• Venezuelan cops rescue kidnapped Nationals catcher

    Luis Hernandez / Reuters

    Baseball player Wilson Ramos kisses his girlfriend after being rescued in Valencia Nov. 12. Venezuelan security forces rescued kidnapped Major League Baseball player Wilson Ramos on Friday, two days after he was abducted in a case that underlined the country's security problems. The 24-year-old Washington Nationals catcher was abducted by armed men Wednesday night while he chatted with friends and relatives at his mother's home in the Venezuelan city of Valencia.

    Luis Hernandez / Reuters

    Venezuelan police escort men arrested in connection with the kidnapping of baseball player Wilson Ramos in Valencia, Venezuela, Nov. 12.

    According to AP:

     "I don't know who those people were. I know they're Colombians by their accent," Ramos said. "Three guys grabbed me there in front of my house, they took me to another SUV and from there they took me into the mountains," in central Carabobo state.

    He said his abductors spoke little to him. "They simply told me to cooperate, that they were going to ask for a ton of cash for me."

    "They put me in a room with a bed. I was lying there," he said. "It was hard for me to think about, if I was going to get out alive first of all ... about how my family, my mother were."

    Read the full story here.

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  • Ministry Of Defense / EPA

    A Spanish Ministry of Defense handout photo shows a longboat that attacked the 'Tribal Kat' catamaran and was intercepted by Spanish troops operating with the EU's anti-piracy force on Sept. 10, two days after a French tourist was kidnapped by seven pirates off the coast of Yemen. The French hostage, that was travelling with a companion on their yacht when captured, was freed and all suspected pirates detained after the commander of the Spanish Navy's 'Galicia' warship ordered his men to open fire and disable the boat.

    French tourist survives kidnapping by pirates off Yemen

    By John Makely, NBC News

    From AP:

    President Nicolas Sarkozy's office provided a copy of a letter he sent Sunday to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero praising "the decisive action" to free Evelyne Colombo as part of a EU maritime patrol operation in the area. Spain's Defense Ministry said that after a gunbattle with the pirates, forces from amphibious ship Galicia arrested seven pirates who had attacked the "Tribal Kat" catamaran that Colombo and her husband were sailing. Officials provided no information about Colombo's husband. Pirates regularly ply the waters of the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen.