WSJ: The WTF On The Mumbai Attacks

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WALL STREET JOURNAL: MUMBAI — India has accused a senior leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of orchestrating last week’s terror attacks that killed at least 172 people here, and demanded the Pakistani government turn him over and take action against the group. Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India’s financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

lankash.gifIndian investigators — helped in part by the testimony of the one terrorist they captured alive, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab — say they now possess solid proof. “We have made substantial progress in the investigation,” said A.N. Roy, director general of the State Police of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located. The 10 militants left Pakistan’s port city of Karachi on Nov. 23 aboard a ship called the Al Husseini, which also carried a crew of seven, another senior police official said. Investigators believe that all the 10 gunmen were Pakistani because they spoke Punjabi or Punjabi-accented Urdu.

When they entered Indian waters, the terrorists hijacked a fishing trawler called the Kuber and took its five crew members prisoner. The terrorists transferred four of them to the Al Husseini and they were subsequently killed, police believe. The terrorists kept the Kuber’s lead crewman alive and sailed close to Mumbai. The terrorists abandoned the Kuber in haste, fearing detection by an approaching vessel, the senior police official said. In the process, they forgot their satellite phone on the Kuber. Investigators found in the call log the numbers of five people, including Mr. Muzammil, two of his deputies and his personal aide, the senior police official said. Indian officials had already intercepted phone conversations made while the terrorists were traveling to Mumbai. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: To Live And Die In Mumbai

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[Source: Anti-Defamation League]

Mumbai Gunfight Footage


[Closed circuit video scenes of gunmen battling police inside a Mumbai train station. Video from NDTV.]

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RECOUNT: Franken Takes Lead With 22 Votes

al_franken2_1.jpgHUFFINGTON POST: On Tuesday the Secretary of State’s office directed county auditors and election officials to review previously rejected absentee ballots to determine whether or not they should be counted. For weeks, the Franken camp has argued that while many of the absentee ballots had been rejected for legitimate reasons, a portion of them (ranging from 500 to 1,000) could be deemed legitimate votes. With the recount margin measure, potentially, in the dozens, each and every single vote could very well determine the victor. And the Franken campaign left the door open for legal action should improperly rejected ballots not, in the end, be counted. As if on cue, during the press conference on Tuesday a story emerged from Ramsey County in Minnesota — a relatively Democratic locale — that some 200 ballots had not been counted due to an optical scanning error. The Star Tribune reports that Franken actually picked up 37 votes from the discovered ballots, meaning that — if the campaign’s internal numbers are correct — the margin separating him and Coleman is an estimated 13 votes. MORE

UPDATE: Al Franken’s campaign announced on Wednesday that, for the first time since the Minnesota recount began, the Democrat has actually pulled ahead of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Franken’s chief counsel Marc Elias said the campaign’s own internal count showed them up 22 votes, a jump from the 13 vote deficit that they faced on Tuesday. MORE

WALL STREET JOURNAL: ATLANTA — Democratic hopes of gaining a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate collapsed Tuesday, as Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss was projected to win re-election in a runoff. Sen. Chambliss was cruising to a comfortable victory, garnering 57.5% of the vote with 96% of precincts reporting. The Associated Press called the race for Sen. Chambliss at 8:55 p.m. EST. MORE

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