Sunday’s daring rescue of Richard Phillips, the ship captain held hostage by Somali pirates, didn’t last too long at the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged Monday that the kind of Navy snipers who took out the three captors are only a stopgap way of dealing with pirates now sailing the Gulf of Aden. “There is no purely military solution to it,” Gates told an audience of the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va.
North Korea’s foreign ministry said the country will quit talks aimed at disarming the country of nuclear weapons and strengthen nuclear capabilities, state-run media reported Tuesday. The statement, issued via North Korean state-run media KCNA, listed reasons that the country will pull out of the so-called six-party talks. “Now that the six-party talks have turned into a platform for infringing upon the sovereignty of the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and seeking to force the DPRK to disarm itself and bring down the system in it, the DPRK will never participate in the talks any longer, nor it will be bound to any agreement of the six-party talks,” KCNA said.
Ravaged by rights groups and upbraided by the U.S.
Federal law enforcement authorities are discussing what to do with the lone surviving pirate captured Sunday off Somalia’s coast after a successful military rescue abruptly ended a five-day hostage standoff at sea. According to sources familiar with the case, U.S.
The rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips, the American sailor held hostage by Somali pirates, came to a dramatic and happy conclusion on Sunday night off the coast of Africa. However, the problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden remains — and may only be getting worse.
A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century By Jacques Attali Arcade Publishing; 312 pages The Gist: Imagine a world where pirates run amok, blowing themselves up in European city centers; where wars are ignited over lack of drinking water; where a global face-off between Islam and Christianity makes World War II look like a water-balloon fight. According to economist and political scientist Jacques Attali, that is what the future has in store for us by 2025. In the belief that past experiences are indicative future events, Attali combs through the history of human kind, all the way back to Homo Habilis, separating the past into nine distinct periods to isolate “what is possible, what changes and what is unvarying” and applies those trends to the coming century