BERLIN — A cruise ship will evacuate passengers before sailing through waters off the Somali coast and fly them to the next port of call to protect them from possible pirate attacks, German cruise operator Hapag-Lloyd said today.

An official with the European Union's anti-piracy mission said separately the force would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The MS Columbus cruise ship will drop off its 246 passengers before the ship and some of its crew sail through the Gulf on Wednesday, the Hamburg-based company said in a statement, without saying exactly where they would disembark. It said the passengers would take a charter flight Wednesday to Dubai and spend three days at a five-star hotel waiting to rejoin the 150-meter (490-foot) vessel in the southern Oman port of Salalah for the remainder of a round-the-world tour that began in Italy.

DUESSELDORF, Germany — A Lebanese man was convicted today of attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison for trying to plant bombs on two German trains.The Duesseldorf state court found Youssef Mohammed el-Hajdib, 24, guilty of multiple counts of attempted murder and attempting to cause an explosion.El-Hajdib was one of two main suspects accused of planting suitcase bombs on two regional trains at Cologne's main station in July 2006. The bombs failed to detonate.The other suspect, Jihad Hamad, was sentenced to 12 years in prison last December by a Lebanese court."That there was not a devastating bloodbath with many dead is thanks only to the fact that the defendant and his accomplice, Jihad Hamad, made a mistake in building the explosive devices," presiding judge Ottmar Breidling told the court.The bombs' triggers went off, but the explosives did not detonate and no one was harmed. El-Hajdib was arrested the following month in the northern German port city of Kiel; Hamad fled to his native Lebanon and was arrested there.

ATHENS, Greece — Hundreds of teenage protesters pelted police with rocks and scuffled with officers in front of Parliament today before the funeral of a 15-year-old boy whose shooting by police set off three days of rioting across Greece.Socialist leader George Papandreou called for early elections, saying the conservative government could no longer defend the public from rioters.The government has a single-seat majority in the 300-member Parliament and opposition parties blame hands-off policing for encouraging the worst rioting the country has seen in decades."The government cannot handle this crisis and has lost the trust of the Greek people," Papandreou said.The funeral of Alexandros Grigoropoulos was to be held in a seaside suburb of Athens this afternoon. Schools and universities across Greece were closed and hundreds of teachers, university lecturers and students rallied in central Athens. In the western part of the city, officials said groups of high school students attacked four police stations but riot police did not respond and no injuries were reported.Saturday's fatal shooting drove angry students to join with violent anarchist groups who have a long-standing animosity with police. Commentators say the growing hostility by young Greeks toward authority is fed by public discontent.