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Pirates in Somalia are making a fortune by hijacking ships and demanding ransoms to set them and their crews free – one official estimates the total this year to be around $150m. There are conflicting reports about how much they want for the Saudi oil tanker they seized last month, the Sirius Star, and its cargo of two million barrels of oil, but how do you negotiate and deliver a pirate ransom in the 21st Century?
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From what can be gleaned – how the negotiations run their course and how the ransoms are paid – what goes on would be worthy of a Hollywood action movie script. “No matter what process is taken, they always go through a middleman,” advises BBC Somali service analyst Said Musa. “And trust is at the heart of everything.” Fahid Hassan, who has experience of the negotiations, says that after boarding the ship, the first step for the pirates is to make contact with its owners. “All the important documents are there on the ship, so the pirates can know easily all the information they need,” he says. “The talks are by telephone, mostly satellite phone but sometimes even SMS/text messages are sent. The pirates do not negotiate themselves. They hire someone and often this person is a relative; someone they can trust.”
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“For the Sirius Star, there are two negotiators. Sometimes they are on the ship, sometimes they are in town. The negotiator must work and work and work to get the money which is a very difficult job. It is very difficult to please the owner and please the pirates,” he adds. “But once the money is delivered the negotiator gets a share, the same as a pirate. Everyone on the ship gets an equal share.” Mr Hassan says that in the past, the ransom was delivered by money transfer, but that now owners hire a third party to hand over the money directly. “They come onto the ship or the pirates get onto their boat for the handover of the bags of cash,” he says. “The men who bring the money then go; they leave the ship to let the pirates count and check. Some of the pirates have counting machines and also machines to detect fake notes.” Security firms Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House, says the ship-owners hire professionals, from specialist negotiators to private security firms, to transfer the ransoms. |
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“They are mostly ex-SAS and British or Australian. A lot are also South African,” he says. Not much more is known for certain, however, as it is an unwritten rule among members of such firms that there are no kiss-and-tell stories. Understandably, those involved are also aware of the needs of their clients and the strict demand for secrecy with people’s lives being at stake. However, Mr Middleton says that such operations cost about $1m, not including the ransom. “The professional negotiators get about $100,000 for their services and the lawyers get a fee of about $300,000,” he explains. Regarding what goes on behind closed doors, be it the negotiations and the legal and insurance matters as a result of these hijackings, Mr Middleton says it would be fair to say that, “most of it happens in London,” he adds.
The EU’s first ever naval mission will patrol the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden
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Gavin Simmonds, head of international affairs at the British Chamber of Shipping, agrees this assumption is “highly likely” as London is the centre of the global maritime industry. “It seems perfectly plausible that the actual facilitation of ransom money is being done by London-based insurers,” he says. However, Mr Simmonds says he has also heard rumours that some exchanges have taken place in Dubai. Bags of cash The pirates ask that the ransom is all in used dollar bills – normally $50 or $100 notes – according to those with experience of such negotiations. Kenyan sailor Athman Said Mangore, who was held captive for more than 120 days by Somali pirates, says they are known to make many demands and put in place a number of restrictions. |
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“They sometimes say they want $208,000 exactly in $100 bills only,” he says. “I don’t know why they make those demands. They usually also don’t like dollar bills that were printed in 2000 or the years before. If it was printed in 1999, they say: ‘This is not fit to be used in our shop’,” he adds. Once the ship’s owners have sourced cash, a private security firm takes over. They then hire a tug boat, often from the Kenyan port of Mombasa, which they take further north up the coast towards Somali waters. The security personnel then board the boat with the bags of cash and enough weaponry to keep it safe. When the ransom has been paid, the pirates are left to count the money and are allowed to leave the vessel freely. “The navies in the Somali waters of course must have a pretty good idea of what goes on, as they have spy drones and they are watching the hijacked vessels,” Mr Middleton says. “Whether there’s any coordination between the ransom payers and the navies is unknown.” The BBC’s Joseph Odhiambo in Mombasa says that on at least two prior occasions the ransom money was delivered to the hijacked vessels via air-drops. He also says that other payments were flown from Wilson Airport in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, into Somalia on cargo planes transporting the stimulant, khat. No-one knows how long it will be until the Sirius Star is set free, but it is fair to say the ransom negotiations will be both complicated and delicate, with its cargo believed to be worth $100m. And the families of its 25 crew members, who are being held hostage, will be hoping that the pirates stay true to their word that they have no intention of harming them. |
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September 24, 2008
Solar wind blows at 50-year low
Posted by Social Geek under BBc, News | Tags: BBc, BBC News, Boston University, corona, Dave McComas, European Space Agency, Jonathan Amos, Jupiter, Massachusetts, News, Professor Nancy Crooker, San Antonio, Science reporter, Scientists, Solar wind blows at 50-year low, Southwest Research Institute, Sun, Technology, Ulysses data, Ulysses satellite, Ulysses solar wind, US, Voyager spacecraft |Leave a Comment
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The solar wind – the stream of charged particles billowing away from the Sun – is at its weakest for 50 years. Scientists made the assessment after studying 18 years of data from the Ulysses satellite which has sampled the space environment all around our star. They expect the reduced output to have effects right across the Solar System. Indeed, one impact is to diminish slightly the influence the Sun has over its local environment which extends billions of kilometres into space.
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Confirmation of that prediction should come from the far-distant Voyager spacecraft which were launched in the 1970s and are now bearing down on the edge of the heliosphere – the great “bubble” of wind material that surrounds the Sun.
Scientists now predict the Voyagers will hit the edge and cross over into interstellar space – that region considered to be “between the stars” – sooner than anticipated. Space age The solar wind, which originates in the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere known as the corona, gusts and calms with the star’s familiar 11-year cycle of activity (but also over its less well known longer cycles, too). Calmer wind conditions would be expected to prevail right now, but the Ulysses data indicates circumstances unprecedented in recent times.
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“This is a whole Sun phenomenon,” said Dave McComas, Ulysses solar wind instrument principal investigator, from Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, US. “The entire Sun is blowing significantly less hard – about 20-25% less hard – than it was during the last solar minimum 10-15 years ago. “That’s a very significant change. In fact, the solar wind we’re seeing now is blowing the least hard we’ve see it for a prolonged time, since the start of those observations in the 1960s at the start of the space age.” In addition to being calmer, the wind measured at Ulysses is 13% cooler. However, judging from Sun activity data collected by non-satellite methods over the past 200 years, the current behaviour is thought to be well within the long-term norm. Nonetheless, scientists expect the weakened wind to have a wide range of impacts. Energetic rays The charged wind particles also carry with them the Sun’s magnetic field, and this has a protective role in limiting the number of high-energy cosmic rays that can enter the Solar System. More of them will probably now make their way through. Many of these rays, which include electrons and atomic nuclei, originate in exploding stars and at black holes, and move at colossal speeds.
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They pose no major risk to people on Earth because our atmosphere also works to reduce their intensity; but they are a consideration for space operations. The rays can damage satellite electronics, and if current solar wind conditions persist, engineers would have to take this into account when deciding how to “harden” their spacecraft. Astronauts, too, are at risk from the higher doses of radiation associated with cosmic rays. “The Sun also puts out cosmic rays in the form of bursts and these bursts are much less frequent at solar minimum. However, when they do occur at solar minimum, they are more lethal, so this is not a good time to be travelling in space owning to both kinds of cosmic rays,” explained Professor Nancy Crooker, from Boston University, Massachusetts, US. “Reduced solar activity also leads to the cooling of Earth’s upper atmosphere and if Earth’s upper atmosphere is cooler then there is less drag up there on satellites and this means we are left with much more debris up there – which is also something astronauts have to look out for.” Some researchers have attempted to link the intensity of cosmic rays at Earth to cloudiness and climate change. Current conditions may be a good opportunity to test these ideas further.
Artist’s impression: The wind forms a bubble of material around the Sun
The Ulysses mission is a co-operative venture between the US space agency and the European Space Agency (Esa). Launched by the shuttle in 1990, it was the first satellite to study the space environment above and below the Sun’s poles. It samples the solar wind and solar magnetic field as it circles the star in a six-year orbit that also carries it out to Jupiter and back. But the harsh conditions of space are now slowly taking their toll on the spacecraft. Ulysses’ main transmitter no longer works and it is struggling to put enough power into its heating systems. With the satellite currently moving away from the Sun, it is gradually getting colder; and engineers expect the hydrazine fuel used in its thrusters to freeze very soon. When this happens, Ulysses will no longer be able to orientate itself and its antenna, and contact will be lost with Earth. “Even though the end is now in sight, every day’s worth of new data is adding to our knowledge of the Sun and its environment; and it’s been a great and exciting mission,” said Richard Marsden, Esa’s Ulysses project scientist and mission manager.
September 10, 2008 Most powerful physics experiment is ready.Posted by Social Geek under Welcome | Tags: 000 cylindrical magnets, 1, ATLAS, BBc, BBC News, Big Bang, construction problems, Dr Tara Shears, emerge, Engineers, equipment trouble, European Organization for Nuclear Research, French acronym Cern, galaxies, gas, God Particle, Imperial College London, LHC, liquid helium, magnets, most powerful physics experiment is ready to be powered, Mr Myers, News, overruns, Paul.Rincon, physics, planets, Positron Collider, proton beams, protons, quark-gluon plasma, Scientists, stars, Steve Myers, underground tunnel, Universe moments, University of Liverpool, Welcome, winter |1 Comment
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