Search Continues for Missing Ship

It's hard to understand how a ship with a tracking beacon, modern navigation devices, and radio communications could have gone missing in a busy shipping lane. The Washington Post reports that "The Arctic Sea, a 4,700-ton cargo ship registered in Malta, owned by Russians and crewed by 15 Siberian sailors" vanished two weeks ago after crossing from the English Channel into the Atlantic. The ship held $1.7 million in Finnish timbers that was scheduled to be delivered Algeria on August 4. The ship could be hijacked or have sunk. One theory suggests that the captain ran off with the cargo to sell in Africa for cash. An international search has been launched, but with no satellite signal, there's nothing to go on. The ship's owners say that soon after it left port, crew members reported by radio that 10 armed and masked men falsely claiming to be Swedish narcotics police boarded the ship, searched for drugs, found nothing, and left.