Pirates Snatch Toddler

Chloé and Florent Lemaçon quit their white-collar jobs in France last year to fix up an old boat and sail away from consumer culture with their 3-year-old son, Colin. Unfortunately, the Lemaçons set their sights on Zanzibar, an archipelago off the coast of Somalia, where gun-wielding pirates attacked 15 crews last month alone. French officials are furious the family, who were snatched by pirates over the weekend, did not heed their warnings, but Lemaçon’s father, Francis, said the couple was told only to stay away from commercial shipping routes. “They are confirmed sailors and definitely not irresponsible,” he said. “They followed the advice they were given.” The family will probably be held for ransom, but the French government might try to wrest them free by force, as it has done in past pirate kidnappings. “We simply want to show Colin that we don’t need all that (Christmas catalogues, magic cereals, Spider-Man) to be happy,” Florent Lemaçon wrote of the trip.