The shooting of the pirates ended a tense, days long standoff and freed their hostage, Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama. Pirates had boarded the Alabama a few days earlier, and had tried to commandeer the vessel before being embarrassingly defeated by the cargo ship’s crew, making the would-be dread pirates look like a scurvy bunch of lily-livered land lubbers.
The attack was something of a surprise, as modern pirates rarely resort to maritime violence, but the economic downturn has dried up many of the cushy jobs they usually get, posing for spiced rum advertisements or pretending to be animatronic robots at Disneyland.

With only Captain Phillips as their captive, the pirates were temporarily at a loss when they found the Alabama lacked a proper plank, or any acceptable substitute to force Phillips to walk. In the end they ended up taking Phillips hostage on a small life boat, where they were promptly surrounded by massively huge U.S. Navy ships with massively huge guns.

Eventually a team of Navy SEALs parachuted in and took up positions on the deck of the USS Bainbridge.

The SEALs are of course the U.S. Navy’s elite commando units whose name is an acronym for Sea Air and Land. Alert readers may notice that those words should actually form the acronym “SAL’s”, however the Navy opted to go with SEALs, in part because SAL’s sounds like a diner owned by a grumpy but lovable Italian gentleman, and in part because they figured no one would correct the spelling of heavily armed troops who know 17 ways to kill using only breakfast cereal.

The SEALs received clearance to use deadly force from no less an authority than President Obama himself. The President later commented that the SEAL’s amazing shots, on choppy seas, in the dark, further cemented the SEAL’s reputation as “badass motherfuckers”.

Defeating the pirates of course means that the SEALs move up in the “Things Sedentary Internet Geeks Think Are Cool” tournament, and will go on to face Ninjas in the semifinals.

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More specifically, they ruled that it would be impossible for the country’s runoff presidential election to be “free and fair” in light of the fact that President Robert Mugabe has been using some slightly undemocratic campaign tactics, such as slaughtering his opponent’s supporters en masse.

President Mugabe has transformed his nation from a beacon of hope and prosperity in Africa, and one of it’s largest agricultural producers, into an impoverished shell of a country. Zimbabwe is now dependent on foreign food aid and fully half the population is undernourished. The unemployment rate is 80% and inflation is a world record-shattering 355,000 percent.

Seriously.

So with that less than stellar track record, it wasn’t too much of a surprise when challenger Morgan Tsvangirai received more votes than Mugabe in the March 29th election. However, after weeks of delays, the official vote tallies released by Mugabe’s government (amid accusations of tampering, rigging, and good old fashioned making shit up) showed that Tsvangirai had won by too close of a margin, forcing a runoff.

Since then, the honorable Mr. Mugabe has engaged in a campaign of violence, intimidation and “outright terror”, as the African National Congress termed it.
Human rights groups report that over 80 of Tsvangirai’s supporters have been killed since March, with tens of thousands injured and twice as many homes destroyed. Over 200,000 people have been displaced by the violence in total.

Tsvangirai was eventually forced to withdraw in the wake of the violence, as well as regular harassment by Mugabe’s government and widespread rumors of state-sponsored assassination attempts. Tsvangirai announced yesterday that he would not be taking part in this “sham of an election process”, explaining that he could not ask Zimbabweans to turn out to vote “when that vote could cost them their lives.”

Tsvangirai then had to flee to the shelter of the Dutch embassy, leading to the U.N.’s declaration today. However, the statement released by the Security Council is actually only a “non-binding” resolution. It is a watered down version of the original statement, drafted by the British, which explicitly blamed Mugabe’s government for the crisis and said Tsvangirai would be the legitimate leader if a credible run-off vote could not be held.

So how would the mighty UK respond to being rebuffed in their attempts to condemn Mugabe? Surely a proud nation like Great Britain could not simply collect their crumpets and go quietly into the night? Of course not. So how would they punish the Zimbabwean regime? That’s right, you guessed it. They’re not going to play cricket with them.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown had British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham hand deliver a letter to the England and Wales Cricket Board conveying the prime minister’s position that Zimbabwe not be allowed to play in next summer’s one-day internationals or the UK-hosted Twenty20 World Cup.

That’s right, hand delivered. Because it would be unthinkable to send a message this important through a medium as undignified and colonial as e-mail.

The International Cricket Council will discuss a possible world ban next week.

Around the world, reactions to the ban ranged from surprise at the harsh reaction to amazement that there is such a thing as The International Cricket Council.
If other nations follow suit, the outlook for Zimbabwe could indeed be grim as they could possibly face being prohibited from playing hockey with Canada, not being able to throw boomerangs at kangaroos with Australia, and being banned from international bobsled competition with Jamaica.

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The amendment was the work of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which may be forced to disband amid swirling accusations of “anti-secular activities” which could lead the party’s members,including Turkey’s president and prime minister, to be banned from belonging to a political party for five years. The headscarf issue is the latest example of what many strict secularists call the AK party’s “secret Islamist agenda”. After all, what could be more extremist than suggesting that no one be barred from education because of their attire?

The court upheld the ban, which experts estimate has forced thousands of women to study abroad or not attend university at all, citing the secularist principles of Turkey’s constitution and the fact that the brightly colored scarves “like, totally clash with the classroom’s earth-tone color palette”.

A statement from the office of  President Abdullah Gul justified the amendment as an attempt to provide equal access for all citizens to higher education. “The amendments do not conflict with the basic principles of the republic,” it said, adding “The Constitutional Court are a bunch of smelly doo-doo heads” which, while true, was just plain mean.

“We’re rubber and you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off of us and sticks to your garish, tacky headscarves,” the Court responded, “and yo mama wears white after labor day!”

Following the ensuing slap-fight, the Constitutional Court admitted that their opposition to the headscarves was not entirely based on upholding secularism, but was  based on the recommendations of Christian Siriano, constitutional scholar, international judicial consultant and of course, winner of season 4 of Project: Runway. Evidently Siriano had judged the headscarves a “fierce hot mess” and the court had ruled accordingly.

At the time of this writing, Turkish government officials would neither confirm nor deny rumors of a ban on wearing socks with sandals.

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WHATEVER.

Meanwhile, in news anybody actually gives a crap about, the previously undefeated New England Patriots lost yesterday in a heartbreaker of a Super Bowl to the New York Giants 17-14, leaving the Boston area and Patriots fans everywhere trying to cope with the tragedy.

“To get to 18-0 and lose the last game,” said Devin Jackson, sister of Patriot’s wide receiver Chad Jackson (pictured above), “it just makes you want to go home, lay on your pillow and cry.”

The Boston Globe’s front page told the story of this unimaginable blow to the city and the toll it is taking on the local populace. “History Derailed!” the headlines proclaimed, “Outcome Leaves Fans at a Loss for Words”. The loss of a football game by a team that had previously won 18 in a row was truly the most heart wrenching story of the day, and for the most part it got the attention it so richly deserved. There would have been room for even more coverage of this disaster, had it not been for some article about brown people killing each other someplace far away that ran on page 3 (reprinted from the LA Times).

All of us here at >3 extend our deepest sympathies to the people of Boston, their families and loved ones during this trying time. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. May God bless you, and we hope that in time, the scars of the terrible events of this Sunday will begin to fade.

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