Life imitating art, yet again

Rico says you can read Bloomberg on reality:

Somali pirates have released sixteen sailors, including ten Italians, from a tugboat that was hijacked in April, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.
No ransom was paid and Italian naval commandos are aboard the boat that is heading for Djibouti, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in an interview today with Sky24 television. “Strong political work with the local authorities as well as an Italian warship that was standing by with special forces finally made the pirates understand there was no other solution than to release the ship,” Frattini said. He thanked officials from the Somali breakaway region of Puntland for their help.
The ship’s release was first announced in a statement last night from the Foreign Ministry.
The Italian-owned Buccaneer was seized on 11 April in the Gulf of Aden with a crew of ten Italians, five Romanians, and one Croatian. It’s been shadowed by the Italian frigate San Giorgio with a contingent of naval commandos from the San Marco regiment.
Somali pirates have seized 28 ships so far this year, the U.S. Navy says. With the release of the Buccaneer, pirates are still holding eight ships and at least 163 seamen, according to Ecoterra, an environmental group that also monitors Somali piracy.
Ransoms to release ships held by Somali pirates have tended to range from $500,000 to $2 million, though $3 million was paid for the Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star last year, the U.S. Congressional Research Service said in a February report.
“At the beginning, the chief pirate called me and said that if I wanted my boat back, I had to pay thirty million dollars,” Silvio Bartolotti, president of Ravenna, Italy-based Micoperi Srl, which owns and operates the boat, said in a telephone interview. “I can assure you that nothing was paid. There was a lot of pressure on the pirates, above all from local tribal leaders who didn’t want this happening on their territory.”
Micoperi recently bought the Buccaneer in Singapore and it was on its way to Italy without cargo to be refitted, Bartolotti said.

or you can buy his novel about piracy: