: world

||| ALLEGATIONS. Indian authorities were warned by a U.S. official

India knew about the plot

||| Pakistan continues to be highly on edge as all evidences are pinpointing that the assailants were partly based in their territory. ||| A total of 172 people lost their lives and 239 were wounded in the most atrocious terrorist attack in Munbai.  

Ramola Talwar Badam | AP Writer
 

MUMBAI – India received a warning from the United States before last week's attacks in Mumbai that militants were plotting a waterborne assault on the city, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday as domestic intelligence officials said they were aware of a Pakistan-based plot.
Another U.S. official added that there is reason to suspect the assailants were part of a group at least partly based across the border in Pakistan.
As the evidence of the militants' links to Pakistan mounts, a list of about 20 people – including India's most-wanted man – was submitted to Pakistan's high commissioner to New Delhi on Monday night, said India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee.
The revelations come as the Indian government faces widespread accusations of security and intelligence failures after suspected Muslim militants carried out a three-day attack across India's financial capital, killing at least 172 people – including six Americans – and wounding 239.
India has already demanded Pakistan take "strong action" against those responsible for the attacks, and the U.S. has pressured Islamabad to cooperate in the investigation.
A Bush administration official, speaking on condition of ano-nymity because of the sensitive nature of intelligence information, said Tuesday that the U.S. passed on information to India about a potential attack on Mumbai from its long waterfront.
But the official would not elaborate on the timing or details of the U.S. warning to Indian counterparts.
Another American official said the assailants could have been at least partly based in Pakistan – the closest the U.S. has come to laying blame for the attacks. The State Department official, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, was careful to say not all the evidence is in.
Indian officials continued to interrogate the only surviving attacker, who reportedly told police that he and the other nine gunmen had trained for months in camps in Pakistan operated by the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
India's foreign intelligence agency received information as recently as September that Paki-stan-based terrorists were plotting attacks against Mumbai targets, according to a government intelligence official familiar with the matter.
He said the information, which he attributed to Indian sources and not the Americans, included indications that hotels would be targeted but did not specify which ones.
The 19 foreigners killed were Americans, Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Mexico, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia, Sin-gapore and Mexico. |||

||| ZIMBABWE. At least 1,000 mortalities

Cholera crisis

Angus Shaw | AP Writer

HARARE – As children play near cesspools, their parents shake their heads at a public service announcement that drifts over the radio urging the people to boil water before drinking it.
It sounds like a taunt in a country where water and electricity supplies are off more than on. Authorities turned off the taps in the capital after the National Water Authority said it ran out of purifying chemicals and feared contaminated water would spread a cholera epidemic that has claimed hundreds of lives since August. The crisis is the latest chapter in the collapse of this once-vibrant nation under President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled for 28 years and refuses to leave office even though he and his party lost elections in March.
An agreement to form a unity government with the opposition has been deadlocked for weeks over how to share the Cabinet posts.
Harare is the epicenter of the cholera epidemic, which has spread across the country and spilled over its borders.
The toll stands close to 1,000 dead. |||

||| IRAQ. The fearest members of Saddam’s regime

‘Chemical Ali’ sentenced

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD – Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin, known as "Chemical Ali," received a second death sentence Tuesday – this time it was for crushing a Shiite uprising in the wake of Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, once among the most feared members of Saddam's regime, muttered "thanks be to God" as chief judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa declared him guilty and imposed the sentence at the end of the trial which began in August 2007.
Al-Majid already faces death by hanging after being convicted last year for his role in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in a crackdown in the late 1980s.
Another defendant, former Baath party official Abdul-Ghani Abdul-Ghafur, was also sentenced to death.
He shouted, "Down with the Persian-United States occupation!" and "Welcome to death for the sake of Arabism and Islam" as the sentence was read.
About 100 witnesses testified during the trial, telling of indiscriminate killings of Shiite civilians by Saddam's forces during the crackdown. |||

BRIEFS

Canada’s governor general is cutting short a European trip to resolve an unprecedented political crisis in which she could decide whether an opposition coalition forms the next government or if Canada will have its second national election in less than two months. AP

Thousands of Orthodox Jewish mourners prayed and wept Tuesday before the shrouded bodies of Israeli victims of the Mumbai carnage, vowing the tragedy will only strengthen their beliefs and fuel the efforts to spread their teachings around the world. AP

The Foreign Ministry says a Bulgarian engineer has been freed by Nigerian kidnappers after being held for 10 days. Ministry spokesman Dragovest Goranov says the man was freed Sunday and is in good health. He refused Tuesday to discuss or confirm media reports that a $4 million ransom was paid. AP

The two parties projected to have won the most votes in weekend elections are holding rival talks about forming a Romanian coalition government while awaiting the final results. President Traian Basescu has yet to name a prime minister, and his former Democratic Liberal Party insists it won the most votes in Sunday's ballot. AP

Pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise ship with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by international warships, a maritime official said Tuesday. The M/S Nautica, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing through the Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six bandits in two speedboats. AP

The U.S. military is urging Iraq's Shiite-led government to boost the number of Sunni volunteers – many of them ex-insurgents – into its security forces. P.M. Nouri al-Maliki's government reluctantly committed to absorbing up to 20 percent of the 100,000 members of the volunteer Awakening Councils, also known as Sons of Iraq, into the security services in an attempt at reconciliation with the minority Sunni Arab community. AP