Surge in Piracy off Somalia

Somali pirates want $15 million in ransom money for the Sirius Star, a Saudi tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil that they took earlier this month. This morning, there’s news that a Yemeni cargo freighter has been captured. That brings the total of ships now being held by pirates to seventeen. There've been more than 200 incidents this year, with a doubling of attacks off the Somali coast. That’s bad news for a world in which eighty percent of international goods travel by sea. Why has the coast of east Africa became such a dangerous place for shipping? What has caused the resurgence in piracy on the world's oceans? Who are the pirates targeting? Why can't they be stopped? How is the international community responding to the problem?