Why the Somali Pirates Keep Getting Their Ransoms

U.S. and European officials insist they don't pay ransoms to pirates. And why would they? Shipping and insurance companies now routinely pay ransoms of millions of dollars, dropping sack-loads of cash from airplanes into the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, despite assertions from politicians back home that the money is fueling the rampant piracy. Here is how the system works, according to kidnap-and-ransom experts who agreed to talk to TIME: Within minutes of a vessel being seized by ...