Somali Pirates plants to Blow the Ship Oil for $ 20 million

Nairobi  Somali pirates on Wednesday threatened to blow up a ship hijacked the majors unless the ransom was paid $ 20 million, and hijack a Panamanian-flagged merchant ship. South Korea sent a destroyer to ambush dream Samho carrying two million barrels of crude oil with a crew that includes five South Koreans and 19 citizens of the Philippines, after the ship was seized this month.

“We are demanding $ 20 million ransom for the release of South Korean ship,” said Hashi, leader of the pirates that controlled the ship was owned by a Singapore company. “The ship and its crew safe. We know that a number of warships to attack plan, but told them that the ship will be detonated if they attack us,” said the pirate nest in Hobyo.

Meanwhile, Andrew Mwangura, officials of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme based in Kenya, said the Panamanian-flagged vessel MV VOC controlled pirate Daisy at dawn at the site some 190 kilometers southeast of the port Salalah in Oman. The ship was manned by 21 Filipinos.

He said the big ship sailing from the United Arab Emirates to a port that is not mentioned on the Suez Canal when it was hijacked. It is unclear what brought the ship of goods.

EU naval patrols in the area confirmed the hijacking of ships weighing 47,183 tons of it in the news site. Three hijacked Thai fishing vessel at the weekend and a series of failed attacks launched since then.

Pirates operating off the coast of Somalia to increase piracy attacks on ships in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden in recent months despite a foreign navy held off the coast of the Horn of Africa . The waters off the coast of Somalia is home to most piracy-prone world, and the International Maritime Bureau reporting 24 attacks in the region between April and June 2008 alone.

The pirates attacked more than 130 merchant ships in that year, an increase of more than 200 percent of the attacks in 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Pirate groups in Somalia, which operates in a strategic sea lane that connects Asia and Europe, making millions of dollars in ransoms from hijacking ships in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.

Multinational naval patrols in the strategic sea route connecting Europe with Asia through the Gulf of Aden availability appears that only the bands of pirates operating expand their attacks deeper into the Indian Ocean.

Pirate the failed Horn of Africa country is currently holding a dozen ships and over 200 crew, including British couples ship hijacked off the Seychelles. Security Council has approved the operation of incursions into Somali territorial waters to fight piracy, but warships patrolling the area did not do much, according to Puntland Fisheries Minister Ahmed Saed Ali Nur.

the weak Somali transitional government, currently battling a bloody insurgency, is not able to stop the action of the pirates who hijack ships and demand ransom for the release of vessels and their crews. Pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, using speedboats to pursue their goal. Submerged Somalia since the lifting of energy and anarchism war commanders overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. In addition to piracy, kidnappings and deadly violence have also affected the country.( Reuters)

Mexico The death toll from last month's devastating earthquake in Haiti could jump to 300,000 people

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico The death toll from last month’s devastating earthquake in Haiti could jump to 300,000 people, including the bodies buried under collapsed buildings in the capital, Haitian President Rene Preval said on Sunday.”You have seen the images you are familiar with the pictures. More than 200,000 bodies were collected on the streets without counting those that are still under the rubble,” Preval told a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Mexico. “We might reach 300,000 people.”

That would make Haiti’s earthquake one of the most lethal natural disasters in modern history, more than the 200,000 people killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.The cost of rebuilding the impoverished country after the 7.0-magnitude quake could be as high as $14 billion, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.Preval’s plea for aid will be at the top of the agenda at the regional summit being held near the Mexican resort town of Playa del Carmen.

With 250,000 houses destroyed and 1.5 million people living in tent camps made with bed sheets and plastic scraps in nearly every open space in the collapsed capital of Port-au-Prince, Preval said the most urgent need is for emergency shelter.Aid workers worry that squalid conditions in the camps, many which have no latrines or source of clean water, could lead to disease outbreaks when the rainy season begins in earnest in March.”The first rainy days that have started falling in Port-au-Prince have made it impossible to enjoy a dignified life and this is the reason for the request for shelters,” Preval said.

Looking ahead to a meeting with international donors to determine the overall shape of rebuilding plans, Preval suggested Haiti should decentralize away from Port-au-Prince, which suffered the heaviest damages.”We will not try to reconstruct but rather to refound the country, where we don’t concentrate ourselves in one capital,” Preval said. He encouraged Latin American countries to step up investments in industry to help Haiti free itself from dependence on international aid.(Reuters)

Five years after the massive Indian Ocean tsunami

Five years after the massive Indian Ocean tsunami, which left a devastating trail of death and destruction, millions of people have benefited from the influx of aid by rebuilding stronger infrastructure, social services and disaster warning systems than existed before the catastrophe, according to the United Nations agencies at the core of the recovery effort.The largest emergency relief response in history was prompted by the earthquake off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on 26 December 2004, which sent waves as high as 30 metres crashing into 14 countries, claiming nearly 230,000 lives and leaving around 2 million people homeless.The international community pledged over $14 billion in aid for the overall emergency relief and recovery operations, according to a recent UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report summarizing the results of its programmes, which have received almost $700 million to date.

The report noted that communities whose livelihoods, homes, schools and heath facilities were destroyed have had opportunities to build back better health, education, water and sanitation services, as well as improve the security of areas vulnerable to natural disaster or violent conflict, and provide safer environments for vulnerable children.

For example, the UNICEF-supported Darusada Children’s Centre in Aceh – a region on the northern tip of Sumatra with the closest major population to the epicentre of the 2004 earthquake – opened in 2007 and currently serves around 120 children who have been orphaned, abandoned or sexually assaulted.In addition, the court house in the regional capital Banda Aceh has added a juvenile court which is presided over by a judge who has been given special training by UNICEF. Changes in the juvenile justice system in Indonesia were also adopted after the tsunami to strengthen child protection provisions.

The UNICEF report noted that the unparalleled international response to the tsunami created a unique opportunity to bolster the peace process between the Government of Indonesia and the separatist Free Aceh Movement which resulted in the signing of a peace agreement in 2005 after 70 years of conflict.

Recovery efforts in Thailand have been instrumental in building a model Child Protection Monitoring System, which was initially established in 2007 to identify and monitor children orphaned by the tsunami, as well as other at-risk children.The report also underscored some of the lessons learned from the relief and recovery operations, with efforts in Myanmar positively influencing preparedness and response to other emergency situations. Following Cyclone Mala and other emergencies in 2006, as well as Cyclone Nargis in 2008, for example, UNICEF was able to swiftly mobilize and deliver emergency relief supplies, including family and child survival kits, insecticide treated bednets, and essential drugs for local health centres, in the affected areas.

In the Maldives, all the houses on the island of Dhuvaafaru are newly built, and construction to defend against rising sea-levels is ongoing. After years spent in temporary settlements on other islands, Dhuvaafaru has been transformed into a new home for an entire community displaced from nearby Kandholhudhoo by the tsunami, but with 4,060 people living in 600 homes, around 80 more houses need to be built.Expanded social services are also helping to protect and promote children’s right in the Maldives, and a UNICEF-backed non-governmental organization (NGO) is at the heart of the fight against the growing problem of intravenous drug use among adolescents since the tsunami.

UNICEF noted that recovery programmes in some countries have now drawn to a close, with continuing projects handed over to the national authorities or integrated into existing programmes carried out by the UNICEF country offices. Due to the scale of the recovery required in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the agency said it will continue to support reconstruction activities through the end of 2010.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has highlighted the power of community involvement in the reconstruction process, with shopkeepers, fishermen and women getting together to plan and build their new homes.“There was a great rush to get people back into permanent housing, but that rush could create problems, preventing a meaningful discussion with people and with the communities,” said UNDP Deputy Resident Representative for Thailand Hakan Bjorkman.“It took a little bit longer but the results were much better, and this is the essence of the ‘build back better’ concept – to have people involved in their reconstruction,” said Mr. Bjorkman.

UNDP noted that since the tsunami governments, international agencies and civil society organizations have banded together to construct 250,000 permanent houses, over 100 air and seaports, thousands of schools and hospitals, as well as create national and regional tsunami warning systems by placing early detection buoys in the Indian Ocean.

In collaboration with other UN agencies, national and international organizations and in cooperation with the Discovery Channel, UNDP has made a documentary telling the story of how community engagement has been successful in the mending and rebuilding lives affected by the tsunami in the hardest-hit areas of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the Maldives.The film shows that many formerly marginalized groups are playing increasingly more significant roles in their communities as a result of recovery initiatives, such as job training for women in fish processing, as well as marketing and business.

Light Shed on Mysteries of Deadly Jellyfish

Box jellyfish are odd creatures. Some species have 24 eyes. They mate in mass spawning, during which males and females never touch while they release sperm and eggs into the ocean and let nature take its course.Most interest to humans is the fact that box jellyfish can be deadly. But because jellyfish don’t make for good fossils, and few jellies exist in museum collections, little is known about their evolutionary history or the relationships between different species.Now scientists have gained new information about the distribution, relationships and evolution of these deadly sea creatures, findings that could eventually help researchers generate antivenom to save lives.

Who’s related to whom

Box jellies, also called sea wasps, stingers or fire jellies, live primarily in warm coastal waters around the world. They are particularly well known in Australia, the Philippines and the rest of southeast Asia, but they also occur in Hawaii and in waters off the United States Gulf and East Coasts. Some are harmless, others cause death to humans in just minutes.Named for their box or cube-shaped body, these animals are members of Cubozoa, the smallest class of Cnidaria, animals ranging from sea anemones and corals to Portuguese man of war and true jellyfish, all of which possess stinging capsules known as nematocysts.

Using DNA extracted from tissue samples, the researchers used a number of genetic tests and analytical techniques to trace the evolution of the various species and their toxicity and to sort out misidentified species. Among the findings: Box jellies may contain a unique family of proteins that, with further study, could help create antiserums.The Australian box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri), the largest box jellyfish species, is considered the most venomous marine animal and its sting can be fatal. Its close relative, Chironex yamaguchii, has caused deaths in Japan and the Philippines. A much smaller species, Carukia barnesi, is the first species known to cause Irukandji Syndrome. Symptoms include severe low back pain, nausea, headache and vomiting, and sometimes “an impending feeling of doom”, but the syndrome is usually not life-threatening. Other box jellyfish species are now known to cause the same symptoms.“Knowing who is related to whom among the box jellyfish will be very helpful in making predictions about species that are not well known,” said NOAA researcher Allen Collins. Its possible an antivenom that works for one species might work for another, he said.

Where they are

Other species of jellyfish are known to swarm and takeover parts of the oceans. Box jellies don’t seem to move around as much as some species, however. The study revealed several patterns in the global distribution of box jellyfish species. Some live exclusively in the Atlantic, others in the Pacific, and still others are found in the Indian Ocean.”Geography seems to isolate species and most don’t seem to cross open ocean habitats,” the researchers said in a statement. “A few are found in all three oceans and may live in tropical regions around the globe.”The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and the PADI Foundation, is detailed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.