beware, here be pirates

When you say the word "pirate," you might think of Blackbeard or Johnny Depp.




A better image might be this friendly-looking guy.

Although the concept sounds vaguely quaint and outdated, there really ARE pirates out there -- and some of them just attacked a luxury liner off the coast of Somalia, fortunately without loss of life to the liner. There have been fifteen pirate attacks off the 2000-mile coast of Somalia this year, reports the International Maritime Organization. But the REAL center of modern piracy is the South China Sea and Straits of Malacca, where piracy has boomed since the mid-1990s.