WaPo:
A Hong Kong-flagged racing sailboat that led its skippers to win multiple contests around the world came under attack Thursday off the coast of war-torn Yemen, with its crew reportedly targeted by militants who fired warning shots and threatened them with rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
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One assailant boarded the Lakota as well, though he jumped overboard after realizing there was no money on the vessel and that he was far from his comrades’ ships
BBC:
The incident comes less than a week after an oil tanker operated by an Israeli-owned company was attacked by a drone off Oman, killing two security guards - one British and the other Romanian.
AP:
Earlier [today], six oil tankers announced around the same time via their Automatic Identification System trackers that they were “not under command”
The Guardian has the overall summary. But Island Echo, "the Isle of Wight’s only truly independent 24-hour news source" has the play by play:
UPDATE @ 14:24 – Hampshire Constabulary have positioned an officer on observation duty at the top of Cowleaze, monitoring the vessel from afar.
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The situation remains largely unchanged since the alarm was raised at around 10:30.
I love how many historical pirates had such shit flags.— Sin Vega (@withoutaplain) July 26, 2020
Special prize to John Phillips (probably. Most of the attribution of these things is hard to prove), whose flag says less "surrender and we will show mercy" than "I am excited for someone to invent the trenchcoat" pic.twitter.com/u4RLq7TjmV— Sin Vega (@withoutaplain) July 26, 2020
Christopher Moody, meanwhile, whose flag gets points for colours, but mostly just says "Make your mind up Chris, fucking hell" pic.twitter.com/W8CkGKiTOY— Sin Vega (@withoutaplain) July 26, 2020
Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard. Not as successful as some, but very influential. Had a decent run. A top tier choice to be pirated by, since he'd only skewer you if you gave him some shit. Flag design: "The Night King will steal your bicycle horn and break your heart." pic.twitter.com/BmRFokLn0r— Sin Vega (@withoutaplain) July 26, 2020
But in 2017, this alleged partnership between [the sailor] and [prostitute] — chronicled in the text messages she provided to NCIS — helped spark a web of investigations that revealed how deeply involved some U.S. sailors had become with the commercial sex trade in Bahrain.Speaking of prostitutes:
Throughout the next year, those probes uncovered evidence that sailors were housing prostitutes in their taxpayer-funded apartments, seizing the women’s passports and taking a cut of the women’s earnings, profiting from a sex trade that serviced shipmates who lived on the island or came ashore during port calls.
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The woman known as Lin Raiwest was far more than just another expat prostitute.
By the time her alleged scheme with Littlejohn collapsed in 2017, court records show Raiwest was a power player among some sailor circles in Bahrain.
Known for her amateur tattoo skills and a hard-partying lifestyle, the streetwise, imposing, at-times jewelry-draped young woman was a fixture in the off-duty underworld, a dolled-up socialite who lived just outside the gates of the Navy base in an upscale glass-and-concrete tower known as the Heavenly Plaza apartments.
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But likely unbeknownst to her American acquaintances on the island, Raiwest had been an NCIS informant since 2014 and is designated under the code name MEBJ-1580 in agency and court records.
So while she continued her work as a prostitute and mamasan, Raiwest could also if needed turn to NCIS Special Agent Stanley Garland, the agent whom she’d known and secretly worked with for years.
“This is a calculating individual that knows what she’s doing and knows how to play this game,” Pristera said in court in 2018. “NCIS just kind of lets her do her own thing.”
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NCIS officials declined to comment on Raiwest’s history with the agency. The agency has also denied Military Times public records requests for documents showing how much Raiwest was paid and the nature of the cases she was involved in, as well as how many other pimps and prostitutes may have similar paid-informant relationships with the NCIS office in Bahrain.
insane how little known this prostitute-turned-pirate queen who commanded a fleet larger than the spanish armada is compared to much less powerful and interesting male pirates pic.twitter.com/sK4qKtdgGg— csz (@cszabla) June 15, 2020
it is reported that four armed military personnel have been killed and two others injured.
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recent incidents, in which a combined 39 seafarers were kidnapped, underscore the serious escalation in the kidnapping of seafarers for ransom in the Gulf of Guinea.
Alarmed by the spate of kidnappings for ransom, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines agreed in May to conduct coordinated naval security patrols in the Sulu Archipelago, and establish a hotline among themselves. In August, they agreed to allow “hot pursuits” of kidnappers and armed robbers by their maritime security forces into one another’s territory.
“The idea is for the closest patrol boat to take the necessary action,”
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“Most of the criminal gangs that hijack fuel tankers are waiting for fuel prices to go up again, and then they will resume hijacking them,”
Just after Hutchings and her publisher got the book to market, Twain’s estate and his publisher sued to stop it, kicking off one of the more unusual intellectual property cases of the 20th century.2. "The Top 9 Ways I Found Your ‘Secret’ Dating Profile"
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In other words, the more firmly they insisted Twain himself was behind the work, the more they strengthened the Twain estate’s copyright argument that it, as the owner of all things written by Twain, owned this book, too. And Twain had a deal with Harper & Brothers that gave it the sole rights to publish books by Twain, so Hutchings and her publisher would have to produce credible evidence that he wanted to break that deal in his afterlife.
The shipping company experienced a series of hit-and-run attacks by pirates who, instead of seeking a ransom for the crew and cargo, went after specific shipping containers and made off with high-value cargo.
"It became apparent to the shipping company that the pirates had specific knowledge of the contents of each of the shipping crates being moved," the RISK team recounted in the report. "They’d board a vessel, locate by bar code specific sought-after crates containing valuables, steal the contents of that crate—and that crate only—and then depart the vessel without further incident."
Apparently the Star Wars Ep VIII crew have drones that they're using to take out drones operated by snoopers trying to get on-set footage.3. "Oil is now so cheap even pirates aren’t stealing it any more"
Indonesia suffered 54 attacks, the highest tally since 2003, continuing a trend that has seen acts of piracy more than triple since 2010.
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However, not a single incident of piracy was reported off the coast of Somalia, or in the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea or Arabian Sea, waters plagued by Somalian pirates in previous years.
The ships that Clisson purchased were painted all black on her command, and the sails dyed red. The 'Black Fleet' took to the waters and began hunting down and destroying the ships of King Philip VI, and were merciless with the crews. But Clisson would always leave two or three of Philip's sailors alive, so that the message would get back to the King that the “Lioness of Brittany” had struck once again. Jeanne and her fleet also assisted in keeping the English Channel free of French warships, and it is very likely that as a privateer she had a hand in keeping supplies available to the English forces for the Battle of Crécy in 1346. When King Philip VI died in 1350, it was not the end to Jeanne's revenge. She continued to wreak havoc among French shipping, and it was reported that she took particular joy in hunting down and capturing the ships of French noblemen, as long as they were aboard. She would then personally behead the aristocrats with an axe, tossing their lifeless bodies overboard.3. "Revealed in pictures at last: How might of US Army responded to Viet Cong sniper; But, despite massive 1970 firepower, they never found him."
After Suez, we enter pirate waters. Channel 16 is suddenly listened to much more carefully. Channel 16 is the official emergency and notification channel with strict codes regulating its use. You use Channel 16 to call someone, then you both agree on another channel for further conversation. In practice, that often fails, particularly in calm waters where there isn't much to do, and where pirate-provoked tension needs release.
The Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, these are the seas of name-calling. Here, it is common to hear Indian voices yelling out, "Filipino monkey!" The captain finds this unpleasantly racist, but the Filipino voices generally retaliate. "Indian, I can't see you, but I can smell you!" There is no way to tell who is calling, so bored watch officers clog the airwaves for fun. When piracy started up again around 2004, there was a period when pirates would play music over Channel 16 just before they attacked, both to unsettle seafarers and to stop ships communicating with the shore.
The second mate has spent many a night listening to weirdness. Around these parts, he tells me, you also hear ghostly voices shouting, "Mario! Mario! Mario!" It's not just him: Friends of his on other ships have made posters about the ghostly Mario-shouter, but no one knows who it is. I don't think they want to know. Strange things happen at sea, and so they should.
Shown here for the first time, these seventy-five patches reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon, where classified projects are known by peculiar names ("Goat Suckers," "None of Your Fucking Business," "Tastes Like Chicken") and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. Although the actual projects represented here (such as the notorious Area 51) are classified, these patches-which are worn by military units working on classified missions-are precisely photographed, strangely hinting at a world about which little is known.
By submitting hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, the author has also assembled an extensive and readable guide to the patches included here, making this volume the best available survey of the military's black world-a $27 billion industry that has quietly grown by almost 50 percent since 9/11.
