KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Pirates hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew near Somalia, bringing the total number of attacks in waters off the impoverished African nation this year to 83, a maritime official said Tuesday.
The tanker was heading to Asia when it was seized Monday in the Gulf of Aden by pirates armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

Heavily armed Somali gunmen stormed across the Kenyan border on Monday and kidnapped two Italian nuns from a remote town in northeastern Kenya, witnesses and local authorities said.
The attackers struck before dawn and then raced back across the border into lawless S

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Suicide bombers struck a U.N. compound, the Ethiopian consulate and three other targets in northern Somalia Wednesday, killing at least 22 people in attacks that coincided with international talks in neighboring Kenya about Somalia’s political crisis.
Three of the five bombings hit the breakaway republic of Somaliland, one of them exploding at the palace of the regional president. Bombers also simultaneously attacked two intelligence facilities in the semiautonomous northern region of Puntland. All the attacks were in the morning.

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed is a veteran Somali politician, and the current transitional President of Somalia.