Things were obviously already bad in Somalia for a long, long time, but they’ve gotten even worse today:

Somalia’s parliament has unanimously approved to implement the Sharia (Islamic law) across the country, the parliamentary deputy speaker has said.

Osman Elmi Bogore said that members of the parliament passed the law, originally proposed by the opposition, on Saturday.

“There were 340 members at the session and they voted unanimously for the implementation of Islamic sharia in Somalia,” Bogore, who presided over the debates, said.

“The bill … is approved by the parliament… We have an Islamic government.”

The opposition had called on the interim government, led by Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, to implement the Sharia as a precondition to start a national dialogue in the war-torn country.

It is not difficult to see where this is going. Somalia will become an African version of Saudi Arabia (or Iran, or Afghanistan before the Taliban were overthrown, etc.). (more…)

With the threat posed to global trade by priates growing in both scope and audacity, India’s navy has stepped up to the plate at the forefront of the global response.  While the traditional European great powers fret about the human rights of the priates and the Americans lament the supposed impracticality of military solution, an Indian warship engaged and sank a pirate “mothership”. (more…)

I guess they didn’t hear what happened the last time they tried this (via Reuters):

NAIROBI – Somalia pirates have seized a yacht with two French nationals aboard off the coast of East Africa, a maritime official and the French Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

‘The ministry confirms that a yacht with two French on board has been the target of an act of maritime piracy in the Gulf of Aden,’ it said in a statement from Paris. (more…)

French special forces rescued a pair of hostages kidnapped two weeks ago by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, and now President Nicolas Sarkozy is calling on the world to do more to fight the current rash of maritime terrorism. Via Fox News:| MORE ›