Incident: New NATO operation begins

NATO has launched a new anti-piracy naval operation called "Allied Protector". A total of "seven ships -- one each from the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, with two vessels from Germany" will take part. A NATO spokesman said "They will be there for about one month, and then they will go on and do port visits, and come back and near the end of June conduct about two more weeks of counter-piracy operations." (ONI Worldwide Threat to Shipping, 03/18/09)