Somalis

The people mass outside the gates hundreds deep and eerily still, many squatting in the red dirt holding emaciated children. They wait for water and medicine. But most of all, they wait for an open spot at the world's largest refugee complex. The worst drought in decades has blistered large parts of the Horn of Africa, turning it into a hellscape of deserted villages and dead rivers. The United Nations says 12 million people need emergency aid. Those hardest to reach are in Somalia, where a quarter of the country's 7.5 million people are on the move.

The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, says the Casey Anthony trial is proof that American courts aren't proper venues for trials of suspected terrorists. "We found with the Caylee Anthony case how difficult it is to get a conviction in a U.S. court," McConnell said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday. " Republicans were angered by the Obama administration's decision last week to transfer accused Somali terrorist Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame from a U.S. Navy ship, where had been held and interrogated, to the federal criminal system.

A Somali militant linked to Al Qaeda was held and interrogated for two months on a U.S. Navy ship — the first publicly known example of the Obama administration secretly detaining a new terrorism suspect outside the criminal justice system. Senior administration officials revealed the case Tuesday after an indictment against the man, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was unsealed in federal court in New York. The indictment, which does not mention Warsame's military detention, charges that he worked to broker a weapons deal between Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen and the Somali militant group Shabab.

"Desert Flower" is a weighty biopic that by all rights should have bloomed more fully than it does in the hands of writer-director Sherry Hormann. That said, a lovely performance by Ethiopian supermodel-actress Liya Kebede as supermodel-activist Waris Dirie works wonders to elevate this uneven, occasionally awkward but often absorbing film. Based on the novel by Dirie and Cathleen Miller, "Desert Flower" attempts a mini-epic telling of Dirie's rise from dirt-poor Somali nomad to international runway superstar.

A federal grand jury has indicted 14 suspected pirates in the attack on a yacht in the Indian Ocean that left four Americans dead. Thirteen Somalis and one Yemeni made initial appearances in a Norfolk, Va., courtroom Thursday on charges of piracy, kidnapping and firearms possession. The four Americans, Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey, and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle of Seattle, were sailing the 58-foot Quest off the coast of Oman last month, headed toward the Red Sea, when their yacht was attacked.

U.S. negotiators told pirates holding four American hostages off the coast of Somalia that they would not be allowed to go ashore with their captives, U.S. officials said, one of several moves that increased pressure on the pirates before the hostages were killed Tuesday. The warning that the U.S. intended to prevent the pirates from taking the hostages onto Somali soil was communicated early in the four-day standoff as Navy ships shadowed the 58-foot yacht carrying 19 Somalis and their prisoners, the officials said.

As FBI agents on Wednesday began investigating the deaths of four Americans whose yacht was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea, U.S. officials were mulling whether to bring captured suspects to America to face justice. FOR THE RECORD: Hostages killed: In the Feb. 24 Section A, the photo accompanying an article about the U.S. investigation into the killings of four Americans whose yacht had been hijacked by Somali pirates was credited to AFP/Getty Images. Although transmitted by the wire service, the photo was provided by the Del Rey Yacht Club and taken by club member Joan Godfrey.

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.

Pirates off the coast of Somalia have hijacked the yacht of a couple on a worldwide voyage distributing Bibles, according to Somalia's U.N. Mission. Jean and Scott Adam have been sailing around the world for six years on their sailboat, the S/V Quest. They have raced with the Del Rey Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, which has been their mail drop during their global odyssey. Omar Jamal, first secretary at the Somali mission, said Friday that pirates in the Indian Ocean had taken four U.S. citizens captive when they hijacked the S/V Quest, according to the Associated Press.