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DeathscytheX

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  4. Posted · Report reply

    Not just the DC version. Any version. Its a rare commodity to come across a hard copy of the game. Its not about how great it is, its just because its hard to come by.

    http://www.gamestop.com/browse/search.aspx?N=0&Ntk=TitleKeyword&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntt=marvel%20vs.%20capcom%202

    Gamestop sells its used copys for $79-89. Poor suckers like my friend have turned it in for a meager $5 and lost out on a small fortune.

  5. Posted · Report reply

    http://kotaku.com/5230220/marvel-vs-capcom-2-confirmed-with-hd-online-support-demo-coming

    It's been rumored. It's been practically verified. Now it's announced: Marvel VS Capcom 2 will be coming to the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 this summer with a new visual filter and online matching modes.

    The game, which was developed for the PS3 and 360 by Foundation 9 and is based on the Dreamcast code, will sell on the Playstation Network Store for $15 and on Xbox Live for 1,200 Microsoft Points.

    During their event in Monte Carlo last week, Capcom said that a demo of the game will be coming to the Playstation Network on April 30 in North America and shortly thereafter in the UK. No demo for the 360 was announced.

    It features an optional visual filter that smooths out the game's graphics and new online modes, including Ranked Matches and the Quarter matches found in Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, which allows up to four people to watch and chat while two others fight. It also features widescreen support with the gameplay in a 4:3 field, but the viewing area expanded.

    The best part? No unlockables in the game. All 56 characters are accessible from the get go.

    The original, and this latest version, features brawlers from the Capcom and Marvel universes. It also features 3 on 3 tag-teammatches and four button controls.

    I laugh at the price gouged market for this game. I laugh at everyone trying to sell it for $200+ because now you are going to be able to buy it for under $12.

  11. Posted · Report reply

    With precise targeting a photon could be blasted through the nuke storage on galactica. Sheilds cancel out the nukes anyways. The Enterprise is too fast, and Galatica is too big giving it week sides where the Enterprise could reign down havoc without any return fire besides the vipers. Kirk is an out of the box commander that could outwit Adama any day of the week. A superior crew and a superior ship (for the situation) gives Enterpirse the wins with no question.

    This comparison is like putting an F22 vs. B17 Flying Fortress.

    The USS Reliant will always be my favorite Starfleet Ship however.

    Star_Trek_Universe_USS_Reliant_freecomputerdesktopwallpaper_p.jpg

  12. Posted · Report reply

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090419/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_factories

    U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water — contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.

    Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.

    Federal and industry officials say they don't know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them — as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.

    As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.

    The data don't show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.

    To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what's being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.

    But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.

    "It doesn't pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they're creating," said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.

    Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.

    Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland's Prince George's and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans.

    Most cities and water providers still do not test. Some scientists say that wherever researchers look, they will find pharma-tainted water.

    Consumers are considered the biggest contributors to the contamination. We consume drugs, then excrete what our bodies don't absorb. Other times, we flush unused drugs down toilets. The AP also found that an estimated 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging are thrown away each year by hospitals and long-term care facilities.

    Researchers have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of drugs harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs. Some scientists say they are increasingly concerned that the consumption of combinations of many drugs, even in small amounts, could harm humans over decades.

    Utilities say the water is safe. Scientists, doctors and the EPA say there are no confirmed human risks associated with consuming minute concentrations of drugs. But those experts also agree that dangers cannot be ruled out, especially given the emerging research.

    ___

    Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals — the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide — account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.

    However, the list of 22 includes other troubling releases of chemicals that can be used to make drugs and other products: 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone, 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches, 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride. Others include treatments for head lice and worms.

    Residues are often released into the environment when manufacturing equipment is cleaned.

    A small fraction of pharmaceuticals also leach out of landfills where they are dumped. Pharmaceuticals released onto land include the chemo agent fluorouracil, the epilepsy medicine phenytoin and the sedative pentobarbital sodium. The overall amount may be considerable, given the volume of what has been buried — 572 million pounds of the 22 monitored drugs since 1988.

    In one case, government data shows that in Columbus, Ohio, pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. discharged an estimated 2,285 pounds of lithium carbonate — which is considered slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and freshwater fish — to a local wastewater treatment plant between 1995 and 2006. Company spokeswoman Marybeth C. McGuire said the pharmaceutical plant, which uses lithium to make drugs for bipolar disorder, has violated no laws or regulations. McGuire said all the lithium discharged, an annual average of 190 pounds, was lost when residues stuck to mixing equipment were washed down the drain.

    ___

    Pharmaceutical company officials point out that active ingredients represent profits, so there's a huge incentive not to let any escape. They also say extremely strict manufacturing regulations — albeit aimed at other chemicals — help prevent leakage, and that whatever traces may get away are handled by onsite wastewater treatment.

    "Manufacturers have to be in compliance with all relevant environmental laws," said Alan Goldhammer, a scientist and vice president at the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

    Goldhammer conceded some drug residues could be released in wastewater, but stressed "it would not cause any environmental issues because it was not a toxic substance at the level that it was being released at."

    Several big drugmakers were asked this simple question: Have you tested wastewater from your plants to find out whether any active pharmaceuticals are escaping, and if so what have you found?

    No drugmaker answered directly.

    "Based on research that we have reviewed from the past 20 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are not a significant source of pharmaceuticals that contribute to environmental risk," GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.

    AstraZeneca spokeswoman Kate Klemas said the company's manufacturing processes "are designed to avoid, or otherwise minimize the loss of product to the environment" and thus "ensure that any residual losses of pharmaceuticals to the environment that do occur are at levels that would be unlikely to pose a threat to human health or the environment."

    One major manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., acknowledged that it tested some of its wastewater — but outside the United States.

    The company's director of hazard communication and environmental toxicology, Frank Mastrocco, said Pfizer has sampled effluent from some of its foreign drug factories. Without disclosing details, he said the results left Pfizer "confident that the current controls and processes in place at these facilities are adequately protective of human health and the environment."

    It's not just the industry that isn't testing.

    FDA spokesman Christopher Kelly noted that his agency is not responsible for what comes out on the waste end of drug factories. At the EPA, acting assistant administrator for water Mike Shapiro — whose agency's Web site says pharmaceutical releases from manufacturing are "well defined and controlled" — did not mention factories as a source of pharmaceutical pollution when asked by the AP how drugs get into drinking water.

    "Pharmaceuticals get into water in many ways," he said in a written statement. "It's commonly believed the majority come from human and animal excretion. A portion also comes from flushing unused drugs down the toilet or drain; a practice EPA generally discourages."

    His position echoes that of a line of federal drug and water regulators as well as drugmakers, who concluded in the 1990s — before highly sensitive tests now used had been developed — that manufacturing is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in the environment.

    Pharmaceutical makers typically are excused from having to submit an environmental review for new products, and the FDA has never rejected a drug application based on potential environmental impact. Also at play are pressures not to delay potentially lifesaving drugs. What's more, because the EPA hasn't concluded at what level, if any, pharmaceuticals are bad for the environment or harmful to people, drugmakers almost never have to report the release of pharmaceuticals they produce.

    "The government could get a national snapshot of the water if they chose to," said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "and it seems logical that we would want to find out what's coming out of these plants."

    Ajit Ghorpade, an environmental engineer who worked for several major pharmaceutical companies before his current job helping run a wastewater treatment plant, said drugmakers have no impetus to take measurements that the government doesn't require.

    "Obviously nobody wants to spend the time or their dime to prove this," he said. "It's like asking me why I don't drive a hybrid car? Why should I? It's not required."

    ___

    After contacting the nation's leading drugmakers and filing public records requests, the AP found two federal agencies that have tested.

    Both the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have studies under way comparing sewage at treatment plants that receive wastewater from drugmaking factories against sewage at treatment plants that do not.

    Preliminary USGS results, slated for publication later this year, show that treated wastewater from sewage plants serving drug factories had significantly more medicine residues. Data from the EPA study show a disproportionate concentration in wastewater of an antibiotic that a major Michigan factory was producing at the time the samples were taken.

    Meanwhile, other researchers recorded concentrations of codeine in the southern reaches of the Delaware River that were at least 10 times higher than the rest of the river.

    The scientists from the Delaware River Basin Commission won't have to look far when they try to track down potential sources later this year. One mile from the sampling site, just off shore of Pennsville, N.J., there's a pipe that spits out treated wastewater from a municipal plant. The plant accepts sewage from a pharmaceutical factory owned by Siegfried Ltd. The factory makes codeine.

    "We have implemented programs to not only reduce the volume of waste materials generated but to minimize the amount of pharmaceutical ingredients in the water," said Siegfried spokeswoman Rita van Eck.

    Another codeine plant, run by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Noramco Inc., is about seven miles away. A Noramco spokesman acknowledged that the Wilmington, Del., factory had voluntarily tested its wastewater and found codeine in trace concentrations thousands of times greater than what was found in the Delaware River. "The amounts of codeine we measured in the wastewater, prior to releasing it to the City of Wilmington, are not considered to be hazardous to the environment," said a company spokesman.

    In another instance, equipment-cleaning water sent down the drain of an Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. factory in Denver consistently contains traces of warfarin, a blood thinner, according to results obtained under a public records act request. Officials at the company and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said they believe the concentrations are safe.

    Warfarin, which also is a common rat poison and pesticide, is so effective at inhibiting growth of aquatic plants and animals it's actually deliberately introduced to clean plants and tiny aquatic animals from ballast water of ships.

    "With regard to wastewater management we are subject to a variety of federal, state and local regulation and oversight," said Joel Green, Upsher-Smith's vice president and general counsel. "And we work hard to maintain systems to promote compliance."

    Baylor University professor Bryan Brooks, who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment, said assurances that drugmakers run clean shops are not enough.

    "I have no reason to believe them or not believe them," he said. "We don't have peer-reviewed studies to support or not support their claims."

    Ladywriter reacted to this

  16. Posted · Report reply

    The ice shelf will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already in the water. I find it disturbing that they will only go as far as to say that. If these shelves that are in the water were to melt, it would lower the sea levels, which could screw shit up just as well. Its like filling up a glass with ice and pouring water in it. Once they all melt, the water level a little over half of what it use to be because water expands when frozen.

    The implications on coast line industries would be catastrophic. Big ports would no longer exist, fishing in poor countries would be severely affected, and beach city tourism would be nonexistent.

  18. Posted · Report reply

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090417/ap_on_re_us/lincoln_s_dna

    By RON TODT, Associated Press Writer Ron Todt, Associated Press Writer – 5 mins ago

    PHILADELPHIA – John Sotos has a theory about why Abraham Lincoln was so tall, why he appeared to have lumps on his lips and even why he had gastrointestinal problems. The 16th president, he contends, had a rare genetic disorder — one that would likely have left him dead of cancer within a year had he not been assassinated. And his bid to prove his theory has posed an ethical and scientific dilemma for a small Philadelphia museum in the year that marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

    Framed behind glass in the Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library in northeast Philadelphia is a small piece of bloodstained pillowcase on which the head of the dying president rested after he was shot at Ford's Theater in Washington 144 years ago.

    Sotos, a cardiologist and author, is hoping a DNA test of the strip will reveal whether Lincoln was afflicted with multiple endocrine neoplasia, type 2B. The disorder, which occurs in one in every 600,000 people, would explain Lincoln's unusual height, his relatively small and asymmetric head and bumps on his lips seen in photos, he said.

    The disorder leads to thyroid or adrenal cancer, and Sotos cites Lincoln's weight loss in office and an appearance of ill health during his final months. He said a finding that Lincoln had the genetic disorder and probably cancer could shed light on his presidency.

    "I'm not interested in how Lincoln might have died. I'm interested in how he might have lived," Sotos said.

    Several months ago, Sotos petitioned the museum for permission to test the pillowcase. Gary Grove, a Civil War enthusiast who advised the museum's board of directors, said the issue has been contentious in several meetings.

    "There are strong voices both ways," Grove said. "It has taken up a good portion of those board meetings."

    Eric Schmincke, president of the museum and its board, said members may decide at a meeting May 5. They must consider not only possible damage to the artifact but also moral issues, he said.

    "You have to look at it as questioning someone that more or less can't defend themselves," Schmincke said.

    Sotos, while declining to discuss the proposed DNA testing, pointed out that Lincoln has no living direct descendants who would be affected. "Every letter he every wrote has been published, every letter his wife wrote that we can find has been published," he said.

    Schmincke said genetic material goes far beyond writings.

    "That's him — that's his blood, his brain matter that's on there," he said. Schmincke also questioned what a positive result would mean.

    "If they find it's cancer ... it's 140-plus years later," he said. "Would it have been different? We can only guess or surmise."

    If Lincoln was seriously ill and knew it, Sotos said, that might explain stories of his premonitions about death.

    "I don't think it was mysticism, I think that was him knowing what his body was telling him," Sotos said. "Then if you're a historian, I think you have to say ... how does that affect how you run the war, your clemency toward soldiers who may have deserted their post, the way you reconcile with the South?"

    One problem with his theory, which he acknowledges: People with MEN-2B normally die young, and Lincoln was 56 when he was shot. And the malady is only one of several ascribed to Lincoln; researchers in the 1960s suggested another genetic disorder, Marfan syndrome, to explain his height, and others say his clumsy gait could have been due to spinocerebellar ataxia.

    Tests have been done on the remains of presidents to settle controversies, most famously for evidence on whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children of his slave, Sally Hemings, and to rule out arsenic poisoning in the death of Zachary Taylor.

    Other museums, however, have declined to do DNA tests on Lincoln artifacts.

    Grove points out that while such material could shed light on history or answer claims of descent, it could also lead to commercialization, perhaps through sales of jewelry or other items embedded with famous DNA.

    And while it may be hard to say what Lincoln would have wanted, the opinion of his surviving son seems clear. After repeated moves of Lincoln's remains, as well as an 1876 plot to rob Lincoln's grave, Robert Lincoln had his father's remains interred underground in 1901 in a steel cage encased in concrete in Springfield, Ill., where they remain.

    "There," Grove said, "we probably have the closest thing of someone saying, from the family point of view, 'Hey, let's not do this.'"

  20. Posted · Report reply

    Its complicated because of the "lets not hurt anyones feelings" world we live in. If we went around sinking all the pirate ships for trying to jack our stuff, they wouldn't be trying to take our shit anymore or anyone elses. Sometimes brute force is the answer. Africa has always had a severe piracy problem because their governments cannot control its people. These guys are getting more advance to where they are jacking oil rigs and shipments of large military weapons. No one is going to do anything about it. It's a legitimate threat.

    I don't look at it from a ethical standpoint, I look at it as someone is stealing other peoples stuff and trying to make them pay for an insane price, and if they aren't willing to pay... people will be killed. Their doing it with large fishing vessels full of guys with AK-47s. They are no match for a warship, I couldn't help but laugh when they said they were calling for "reinforcements" when US destroyers started showing up at the scene... yet no one showed up for them.

    Of course what I see as justice, the world sees as blowing up helpless people on fishing boats. Maybe its offensive, but that's just how I see it. There is always going to be some committee out there that disapproves. Its a bunch of bureaucratic garbage that's been around since the first world war.

  22. Posted · Report reply

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21156.html

    President Barack Obama issued a standing order to use force against pirates holding an American captain hostage — including giving a Navy commander the authority to act if he believed the captain’s life was in danger, two senior defense officials said Sunday night.

    Navy snipers aboard the USS Bainbridge on Sunday shot and killed three of the pirates after the Bainbridge’s commander gave the order, when a pirate was spotted aboard the lifeboat pointing an AK-47 rifle at Capt. Richard Phillips, one defense official said.

    “The clear belief by the captain of the ship was that he was in imminent danger,” this official said.

    The exact details of the shooting remain murky. The snipers fired after all three pirates became visible on the enclosed lifeboat where they were holding Phillips, a Navy official in Bahrain told reporters — giving the snipers the chance to kill all three at once, so that none would be left behind to harm Phillips.

    Obama's involvement in the decision to authorize lethal force was legally required, officials said, because it was a hostage situation, not combat, and unrelated to the already authorized U.S. effort against Al Qaeda and other terror groups, officials said.

    “It’s not a combat operation, so the lawyers wanted to ensure this was done right," said a second defense official.

    Phillips’ rescue brought to an end a tense five-day standoff that proved an early test for Obama, who said little about the case in public but behind the scenes received more than a dozen briefings on it, White House aides said.

    A timeline provided by the White House showed he issued the orders to use force at 8 p.m. Friday, and again at 9:20 a.m. Saturday, after new Navy forces moved on to the scene. In both cases, he was first briefed by the National Security Council for an update on the situation.

    The timeline suggests that planning for the rescue mission intensified Saturday evening, as the National Security Council updated Obama on “planning for hostage contingencies” at 6:30 p.m. At 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Obama received an update on “action leading to the rescue of Captain Phillips.” He called Phillips about 4 p.m. Sunday.

    In a statement, Obama said, “We remain resolved to halt the rise of piracy in this region. To achieve that goal, we must continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks, be prepared to interdict acts of piracy and ensure that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes," Obama said in a statement.

    The defense officials also provided new details behind the rescue, noting that Bainbridge had been in contact with the pirates at one point. One of the pirates, a 16-year-old boy, had come onto the Bainbridge for medical attention and was speaking to the crew about the conditions under which Phillips might be released.

    The seas had started getting rough and the lifeboat where the pirates were holding Phillips was dead in the water. So the pirates agreed to be towed out further from shore to calmer waters. During that time, the towline was shortened so that the life raft was only 25 to 30 yards from the Bainbridge.

    At some point on Sunday, all three remaining pirates were spotted on the boat, including one holding the AK-47, and the authorization was given for the snipers to shoot. All three were killed and a smaller boat was dispatched from Bainbridge to pick up Phillips.

    One defense official said it was very likely the surviving pirate would be prosecuted for piracy by the United States. Other pirates have been turned over to the Kenyans but "I don't think that will be the case here," this official said, adding that the specific decision to prosecute would be up to the Justice Department.

    After calling on other countries to prosecute pirates the U.S. might feel it has to make an example of the youth in custody, this official said, though his age would have to be taken into account.

    At a briefing in Bahrain, Vice Adm. William E. Gortney warned that the Navy’s use of force to Phillips could "escalate violence in this part of the world." Pirates ply the waters off the Somali coast, but it was a rare instance that they took an American flagged vessel with an American crew.

    Well its good to see he didn't pull a Jimmy Carter.

  25. Posted · Report reply

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/piracy

    MOMBASA, Kenya – An American ship captain was freed unharmed Sunday in a swift firefight that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, U.S. officials said.

    Capt. Richard Phillips' crew, who said they escaped after he offered himself to the pirates as a hostage, erupted in cheers abroad their ship docked in Mombasa, Kenya, waving an American flag and firing a flare in celebration.

    The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet said Phillips was resting comfortably on a U.S. warship after receiving a medical exam.

    The Navy said Phillips was freed at 7:19 p.m. local time. He was taken aboard the Norfolk, Virginia-based USS Bainbridge and then flown to the San Diego-based USS Boxer for the medial exam, 5th Fleet spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said.

    Christensen said Phillips was now "resting comfortably." The USS Boxer was in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia, Christensen said.

    The U.S. did not say if Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, was receiving medical care because he had been injured or if he was being treated for exposure after his ordeal.

    U.S. officials said a pirate who had been involved in negotiations to free Phillips but who was not on the lifeboat during the rescue was in military custody. FBI spokesman John Miller said that would change as the situation became "more of a criminal issue than a military issue."

    Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said prosecutors were looking at "evidence and other issues" to determine whether to bring a case in the United States.

    Maersk Line Limited President and CEO John Reinhart said in a news release that the U.S. government informed the company around 1:30 p.m. EDT Sunday that Phillips had been rescued. Reinhart said the company called Phillips' wife, Andrea, to tell her the news.

    The U.S. official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment.

    When Phillips' crew heard the news aboard their ship in the port of Mombasa, they placed an American flag over the rail of the top of the Maersk Alabama and whistled and pumped their fists in the air. Crew fired a bright red flare into the sky from the ship.

    "We made it!" said crewman ATM Reza, pumping his fist in the air.

    "He managed to be in a 120-degree oven for days, it's amazing," said another of about a dozen crew members who came out to talk to reporters. He said the crew found out the captain was released because one of the sailors had been talking to his wife on the phone.

    Capt. Joseph Murphy, the father of second-in-command Shane Murphy, thanked Phillips for his bravery.

    "Our prayers have been answered on this Easter Sunday. I have made it clear throughout this terrible ordeal that my son and our family will forever be indebted to Capt. Phillips for his bravery," Murphy said. "If not for his incredible personal sacrifice, this kidnapping and act of terror could have turned out much worse."

    In the written statement, Murphy said both his family and Phillips' "can now celebrate a joyous Easter together."

    Terry Aiken, 66, who lives across the street from the Phillips house, fought back tears as he reacted to the news.

    "I'm very, very happy," Aiken said. "I can't be happier for him and his family."

    A government official and others in Somalia with knowledge of the situation had reported hours earlier that negotiations for Phillips' release had broken down.

    Talks to free him began Thursday with the captain of the USS Bainbridge talking to the pirates under instruction from FBI hostage negotiators on board the U.S. destroyer. The pirates had threatened to kill Phillips if attacked.

    Three U.S. warships were within easy reach of the lifeboat on Saturday. The U.S. Navy had assumed the pirates would try to get their hostage to shore, where they can hide him on Somalia's lawless soil and be in a stronger position to negotiate a ransom.

    Maersk Line said before news of the rescue broke that "the U.S. Navy had sight contact" of Phillips — apparently when the pirates opened the hatches.

    Before Phillips was freed, a pirate who said he was associated with the gang that held Phillips, Ahmed Mohamed Nur, told The Associated Press that the pirates had reported that "helicopters continue to fly over their heads in the daylight and in the night they are under the focus of a spotlight from a warship."

    He spoke by satellite phone from Harardhere, a port and pirate stronghold where a fisherman said helicopters flew over the town Sunday morning and a warship was looming on the horizon. The fisherman, Abdi Sheikh Muse, said that could be an indication the lifeboat may be near to shore.

    The district commissioner of the central Mudug region said talks went on all day Saturday, with clan elders from his area talking by satellite telephone and through a translator with Americans, but collapsed late Saturday night.

    "The negotiations between the elders and American officials have broken down. The reason is American officials wanted to arrest the pirates in Puntland and elders refused the arrest of the pirates," said the commissioner, Abdi Aziz Aw Yusuf. He said he organized initial contacts between the elders and the Americans.

    Two other Somalis, one involved in the negotiations and another in contact with the pirates, also said the talks collapsed because of the U.S. insistence that the pirates be arrested and brought to justice.

    Phillips' crew of 19 American sailors reached safe harbor in Kenya's northeast port of Mombasa on Saturday night under guard of U.S. Navy Seals, exhilarated by their freedom but mourning the absence of Phillips.

    Crew members said their ordeal had begun with the Somali pirates hauling themselves up from a small boat bobbing on the surface of the Indian Ocean far below.

    As the pirates shot in the air, Phillips told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself to safeguard his men, crew members said.

    Phillips was then held hostage in an enclosed lifeboat that was closely watched by U.S. warships and a helicopter in an increasingly tense standoff. On Friday, the French navy freed a sailboat seized off Somalia last week by other pirates, but one of the five hostages was killed.

    Phillips jumped out of the lifeboat Friday and tried to swim for his freedom but was recaptured when a pirate fired an automatic weapon at or near him, according to U.S. Defense Department officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the unfolding operations.

    Early Saturday, the pirates holding Phillips in the lifeboat fired a few shots at a small U.S. Navy vessel that had approached, a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

    The official said the U.S. sailors did not return fire, the Navy vessel turned away and no one was hurt. He said the vessel had not been attempting a rescue. The pirates are believed armed with pistols and AK-47 assault rifles.

    "When I spoke to the crew, they won't consider it done when they board a plane and come home," Maersk President John Reinhart said from Norfolk, Virginia before news of Phillips' rescue. "They won't consider it done until the captain is back, nor will we."

    In Phillips' hometown, the Rev. Charles Danielson of the St. Thomas Church said before the news broke that the congregation would continue to pray for Phillips and his family, who are members, and he would encourage "people to find hope in the triumph of good over evil."

    Reinhart said he spoke with Phillips' wife, who is surrounded by family and two company employees who were sent to support her.

    "She's a brave woman," Reinhart said. "And she has one favor to ask: 'Do what you have to do to bring Richard home safely.' That means don't make a mistake, folks. We have to be perfect in our execution."

    Instead of getting money, you get to die. I think we should run navy exercises on their pirate ships. I hope they learned a valuable lesson.

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