The State Department put American embassies around the world on alert as it issued a travel warning about the possibility of anti-American outbursts in the wake of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of American special forces in Pakistan.

The worldwide travel alert was posted early Monday morning, shortly after President Barack Obama confirmed bin Laden’s death in a live speech at the White House.

The alert warns of “enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counterterrorism activity in Pakistan.”

“Given the uncertainty and volatility of the current situation, U.S. citizens in areas where recent events could cause anti-American violence are strongly urged to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

In a June 2009 cable posted online by Wikileaks, a meeting is detailed between National Security Adviser James Jones and Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony, who stressed the importance of a close military relationship between India and the United States.

The cable shows that both men were acting under the direction of the leaders of both countries.

“Both Jones and Antony affirmed their commitment to building the U.S.-India mil-mil partnership as envisioned by President Obama and Prime Minister Singh,” the cable reads.

India is seen as a strategic ally in Asia, given its proximity to the Middle East.

India also has a vested interest in American success in the war in Afghanistan.

“The Indian military is concerned by the situation in Afghanistan, Antony admitted, and stressed that the international community’s operations there must succeed because the India cannot imagine for a moment a Taliban takeover of its “’extended neighbor,’” the cable reads.

Both sides also worry about Pakistan. Indian officials stressed that they did not make any aggressive military moves toward Pakistan, even after the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

The Indians believe that 43 terrorist camps operate in Pakistan, 22 of which are located in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. They also shared intelligence that even after the Pakistan military raided some camps, they simply set up operations again after the soldiers left.

General Deepak Kapoor, Indian Chief of Army Staff, told the Americans that they worried that American military supplies meant for Pakistan’s forces to control terrorists are actually ending up in the wrong hands, as terrorists are being found to be well supplied and full of ammunition.

“There’s a trust deficit between the U.S. and Pakistan but there’s also one between India and Pakistan,” Kapoor siad.

Edited August 22, 2010

The floods in Pakistan have killed up to 1,500 and left six million homeless, the BBC reports. Death tolls will likely rise as officials expect the continuation of monsoon season to worsen Pakistan’s most severe flooding in more than 80 years.

Many men, women and children are still waiting for aid as groups struggle to traverse land submerged in muddy water.

If aid doesn’t reach some areas soon, the death toll could rise sharply because of an influx in the spread of water-borne illnesses. Dehydration is common, but can be avoided, if aid organizations start handing out filter bottles, like those made by Lifesaver.

Now I don’t have any connection to Lifesaver. But these floods reminded me of a TED lecture I watched late last year. In it, Lifesaver CEO Michael Pritchard pours a combination of dreadful bacteria-laden objects into a fish tank full of water. He then mixes it around to create a brown sludge, a color of water familiar to anyone who has either been to fresh water-lacking areas of our globe, or has seen them on TV.

Pritchard then scoops the water into his water bottle, pulls out a pump from its base and pushes and pulls it back and forth a few times. He then pops the cap and voila; crystal clear water. He even drinks it just to prove its safety. The audience reaction is priceless.

How does it work? Well, Pritchard says the advanced nanotech and carbon filters in the bottle are 15 nanometres, which can filter out 99.9 percent of viruses, chemicals and bacteria, including polio. The individual bottles have a lifespan of about  6,000 litres. The jerrycan can last 20000 litres.

Then there’s the Lifestraw, which a person can just pop into a pool of water and suck through. It’s good for about 700 litres. When the filter no long works, Pritchard says the filter shuts down on its own.

There are, of course, other systems like this in place, and they are no doubt being used to some degree by aid organizations. But they definitely can be used more. Lifesaver sent more than 1,000 bottles down to Haiti, and they’ve been helping a lot.

Access to clean water for Pakistan’s displaced is key to saving lives and reducing the number of illnesses. If aid organizations can just scoop up stagnant water and seconds later use it to hydrate a child or clean a mother’s wound, the situation could become less severe.

Even if it doesn’t have a huge impact, something isn’t nothing, and Pakistan could use the help.

At this moment, in some war torn country in Africa or the Middle-East, a child, brother, sister, mother or father is being forced to flee their home for safety. They run, as fast as they can, taking only what they can carry away from those who want to do them harm. They may never be able to return.

On June 20, we honor these people, their courage and quick-thinking in situations of extreme peril and terror. In 2000, the United Nations General Assembly decided the need for an international refugee day was imminent. To show solidarity with the plight of African refugees, they decided to have World Refugee Day coincide with African Refugee Day.

The day is extremely important, especially now. Along with several African nations, countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan are seeing their citizens run for solace, finding it in countries in Europe and North America.

Sometimes, they can’t even get out of their country, forced to make refugee camps, large open spaces equipped with just tents for shelter, their homes. The conditions are dirty and unsanitary. Debilitating diseases and illnesses spread quickly.

Recent wars in Pakistan and Sri Lanka have displaced millions of people. In Sri Lanka, many are still living in poorly kept refugee camps. In Pakistan, many will never be able to return, their homes destroyed by Taliban forces.

It is hard to comprehend, perhaps for many in North America, what it truly would feel like to have to flee your home to protect yourself or your family.

Imagine a war is taking place right outside your door. Opposition forces enter your home to use it as shelter against their enemy, killing you if you try to protect it, giving you just a short window to flee.

But war isn’t the only problem for refugees. Extreme poverty and governmental neglect can make surviving in your home country nearly impossible.

How can the children of Uganda, where it was recently discovered countless kids are being used and are at risk of becoming child soldiers or child laborers, leave? Today is not only a day to honor those who made it out, but also those who need to leave.

Events to honor the distressed are being held around the world. A dance event in Nairobi. A mini-marathon in northern Sri Lanka. A concert in Washington D.C. A symposium in Tokyo.

Take a minute today to research and learn more about the world’s refugees and the conflicts they face. Donate. Attend an event. Help our world’s refugees.

NEW DELHI, India — Suicide bombers attacked a five-star hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan on Tuesday, in the most direct attack of a Western target since the Islamabad Marriott bombing last September.

Bombers rammed a small truck laden with explosives through the gates of the upscale Pearl Continental Hotel at around 10 p.m., killing at least 16 — including two United Nations workers — and injuring 70. The bombing was by far one of the country’s largest, with at least 1,000 pounds of explosives according to police, forming a gigantic crater and reducing much of the hotel to little more than rubble.

The attacks come little more than a week after Taliban leaders warned they would instigate attacks in major cities, retaliating against the Pakistani government’s military offensive to reclaim the nearby Swat Valley in Pakistan’s tribal Northwest Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan.

The blasts also resembled methods used in the May 27 attack against Pakistani intelligence service in Lahore, when the Taliban struck disturbingly near to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. Yesterday’s bombings indicate a continuing trend, the Taliban moving its operations of the rural borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and into Pakistan’s urban centers.

Pakistan is in bad shape. A lot of horrible things have been going on in the distressed nation for a while: people are being displaced, people are dying, the Taliban is taking over areas, the army is claiming it’s killed more than 1,000 insurgents.

The Taliban is bombing mosques and the civilians, until now, were standing idly by.

For a long time it was difficult for civilians in Pakistan to publicly show their disloyalty to the Taliban. After all, Pakistan supported the Taliban organization for nearly seven years with arms and aid, while the Taliban imposed very, very strict Sharia law on all under them, in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.

Then they were ousted in 2004 by NATO forces and have been regaining muscle ever since.

Now the Taliban is waging war on Pakistan, a former provider and new enemy. They are attacking civilian establishments in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), most recently suicide bombing a mosque and killing at least 40 people.

So as you can imagine by having read all that has been happening to the residents of Swat Valley and NWFP, and the displacement of millions and the deaths of thousands, the civilians have had enough.

On Saturday, nearly 500 residents of the Upper Dir district (near Swat Valley, where the suicide mosque bombing took place) banded together to form a small but determined civilian army, known as a “lashkar” and attacked the Taliban.

The angry, armed mob attacked five villages and destroyed 20 houses suspected of belonging to Taliban forces. Seven Taliban fighters were killed in the surge and the villagers now occupy three villages and are attempting to push the Taliban out of the other two.

“We are Muslims, we pray regularly and read the Koran. We don’t want them, they have to go,” said Upper Dir resident Samiullah Khan, Reuters India reports.

“Attacking a mosque is not Islam. They’re not Muslim” he said.

The U.S. is hoping for sustained fighting from the Pakistani army to help push out the Taliban and neutralize their forces. By doing this, support for the insurgency in Afghanistan will be cut off, potentially leading to the defeat of al Qaeda and the war in Afghanistan.

It’s safe to say the residents are rising up. They are angry with their army for taking so long to act and for allowing the displacement of so many of their own people. They are angry with the Taliban for thinking they can act in any way and claim Islam as their defense.

They are angry that their way of life has been so disrupted. Now they are taking it back.

More bombs exploded in Pakistan today, this time in the busy city of Peshawar. Two separate attacks were executed; one near a military checkpoint where a suicide bomber detonated himself and killed four soldiers, and the other in a busy market, where two motorcycles carrying time bombs exploded to kill six and injure 70, according to bomb disposal squad chief Shafqat Malik, the British Broadcasting Company reports.

The attack comes just hours after the Taliban attacked Lahore and promised more attacks on Pakistan’s urban centers in response to an increase in military offensives in Swat Valley. Pakistan’s army says it has recaptured more than 70 percent of Swat Valley’s main city, Mingora, and expects to complete the operation within days, the BBC reports.

Some of the wounded are no doubt in serious condition, suffering injuries similar to yesterday’s victims: broken bones and severe burns. Television reports, according to the BBC, show civilians dragging others out of the market to safety.

Gunmen began openly firing on police as they arrived on the scene. None have been reported dead.

Peshawar, capital of the North Western Frontier Province, has seen an increase in bomb attacks over the past few weeks. On May 16 and May 23, car bombs exploded in dense areas, killing nearly 20 people and injuring more than 100.

Yesterday’s bomb and gun attack in Lahore, which targeted police and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) buildings, killed more than 20 and injured upwards of 200 civilians.

Click here for pictures of the blast on BBC.

Pakistan officials are blaming the Taliban for a bomb attack in Lahore that killed 23 people and left hundreds injured, BBC reports.

This morning at approximately 10:30 a.m. local time, a group of men shot at police officers before detonating a powerful car bomb that damaged buildings belonging to police and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s version of the CIA.

Officials warn the death toll, as is customary in these cases, may rise. Some have been injured‚ severely, suffering broken limbs and third-degree burns.

This could be the first of many attacks on Pakistan cities since the Taliban vowed to strike urban centers as revenge for the military’s increased operations in Swat Valley, where they claim to have killed more than 1,000 Taliban operatives.

“Enemies of Pakistan who want to destabilize the country are coming here after their defeat in Swat. There is a war, and this is a war for our survival” said Interior Minister Rehman Malik, BBC reports.

The attack killed at least one ISI agent, 12 officers and one child. BBC reports officials are speculating that the ISI building was the target for the attack, though it is uncertain at this time.

Lahore, which is located in Punjab province near the Indian border, was the scene of two sieges in March as well. Militants flooded the city and killed at least eight people in late March, and weeks earlier attacked the Sri Lanka cricket team.

The BBC reports that the area is being targeted since it is believed to be the secure home for the country’s “Punjab-dominated army.”‚ 

Pakistan’s Swat Valley has become the site of yet another humanitarian crisis as nearly half a million inhabitants flee in efforts to escape the battle between the Taliban and government troops, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The Pakistani government estimates that nearly 200,000 innocent civilians have made it out of the northwestern region, with another 300,000 attempting to escape alive. This latest evacuation effort brings the total number of people displaced by the on going violence to near a million, Al Jazeera reports.

A military spokesman claims the government military killed 143 opposition fighters on Thursday. Reinforcement troops were sent to Swat Valley Friday, just one day after Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani ordered the army to remove the Taliban as they battle to control the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP).

“The armed forces have been called in to eliminate the militants and terrorists,” he said. He also accused the Taliban of violating the peace deal and threatening the nation’s independence.

The outcome of the battle in Swat Valley could very well determine the future of Pakistan’s military. If the Taliban overcome government forces, they could easily advance on Islamabad and put the entire nation at risk.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, after a meeting with U.S. senators, said the military operation would continue “”¦until life in Swat comes back to normalcy.” These people must have lost hope for normal life now. Normal is long gone.

A democratic nation whose capital is infiltrated by a terrorist insurgency would no doubt pose a serious threat to the whole world, especially when that nation is a known nuclear power. That’s why world leaders, like Obama, are really, really trying to end this as soon as possible. It’d be an international disaster if they advanced further into the country.

The equivalent of like 1000 different swine flues.

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There’s been a lot of public Taliban activity in Pakistan over the last little while.

The Taliban is slowly trying to make its way toward Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. The Pakistani armed forces have been verbally scolded by both American officials and Pakistani politicians over their lack of action and unwillingness to shift troops from the India-Pakistan border to help concentrate on combating the Taliban threat.

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani defended his military’s actions on Friday, saying that they are committed to fighting and halting the Taliban insurgency. American and Pakistani officials however have expressed concern over the army’s lack of performance, insinuating that they merely stood by as hundreds of Taliban insurgents made their way into the Buner district, just 70 miles from Islamabad.

Also on Friday, after meeting with government officials, Taliban executives said they would withdraw from Buner. However, residents of the district say that this promise has not been honored and that few insurgents have vacated the region.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited the distressed country for two days earlier this week. “The situation there is definitely worse than it was two weeks ago” he said. “They need aggressive leadership that takes action.”

General Kayani attended an operational meeting in Rawalpindi Friday in an effort to prove his military is committed to dislodging the Taliban insurgency. “The army is determined to root out the menace of terrorism from society” the military said, according to the New York Times, in a statement afterward. “It will not allow the militants to dictate terms to the government or impose their way of life on the civil society of Pakistan.”

The general said the military is currently preparing to carry out a mission in Swat Valley, where Taliban insurgents have refused to disarm, disengage and evacuate, in violation of a February peace treaty.

Kayani said the army’s lack of action over the past while was an “operational pause” an effort to let the peace treaty work out the differences on its own.

Admiral Mullen has met with the general many times and has discussed with him many different ways to approach a solution to the insurgency conflict.

The admiral said he was quite impressed after watching the army in training sessions.

Hopefully the operation heading into Swat Valley takes place quick and is as effective as many are hoping.

Pakistani author Danyal Mueenuddin begins his inaugural book simply, with a dedication to his mother and an epigraph: “Three things for which we kill — Land, women and gold.”

The Punjabi proverb, written in English and the highly stylized lettering of Urdu calligraphy, anticipates with startling accuracy the source of conflict in Mueenuddin’s brilliant debut collection of fiction, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

In the title story, the wealthy patriarch of a feudal landowning family, KK Harouni, falls for Husna, a shrewd, young social climber looking to integrate herself into the glitzy, jet-setting life of Lahore’s wealthy elite. Much to the chagrin of Harouni’s europhile daughters and estranged wife, Harouni takes Husna, with her simple clothes and unrefined manners — imagine a Pakistani Eliza Doolittle, if you will — under his roof, at first only as a servant of sorts, but eventually as a mistress.

Husna shows up at Harouni’s door, a distantly related young girl of a family that “had not so much fallen into poverty as failed to rise”. Harouni, a disinterested old man who seems bored to tears with almost everything, finds in Husna a relief from the redundancies of upper crust Lahore. As he explains to his daughter, “She keeps me company. She’s no genius, if you like, but she can play cards and so on.” Mueenuddin’s characters seldom try to sugarcoat the facts of life.

As many of the women in the Mueenuddin’s grim fairy tales, Husna assumes she can use feminine wiles to climb the social ladder, and avoid marriage to “a compromise, a salary man.” And at first, she succeeds, until, also like many of Mueenuddin’s stories, the fairytale ending is pulled right out from beneath her.

Mueenuddin builds up his reader’s hope for his characters, only to vindictively strip all hope away in the end. In ‘Saleema’, a young woman and her drugged-up husband move to the cramped servant quarters of the Harouni estate. The woman, Saleema, is the daughter of a prostitute mother and a heroin addicted father seeking for herself a better life. As a maid for the Harouni’s, she meets Rafik, a gentle and reserved valet. Saleema hopes that their affair can somehow make of her an honest woman. Before Rafik, “her love affairs had been so plainly mercantile transactions that she hadn’t learned to be coquettish. But that little hopeful girl in her awoke now.”

The reader can’t help but root for the honest and wide-eyed (though admittedly shrewd) Saleema, but it’s not long before she winds up drug-addled and dead herself, her child with Rafik begging “in the streets, one of the sparrows of Lahore”.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is partly an exploration into the harsh realities of a modern-day society still bound by class. If this had been Cinderella, most of Mueenuddin’s stories would have ended halfway through, but instead, in his Pakistan, happiness is usually short-lived. Like Husna and Saleema, his characters end up learning a harsh lesson: you can move up or down the ladder, but in the end, motion in Pakistan is only horizontal.

The collection is, in the tradition of Balzac’s original Comƒ©die humaine, eight stories bound together by the common thread of the moneyed KK Harouni’s household and extended family. Characters reappear throughout the book — sometimes on the main stage, and sometimes as a side note. Set in the Pakistani district of Punjab, Mueenuddin’s stories follow the lives of the rich and powerful Harouni family and its employees — from the managers, drivers, gardeners, cooks, and servants to the patriarch’s young, traveled nephew in Paris.

The collection sheds light on contemporary Pakistan’s many faces, from the inhabitants of impoverished rural Pakistan to the young, bored nouveau- rich gracing Mueenuddin’s pages feasting on lavish picnics of champagne and cheese or as coke-snorting snobs at Halloween parties in Islamabad.

Reading In Other Rooms, In Other Wonders, you often get the sense that writing the collection was in some ways Mueenuddin’s method for working out his own problems of identity and feelings towards Pakistan. He spent the first years of his childhood in Pakistan, then was shipped off to an East Coast boarding school at 13 and went on to attend Dartmouth College. A decade after first moving to America, he returned to Pakistan to help his aging father uphold family property that was in danger of being taken over by crafty managers. He spent seven years alone on this farm – an isolated 10 hours from Lahore by a bumpy road – before he moved back to the US to study law at Yale and practice corporate law in New York. Eventually, Mueenuddin, tired of the corporate sector, received a Master of Fine Arts and returned to manage the Pakistan farm, in his spare time writing what would become the stories of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, which were first picked up by literary rags like The New Yorker and Granta.

In Mueenuddin’s work, you easily see the characters and colors of his own life. The crafty managers and wily servants of his father’s farm are the same characters who occupy KK Harouni’s farm and Lahore estate, and color the pages in tales like ‘Provide, Provide’ (writes Mueenuddin, Jaglani “would receive a brief telegram, NEED FIFTY THOUSAND IMMEDIATELY” and he would “sell the land at half price, the choice pieces to himself, putting it in the names of his servants and relatives.”). In ‘Lily’, the title character’s eventual betrothed manages his father’s old farm, 10 hours from Lahore by a rough road, where he is beginning to grow vegetables in greenhouses, just as Mueenuddin himself does now. And in the tale ‘Our Lady of Paris’, the character, Sohail, perhaps bears resemblance to Mueenuddin’s own identity struggle: the wealthy Yale law school-educated son of KK Harouni’s brother, Sohail struggles with what to do next in his life – move back to Pakistan and take over his father’s business dealings or live in America with his American girlfriend Helen.

The time has come. Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress takes place tonight at 9 p.m., broadcast on all major television stations. Will he extend a hand towards Iran, following up on his promise to engage in open discourse with President Ahmadinejad? What will he say about health care reform? The economy?‚ 

We’ll see tonight. But we know one thing, the kid is feeling some pressure. It’s a big speech that will outline what Americans and the world can expect over the next few months and perhaps even years.

He may talk about what the administration refers to as “AFPAK” – the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I refer to it as a double-edged sword that has the potential to maim the collective world.

Obama said he’s going to send nearly 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but as CNN’s Christiane Amanpour outlines in a report, “[he]‚ seems to be pulling back from a promise to help rebuild Afghanistan and promote democracy there.”

The economy will for sure come up, and the kid is going to have to outline a plan to cut spending, something he said is absolutely necessary. The U.S. spends so much money on foreign missions, and right now we can’t afford to help everyone in the world without first helping ourselves. We should be priority number one. Too many people are out of work, that’s just a fact.

Obama will hopefully come through on a lot of his campaign promises tonight, especially those to do with foreign policy and the economy (one of the main reasons he was elected was because his economic plan kicked McCain’s ass).‚ 

In classic Obama fashion, everything he says will sound great, just because of his oration skills. But how much substance there will be beneath the kid’s words will be open for debate following his speech.

• Obama’s first budget comes with the promise of slashing the deficit in half in four years

President Obama launched a “fiscal responsibility summit” at the White House today by vowing to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term in office, and he pledged to reinstate pay-as-you-go budgeting rules to prevent the government from spending money it does not have.

• The government is looking to buy majority stakes in large banks as the markets continue to tumble.

WASHINGTON “" The Obama administration put the nation’s biggest banks on notice Monday that the government could become their biggest shareholder if regulators decide they are not strong enough to weather a deeper-than-expected downturn in the economy.

• US is secretly training the Pakistani military to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

BARA, Pakistan “" More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.

The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics, the officials said. They do not conduct combat operations, the officials added.

• Karl Rove defies a Congressional subpoena. Again.

So today was the day that Karl Rove was supposed to appear before the House Judiciary committee to testify about the US Attorney firings. And of course, Rove didn’t show.

That wasn’t a surprise. After getting the deadline pushed back, Rove had already publicly indicated he didn’t plan on being there, citing President Bush’s claim of executive privilege. Rove’s lawyer had then asked for a second postponement, a request that Judiciary chair John Conyers had declined to grant.

Pakistan has canceled all military leave and increased troop numbers in regions bordering Jammu and Punjab in northwest India, the Times of India reports.

A little further south, in the area bordering Ganganagar, India, Pakistan has reportedly begun renovating old bunkers, as well as constructing new ones. ‚ 

Pakistan’s troops are, in some places, as close as six miles from the border. ‚ According to the Geneva Convention, no country can deploy troops within 1.8 miles of the border unless war is‚ officially‚ declared.

In response, India has moved some of its troops closer to the border. ‚ India’s Border Security Forces (BSF) have provided the government with intelligence, specifically the number of troops being deployed by Pakistan and the types of weapons they are carrying. ‚ This way, they would be prepared if, let’s hope not, anything goes down.

India has also begun telling its citizens that it is unsafe for them to be in Pakistan, the Times of India reports. ‚ They’ve also asked the U.S., China and Iran to put some pressure on Pakistan to act against those involved in the Mumbai terror attacks.

It seems that it’s getting worse there by the minute. ‚ Moving troops within miles of war is bad enough, but India actually telling its citizens they are unsafe in another country is an official sign that something will go down soon if Pakistan doesn’t buckle down and cooperate. ‚ 

Other countries may not officially say it, but they are all thinking it. ‚ Pakistan needs to actually help the‚ investigation, not just say they will. ‚ If they don’t things could get worse, and no one wants to see these two countries go at it. ‚ Trust me.

Pakistani media is reporting that the country’s military is now on “high alert” over a possible attack by neighbour India, Al Jazeera reports.

The announcement came Monday after Indian officials handed over a letter by the last surviving terrorist from November’s Mumbai tragedy that killed nearly 170 people.

The letter confirmed accusations that all 10 terrorists hailed from Pakistan, India’s Foreign ministry reports.

The navy, air force and army are all on “red alert.”

Obviously, I don’t think attacking Pakistan is the answer. ‚ These two countries have enough problems, starting a string of attacks between the two isn’t going to solve anything.

Then again, the people of India are demanding some sort of action be taken in response to these attacks, especially now since it has been confirmed that all attackers were from Pakistan.

Indian officials have said that they will “explore all options” to ensure Pakistan cracks down on these kinds of cross-border attacks. ‚ They also called for more international pressure to be put on Pakistan, in an effort to make them co-operate in investigations.

I agree with that, there’s a lot more Pakistan can do. ‚ They’ve‚ arrested‚ some people but refuse to really do anything with them. ‚ Extraditing them to India makes sense to me, but not for them, since the arrested are citizens of Pakistan and many of them have no direct connection to the attacks.

No matter what happens, tensions are increasing between these two rivals, and will continue to increase until something groundbreaking happens.

As attacks on India’s financial and entertainment capital persist, military personnel are fighting to secure the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, according to the International Herald Tribune.

Shortly before night in Mumbai, police told news media they were trying to secure and capture one terrorist left inside the Taj, who was constantly moving between two floors.‚  IHT reports police told media that two terrorists had been killed overnight in the Taj.‚  Commandos continued operations as the city darkened.

On the first day of attacks, a freelance journalist by the name of Samuel Gill posted a comment on Blast’s “Terror in India” article.‚  He did not answer his phone this afternoon, however, answered an email asking him for an update on the situation in Mumbai.

Gill said that the official death toll at the Trident/Oberoi is 30. He also confirmed that Indian security forces were engaged in gunfights as of at least 11:54 a.m. EST (10:24 p.m. IST), the time of the email.‚  He also told Blast that grenade blasts continue in higher volume than is being reported.

Gill also said that the Chabad House (known as Nariman House in India), a five-story center for Hasidic Jews in Mumbai, was the center of some scrutiny regarding the handling of the crisis there. “A Rabbi and his wife, along with three more had been shot by terrorists before army commandos killed [the] terrorists,” he said.‚  “Now NSG [National Security Guard] has handed over this building to Mumbai police.”

Police say, according to IHT, 93 foreigners were rescued from the Trident/Oberoi on Friday.‚  Later, police found 24 dead bodies in the hotel.

The attacks have increased tensions between India and its neighbor and longtime rival Pakistan, at a time when both countries have been advocating for closer relationships and a joint terrorism combat force.‚  Indian authorities have blamed “elements with links to Pakistan” for the attacks.

Stick with Blast for ongoing analysis.

Gunmen open fired at a number of locations across Mumbai Thursday morning, killing more than 100 people, injuring more than 300 and taking several hostages from luxury hotels usually inhabited by foreigners, according to CNN.

While India has frequently blamed terrorist attacks on Islamic militants and extremists in Pakistan, this attack comes at a time during which Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has been advocating closer relations with India; he even suggested a joint terrorism combat force.

Some analysts believe Zardari’s advocacy to become closer allies with India contributed to the attacks.‚  Some even believe it caused the attacks.‚  Many Islamic militant groups would see such a partnership as befriending a sworn enemy, one with whom they have a long history of tension and disagreement.

The terror attacks differ in many ways from attacks that are usually reported.‚  Rather than use suicide bombers of place bombs at several sites, the attackers actually open fired on innocent bystanders and took hostages.

The attackers openly engaged with civilians and armed Indian forces, clearly on some sort of meticulously organized mission.‚  The attackers had command centers set up at two hotels in India’s financial and entertainment capital.

While an organization has taken responsibility for the attack (the Deccan Mujahideen, though doubts about their existence still linger, some believe the name may be a front for another organization), Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has repeatedly stressed the attack was carried out by militants based outside India with an eye for targeting foreigners in Mumbai’s streets, as well as in the prestigious Trident/Oberoi Hotel and the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel.

Singh stressed the need for stronger measures on terrorism and has vowed to track down the perpetrators at all costs.

The attacks are getting very much attention in the West, more than usual for something that took place thousands of miles away.‚  The reason being that it seems the targets of the attacks were largely westerners, which would mean tensions between Pakistan and India cannot be blamed.

Whatever the reason for the attacks, they must still be condemned.‚  Pakistan is however urging India not to jump to conclusions.

Indian officials say they have captured nine suspects and killed six others.

Stick with Blast for ongoing analysis.

The world is indeed watching today.

Despite the United States recent economic woes, there is no doubt amongst serious observers that the country is still, by far the most powerful nation in the world. The United States military budget “" which, I think it is fair to say, gets quite a bit of use “" is astronomical. The U.S. accounts almost half of the world’s military spending, with the FY 2009 budget allocating more than $650 billion. To put this in perspective, the next highest spender is the United Kingdom with just over $50 billion. And the U.S. figures do not count the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan which are paid for with supplemental bills and have cost the nation hundreds of billions more over the last five years.

Further, the world economy, for better or worse (worse is the popular answer in 2008), is directly dependent on the U.S economy. Even though China, for example, continues to grow, they are only able to do so by sending 80 percent of their exports to the U.S. Now, as American consumers are becoming thrifty, or broke (or both), Chinese growth is in trouble.

Russia “" China’s partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which many see as a blossoming counter to the US and NATO “" is now losing out on all the revenues that they were getting from $147 barrels of oil. And this drop in oil occurred, at least in part, due to the massive deflation that has occurred since the US economy really hit the skids in September. Venezuela and Iran, two other oil-rich nations with hostile relations with the U.S, are facing the same problems as oil prices go down.

So why is this relevant to the 2008 election? It is a reminder of how important this election, and American policy in general, is to other parts of the world.

In Israel, for example, the right has expressed fears over an Obama presidency. While Obama has said all of the right things, and spoke in front of AIPAC when he finally won the primary, some in Israel are not sure he will be 1) as aggressive on Iran as a McCain or Bush Administration or 2) as willing to continue America’s unconditional (and totally unique) package in aid, which is at $3 billion, the most in the world. This is why the right started singing the “Obama-is-anti-Israel” tune when McCain fell sharply behind (as did Hillary Clinton when she was gasping for anything at the tail end of the divisive primary, which gives you a sense of how predictably low politicians can go when in trouble).

It is a fairly empty tale. Obama has toed the Party line with Israel, pledging continued and increased aid, and insisting that Iran poses a grave threat, despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said the opposite.

Nonetheless, this election is watched with great interest from the Israeli right. To follow the coverage in Israel, I recommend, Haaretz, which is widely viewed as the “New York Times of Israel.”

Another country that must be watching with watchful eyes in Pakistan, especially given Obama’s expressed a willingness to bomb the country (which President Bush actually did recently).

Interestingly, Iraqis and U.S. soldiers may have less at stake that one might think. While Obama ran in the primary with anti-war rhetoric , his staff has acknowledged to the Wall Street Journal that he will leave around 35 “" 45 thousands troops in the country. Given that a similar draw down is likely under a McCain Administration (though the exact timeline could vary), it appears that the War in Iraq will continue in a lesser fashion, no matter who wins. Still, if anyone wants to read an English language Iraqi newspaper, visit Azzaman in English.

Iranians, too, must be watching with great interest. While both McCain and Obama are willing to talk tough on Iran, Obama has a far more moderate (supported by many Republicans from the Bush I days, such as James Baker and Collin Powell) and reasonable stance on engaging in diplomacy. To read Iranian media visit Press TV and the Islamic Republic News Agency (both state-owned, for what its worth).

And of course, every country has a stake in the U.S. economy. As I listed above, the ramifications of the economic crisis are indeed global, and countries have been scrambling with bailout and stimulus packages, request for aid from the (US controlled) International Monetary Fund and the nationalizing of some banks.

Here, world public opinion is clear: Obama is the favorite for most of the world, which has grown deeply skeptical of U.S. economic policies, and gives most of the blame to Republicans.

Some other foreign news outlets:

The Daily Star (Lebanon)

Russia Today (Russia)

The Independent (United Kingdom)

Dar al Hayet (Saudi Arabia )

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