Word: ransome
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There will be plenty of winners if Somali pirates keep their pledge to release the captive Ukrainian freighter MV Faina and its cargo of Russian battle tanks in exchange for a ransom of $3 million - but very little of the booty will go to the pirates themselves. "Our representatives told us that the ship's owners have agreed to a good amount of money," TIME was told this week by a man named Ahmed Gel-Qonaf, 29, who claimed to be among the pirates aboard the Faina, captured in September. "We said if there is money they are ready...
...Conspicuous Consumption Is Safe. It used to be hard to tell rich from poor in Baghdad, especially outside the Green Zone. Fear of being kidnapped for ransom prompted many wealthy Iraqis to feign poverty. Living below one's means became an art form: decrepit cars, cheap cell phones, minimalist jewelry...
...tanker on Nov. 15, Somali pirates seized their largest vessel yet amid a torrent of other hijackings in the Gulf of Aden, where there have been at least eight attacks in just the past two weeks. Pirates currently hold an estimated 17 vessels and some 300 crew for ransom. Some shipping firms are resorting to the long, costly route around Africa to avoid the gulf's dangerous waters...
...size of an aircraft carrier. And let’s not forget the Ukrainian cargo ship, the Faina, which was captured in September while carrying $30 million of weapons and tanks. According to reports, the Faina’s owners have haggled the pirates down to $8 million in ransom from the original demand of $35 million—quite a steal...
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, alarmed that the agreement - which has taken nine months of painstaking negotiations - was about to unravel, fired broadsides in all directions. At a press conference, he lambasted naysayers as political opportunists who were trying to hold his government for ransom, in effect working against the national interest. His anger was directed not only at the Sunni, Sadrist and secular blocks in parliament, which have formed a loose coalition to oppose the SOFA; he also took an unrelated sideswipe at Kurdish politicians, without whose help he cannot hope to have the agreement ratified...