The Message From Moscow

May 12, 2010: Some 20 kilometers south of Mogadishu, Al Shabaab gunmen attacked and closed a medical clinic run by a foreign aid group. No reason for this was given, although al Shabaab has been increasingly hostile to foreign aid groups. The clinic mainly served the several hundred thousand refugees from the fighting in Mogadishu. A stalemate continues in Mogadishu, with no one being able to control all of the largest city in the country. The rest of Somalia remains controlled by a patchwork of clan and warlord militias. The most powerful warlords are Islamic radicals (al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam) and Sufi moderates Ahlu Sunna. Large tankers are now detouring further (some 2,000 kilometers east of Somalia), as they head south from the Persian Gulf to round the southern tip of Africa.
May 11, 2010: Somali pirates seized a Bulgarian chemical tanker about 200 kilometers east of the Yemen port of Aden. The pirates may have picked the wrong ship. The Bulgarian tanker was on its last voyage, travelling empty to Karachi, where it will be broken up for scrap.
The UN has agreed to help Kenya expand its legal system to handle prosecuting a lot more pirates. So far, 127 pirates were handled over to Kenya for prosecution (with Western nations picking up the expenses). But corruption and inefficiency resulted in only ten pirates being prosecuted in over a year.