Cheat Sheet

A full day after terrorists assaulted a number of high profile targets in Mumbai, killing 125, the two hotels at the center of the carnage, the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi, remained under lockdown. The dead included at least nine foreigners and 14 policemen, among them some senior officers, while over 325 people were reported wounded. Police said they had killed five terrorists. A single terrorist was holding out in the Taj, which had been set ablaze three times, while the evening brought an all out assault by security forces on the terrorists who had taken hostages in the Oberoi, which was also on fire. At a third location, four Israelis were still being held by at least six armed men.

By midnight, India's security forces had seized control of all the hotels that had been taken over by the militants. Though the police operation continues, the flush-out appears to be near completion. The identity of the attackers remains vague, and officials said they had never heard of the group that has claimed responsibility and calls itself the Deccan Mujahedeen.

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 Iraqi parliament on Thursday approved an agreement for U.S. forces to remain in the country until January 1, 2012. The pact was agreed to by 144 members out of the 198 members-present of the 275-member assembly. It was one of President Bush’s goals to secure a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) before he left office. The agreement has been supported by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Where this leaves Barack Obama is unclear. He has pledged to withdraw U.S. forces within 16 months. In July, Maliki suggested that he backed Obama’s proposal. But Obama may be bound to the SOFA engineered by Bush.

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.

The actor Paul Newman has left his Oscars, theatrical awards and his interests in his businesses to his charity, the Newman's Own Foundation, a will that was made public yesterday revealed. Newman made a fortune selling food items, beginning with his own recipe for salad dressing. The profits from those enterprises have always gone to support the Hole in the Wall Camp for children with cancer, which he established. Now the money will fund the camp in perpetuity. The rest of his estate will go to his wife, actor Joanne Woodward, and his surviving children.

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.”

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."