THEY’RE BACK

UK Couple Captured by Pirates?

Search under way off coast of East Africa.

A British couple sailing off the coast of East Africa and unheard from since sending a distress call Friday seem to have been taken by pirates. A statement from the coast guard of Seychelles, the island nation from which Paul and Rachel Chandler set sail, says that "the probability of [hijacking] is high," and a Somalian man claiming to be a member of a pirate gang told a reporter that the boat had been captured by his group. EU and Seychelles aircraft and EU and U.S. naval forces have been searching for the couple since the distress call, but an EU representative could not confirm that the yacht had been hijacked. This wouldn't be the first pirate hijacking of a yacht: at least two French yachts and two Indian yachts were seized by pirates in 2008 and 2009.