Happy
Thanksgiving
At Least 100 Dead in India Terror Attacks
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: November 26, 2008
MUMBAI, India – Coordinated terrorist attacks struck the heart of Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, on Wednesday night, killing dozens in machine-gun and grenade assaults on at least two five-star hotels, the city’s largest train station, a Jewish center, a movie theater and a hospital.
Even by the standards of terrorism in India, which has suffered a rising number of attacks this year, the assaults were particularly brazen in scale and execution. The attackers used boats to reach the urban peninsula where they hit, and their targets were sites popular with tourists.
Robert Fisk: ‘Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government’
As he leaves Afghanistan, our correspondent reflects on a failed state cursed by brutal fundamentalism and rampant corruption
Thursday, 27 November 2008
The collapse of Afghanistan is closer than the world believes. Kandahar is in Taliban hands – all but a square mile at the centre of the city – and the first Taliban checkpoints are scarcely 15 miles from Kabul. Hamid Karzai’s deeply corrupted government is almost as powerless as the Iraqi cabinet in Baghdad’s “Green Zone”; lorry drivers in the country now carry business permits issued by the Taliban which operate their own courts in remote areas of the country.The Red Cross has already warned that humanitarian operations are being drastically curtailed in ever larger areas of Afghanistan; more than 4,000 people, at least a third of them civilians, have been killed in the past 11 months, along with scores of Nato troops and about 30 aid workers.
USA
As Loan Rates Fall, Borrowers Seek ‘Taste of the Bailout Pie’
Consumers Flock to Cheaper Mortgages After Federal Action
By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 27, 2008; Page A01
Would-be mortgage borrowers have rushed to refinance their loans and even weighed plans to buy homes following the government’s move this week to loosen consumer lending.With interest rates suddenly plummeting, “the phone is ringing, the e-mails keep coming,” said Jennifer Du Plessis, a mortgage adviser at Prosperity Mortgage, the lending arm of Long & Foster. “Real estate agents are hovering outside our office saying: ‘I’ve got another client who wants to refinance.’ ”
“Our loan officers were here well past midnight,” Bob Walters of Internet lender Quicken Loans said regarding Tuesday, when the government announced its plan. Quicken received $400 million worth of mortgage applications that day, more than quadrupling the number of loans from the day before, he said. It was on track to meet that number yesterday, too.