MUMBAI, India (AP) – Authorities finished removing bodies from the bullet- and grenade-scarred Taj Mahal hotel Monday, the final site of the Mumbai siege to be cleared, as schools and businesses reopened and commuters returned to work.,”India clears last Mumbai siege site; death toll stands at 172
MUMBAI, India (AP) – Authorities finished removing bodies from the bullet- and grenade-scarred Taj Mahal hotel Monday, the final site of the Mumbai siege to be cleared, as schools and businesses reopened and commuters returned to work.
Security forces had been scouring the 565-room hotel for booby traps and bodies, and declared the landmark building cleared two days after they killed the last three militants holed up inside following a three-day rampage in India's financial center that left at least 172 dead.
"We were apprehensive about more bodies being found. But this is not likely – all rooms in the Taj have been opened and checked," said Maharashtra state government spokesman Bhushan Gagrani.
The army had already cleared other sites, including the five-star Oberoi hotel and the Mumbai headquarters of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group. Israeli emergency workers sorted through the shattered glass and splintered furniture at the Jewish center Monday to gather the victims' body parts. At one point, one of the men opened a prayer book amid the rubble and stopped to pray.
On Monday morning, parents dropped their children off at school and many shopkeepers opened their doors for the first time since the attacks began.
___
AP IMPACT: They warned us: US was told to 'expect foreclosures, expect horror stories'
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.
Bowing to aggressive lobbying – along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK – regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.
"These mortgages have been considered more safe and sound for portfolio lenders than many fixed rate mortgages," David Schneider, home loan president of Washington Mutual, told federal regulators in early 2006. Two years later, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history.
The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.
___
Obama's picks: Longtime advisers, political foes to fill top positions in new administration
WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Barack Obama plans on Monday to announce six experienced hands to fill top administration posts, moving at record speed to name the leadership team that will guide his presidency through a time of war and recession.
His selections include longtime advisers and political foes alike, most notably Democratic primary rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and President Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, staying in his current post. The two were among six who Obama planned to announce at a news conference in Chicago, Democratic officials said.
The officials said Obama also planned to name Washington lawyer Eric Holder as attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary. He also planned to announce two senior foreign policy positions outside the Cabinet: campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador and retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser.
The Democratic officials disclosed the plans Sunday on a condition of anonymity because they were not authorized for public release ahead of the news conference. Those names had been discussed before for those jobs, but the officials confirmed that Obama will make them official Monday in his hometown.
Obama also has settled on former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle to be his secretary of Health and Human Services and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be Commerce secretary, but those announcements are not yet official. Last week, he named key members of his economic team, including Timothy Geithner, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as Treasury secretary.
___
Protesters move to besieged airports as country's political crisis heightens
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP ) – Anti-government protesters reinforced their siege of Bangkok's two airports Monday as the politically paralyzed country struggled with more than 300,000 stranded travelers.
In a switch of tactics, the People's Alliance for Democracy told its members occupying the prime minister's office compound for the last three months to leave and join compatriots at the airports, which they seized last week in their push to oust the government.
The airport seizure since Tuesday severed all commercial flights in and out of the capital. Airlines, meanwhile, were flying dozens of empty planes out of Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi international airport.
Some 30 planes had been flown out starting Sunday and an additional 50 were to be moved later Monday, some to protest-free airports elsewhere in Thailand so that stranded tourists, businesspeople and others can fly out of the country, said Serirat Prasutanont, acting director of the Airports Authority of Thailand.
He said the airport will remain closed at least until Wednesday, renewing a shutdown that has been repeated every 48 hours.
___
17 years after Gulf War, some sick vets feel vindicated but still worry about long-term health
WASHINGTON (AP) – Ground combat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War lasted just 100 hours, but it's meant 17 years of pain and anguish for hundreds of thousands of veterans.
Those who came home and complained of symptoms such as memory loss and joint pain are only sicker. Even as their lives unraveled as their health further deteriorated, many were told their problems were just in their head.
But, recently, many of the sufferers were given a new reason to hope. Earlier this month, a high-profile advisory panel to Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake affirmed previous research that a collection of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War illnesses are real and require treatment. The country has a "national obligation" to help them, the panel concluded.
The report, however, also noted a sad reality: Of the $340 million in government funds spent to research the topic, little has focused on finding treatments. And, researchers said, the estimated 175,000-210,000 Gulf veterans who are sick aren't getting any better.
Many of those veterans are left wondering what's next for them. The panel, created by Congress, said at least $60 million should be spent annually for research, but some veterans question if in these economically strapped times the money will be made available.
___
Rice says Pakistan must cooperate fully with India in terrorism investigation
LONDON (AP) – The United States has told Pakistan it expects nothing short of complete cooperation in investigations into the terrorist rampage in nuclear rival India. Pakistan's response will be a test of the will of the new civilian government, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday.
"What we are emphasizing to the Pakistani government is the need to follow the evidence wherever it leads," Rice said. "I don't want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that's what we expect."
At President George W. Bush's direction, Rice is cutting short a European trip to visit India later this week. Attacks spanning three days killed more than 170 people in the Indian commercial capital Mumbai, including six Americans.
Indian leaders pointed fingers at "elements in Pakistan" although it is not yet clear where the well-planned operation originated.
"We share the grief and the anger of the Indian people but of course Americans were also killed in this attack and they were killed deliberately because they were Americans," Rice said during a press conference aboard her plane en route to London. "That makes this of special interest and concern to the United States."
___
Insurgents rocket NATO supply trucks in Pakistan, as bomber kills 8
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) – Militants in northwestern Pakistan attacked trucks ferrying supplies to NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan on Monday, killing two people and destroying a dozen vehicles, witnesses and police said.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded 40 others at a military checkpoint in the region's Swat Valley, police said.
The spasm of violence comes amid a spike in tensions between Pakistan and rival India over last week's terror attacks in Mumbai, which New Delhi has blamed on Pakistani militants.
Pakistan has condemned the attacks and vowed to crack down on the perpetrators if New Delhi provides evidence. But there are fears that tensions could nevertheless boil over between the nuclear-armed rivals.
The attack on the U.S.-led coalition trucks took place at a terminal in Peshawar, which sits along the supply route from Pakistan to Afghanistan. The city has seen an upsurge in violence in recent weeks, including the slaying of an American working on a U.S.-funded aid project.
___
Police: suicide bomber kills 10 Afghans in crowded southern market
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) – A suicide bomber apparently trying to target Afghan police detonated his explosives in a crowded market in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing eight civilians and two policemen, an official said.
The attack in the central market in Musa Qala in Afghanistan's dangerous Helmand province also wounded 25 civilians and two police, said Helmand police chief Asadullah Sherzad. Six children were among the wounded.
Taliban and other militant suicide bombers frequently target Afghan and international military forces in their suicide attacks, but many more Afghan civilians typically die in the attacks than do government officials or military personnel.
In Kabul on Sunday, a suicide bomber attacked a German Embassy vehicle but killed two Afghan civilians, including a street sweeper.
A Taliban spokesman couldn't immediately be reached for comment regarding Monday's attack in Helmand. The Taliban claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing in Kabul.
___
Asian markets fall as investors watch US, Chinese economies; Indian stocks drop after attack
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Most Asian stock markets fell Monday on signs that the U.S. holiday shopping season got off to a tepid start over the key Thanksgiving weekend. Major European markets opened lower.
Investors seemed to want a breather to reassess after rallies in global markets last week, including the first five-day advance for Wall Street since July 2007. Some traders wanted to hold back ahead of the Institute for Supply Management's November manufacturing survey due later Monday for further clues about the strength of the U.S. economy, a vital export market.
Investors are bracing for more bad news about the U.S. economy, said Tsuyoshi Nomaguchi, a strategist for Daiwa Securities in Tokyo.
"They aren't sure what they're supposed to do at this point," he said.
India's benchmark Sensex index reversed early gains, falling 2.9 percent to 8,829.76 in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that left 172 people dead.
___
Endeavour glides to safe landing in Calif. after 16-day home makeover trip to space station
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) – Space shuttle Endeavour slipped out of a brilliant desert sky and touched down safely in California after a nearly 16-day mission to repair and upgrade the international space station.
Stormy weather at the shuttle's main Florida landing site forced controllers to divert Endeavour and its crew of seven astronauts across the country to Edwards Air Force Base, where it glided to Earth at 4:25 p.m. EST Sunday.
"It's great to be back on the ground, and it's great to be in California," shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson said, standing with three of his crew members on the tarmac near the shuttle.
The shuttle program's 124th mission remodeled the space station, doubled its crew capacity to six and repaired a rotating joint on a solar wing.
Endeavour delivered a new bathroom, kitchenette, exercise machine, two sleeping quarters, and a recycling system that converts astronauts' urine and sweat into drinking water.
“