Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fusion of northern technique and southern hardware seems to be paying dividends. Somali pirates now demand, and often receive, hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom, according to the Piracy Reporting Center's Choong. With that sort of money the pirates "can afford to buy themselves some pretty nice boats," says Choong, and hence extend the range of their seizures...
...September, negotiations to obtain the crew's release had foundered. The hijackers had increased their ransom demand and reneged on an agreement to allow the rice to be handed over to the Somali government. When the Semlow's generator ran out of oil, the pirates accused the crew of hoarding it. One Somali fired a shot through the window on the bridge. "We thought this trip was the end of our lives," remembered able seaman Rashid Juma Mwatuga, 42. In late September the Ibn Batuta, an Egyptian ship carrying cement, appeared on the horizon. "The pirates told me they were...
...know when I was coming home," says Mahalingam. He and the chief engineer were taken back to the ship. A few days later, the pirates gathered their weapons, piled into their speedboats, and abandoned both the Semlow and the Ibn Batuta. The WFP denies paying any ransom-"It would set a bad precedent," said a WFP spokesman-but the Motaku Shipping Agency's Kudrati told TIME that he had handed over $135,000. "In the end we had to give in to them," he says...
...role in a deadly train raid; in Anlong Veng, Cambodia. In 1994 fighters led by Chhouk Rin attacked a train bound for the coastal city of Sihanoukville, killing 13 Cambodians and abducting Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet, Briton Mark Slater and Australian David Wilson. The three backpackers were executed after ransom negotiations collapsed weeks later. Sentenced to life in prison but free while his case was being appealed, Chhouk Rin fled after the Supreme Court upheld his conviction and issued a warrant for his arrest in February. At the time of his capture, he was reportedly putting the finishing touches...
...Ransom, 56, learned that the hard way. A disabled former secretary from Bonham, Texas, she took up online poker with glee about a year ago. Lonely at home and hooked on the thrill of competing, she began playing $20 and $30 tables and losing too much. Then an online friend at the Women's Poker Club gave her some sisterly advice, which she took to heart. "Now I deposit only so much a month," she says, "and if I lose it, I just play free games until the next month." Borrowing to play is a sure sign of trouble...