the_idle_threat
04-05-2008, 02:03 AM
Pirates seize French yacht
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/04/04/cruiseship.pirates.ap/index.html
PARIS, France (AP) -- Pirates seized control of a French luxury yacht carrying 30 crew members Friday in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast, the French government and the ship's owner said.
Attackers stormed the three-mast Le Ponant as it returned without passengers from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, toward the Mediterranean Sea, said officials with French maritime transport company CMA-CGM.
"This is a blatant act of piracy," Prime Minister Francois Fillon told reporters while on a visit to Brussels. "The Defense and Foreign ministries are mobilized to act as quickly as possible, I hope in the coming minutes or hours to try to win the freedom of these hostages."
He did not elaborate. France has considerable military resources in the region, including a base in Djibouti and a naval flotilla circulating in the Indian Ocean.
The ship was in the high seas in the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia's coast in the Indian Ocean, the ministry said. At least some of the crew members are French. The company declined to identify any other crew member nationalities.
"French authorities are handling the situation," Jean-Emmanuel Sauvee, managing director of La Compagnie des Iles du Ponant, told reporters in the southeastern city of Marseille, where his subsidiary of CMA-CGM is based. The company did not want to comment further so as not to endanger the crew members held hostage, he said.
According to the company's Web site, the 88-meter (288-foot) boat features four decks, two restaurants, and indoor and outdoor luxury lounges. It can hold up to 64 passengers.
Le Ponant was next scheduled to carry passengers as part of a 10-day, seven-night trip from Alexandria, Egypt, to Valletta, Malta, starting April 19. Prices started at $3,465, not including air fare or taxes.
Pirates seized more than two dozen ships off Somalia's coast last year.
Denmark's government paid a ransom to win the release in August of the crew of a Danish cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates some two months after they were taken captive.
The U.S. Navy has led international patrols to try to combat piracy in the region. Last year, the guided missile destroyer USS Porter opened fire to destroy pirate skiffs tied to a Japanese tanker.
Wracked by more than a decade of violence and anarchy, Somalia does not have its own navy, and a transitional government formed in 2004 with U.N. help has struggled to assert control.
The International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy, said in its annual report earlier this year that global pirate attacks rose 10 percent in 2007, marking the first increase in three years.
Global temperatures 'to decrease'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm
Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.
The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.
This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.
But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.
The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C.
While Nasa, the US space agency, cites 2005 as the warmest year, the UK's Hadley Centre lists it as second to 1998.
Researchers say the uncertainty in the observed value for any particular year is larger than these small temperature differences. What matters, they say, is the long-term upward trend.
Rises 'stalled'
La Nina and El Nino are two great natural Pacific currents whose effects are so huge they resonate round the world.
El Nino warms the planet when it happens; La Nina cools it. This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Nina.
It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.
Mr Jarraud told the BBC that the effect was likely to continue into the summer, depressing temperatures globally by a fraction of a degree.
This would mean that temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.
Watching trends
A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked and argue the Earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than predicted.
But Mr Jarraud insisted this was not the case and noted that 2008 temperatures would still be well above average for the century.
"When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular year," he said. "You should look at trends over a pretty long period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming.
"La Nina is part of what we call 'variability'. There has always been and there will always be cooler and warmer years, but what is important for climate change is that the trend is up; the climate on average is warming even if there is a temporary cooling because of La Nina."
Adam Scaife, lead scientist for Modelling Climate Variability at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, said their best estimate for 2008 was about 0.4C above the 1961-1990 average, and higher than this if you compared it with further back in the 20th Century.
Mr Scaife told the BBC: "What's happened now is that La Nina has come along and depressed temperatures slightly but these changes are very small compared to the long-term climate change signal, and in a few years time we are confident that the current record temperature of 1998 will be beaten when the La Nina has ended."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/04/04/cruiseship.pirates.ap/index.html
PARIS, France (AP) -- Pirates seized control of a French luxury yacht carrying 30 crew members Friday in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's coast, the French government and the ship's owner said.
Attackers stormed the three-mast Le Ponant as it returned without passengers from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, toward the Mediterranean Sea, said officials with French maritime transport company CMA-CGM.
"This is a blatant act of piracy," Prime Minister Francois Fillon told reporters while on a visit to Brussels. "The Defense and Foreign ministries are mobilized to act as quickly as possible, I hope in the coming minutes or hours to try to win the freedom of these hostages."
He did not elaborate. France has considerable military resources in the region, including a base in Djibouti and a naval flotilla circulating in the Indian Ocean.
The ship was in the high seas in the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia's coast in the Indian Ocean, the ministry said. At least some of the crew members are French. The company declined to identify any other crew member nationalities.
"French authorities are handling the situation," Jean-Emmanuel Sauvee, managing director of La Compagnie des Iles du Ponant, told reporters in the southeastern city of Marseille, where his subsidiary of CMA-CGM is based. The company did not want to comment further so as not to endanger the crew members held hostage, he said.
According to the company's Web site, the 88-meter (288-foot) boat features four decks, two restaurants, and indoor and outdoor luxury lounges. It can hold up to 64 passengers.
Le Ponant was next scheduled to carry passengers as part of a 10-day, seven-night trip from Alexandria, Egypt, to Valletta, Malta, starting April 19. Prices started at $3,465, not including air fare or taxes.
Pirates seized more than two dozen ships off Somalia's coast last year.
Denmark's government paid a ransom to win the release in August of the crew of a Danish cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates some two months after they were taken captive.
The U.S. Navy has led international patrols to try to combat piracy in the region. Last year, the guided missile destroyer USS Porter opened fire to destroy pirate skiffs tied to a Japanese tanker.
Wracked by more than a decade of violence and anarchy, Somalia does not have its own navy, and a transitional government formed in 2004 with U.N. help has struggled to assert control.
The International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy, said in its annual report earlier this year that global pirate attacks rose 10 percent in 2007, marking the first increase in three years.
Global temperatures 'to decrease'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm
Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.
The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.
This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.
But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.
The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C.
While Nasa, the US space agency, cites 2005 as the warmest year, the UK's Hadley Centre lists it as second to 1998.
Researchers say the uncertainty in the observed value for any particular year is larger than these small temperature differences. What matters, they say, is the long-term upward trend.
Rises 'stalled'
La Nina and El Nino are two great natural Pacific currents whose effects are so huge they resonate round the world.
El Nino warms the planet when it happens; La Nina cools it. This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Nina.
It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.
Mr Jarraud told the BBC that the effect was likely to continue into the summer, depressing temperatures globally by a fraction of a degree.
This would mean that temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.
Watching trends
A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked and argue the Earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than predicted.
But Mr Jarraud insisted this was not the case and noted that 2008 temperatures would still be well above average for the century.
"When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular year," he said. "You should look at trends over a pretty long period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming.
"La Nina is part of what we call 'variability'. There has always been and there will always be cooler and warmer years, but what is important for climate change is that the trend is up; the climate on average is warming even if there is a temporary cooling because of La Nina."
Adam Scaife, lead scientist for Modelling Climate Variability at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, said their best estimate for 2008 was about 0.4C above the 1961-1990 average, and higher than this if you compared it with further back in the 20th Century.
Mr Scaife told the BBC: "What's happened now is that La Nina has come along and depressed temperatures slightly but these changes are very small compared to the long-term climate change signal, and in a few years time we are confident that the current record temperature of 1998 will be beaten when the La Nina has ended."