Hostages

With a U.S. warship on site keeping watch early today, Somali pirates and American seamen engaged in a standoff on the high seas after the crew of a freighter loaded with food for Africa fought off the hijackers -- who fled in a lifeboat with the captain as a hostage. The assault on the U.S.- registered Maersk Alabama cargo ship far off Somalia's coast marked the first attack against a U.S.

Two women held hostage for more than five years by leftist rebels were released deep in Colombia's eastern jungle Thursday and handed over to Red Cross officials in helicopters provided by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The phone rings and Jo Rosano jumps to answer, thinking of the sound of her son's voice: Hi, Mom, it's me, Marc. But it isn't him. Rosano hangs up to resume scouring the Internet for news, brewing espresso, pacing, praying, crying and waiting -- as she has for the last five years. "Day and night," she says, "this is my life." Colombian rebels have held Marc Gonsalves and two other Americans hostage since February 2003, when their plane crashed during a drug surveillance mission for a U.S.

Gunmen who had held more than 30 hostages inside a Venezuelan bank for more than 24 hours fled in an ambulance Tuesday and were caught along a roadside, where they surrendered and freed their last five captives. "This nightmare is over," Guarico state Gov. Eduardo Manuitt told state television.

The standoff began shortly after a man in Winnetka called 911 saying he had gunned down three relatives. It ended early Thursday -- more than eight hours later -- with a single round from a police sniper who killed the suspect as he emerged from his burning house firing a barrage of bullets. In between, two highly decorated Los Angeles Police Department officers were shot, one fatally. The LAPD was deeply shaken by the nightlong siege in an otherwise quiet San Fernando Valley neighborhood.

A crowd that took 29 policemen hostage released them Friday in exchange for talks with the government on legalizing their claims to land and possibly dropping charges against a jailed farm leader, a human rights official said. Hundreds of people surrounded the police station in the Caribbean coastal town of Livingston on Thursday, disarmed the police and took them in boats to their remote village.

After six years of captivity at the hands of leftist rebels, four Colombian hostages gained their freedom in a jungle clearing Wednesday after captors turned them over to representatives of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by rebels since 2002, is seriously ill with hepatitis B and malnutrition, Colombia's human rights ombudsman said Thursday, and President Alvaro Uribe signed a decree later that would allow the release of hundreds of guerrillas from jail if she were set free, Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo told reporters.

In this damp, largely forgotten corner of the state, where loggers and former loggers live and drink in obscurity, the talk of the town has swirled around a dirt-stained clump of fabric recently unearthed not far from here. It turned out to be part of a nylon parachute that roughly matched the dimensions of the one used by legendary hijacker "D.B. Cooper," who leapt from a jetliner with $200,000 into folk-hero stardom 36 years ago. He is believed to have landed somewhere in this area.

Eight people were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping a 24-year-old man after SWAT officers and detectives made a high-risk rescue Tuesday afternoon at a Reseda home, police said. Members of the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division had the house in the 18300 block of Schoolcraft Street under surveillance after an attempt to deliver a ransom to the kidnappers failed.