DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Somali pirates hijacked a Saudi supertanker with a cargo of crude oil hundreds of miles out in the Indian Ocean in a dramatic escalation that showed their expanding reach.

It was the largest vessel seized yet in a surge of pirate attacks, and the farthest out to sea that the well-armed fighters, bolstered by millions in past ransoms, have successfully struck. Maritime experts warned that the daylight attack, reported by the U.S. Navy on Monday, was an alarming sign of the difficulty of patrolling a vast stretch of ocean key for oil and other cargo traffic.

The brand-new MV Sirius Star tanker, with a 25-member crew, was seized at about 10 a.m. Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, the U.S. Navy said. The area lies far south of the zone where warships have increased their patrols this year in the Gulf of Aden, one of the busiest channels in the world, leading to and from the Suez Canal, and the scene of most past attacks.

The massive supertanker would seem to present a daunting target for the pirates, who usually operate in small speedboats. At 1,080 feet, it's the length of an aircraft carrier, able to carry about 2 million barrels of oil.

But its crew may have had a false sense of security so far from shore, and pirates have repeatedly demonstrated their skill in taking down big prizes.

Aggressive tactics
Details of Saturday's attack were not known, but in past seizures, pirates have used ropes and ladders to climb the hull — and often on large ships, the crew don't notice them until it's too late. On the Sirius Star, the attackers likely would have had to scale about 33 feet from the water to the deck.

It was not clear if the Sirius Star had any armed security on board. In past attacks, alert crews have been able to fend off pirates trying to climb the sides, using water hoses to knock them away. But the pirates are able to strike back: In April, they punched a hole in the side of a Japanese oil tanker with a rocket-propelled grenade in an unsuccessful attempt to capture it.
Pirates have been spreading their attacks in recent weeks southward into a vast area of the Indian Ocean that would be extremely difficult and costly to patrol, maritime security experts said.

"It had been slightly more easy to get it under control in the Gulf of Aden because it is a comparatively smaller area of water which has to be patrolled, but this is huge," said Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau.

The pirates were taking the captured tanker and crew to an anchorage off the Somali port of Eyl, Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, said. The port on Somalia's northeastern coast has become a pirate haven and a number of ships are already being held there as pirates negotiate ransoms.

Christensen said the Sirius Star was carrying crude, but could not say how much. Fully loaded, the ship's cargo could be worth about $100 million. But the pirates would have no way of selling crude and no way to refine it in Somalia. Instead, they were likely to demand a ransom, as they have in the past.

"It's the largest ship we've seen hijacked and one attacked farthest out on the sea," Christensen said. The capturing of the oil tanker represents a "fundamental shift in the ability of pirates to be able to attack merchant vessels."

Uptick in hijackings
The Sirius Star, which was commissioned in March and is owned by Saudi oil company Aramco, is classed as a Very Large Crude Carrier, the second-largest classification. It was sailing under a Liberian flag and its 25-member crew includes citizens of Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia. A British Foreign Office spokesman said there were at least two British nationals on board.

An operator with Aramco said there was no one available at the company to comment after business hours. Calls went unanswered at Vela international, the Dubai-based marine company that operated the ship for Aramco. Christensen said he had no details on the ship's port of origin and destination.

Pirate attacks off Somalia have surged more than 75 percent this year, hitting freighters, tankers, yachts and fishing vessels. The pirates raised international alarm bells in September when they seized a Ukrainian freighter, the Faina, carrying a cargo of battle tanks and other weapons. The Faina and its 20-member crew are still being held off Somalia, watched by warships to prevent the removal of its cargo.

With most attacks ending with million-dollar payouts, piracy is considered the biggest economy in Somalia, a country that has had no stable government for decades. A report last month by a London-based think tank said pirates have raked in up to $30 million in ransoms this year alone.

'Very strong and very rich'
The pirates are trained fighters, often dressed in military fatigues, using speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment. They are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rockets launchers and various types of grenades. Far out to sea, their speedboats operate from larger motherships.

"Pirates are becoming very strong and very rich, and they are expanding into other parts of the (Indian) ocean beyond the Gulf of Aden," said Nour Mohammed Saeed, a former fisheries minister in the Puntland region of northern Somalia. "They are getting a lot of money and they know that they can make more."

The seizure of the Faina and its cargo of weapons prompted a reinforcement of warships patrolling the waters off Somalia. Along with a Russian frigate and Indian vessels, a NATO flotilla of seven ships is in the Gulf of Aden to help the U.S. 5th Fleet in anti-piracy patrols and to escort cargo vessels. The 5th Fleet said it has repelled about two dozen pirate attacks since Aug. 22 in the gulf.

Another multinational fleet currently led by the Dutch has carved out a protected lane through the Gulf of Aden, through which 20,000 tankers, freighters and merchant vessels transit every year, entering and exiting the Suez Canal.

But other ships — including ones too big for the canal like the Sirius Star — pass off East Africa to circle the continent by the Cape of Good Hope.

The expansion of attacks signals they too could be vulnerable.

"There will never be enough warships," said Graeme Gibbon Brooks, the managing director of British company Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service Ltd. "The whole area is 2.5 million square miles ... the coalition have to act preemptively and be one step ahead of the pirates."

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27766333/

Wings become desks ($8,900), and cockpits turn into chairs ($12,000). The Latro Primo ($5,500- $8,900) is made from the rear stabilizer of a Beechcraft 18/C-45, the Lo Squalo club chair ($5,000- $8,500) is made from the air cooling engine scoop of a DC6/7, the II Sole conference table ($10,000) has been inducted in The Smithsonian Institute’s National Air Space Museum and is made from the first stage of a Pratt & Whitney JT8D jet engine case fan.
Tags: unique luxury furniture, luxury goods, most expensive

Via:  dvice 

Then of course she began scanning the crowd hysterically looking for someone she was going to ignore. I mean you know she just wanted to do that, but unfortunately for her, no one at JFK even looked up from what they were doing and didn’t even care that she was there. Must suck to think you are going to get mobbed and instead see hundreds of people who don’t even care and probably don’t even know who you are. Presumably she then grabbed the microphone and told people who she was and that she was famous and that they should all bow down to her before entering the aircraft.

(source)

When last we checked in on poor Baz Luhrmann, he was still frantically trying to edit his $130 million WWII epic Australia down into a concise 170 minutes to make the film's rapidly advancing release date ("It's a little like landing a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier in a storm," he said last week). Now, according to reports, he's bowed to studio pressure to change the movie's ending. Warning: Spoilers ahead, obviously!

Hey, at least he made it to the end, right? Apparently Fox executives were worried by test audiences' "disastrous reviews" of a rough cut of Australia, in which Hugh Jackman's character — hey, we weren't kidding about that spoiler alert! — died in the final minutes (were these the same Fox executives who previously tried to convince us that Jackman was "rough-hewn," like a "young Clint Eastwood"?). But after "intense discussions," Luhrmann's agreed to a more uplifting finale, probably because he just wants to be done with this thing already ("I wouldn't say we are within schedule, but it's possibly within reach," he told the Telegraph). Now, presumably, instead of being exploded during a Japanese air raid, Jackman's unnamed ranch-hand character will escape with a few light scratches and be invited to host the Tonys.

Baz bows to Hollywood [Sunday Telegraph via Hollywood Elsewhere]

Earlier: Can ‘Australia’ Finally Convince Moviegoers That Hugh Jackman Isn’t Gay?

A father of three, Juan Camilo Mouriño, 37, was viewed as a rising star in Mexican politics. He was one of the architects of conservative Felipe Calderón’s 2006 election victory.

Seven other people were killed and 40 injured when the government Learjet smashed into the streets of Mexico City yesterday, setting several cars ablaze, Reuters reported.

Calderon described Mouriño as “a compatriot who worked for the service of his county”.

Last week, the lack of pre-release marketing for Milk caused some to wonder if the film might secretly be a stinker (apparently it's not). But what of the other unadvertised swashbuckling Oscar contender coming out on the very same day (November 26), Baz Luhrmann's Australia? Hilariously, it's not even done yet! Over the weekend, Luhrmann told his local paper, The Australian, "We're going to give it our all and at the moment it's an absolutely real [release] date. But I would not be truthful if I didn't say it's a little like landing a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier in a storm."

Yes, that sounds bad! Budgeted at $130 million and with a reported running time of over 170 minutes, Australia's been tipped as a likely Oscar contender basically since anyone found out it existed — but what if it misses its release date? Will it still come out in 2008? Or will Academy voters have even fewer Oscar-quality movies to choose from this year? And, given its huge budget and expectations, wouldn't it be the year's biggest disaster if it were to turn out bad? Also, please tell us the delay is somehow due to Luhrmann frantically trying to use CGI to make Hugh Jackman look even more macho.

Baz Luhrmann's epic gamble [The Australian]

Earlier: Can ‘Australia’ Finally Convince Moviegoers That Hugh Jackman Isn’t Gay?

We're all aware of just how much real life has failed to live up to our grand, movie-heightened expectations for the future: Taco Bell is not America's only restaurant; Prisoners are not cryogenically frozen until they can once again be of use to society; We have not replaced toilet paper with seashells. (Okay, those are all from Demolition Man, but that movie was seriously on cable a lot.) But it looks like we may be one step closer to the Hill Valley of 2015: American aircraft-design team Moller International says they are now two years away from a functional flying car. At last! Apparently, the car — dubbed the Autovolantor — will cost about a million dollars, be powered by eight fans, and could fly at altitudes of up to 5,000 feet at 150 miles per hour (we suppose this is reasonable for a first model). But what took so long? Flying cars are the most basic of all sci-fi clichés! We wouldn't be this antsy if science had given us crime-predicting precogs years ago, or if we could take a virtual-reality Mars vacation (two things we figured would've been easy). Also, what's the status on those self-tying sneakers?

Stuck in traffic? Meet the new supercar based on a Ferrari that could fly you out of jams - for £500,000 [Daily Mail]

POLK CITY, Florida (CNN) — At a boisterous Sarah Palin rally in Polk City, Florida on Saturday afternoon, one name was surprisingly absent from the campaign décor — John McCain’s.

Watch: Palin campaigns in Polk City, FL Saturday

Looking around the Fantasy of Flight aircraft hangar where the rally took place, one could see all the usual reminders that it was a pro-McCain event. There were two large “Country First” banners hung on the walls along with four enormous American flags meant to conjure the campaign’s underlying patriotic theme. Many of the men and women in the audience wore McCain hats and t-shirts.

But on closer inspection, the GOP nominee’s name was literally nowhere to be found on any of the official campaign signage distributed to supporters at the event.

Members of the audience proudly waved “Country First” placards as Palin delivered her stump speech. Those signs were paid for by the Republican National Committee.

The other sign handed out to supporters read “Florida is Palin Country,” but those signs were neither paid for by the Republican National Committee nor the McCain campaign. In small print, the signs were stamped with the line “Paid for and authorized by Putnam for Congress" — as in, the re-election campaign of Florida congressman Adam Putnam, whose district skirts Polk City.

In fact, Putnam’s name was considerably more prominent than was McCain’s — his campaign had placed a number of large “Putnam for Congress” banners around the event site.

Source: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/01/mccains-name-nowhere-to-...

This is real footage of John McCain when he was a prisoner of war, still in a cast. The interview was very emotional for John McCain. It’s not easy being a prisoner of war for 6 years, and never knowing if you would live or die. The announcer is speaking in French.

From Wikipedia:

McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973, experiencing episodes of torture and refusing an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer; his war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.

He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981, moved to Arizona, and entered politics. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily in 1992, 1998, and 2004. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for having disagreed with his party. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the "Keating Five," he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work towards restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, has opposed spending that he considered to be pork barrel, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.

What sacrifices has Barack Obama made for the United States?

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