A Somali teenager accused of being one of the pirates who held an American sea captain hostage has been flown from Africa to the US to face trial.
Abde Wale Abdul Kadhir Muse is the first person to be tried in the US on piracy charges in more than a century, the Associated Press news agency says.
He was held over the seizure off Somalia of Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship.
Earlier, his mother appealed to US President Barack Obama to free him.

Somali pirates in speedboats opened fire Monday on two cargo ships in the latest hijacking attempts in the notorious Gulf of Aden. Another band of brigands freed a food aid freighter but only after receiving a $100,000 “reward” from Somali businessmen. The latest attack occurred at midday when pirates fired shots at a Chinese-owned, Panama-flagged cargo ship, the MV New Legend Honor, said Cmdr. Chris Davies, from NATO’s maritime headquarters in England.
Two NATO warships — one Canadian, the other British — scrambled helicopters in defense, Davies said. No damage was …

Somali pirates seized ships from France, Britain, Germany, Taiwan and Yemen, defying world naval powers by prowling further out in the Indian Ocean to target victims.
Ransom-hunting pirates equipped with skiffs, guns and grapnels took five ships in 48 hours, the two latest on Monday targeting a British cargo ship and a Taiwanese fishing vessel.
At least 17 ships and more than 250 hostages are now in pirate hands.

A French warship captured 19 Somali pirates on Sunday when it came to the rescue of two cargo ships threatened in the Gulf of Aden, the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy said.
The French naval vessel “Jean de Vienne” was on patrol off the Somali coast as part of a European Union anti-piracy force when it came to the rescue of a Croatian cargo vessel and a Panamanian ship crossing the Gulf of Aden.
The 19 Somali pirates, armed and equipped with equipment to board the vessels, were captured and have been …

HONG KONG — In China’s first modern deployment of battle-ready warships beyond the Pacific, a naval task force set out Friday to begin escorts and patrols in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, state news media reported.
A supply ship and two destroyers departed from Sanya, on the island province of Hainan, carrying a total of about 800 crew members, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

China confirmed today that it will send naval ships to waters off Somalia to protect against pirates that have attacked 20 percent of its vessel traffic this year, the Foreign Ministry said.
In the first 11 months, 1,265 Chinese commercial ships passed through Somali waters, or about three to four a day, a fifth of which were assaulted by pirates, according to Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for the ministry.

UNITED NATIONS – On the same day Somali gunmen seized two more ships, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of the Horn of Africa country.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on hand to push through the resolution, one of President George W. Bush’s last major foreign policy initiatives.

Two British and one Irish security guard have been plucked from the sea by a military helicopter after jumping from a chemical tanker seized by pirates off Somalia.
Their decision to abandon the two dozen crew members still on board attracted some criticism, but their British employer insisted that the three former soldiers were heroes who had resisted a sustained attack by heavily-armed pirates with great courage and would have been killed if they had stayed any longer.

The owner of a Thai fishing trawler has said the Indian navy sank it off Somalia’s coast last week after wrongly assuming it was a pirate “mother ship”.
Wicharn Sirichaiekawat said the Indian frigate had attacked the Ekawat Nava 5 while it was being hijacked by pirates.
He said one of the crew had been found alive after six days in the Gulf of Aden, but that another 14 were missing.
The Indian navy has insisted the vessel fired in self-defence at a pirate ship which had been stacked with explosives.
Almost 40 …

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Somali pirates Tuesday were engaged in talks over ransoms for several vessels, including a Saudi oil tanker, an Ukrainian freighter carrying arms and their latest catch, a Yemeni cargo ship.
As the world mulled a response to the problem which has sowed panic in the shipping industry and threatens an ailing global economy, increasingly brazen pirates continued to dodge navy ships to prey on foreign vessels.
Officials from Yemen, which shares the Gulf of Aden’s shores with Somalia, said Tuesday that a Yemeni cargo ship carrying building materials was …