Modern Day Piracy?

CNN recently reported that pirate attacks are up 14% in 2007, with the waters off Africa's eastern coast and the Indonesian islands being primary targets.

In a related story, the USS Porter is one of two US ships currently pursing a pirated Japanese ship off the coast of Somalia that is loaded with the highly flammable chemical benzene--making pursuit of this pirated ship even more dangerous.

To learn more about benzene, see the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (click on "Access Science," PSU only) for basic information and CHEMnetBASE (PSU only) for more detailed chemical information. Remember that "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing and that "non-flammable" or "uninflammable" are the opposites, meaning does not ignite easily!

To learn more about modern-day piracy, try one of the databases in our Try These First category (PSU only). For further research, look for suggested databases in the business, history, political science, or science categories. To avoid results about a popular pirate film or software piracy, try adding "terrorism" or "terrorist groups" to your search for articles on "pirates."

Track the progress of this event, or future incidents of piracy in one of our news research resources (such as LexisNexis Academic Universe, PressDisplay, World News Connection; PSU only) or on Google News.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) maintains a live piracy map, but offers little additional current information on their website.