L.A. Times - Middle East

India pressures Pakistan to act on terrorism

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Becoming more sure that militants based in Pakistan carried out the Mumbai attacks, India calls on its neighbor and rival to hand over 20 terrorism suspects and cooperate fully in the investigation.

Reporting from Mumbai, India, and Islamabad, Pakistan -- India called in a Pakistani envoy Monday and demanded that its neighbor and longtime rival take swift action after deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai that shook the nation, even as widening domestic fallout forced another top official to resign.

Mumbai residents try to return to routines

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

City dwellers get on trains, go to work and gather publicly to show solidarity after the terrorist attacks that killed more than 170. 'I want to shop just to show I'm not afraid,' one says.

With a bit of pluck, even if it was not always heartfelt, a touch of defiance and a dose of the city's famous resilience, Mumbai dusted itself off Monday from last week's terrorist attacks and headed back to work.

Pakistan dismisses claims that Mumbai attackers were trained by Pakistani militants

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 07:01:00 -0800

Officials say Indian investigators' assertions that a Pakistani group taught the attackers are unfounded. But Indian officials say the surviving gunman detailed the training by Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan today dismissed Indian investigators' claims that the Mumbai attackers underwent months of training at camps run by a Pakistani militant group, saying no such proof had been provided.

Blasts kill at least 15 cadets at Baghdad police academy

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The twin bombings are among several attacks across Iraq that leave as many as 36 dead, including two attackers.

Bombers targeting Iraqi and U.S. security forces cut a deadly swath across Iraq on Monday, killing as many as 36 people, including at least 15 cadets at a police academy in Baghdad.

World Briefing

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Pakistan: Militants hit NATO supplies / Brazil: Pledge to reduce Amazon clearing / Guatemala: 17 killed in spat / China: 294,000 infants ill from melamine / The Netherlands: 'Magic' mushrooms banned

PAKISTAN Militants hit NATO supplies

U.S. death toll in Afghanistan was 1 last month

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

One American serviceman died in Afghanistan in November, a significant drop from earlier months that the U.S. military attributed to its campaign against insurgent leaders, operations by Afghan and Pakistani forces and the onset of winter.

Bush tells ABC News: 'I was unprepared for war'

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

In an interview with Charles Gibson, the president is unusually blunt about shortcomings on the Iraq war and praises his HIV/AIDs initiative as a success.

President Bush, who has long brushed aside questions about his legacy, is opening up a bit during his final weeks in office.

Turkish warplanes bombing Kurdish separatists

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq are reported to be under attack.

Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish separatist positions Monday in northern Iraq, the head of Iraq's border guards in Dahuk said.

Looking ahead to a Clinton State Department, Israelis and Arabs retool their expectations

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Israel is applauding her nomination as a check on Obama, while the news has damped Arabs' hopes of a swing away from Bush policies.

Nearly a month after Barack Obama's election, his decision to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of State is causing Arabs and Israelis to readjust expectations of his administration's policies toward the Middle East.

Dissident poet is allowed to speak, but Egypt's leaders aren't listening

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Iman Bakry has risen to national prominence with her politically barbed verse about repression, corruption and poverty, appealing to the intellectual as well as the illiterate.

Iman Bakry has a fortuneteller's voice, husky and cracked. It coaxes you into her colloquial poems, which once were about romance, but have since shifted to a cutting critique of President Hosni Mubarak's government and an Egypt plagued by self-doubt, repression, corruption and a dangerous divide between rich and poor.