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Pirates operating off Somalia's lawless coast have taken in more than $100 million in ransom payments since 2007, and this year their attacks became ever more brazen. Somali pirates targeted close to 100 ships in 2009, ranging from supertankers to fishing boats. In April, a raiding party seized the U.S. cargo ship M.V. Maersk Alabama--the first American ship to be successfully hijacked since the 1800s--but all the pirates were killed or captured in the ensuing standoff with a U.S. Navy destroyer. The navies of more than two dozen nations now patrol the Gulf of Aden, and cargo...
...Today, the village of Peraliya is serene. The carriages are gone, and the few visitors who stop by come to see a large Buddha statue, or the memorial for those who died, located close to the wreckage site. The carriages themselves, once tagged to be the showcase of a national tsunami memorial, are now rusting at a yard in Colombo, and will likely be sold for scrap metal unless they decay before that. The dents where the waves hit are more pronounced now, and rusting has left gaping holes caving in the roofs and walls. The carriages' guts...
...combination of Swiss Guards, Vatican police and Italian police. Since the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, security has tightened at the Vatican, and all visitors to St. Peter's must past through metal detectors. Still, compared to other mega-visible leaders, including the U.S. President, close access to the Pope, while not guaranteed, is never really rendered impossible either. (Read "Pope Benedict on the Question of Judaism...
While getting close to the Pope during his foreign travels tends to be more difficult, and he waves to the crowds in a bulletproof popemobile, at home in Rome, there is a relatively loose approach to managing the crowds, and the giro among the faithful is done in an open jeep. Tickets to get inside a papal mass can be easily obtained in advance through a Vatican office or some of the foreign embassies to the Holy See. For weekly general audiences, which are held during the winter months inside the Paul VI auditorium, you simply need to show...
...mass worldwide exposure and the close contact between the Roman Pontiff and his faithful is actually a modern phenomenon, largely put into motion by Paul VI, and multiplied by John Paul II. Both those popes were lucky to survive brazen assassination attempts: a mentally unstable man lunged at Paul with a knife just after his 1970 arrival at the Manila airport; while John Paul was shot and seriously wounded in 1981 by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca...