Dear Readers,

Despite much of the world's attention riveted on Arab Spring, Financial Falls and Fashion Week, rest assuredthat even without celeb-journos in Mogadishu patching in rock stars, the wheels of misery still grind hard. This week the news is chock full of feuds, fundies, fighting and famine with pirates, predators and privation filling out the rest of the slots.

The biggest story, as always, iswhat isnotin the news. The famine and displacement continue and the efforts to meet Somalis needs are growing, but the crop for next year is not going in. According to Google Trends,Somalia news coverage(along with the resultant public interest) peaked in August and has been plummeting ever since. In a desperate attempt to stay in the news, Somalia racked up added another "worst" this week, this time forchild deaths.

The top local development was a series of arrests, shootings and assassinations in and around Puntland's port city of Bosaso as pirate money used to influence a judge went wrong. In this case the judge refused to release the clan member (arrested for killing another person) and was protected by the clan from the Minster of Ports. Then when leaned on by clan elders to release him, thejudge refused and died for his moral stand. Byzantine enough? The bottom line is that the new effort by Puntland to stamp out piracy is having ugly side effects. We will write more on this but for now it could be a weekly soap opera.

We had an inordinate amount ofcoverage on Puntlandprobably because the past media focus on the famine in the south has been written up in every possible permutation with little effect on the world's attention. So we are drilling down on un-randomizing what appears at first to be a constant series of random killings but are actually linked.

On a less lethal level, politicians threw insults and accusations and the pirates were no pikers in adding to the chaos. The recent pushback by President Farole against the pirates has also inspired another group to criticize him fornot fighting against the pirates enough. Somalia politics at it's finest.

We revealedwhy pirates just can't get alongand in excruciating detail, "Why pirates don't get along with mariners" could be the title of our must-readweekly piracy report. The kidnapping of 56 year old Judith Tebbutt and the murder of her husband in Lamu is a grim reminder of how desperate and dirty the business of piracy has become. We tracked her movements and can confirm that she is now being held by the lesser of two of Somali evils. The bigger evil was also busted bySomalia Reportwhen we foundal-Shabaab's plan to disrupt the Kenyan tourism industry.

As all news organizations must, we covered a fire, except this was at sea andcaused by pirates.

We also covered the war on terror with a world exclusive photo ofAmerican contractors training CIA funded intelligence security forcesand yet another airstrike splattering an al-Shabaabie convoy. Jihadi social events may be cancelled for the foreseeable future.We explained in a nice little filler piece about why youcan't use that green Somali passportyou bought for twenty bucks.

Al-Shabaab is cleary sulking that ever since it bailed out of Mog, it has been out of the media spotlight so they held one of their classic press conferences in an old spaghetti factory (we do not make this up) displaying three terrified AMISOM soldiers. Theypledged to take back Mogadishustarting with the northern districts.

It doesn't help that al-Shabaab keepspicking on Somalisincluding farmers and you would think that ASWJ would seize the moment but they seem to use the lull in fighting tofight among themselves.They apparently kissed and made up and began to march around in circles insisting this behavior willrid Somalia of al-Shabaab.Our famous and ubiquitous "unnamed sources" suggest the reason for the change was that it was close to payday.

I would like to spotlight our invaluabledaily media roundup. Our Somalia media condensed read now features commentary on Islamic websites, radio reports, print, internet and op eds - a life savior when your internet service works as efficiently as the TFG.

We have received a lot of input for our upcoming maritime security report (and some silly backchannel poo throwing over oursecurity contractor piece). Rest assured we will be contacting people as soon as I am finished my pirate cruise across the Gulf of Aden. And for any pirates (those that can read I guess) that apprehend our massive vessel loaded with plunderable goodies... for the record all the mean spirited quips I publish are all in good fun. Once I am finished with my famous ground (sea?) reporting on maritime security, I will commence with the industry interviews.

In any case, please tell your friends aboutSomalia Report. We have been growing steadily and we encourage you to tell your friends to check in while it is still free.

By Robert Young Pelton