Indian Ocean

The fortunes of a band of Somali pirates quickly changed Thursday when a Russian warship opened fire on a hijacked oil tanker, freeing the crew and arresting the bandits, who a day earlier had raced across the Indian Ocean to seize a cargo valued at more than $50 million. The high-seas battle unfolded after 23 crewmen on the tanker Moscow University sent out a distress call and hid from the pirates in a sealed rudder compartment. A Russian destroyer closed in and special forces stormed the vessel at dawn, after marauders shot at a surveillance helicopter, according to the anti-piracy European Union Naval Force.

By the time their rickety boat was rescued last week off the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, nearly a hundred of the weakened passengers had lost their lives - roughly three times as many as survived. The starving people had endured nearly two months at sea, trying to flee the western state of Myanmar where hundreds were slain last year, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. The Rohingya Muslims say they undertook the arduous journey out of fear for their lives. The outpouring of Rohingya from western Myanmar and Bangladesh refugee camps has made the Indian Ocean “one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world,” the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

Oceans divide, but they also unite, because it's easier to drag stuff across water than across land. Europe, West Africa and the Americas have influenced one another in all sorts of ways because of the last 500 years of transatlantic trade. The same sort of thing has happened over a longer period, if less conspicuously, in the Indian Ocean, because of the monsoon trade routes linking East Africa, Arabia, India and Indonesia.

Days after his arrest was ordered, the former president of the Maldives sought refuge Wednesday at the Indian embassy, the latest twist in a political saga that has gripped the chain of islands south of India. Mohamed Nasheed stepped down as president last year after weeks of turmoil, set off by his decision last February to arrest a judge whose rulings he claimed were politically tainted. He and his backers later said he was forced to resign by forces loyal to his country's longtime autocracy, which held sway over the Maldives until its first democratic elections roughly four and a half years ago. In August, a national commission countered that there was no coup and concluded that Nasheed had run afoul of the constitution by arresting the judge, findings that triggered new rounds of protests.

By the time their rickety boat was rescued last week off the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, nearly a hundred of the weakened passengers had lost their lives - roughly three times as many as survived. The starving people had endured nearly two months at sea, trying to flee the western state of Myanmar where hundreds were slain last year, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. The Rohingya Muslims say they undertook the arduous journey out of fear for their lives. The outpouring of Rohingya from western Myanmar and Bangladesh refugee camps has made the Indian Ocean “one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world,” the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett headed across the Indian Ocean, trying to find an altitude that would carry him neither too far north nor south to reach Australia in his bid to become the first to fly around the world nonstop in a balloon. Fossett, a 54-year-old financial markets millionaire, was 800 miles southeast of Cape Town, South Africa, at 24,574 feet, a spokesman for his St. Louis-based team said. He had traversed 6,778 miles since leaving Argentina Friday.

Three children are among seven Danes who have been kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean, Danish officials said Monday. The youths, ages 12 to 16, were taken captive along with their parents and two other adults on board a sailing vessel that put out a distress call Thursday, the Danish Foreign Ministry said. Media reports said the ship was on its way to Somalia, but the purpose of the voyage was unclear. It's believed to be the first time that children have been victims in the spate of hostage-taking bedeviling the waters off eastern Africa.

Frenchwoman Raphaela le Gouvello became the first person to windsurf across the Indian Ocean, landing on the French island of La Reunion after spending 60 days at sea on a specially designed 23-foot board. Le Gouvello, 46, set out April 9 from Exmouth in northwestern Australia and windsurfed about 4,000 miles. Her board capsized twice, but she had help from an escort team.

Six seamen from a Philippine-registered freighter that sank in a storm July 4 were rescued by a passing supertanker in the Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast, officials said Wednesday. Vincent Daly, a spokesman for the Canberra-based Sea Safety Center, said the six survivors, mostly Filipinos, from the freighter Singa Sea were picked up Tuesday by the supertanker Standard Virtue about 200 miles west of Perth, Australia. He said they were suffering from burns and exposure.

France ordered an aircraft carrier battle group of four ships to head toward the Indian Ocean today to "protect our interests" as a result of increased tensions between Paris and Tehran, a defense ministry spokesman said. Defense Minister Andre Giraud ordered the fleet to sail from its home port at Toulon on the Mediterranean coast after President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac held talks on the Franco-Iranian crisis and the situation in the Persian Gulf.

NEW DELHI - Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta urged India on Wednesday to build a closer military relationship with the United States, but Indian leaders appeared more interested in buying U.S. weapons than in aligning strategically with Washington. Senior Indian officials made it clear in two days of talks that they will continue to set their own course on U.S. national security priorities, including isolating Iran and building upAfghanistan'smilitary forces, sometimes in tandem with Washington and sometimes not. Panetta is visiting Asia this week to bolster military ties as the Obama administration, wary ofChina's growing clout in the region, seeks to reassert America's presence in the Pacific after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A sister ship of the cruise liner that ran aground in Italy last month was adrift in the Indian Ocean after a fire broke out in the engine room. No casualties or injuries were reported Monday on board the Costa Allegra, which is owned by Costa Cruises, the same Italian company that operates the Costa Concordia. The Costa Concordia ran aground on the Italian island of Giglio on the night of Jan 13., killing 25 people, with another seven still unaccounted for. Costa Cruises confirmed in a statement that a fire broke out in the electric generator room Monday afternoon but was promptly extinguished.

A criminal court issued an arrest warrant Thursday for deposed Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed amid fear of further violence in the Indian Ocean nation after rioting the day before. It wasn't immediately clear what the charges against him were in the confusing and fast-evolving political crisis. Newly installed President Mohammed Waheed Hassan moved Thursday to assemble a Cabinet, naming defense and home ministers who have had differences with Nasheed. The jockeying and political upheaval come at a sensitive time for a country that held its first democratic election four years ago. The turmoil also provides a potential opening for China, which has been angling to expand its influence on India's doorstep, given the Maldives' strategic location astride Asia's main oil shipping lanes.

After the surging ocean waters spawned by Japan's magnitude 8.9 earthquake receded, the drowned were only the first victims to be counted. In the coming days, physicians and public health officials along Japan's hard-hit eastern coast can expect a second wave of tsunami victims with aspiration-related illnesses, trauma and crush wounds, as well as the threat of disease spread by contaminated water. As they tend to survivors, Japanese officials can look to the experience of health workers who ministered to victims after the massive tsunami that inundated Indian Ocean nations on Dec. 26, 2004.

Three children are among seven Danes who have been kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean, Danish officials said Monday. The youths, ages 12 to 16, were taken captive along with their parents and two other adults on board a sailing vessel that put out a distress call Thursday, the Danish Foreign Ministry said. Media reports said the ship was on its way to Somalia, but the purpose of the voyage was unclear. It's believed to be the first time that children have been victims in the spate of hostage-taking bedeviling the waters off eastern Africa.

Jean and Scott Adam traipsed the globe the way Georges Seurat painted an afternoon at the park ? point by point or, in their case, port by port. Aboard their 58-foot yacht, the couple sailed for months at a time, patching together an enviable life of exotic sights and blue-water adventure, imbued with devout faith. For every busted alternator or arduous dive to wipe muck from the propeller, there was a breathless report to friends from another remote locale ? Kota Kinabalu, Micronesian archipelagos.

Navy helicopters and airplanes continued to search a 600-mile swath of the Indian Ocean on Saturday for signs of a missing plane with four people aboard, Navy officials said. The EA-6B Prowler was assigned to Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 136 and was lost during a routine flight.

Watching her friend climb a rock tower on Krabi, a well-known beach and rock-climbing area in southern Thailand, Mary McAllister suddenly heard a climber yell. "Big wave!" McAllister, of San Francisco, reported the story in an e-mail to family and friends. A wave the length of the horizon sculpted itself out of the water, she wrote. "We saw a kayaker ride the first wave. It was about 2 to 3 meters high.... A man behind me yelled, 'Now it's time to go!'

A federal jury convicted five Somali men Wednesday of piracy on the high seas, the first such verdict in an American court in nearly 200 years, for shooting at a U.S. Navy warship disguised as a merchant vessel in the Indian Ocean last spring. The conviction on all counts after a dramatic trial in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Va., carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison plus 80 years. Defense lawyers said they would appeal. The five defendants stood without expression and listened to an interpreter through earphones as the court clerk pronounced them each guilty on 14 counts, including attempts to plunder a vessel and assault with a deadly weapon.

POP MUSIC Gorillaz Our favorite cartoon-charactered "virtual band" is out on a world tour supporting its much-awaited new album, "Plastic Beach. " Former Blur frontman Damon Albarn will be heading up the flesh-and-blood version of the group, with hip-hop/rock outfit N.E.R.D. supporting. Gibson Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza. 7:30 p.m. $79-$143. (818) 622-4440. http://www.livenation.com . Stone Temple Pilots Trying out its first new material in nearly a decade, the band has been touring with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in support of its recently released self-titled sixth album.