Africa’s little known piracy hot-spot and how to counter it

Editor’s note: This article was written by Ana-Maria Baloi and originally published on Grey Dynamics. This report examines the benefits of using satellite imagery in countering piracy activity in the Gulf of Guinea. For collection and processing, the author used Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Geointelligence (GEOINT). The reconstructed scenario is based on the following key […]

Breaking: Pirates capture 6 Russian citizens off the African coast

State owned Russian media outlets report that six Russian citizens were captured from the MSC Mandy container ship off the coast of Cotonou, Benin. According to the Kremlin, the six Russians, which included the vessel’s captain, were taken hostage and removed from the ship before it was secured and sailed to a port near Nigeria. […]

A retired Navy admiral is ‘very concerned’ about terrorists attacking cruise ships

Retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis thinks one of the most “lucrative” targets that terrorists could potentially attack is cruise ships with little in the way of defenses. Stavridis, who retired from the Navy as the supreme allied commander in Europe, gave the cruise ship example as one of two scenarios that have him “very concerned” […]

Somali pirates disembark hijacked tanker empty handed, are permitted to flee

Four days after hijacking a Comoros-flagged oil tanker, Aris 13, with eight Sri Lankans on board, Somali pirates disembarked the vessel and fled empty-handed, leaving the ship and its crew intact to continue along to Bosaso Port, the region’s commercial hub. Ahmed Mohamed, a security official from the semi autonomous state of Puntland within Somalia, made […]

Duterte says if Islamic State comes to Philippines, forget human rights

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned on Monday that Islamic State militants driven out of Syria and Iraq could set up in his country, and if that happened he would forego human rights obligations to keep his people safe. Duterte said the southern Philippine province of Mindanao was already a hotbed of rebellion and banditry and […]

Has a new kind of threat emerged in the Indian Ocean?

On October 25th, an LNG (liquefied natural gas) tanker named Galicia Spirit was attacked off the coast of Yemen. What makes this case stand out is that experts and authorities are treating it as a terrorist attack and not your run-of-the-mill Somali pirates angling for hostages. The skiff that conducted the attack was carrying a […]

UK Spies: The First Line of Defense for Harry Potter

Usually concerned with top secret matters affecting national security, Britain’s eavesdropping spy agency GCHQ was also on the lookout for leaks of a yet-to-be-published Harry Potter book, its publisher has revealed. Shortly before the publication of one of the volumes in J.K. Rowling’s seven-part wizarding saga, with millions of fans worldwide at a fever pitch […]