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Explosions and gunshots "have been heard inside Taj hotel" Thursday, following reports that hostages there were rescued, The Times of India reports. As police attempted to "flush out terrorists," around 200 victims still trapped at the Oberoi Trident hotel. At least 101 people died, including six foreigners, in the coordinated attacks in Mumbai on Wednesday. At about 10 local time, gunmen with AK-47s and grenades struck landmarks across India's financial capital, including the Taj and Oberoi hotels, a café popular with foreign backpackers, and a train station. The chief of the city's anti-terror squad was among the dead in the attacks, which "appeared to be aimed at getting international attention, as the terrorists took up to 40 British nationals and other foreigners hostage," The Times reports.
How could a previously unknown group pull off such highly organized and deadly attacks? Deccan Mujahedeen—“Deccan” is an area of India; “Mujahedeen” are Muslims participating in jihad—has claimed responsibility for the Mumbai attacks, but terrorism experts say they doubt such an unknown group could have been behind them. Instead they are pointing to the Indian Mujahedeen, a radical Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for other attacks this year. The group sent an email in September warning of an impending attack on Mumbai and threatening a senior police official. The head of Mumbai’s anti-terror squad was among the dead Wednesday night.
Witnesses in Mumbai said the attackers targeted Britons and Americans. “They were very young, like boys really, wearing jeans and T-shirts,” said Rakesh Patel, a British guest at the Taj, told Indian TV. “They said they wanted anyone with British and American passports and then they took us up the stairs. I think they wanted to take us to the roof.” Patel managed to escape with another hostage, he said. At the nearby Leopold Café, which is popular with foreigners, “the walls were left pocked with bullet marks and the floors streaked with blood,” The Times of London reports. “They shot indiscriminately,” Australian tourist Paul Stanley said.
The FBI has received a "plausible but unsubstantiated" report that al Qaeda terrorists discussed in late September blowing up part of the New York subway system, according to an internal FBI memo dated Tuesday published by AP. “These discussions reportedly involved the use of suicide bombers or explosives placed on subway/passenger rail systems," says the FBI assessment. "We have no specific details to confirm that this plot has developed beyond aspirational planning, but we are issuing this warning out of concern that such an attack could possibly be conducted during the forthcoming holiday season.” Intelligence and homeland security officials are working with local authorities and " will continue to investigate every possible lead," the memo says.
Interesting note from Elizabeth Drew's New York Review of Books piece on Hillary Clinton and the State Department: "Mrs. Clinton's and her closest advisers' turning a suggestion by the President-elect that she might, among other things, head the State Department into an "offer" and reports that she was agonizing over whether to accept it, did not please [Obama] officials in Chicago, some of whom hoped that issues over disclosure of Bill Clinton's post-presidential record might block the appointment. … Statements by the Hilary camp on November 21 saying that 'she's ready' for the position but then backtracking, saying that some matters were 'under discussion,' typified the whole mess, the only snag thus far in an otherwise unusually smooth transition..." It was "an object lesson to Obama (which he had reason to know already) that getting involved with the Clintons is rarely uncomplicated."
Unlike his predecessor, President Bush has so far been pretty stingy with the pardons. But Ken Silverstein at Harper’s notices a trend. “He has been generous in coming to the aid of one particular constituency group: S&L [Savings and Loans] executives and others who swindled thrifts in the mid-1980’s.” Several of the pardoned criminals are from Texas. Silverstein notes the irony: “So Bush is handing out pardons to a group of people who helped produce the last financial system meltdown just as a new crop are under investigation.”
A stunning new report out today says the virus that causes AIDS could be eliminated in a decade. The research, published in The Lancet and based on a mathematical model, shows the virus could be eradicated if people in countries with high infection rates were tested and treated regularly. But don’t get too excited: The AP cautions the study “is based on assumptions rather than data and is riddled with logistical problems.” Still, “It’s quite a startling result,” Charlie Gilks, an AIDS treatment expert at the World Health Organization and one of the paper’s authors, told AP. “In a relatively short amount of time, we could potentially knock the epidemic on its head.”
Does the Team of Rivals need a hockey mom? Barack Obama will be meeting with governors of both parties at a National Governors Association’s summit in Philadelphia next week, and Sarah Palin will be in attendance. No meeting has yet been arranged. "I don't know if she has a one-on-one with [Obama]," said a Palin spokesman. "It may be, given that they were both involved in the national campaign." On her way to Philly, Palin will stopover in Georgia, where she will campaign for Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss in his runoff election.
Obama’s economic brain trust keeps on growing: At his third press conference in as many days, Obama announced the creation of a new economic recovery advisory board led by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman. The president-elect said that the board, whose White House liason will be longtime Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee, would provide oversight and an outside perspective to prevent "groupthink" from taking hold. He also responded to a question on whether his cabinet picks, many of whom worked in the Clinton administration, were in fact the same Washington insiders he pledged to push out of government during his campaign. "What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost--it comes from me," Obama said, "That's my job--to provide a vision as to where we're going and make sure my team is implementing."
The private alcohol-and-drug rehab facility Wonderland and its executive director, Howard Samuels, are the subject of a fascinating profile in this week’s New Yorker. The center is famous for hosting Lindsay Lohan and Mike Tyson, among others—one unnamed celeb is said to have brought along a “little entourage.” “One has the overwhelming sense of attending a weekend party at a cozy but understated house,” Amanda Fortini writes of Wonderland. But Samuels insists his facility is providing more than just celeb pampering: “You know, celebrities mirror what is happening in the rest of the country…It’s so important to get that message out...That’s the struggle, O.K.?”
Lori Drew, the mother who posed as a teenage boy on MySpace and taunted a classmate of her daughter who eventually killed herself was acquitted today of a conspiracy felony charge and convicted on three lesser misdemeanor charges. Drew faces up to three years in prison and $300,000 in fines. The felony charge was “accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress.” It is unclear if she will be retried. If she is, she could face up to 20 years in prison.
The news of the Bad Sex in Fiction awards has already made the rounds, but this news just caught our attention: The winner is London Mayor Boris Johnson’s sister. Rachel Johnson beat heavyweights like John Updike and Paul Coehlo and said she was honored to win the prize. The winning passage from her novel Shire Hell compares a man’s “light fingers” to “moths in a lampshade” and his tongue to “a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop.” In light of Boris’s own tendency to go overboard with metaphor (see his column in yesterday’s Telegraph for an example), let us hope for sex’s sake that he does not follow his sister’s lead.
Laura Bush confirmed to the AP yesterday that she is planning to write her memoirs and has begun meeting with publishers. Laura’s memoirs are in much higher demand than George’s and are expected to fetch at least as much as Hillary Clinton’s $8 million for Living History. Sad news though for anyone hoping for some dirt: “One publishing executive with knowledge of the meetings with Laura Bush said the current first lady has vowed to write a positive book.”
Religious organizations led the charge for Proposition 8, but it’s not exactly clear why they were so invested. The Mormon Church, after all, was founded on polygamy and the Catholic Church, on the heels of its own sex scandals, is not exactly in a position to legislate morality. In an enlightening interview with Salon, gay Catholic author Richard Rodriguez offers a compelling feminist explanation. “The possibility that a whole new generation of American males is being raised by women without men is very challenging for the churches. I think they want to reassert some sort of male authority over the order of things. … In such a world, we need to identify the relationship between feminism and homosexuality. … What we represent as gays in America is an alternative to the traditional male-structured society. The possibility that we can form ourselves sexually--even form our sense of what a sex is--sets us apart from the traditional roles we were given by our fathers.”
Remember Joseph Fritzl, the repugnant Austrian father who kept this daughter imprisoned in a dungeon for years? Sadly, Britain has its own version. The British papers today bring news of a father who abused his two daughters for nearly 30 years and impregnated them 19 times. (His name is withheld to protect his victims.) The man has been given 25 life sentences, and local authorities are being investigated for not reporting the crimes sooner. According to The Guardian, “He ‘took pleasure’ in assaulting the girls, the court heard, and the violent attacks would stop only while the children were pregnant.” The girls’ mother apparently moved out of the home sometime in the 1990s. The man’s daughters released a statement saying: “His detention in prison brings us only the knowledge that he cannot physically touch us again.”
In the Mexican state of Guerrero, the kidnappers of Jesus Nuñez Fernandez, a 21-year-old son of a businessman, have posted a video of the child on YouTube in which he implores his father to pay his ransom. The six-minute video, entitled "Merry Christmas," was sent to several local reporters. In it, Nuñez, who was abducted in September, says, "My life has a deadline, mom, dad ... if you don't pay and you don't ask the police to step out of the case I will be executed on Thursday."
So far, liberals have nodded in agreement with most of President-elect Obama’s appointments. But the retention of Robert Gates as the Secretary of Defense is a source of some friction. Chris Bowers at Open Left makes the case against Gates: “If there was one message that Obama ran on loudly, clearly, and indisputably, it is that he was going to bring ‘change’ to Washington, D.C. If Gates were kept on as Secretary of Defense, it apparently would also mean that all of his top advisors would also stay on... Keeping the same guy and all of his advisors at the behest of old establishment types is about as far from change as possible.” Another liberal commentator, Steve Clemons at The Washington Note, says he originally opposed Gates, but has come around, citing Gates’ support for an Iran-U.S. dialogue, a re-thinking of our Afghanistan strategy, and a push for Israel-Palestine peace.
The Federal Reserve announced yesterday two new programs to fight the financial crisis by increasing lending to consumers and small businesses and supporting the market for mortgage-backed securities. The Fed will buy up to $600 billion of mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in order to boost the availability of credit for purchasing houses. This means the Fed is directly subsidizing lower mortgage rates, as opposed to tinkering with them indirectly via interest rates. The Fed and the Treasury will also lend $200 billion to holders of assets backed by car, credit card, student, and small business loans. According to Henry Paulson, “It gives institutions liquidity and it’s clearly direct lending that will help consumers.”
The Independent has new details on the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe: One of the country’s health officials tells the paper that 3,000 have died of the disease in the last two weeks, not 300 as has been officially reported. "But even this higher figure is still an understatement because very few bother to register the deaths of their relatives these days," the official said. Munyaradzi Mudzingwa, who lives near Harare, tells the paper that the cemeteries have long lines; Mudzingwa waited behind 40 people when attempting to bury his brother. Zimbabwe has been locked in a political stalemate as Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai vie for power.
Jack Goldsmith headed the White House's ultra-secret legal arm, the Office of Legal Counsel, and his attempts to rein in the "unitary executive" infuriated David Addington. So what's his advice for Barack Obama and Congress on investigating those same excesses? Don't bother. A congressional or Justice Department investigation "would bring little benefit, and they would further weaken the Justice Department and the CIA in ways that would compromise our security." The relevant facts, he says, are "well known inside the government," and several investigations, both public and private, have already been conducted. Obama should allow these investigations to continue and make their findings public. But new investigations could spook intelligence agencies from properly doing their jobs. "The greater danger now," Goldsmith writes, "is that lawyers will become excessively cautious in giving advice and will substitute predictions of political palatability for careful legal judgment."
As President-elect Obama hands out assignments, one big name has yet to get his marching orders: Joe Biden. The New York Times reports that Obama hasn’t given Biden much of anything to do, much less a portfolio of the kind Bill Clinton entrusted to Al Gore. So what’s Biden up to? Stuffing Christmas stockings for charity. Still refusing to talk to the media. And vetting appointees—even those like Hillary Clinton, whose promotion to Secretary of State will likely limit Biden’s role in foreign policy. “If he had made an argument against it, it would have carried a lot of weight,” a source says of the Clinton nomination. “He was totally in support of it.” Meanwhile, Biden is said to be “honing his economic credentials.”
"At least five near-simultaneous firings and explosions" rattled India's financial capital of Mumbai on Wednesday, killing 80 and wounding 900, the Times of India reports. "Armed with AK-47 rifles and grenades, a couple of terrorists entered the passenger hall of crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal railway station and opened fire and threw a grenade killing two to three persons," according to the Times. There were reports of gunfire at various locations in the city, including five-star hotels. A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahedeen has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The leader of Thailand's army has called on Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawa to resign. That should come as a relief to tourists stuck in Bangkok's airports, like Robert Grieve, an Australian newlywed who was found by the Asia Strait-Times "drinking a can of Heineken at 9 a.m. as he leaned against a vacated Thai Airways check-in counter." "Our main concern is to get the first flight home and never come back," said Grieve. The airport was shut down yesterday after thousands of protestors stormed it. Thailand has a long history of military coups, but General Anupong Paochinda Anupong insisted "We will not seize power from the government" and "the government should return power to the people."
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