Word: africa
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...taking shape on several fronts. Cash-flush Japanese banks, which have only just emerged from their own decade-long debt crisis, are infusing money into distressed companies such as Morgan Stanley. Japan Inc. is going on another of its famous investment sprees abroad, opening factories and representative offices across Africa and Asia. In October, the country's central bank even offered part of its nearly $1 trillion in reserves to financially strapped nations like Iceland. In November, Japan also expressed willingness to lend up to $100 billion to the International Monetary Fund. But it isn't just money that...
...Navy officials say the Sirius Star, whose maiden voyage was in March, had planned to avoid the Gulf of Aden altogether and sail around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope rather than through the Suez Canal Zone, as its owners wanted to avoid an encounter with the pirates. "That is the scary part," says Cyrus Mody, manager at the International Maritime Bureau. "What exactly are [the pirates] doing so far south? If they are thinking of expanding their sphere of operations to such great distance, it is going to become an absolutely humongous task to get this thing under...
...British raid only underscored the difficulty facing international military efforts to police the shipping lanes of East Africa. The vessel attacked by the marines was nothing more than a rickety old fishing dhow, and the eight men arrested are likely to be quickly replaced by hundreds of other pirates - not to mention the thousands desperate to join their ranks and get a piece of the lucrative action. The pirates have thrived in a situation of negligible government authority on land, where the Somali state barely exists. And they are further emboldened by the jurisdictional difficulty of figuring out where...
...debased piracy. The word evoked cheap and illegal Chinese DVDs of Hollywood blockbusters - the real Pirates of the Caribbean having become historical fantasy. Suddenly, however, old-fashioned "Jolly Roger" piracy has hoisted itself as a distinctly modern-day menace, playing out every week off the eastern coast of Africa. At least 88 ships have been attacked in the Gulf of Aden alone this year. The problem would not pose too difficult a problem for the modern military forces of the world to solve - except that there has been no political will thus far to launch a campaign against these pirates...
...pirates are lured by the booty. Almost half of the world's crude is transported by sea, and much of it passes Somalia every day. Insurance rates for shipping in the region are rising, and some vessels are taking longer routes around Africa to avoid the area. Because shippers abhor uncertainty and the risk it entails, they have been paying the ransoms - up to $2 million - demanded by the pirates. (And insurance companies can take comfort in their actuarial charts: only 1 in 600 ships in the area gets attacked...