SOMALI COAST - UPDATE: Iranian Hikers Kidnapped by Somali Pirates!
Recently freed by Iran, "Iranian hikers" Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal set sail today from Mogadishu on an all-expenses-paid luxury cruise along the African coast. The ship was stopped and boarded by pirates, however, moments after entering international waters. The hikers were reportedly detained by the pirates and taken to an undisclosed location, awaiting payment of the pirates' ransom.
State Department spokesman Ryan Daniels, exhausted after negotiating the hiker's release from Iran, didn't even have time to change suits. "I was literally just about to sit down in my hotel room," said Daniels, "order the largest steak they had and three bottles of wine! Then my cell phone rings! I know the ring-tone because I've heard it about 12 million times over the last year! They say, 'Guess what, Ryan?' All I can think of is what happened? Is my wife sick or my kids hurt or what? And they say, 'Oh no no, nothing like that! You remember those kids you just got out of Iran?' At that point I threw my phone and smashed it against the wall!"
Ryan continued for a few minutes, before calming down. "Then I patiently filled out a E8944/E form for a new State Department cell phone, picked up my ticket to Mogadishu and left."
"In retrospect," said Derrick "Jimmy" McCallister, the billionaire founder of a number of dot-coms who gave the trip to the hikers as a gift following their long ordeal, "I probably should'a sprang the extra $500 and sent them to Barbados. Lesson learned."