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It's a little easier to understand why a man who claimed to have thwarted a potential terrorist attack on a plane has not answered repeated requests to tell his story. He was not on the plane, according to AirTran Airways. "After conducting additional research into this situation, we have verified, according to flight manifests (legally binding documents) that the individual that allegedly created a first-hand account of events on-board AirTran Airways Flight 297, a Theodore Petruna, was never actually on-board the flight," AirTran said in a statement, which the AJC was the first to obtain. An e-mail from a Tedd...

The 21st Century has, in less than a decade, seen the explosion of three “bubbles.” In 2001 we saw the tech bubble explode, leaving in its wake the collapse of numerous fortunes and a renewed appreciation for value rather than promises of ever more extravagant high-tech dreams. ... Swearing that the stock market was rigged, people decided to put their money in houses. “Real estate never goes down” was the new mantra, and as evidence we saw houses “flipped” – on TV - for huge profits and real estate assessments climb 20, 30 or 40% per year, proving how to...

An attempted hijacking by a man wielding a knife from an in-flight meal has been thwarted by guards, EgyptAir officials said. The incident happened shortly after the plane, carrying almost 90 people, took off from Istanbul, Turkey, heading to Cairo. The Sudanese man threatened crew members and demanded that the flight be diverted to Jerusalem, officials said. He was detained by air marshals, and the flight landed in Cairo.

A Sudanese man used a knife from the in-flight meal to threaten crew members after the plane left Turkish airspace and demanded that the flight be diverted to Jerusalem, the official said.

French marines aboard trawlers in the Indian Ocean Saturday fired on pirates to repel a dawn attack, as two vessels used in the attack were subsequently captured by Seychelles coastguards, sources said. "Three small launches... (which were) nearly invisible and that we had on the radar at the last moment, chased us," a member of the crew of the Drennac, one of two fishing vessels approached by the pirates, told AFP by telephone. The French military said the marines had first fired flares then "warning shots in the air and across the bows of the pirates' boats", before finally, when...

A CARGO ship that vanished in the Channel was carrying arms to Iran and was being tracked by Mossad, the Israeli security service, according to sources in both Russia and Israel.

can’t say anything about the roots of this story and I don’t plan to dig further… I need to think about my own skin too. Understand that as you will.” —Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian maritime Bulletin Sovfrakht., speaking about the “hijacking” of the Arctic Sea While it might seem like an unusual morphing of the movies Inside Man and The Hunt for Red October, the account of the cargo ship Arctic Sea is far stranger than either fictional account. Based on information developed through our extensive investigation, we can authoritatively state, without hyperbole, that the mysteries surrounding the...

ULAN BATOR (Reuters) - Russia's top general said on Wednesday the military would search the Arctic Sea merchant ship for a possible secret cargo when it returns to Russia from a maritime odyssey that has made headlines around the world.Russia says the Maltese-registered Arctic Sea, officially carrying timber from Finland to Algeria, was hijacked by eight men off the coast of Sweden on July 24. This month Russian warships intercepted the vessel off the coast of Cape Verde."We do not know yet what it is carrying, we only know it is timber. But what else it is actually transporting. It...

Moscow, Aug 21 (DPA) A Russian newspaper claimed Friday that suspected pirates who boarded the freighter Arctic Sea were actually agents of the Israeli secret service trying to stop it from smuggling arms into Iran. According to Russian media, the Arctic Sea may have been carrying illegal X-55 cruise missiles destined for Iran hidden among its cargo of lumber. Men acting on behalf of the Israeli Mossad secret service commandeered the ship to divert the weapons away from Israel's regional enemy, the daily Novaya Gazeta said. Citing Moscow publicist Yulia Latynina, the daily pointed to the surprise visit of Israeli...

The eight suspected hijackers of the Arctic Sea cargo ship that went missing in the Atlantic Ocean this month appeared in court in Moscow on Friday to be formally arrested for piracy and kidnap. "We were saving ourselves, we were drowning," said Igor Borisov, 45, after he was arrested. "We didn't hijack the ship."

Russian authorities flew the suspected hijackers of the cargo vessel Arctic Sea to Moscow on Thursday and took off them for interrogation, dismissing suggestions that the ship may have been carrying weapons. The Russian Navy tracked the ship into the Atlantic after what Moscow has termed an act of piracy and boarded it off the Cape Verde islands in the early hours of Monday, freeing the 15 Russian crewmen.

The hijackers of a cargo ship that disappeared off the coast of France threatened to blow it up if their ransom demands were not met, Russian news agencies said.Russia has arrested eight people on suspicion of hijacking the Arctic Sea off the Swedish coast and sailing it to the Atlantic Ocean, ending weeks of silence about the fate of a ship which has intrigued European maritime authorities. Limited information from Russian officials has failed to satisfy sceptics who voiced doubts about whether the piracy actually took place or was a convenient cover story to conceal a possible secret cargo of...

MOSCOW - Russia's navy arrested eight men accused of hijacking the Arctic Sea freighter near Sweden and forcing the crew to sail to West Africa, the defense minister said Tuesday

Russia has arrested eight people who hijacked the merchant ship Arctic Sea, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on Tuesday. Serdyukov was quoted as saying that the hijackers of the ship, whose disappearance baffled maritime authorities for weeks, included nationals from Russia, Estonia and Latvia.

CHINA (BNO NEWS) -- A plane was hijacked in China's restive region of Xinjiang on Sunday, according to state media. The agency sent out a brief "flash" alert saying a plane had been hijacked, without giving further details

As the remains of Air France Flight 447 are still being recovered after last week's crash in the Atlantic that saw all 228 people aboard lose their lives, this story has emerged in headlines today. As the Times online reports, an Italian woman who arrived late for the flight has been killed in a car crash: ohanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from Bolzano-Bozen province, had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband Kurt and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31... The ANSA news agency reported that the couple had...

BRAZILIAN search aircraft late have spotted seats and part of a plane wing in the Atlantic where an Air France jet went down nearly a week ago, officials said after two bodies and other items were recovered from the area. "Plane seats, part of the wing (and) various other items (were) localised,"

Bodies from the Air France passenger plane that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil have been found by search teams. The news comes it was revealed the airliner sent out 24 automatic error messages in its final moments as its systems broke down one by one. The head of the French agency probing the tragedy said signals from the jet before it disappeared showed its autopilot was not on. Paul-Louis Arslanian said it was not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings. He said investigators...

Pirates attacks an American-flagged commercial vessel Tuesday in an unsuccessful new hijacking attempt off of the coast of Somalia.At about noon EDT, the Liberty Sun, with a crew of about 20 U.S. citizens, reported to the Coast Guard that they were being attacked by pirates. The U.S. Navy dispatched the USS Bainbridge in response, a Department of Defense official told FOX News. The official confirmed it was a failed piracy attempt, and by the time the warship arrived several hours later, the pirates were gone. The Navy was unable to track the pirate ship, but may have had them...

Long Island based ship, Liberty Sun, was carrying humanitarian aide. The 20 man crew is apparently unhurt as USS Bainbridge makes its way towards distressed vessel.

MOMBASA, Kenya – Somali pirates captured four ships and took more than 60 crew members hostage in a brazen hijacking spree, while the American captain freed from their grip planned to reunite with his crew and fly home Wednesday to the United States. Capt. Richard Phillips and his 19-man crew will reunite in the Kenyan port of Mombasa on Wednesday and fly from there to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on a chartered flight, according to the shipping company Maersk... ... Pirates have vowed to retaliate for those deaths and two others slain by French forces in a separate...

Pirates have hijacked a tanker off the coast of Somalia, maritime officials say, days after several pirates were killed by US and French forces. In the latest in a string of attacks by pirates seeking ransom payments, a freighter named as the MV Irene was taken in the Gulf of Aden..... [snip]

Pirates on a German ship with 24 foreign hostages said Saturday they had returned to the Somali coast after failing to locate the scene of a standoff involving an American captive on a drifting lifeboat, Reuters reported. The pirates hoped to use the hijacked 20,000-ton container vessel, Hansa Stavanger, as a "shield" to reach fellow pirates holding American ship captain Richard Phillips. "We have come back to Haradheere coast. We could not locate the lifeboat," a pirate on the ship told Reuters. "We almost got lost because we could not find the bearing of the lifeboat." The Hansa Stavanger was...

Mike Kucharek, a spokesman for North American Aerospace Defense Command, is being reported in an article on Foxnews.com that very shortly after American F-16s started following the stolen plane, they knew they wouldn't shoot it down. Why?

The Canadian man who led fighter jets on a chase across six states Monday flew his stolen plane into the United States. in hopes the military would shoot him down and kill him, according to a Missouri state trooper who apprehended the rogue pilot. Missouri state trooper Justin Watson told "Good Morning America" today that 31-year-old Yavuz Berke, formerly known as Adam Leon, wanted to commit suicide, but didn't have the courage to do it himself. "His idea was to fly the aircraft into the United States where he would be shot down," Watson said. "He stated several times that...

http://www.northlandsnewscenter.com/news/local/42563292.html SNIPPET: "A stolen airplane from Thunder Bay, Ontario that had U.S. defense Officials on high alert throughout Monday, landed on a Missouri highway." MULTIMEDIA WATCH THE VIDEO SNIPPET: "Spokespeople say a student at a flight school stole the aircraft and took off. The plane continued to fly towards Madison and that's when two F-16 fighter jets fighter intercepted the stolen Cessna"

WAUSAU, Wis. - Two F-16 fighters were dispatched over Wisconsin Monday to track a single-engine plane that was believed stolen in Canada by a student pilot, authorities said. The incident caused the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison to be evacuated as a precaution.

Over the skies of the Midwest, two F-16 fighter jets are escorting a private Cessna 172 aircraft stolen from a flight school in Ontario, Canada, whose pilot has been unresponsive to multiple requests that he establish communications with ground controllers. The plane entered American airspace over Michigan's Upper Peninsula at 3:25 p.m. today and has been trailed by the military aircraft since 4:43 p.m. as it has flown over Minnesota, south through Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri. The aircraft went past St. Louis flew south over eastern Missouri towards Arkansas. At one point, the Wisconsin state capitol building in Madison was...

U.S. F-16 fighter jets are tracking a single-engine plane over Missouri that was stolen from a Thunder Bay, Ont., aviation school Monday afternoon. Lt.-Cmdr. Gary Ross of NORAD in Colorado told CTV Newsnet that as of about 9 p.m. the plane was about 50 kilometres east of Salem. "We remain in pursuit and are trying to encourage the pilot to land safely," he said. Ross said the pilot has not responded to radio calls from the F-16s or the FAA and that the stolen Cessna 172 only has about one hour of fuel left. He also said the pilot has...

The last time Patrick Moroney saw his Cessna Stationair 206, it was flying away from a rural airstrip in Mulege, Mexico - hijacked by gun-toting drug runners who left him and his stunned family abandoned beside a burning car. -- SNIP -- there was no way I am getting my family out of this plane with a propeller moving. -- SNIP -- They told me I was going to die -- SNIP -- Kim Moroney called then-U.S. Sen. Larry Craig's staffers. They promised to help but nothing happened. But less than two hours after her initial conversation with one of...

An Indigo aircraft flight E-664 made an emergency landing at New Delhi airport. The National Security Guard and Delhi police's quick response team have been called in. The Border Security Force's planes have been put on standby. The plane has been isolated at the airport. No one has disembarked from the aircraft. The possibility of a hijack has not been ruled out.

Mumbai: The group of 11 terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks had boarded a fishing boat near Karachi in Pakistan five days earlier, a senior investigating official revealed on Sunday. According to the investigation, the terror group loaded their arms and ammunition and boarded the boat on November 21 from a location near Karachi, said the official who declined to be identified. All the terrorists - in their 20s - are said to be members of the Lashker-E-Taiba (LeT), he said. They all had undergone rigorous training in terror camps in which they learnt all ways to create terror, especially...

Maritime officials said pirates off the coast of Somalia Friday hijacked another ship and released one that had been held for more than two months. Officials said three crew members escaped as pirates boarded the Liberian-flagged chemical tanker Biscaglia. A warship on patrol near the ship sent a helicopter to intervene. It arrived after pirates seized the ship, but rescued the three crew members who had jumped into the Gulf of Aden. At least 25 other crew members are still on board the hijacked ship. They are reported to be mostly from India and Bangladesh. Also Friday, Kenyan authorities said...

Details about another ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates and one that was released with the crew unharmed. Question: Why not have weapons aboard ships that sail these waters similar to our troops with rocket launchers that home in on a target painted with a laser beam. My guess is that putting a few prirate boats in orbit might discourage other pirates in the area...just a thought.

I stumbled upon this Iraqi website last night and noticed the date of the post. It seemed like a huge coincidence that it would mention pirate attacks on Saudi vessels 6 days before it actually happened. "And this report from an Arab site may demonstrate that the Iranians were behind this latest pirate attack. This report is from November 12, 2008. Six days before the Saudi vessel was seized. It's translated from Arabic, so you have to read it closely as the syntax is jumbled" Are The Iranians Training the Somali Pirates?I'm just sayin'

• British government appeals for immediate release of the hostages • Owner says ship is fully loaded with crude oil and crew is safe

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Th Saudi owners of a oil supertanker hijacked off Somalia say they are working for the release and safe return of its crew. Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian oil company Saudi Aramco, issued a statement from Dubai Tuesday confirming the 1,080-foot Sirius Star had been seized 480 miles off the coast of Somalia and that it was "awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel," The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported.Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said the vessel was believed to have put down anchor off Somalia with...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17, 2008 – Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said he was shocked by the piracy of a Saudi Arabian supertanker 450 nautical miles off the coast of Kenya in the Arabian Sea. Mullen, speaking during a Pentagon news conference today, said the Sirius Star was attacked more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya. News reports indicate the pirates have hijacked the ship and are heading for the Somali port of Eyl. The ship is owned by a Saudi Arabian oil company and flagged in Liberia. Its crew of 25 includes citizens of Croatia, Great Britain, The Philippines,...

OK, some Obama supporter has gotten a negative picture going of McCain. Click here and email this one to as many email accounts as you can to reverse their course. Thanks!

Just breaking, and a banner for now. More developing...

DEVELOPING: A passenger aboard a domestic Russian flight has hijacked the aircraft and ordered it to divert to Vienna, according to Russian law enforcement, Reuters reported. "At 5.20 p.m. one of the passengers on a flight from Adler to Moscow cried 'Allah Akbar' and announced that the flight had been hijacked and demanded to change the course from Vnukovo (airport outside Moscow) to Vienna," Reuters quotes Russian news sources as reporting. Emergency vehicles are on their way to Vnukovo Moscow airport.

Police Arrest "Insane" Man Who Demanded Commercial Jet Fly To Vienna (CBS/AP) A passenger demanded that a Moscow-bound flight change course and fly to Vienna but the attempted hijacking was thwarted. Russian news media say the hijacker — described in one report as having a history of mental illness — was overpowered by other passengers. The ITAR-Tass news agency quotes a spokesman for Sky Express airline saying that a passenger demanded the plane change course about 20 minutes before it was due to land in Moscow. The incident occurred while the plane with 130 people on board was en route...

FNC is reporting now that a 737 has been hijacked with 130 people onboard and diverted to Vienna.

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A man claiming to be a spokesman for the Somali pirates who seized a ship laden with Russian tanks says they want $20 million to release the vessel. Sugule Ali says others who have made earlier ransom demands did not speak for the particular pirates who hijacked the Ukrainian-operated cargo ship Faina on Thursday.

A U.S. destroyer off the coast of Somalia closed in Saturday on a hijacked Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and ammunition, watching it to ensure the pirates who seized it do not try to remove any cargo or crew. Nikolsky said the ship was anchored near the Somali town of Hobyo and that two other apparently hijacked ships were nearby. Hobyo is in the central region of Mudug, south of Puntland. It is a natural port and does not have any facilities.

Pirates have seized a Greek chemical tanker with a crew of 19 off Somalia's coast, days after hijacking a Ukrainian cargo ship loaded with tanks, an international anti-piracy group said Saturday. The hijacking brings the number of attacks on ships off the coast of Somalia to 62 this year, or more than one every week. A total of 26 ships were hijacked, and 15 remain in the hands of the pirates along with 300 crew members.

TRIPOLI, Libya - Hijackers in Sudan's wartorn Darfur region seized a jetliner carrying nearly 100 people, including local Darfur officials, and forced it to land at a World War II-era airfield in the heart of the Sahara Desert in neighboring Libya, officials said. A Libyan official at the remote Kufra airport said there were 10 hijackers belonging to a Darfur rebel group and were demanding enough fuel for the Boeing 737 to continue to France. -snip-

April 6, 2008 -- Hillary Rodham Clinton "misspoke" again on the campaign trail - and a distraught Ohio family is furious about it. Several times in recent months while talking about her plan for universal health care, Clinton told a tale of woe about a young pregnant woman who sought medical care at a local hospital and was turned away for lack of insurance - and both she and the baby died. But the family of the 35-year-old woman - Trina Bachtel - says the story is simply not true. "Trina had good insurance. She was a good girl, and...

MOGADISHU, Somalia: A French luxury yacht seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden with 30 crew on board has arrived in northern Somalia, officials and fishermen said Sunday.