New York  - Acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea trebled in 2008 with the pirates taking an estimated 30 million dollars in ransom, the United Nations said Wednesday in an updated report on shipping lanes between the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean.

The International Maritime Bureau recorded 293 acts of piracy in 2008, 111 of which took place off the Somali coast, for a total increase of 200 per cent last year in the Suez Canal-Indian Ocean corridor alone.

Antananarivo - The United States embassy in Madagascar's capital Antananarivo on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of all non- critical embassy staff from the island.

The embassy said in a travel advisory that it had moved to "ordered departure" which meant that "non non-mission critical personnel and their families have been ordered to depart."

The embassy also urged private US citizens to "seriously consider the risks of staying."

San Francisco  - Technology giant IBM is in talks to buy rival Sun Microsystems for 6.5 billion dollars, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The deal would represent the largest purchase ever by IBM and signal the company's determination to maintain a strong presence in the market for servers in the face of challenges from HP, Dell and Cisco.

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Washington, Mar 18 : Former Atomic Kitten member Kerry Katona has had her breast implants removed from eBay as they were unauthorized.

Katona, 28, had apparently put the implants up on the auction site to raise funds for charity breastcancercampaign. org, but now they have been removed due to too many legal issues.

"The implant was on eBay and I believe the idea was to raise money for Breast Cancer Campaign," Fox News quoted a rep for the charity as saying.

Washington, Mar 18 : The purported benefits of fish for such things as cardiovascular health have been overstated and have put increased pressure on global fish stocks, according to a new research.

Researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto teamed up with scientists at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre and author Farley Mowat to closely examine the effects of health claims with regard to seafood.

For years, international agencies concerned with health and nutrition have promoted seafood consumption.