Word: waterway
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sheer quantity of ships passing through its confined space - at one point the strait narrows to a mere 1.7 miles - makes spotting potential targets easy for pirates, and its route is a Hollywood-ready seascape of tropical isles and secret coves, providing ample hideaways. Earlier this decade, the waterway's piracy problem reached crisis levels. Attacks ranged from small-scale robberies by lightly armed desperados to highly organized hijackings of giant vessels by teams of professionals. According to the International Maritime Bureau of the International Chamber of Commerce, the Strait of Malacca suffered 38 actual or attempted pirate attacks...
...pirates, largely from lawless coastal Somali towns, have basically turned the heavily traveled route through the Gulf of Aden into a toll road that shippers' insurance firms have been willing to pay for (up to $3 million for a single vessel). About 20,000 merchant ships traverse the waterway each year; there have already been 74 attacks and 15 hijackings in 2009, compared with 111 attacks last year. The pirates generally want cash, not trouble. They've treated their hostages well, and violence has been rare. All of that changed, of course, last week when a quartet of Somalis seized...
...escaping across the narrow and heavily guarded shallow Tumen River that marks the border between China and the brutal regime of Kim Jong Il. But untold numbers of North Koreans have been shot and killed there as well, and as two American reporters on assignment discovered last week, the waterway can also be treacherous for journalists...
...militias also targeted women they deemed guilty of loose behavior, so sisters-in-law Yusra Mahmoud and Saleema Abdalhussein used to hurry home before dark. Now on a balmy February evening, they linger in the amusement park overlooking the Shatt al-Arab waterway and discuss their children. Mahmoud has five, ages 7 to 19; Abdalhussein has just one, a son born in 1981 - not long before her husband, a conscript, was killed fighting Iran. "We're always talking about the future of the children and what it holds for them," says Mahmoud. "We've been through many wars...
...years of upheaval unscathed. The militias targeted women they deemed guilty of loose behavior. That meant that until recently, sisters-in-law Yusra Mahmoud and Saleema Abdalhussein hurried home before dark. Now, on a balmy February evening, they linger in the amusement park overlooking the Shatt al-Arab waterway and discuss their children. Mahmoud has five, ranging in age from 19 to 7; Abdalhussein has just one, a son born in 1981 not long before her husband, an Iraqi conscript, was killed fighting Iran. "We're always talking about the future of the children and what it holds for them...