WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials say the Obama administration has decided to bolster efforts to support Somalia’s embattled government. That … More

Mogadishu’s best barometer of ­violence is the little blackboard on which Dr Taher Mahmoud daily records the number of patients in his hospital. For the last 20 years the tall surgeon with huge hands has been operating on the victims of the city’s civil war.

For the past seven months world news outlets have provided daily coverage on what has been described as escalating piracy off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and attempts by international, primarily Western, military vessels to combat it.

Absent from such reporting, as the exigencies of commercial news broadcasting inevitably entail, is how and why the situation in the region reached the impasse it has and what its broader significance is.

I think that the trends in Somalia are moving in the right direction. I think that the current president is part of that positive trend and I think that he needs and deserves support. But I believe that this is not about individuals but about general trends within the society in Somalia.

For the past seven months world news outlets have provided daily coverage on what has been described as escalating piracy off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden and attempts by international, primarily Western, military vessels to combat it.

Absent from such reporting, as the exigencies of commercial news broadcasting inevitably entail, is how and why the situation in the region reached the impasse it has and what its broader significance is.

Somali pirates have seized a 20,000 tonne German container vessel in their latest attack on commercial shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, a regional maritime group said on Sunday.