Word: sirius
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...carrying 33 battle tanks, the temptation may have been to laugh them off as a bunch of ragtag local gunmen who had improbably gotten lucky. But the pirates of Somalia proved they have more than dumb luck going for them last Saturday, when they seized the Saudi supertanker MV Sirius Star and its cargo of more than $100 million worth of crude oil. This occurred despite the attention of navies from the U.S., NATO and others that were patrolling the area to protect shipping. (The Ukrainian vessel, MV Faina, remains one of 11 captive vessels currently moored off pirate ports...
...Sirius Star, at 1,000 feet long with three times the mass of a U.S. aircraft carrier, was seized 450 nautical miles out to sea, well south of the pirates' usual hunting ground in the Gulf of Aden. Its capture has experts worried that the pirates' audacity and technical capabilities have been underestimated. (See pictures of piracy in Somalia...
...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...
...hijacking of the Sirius Star is also an embarrassment to NATO and the U.S., which had deployed naval vessels to protect shipping in the area in response to the recent uptick in attacks. According to the International Maritime Board, there have been some 80 pirate attacks off Somalia's coast this year. More than half of those were repelled, but the remainder have made for a highly lucrative year for Somali piracy...
...this reason, the potential merger between satellite radio services XM and Sirius is exciting because of their ability to play a broader selection of indie and unsigned artists. And although moves like Radiohead’s may not be perfect, I like seeing bands go over the heads of labels and government regulations to give music straight to their listeners...