Michael Rubenstein, a photographer working with The New York Times reports from outside the Taj hotel in Mumbai that the top floor of the hotel is still on fire and that hotel guests are banging on the windows begging to be rescued.
I hope they don’t have to face the choice of jumping or burning alive.
Breaking now: mass terror attacks underway in Mumbai, at hotels and other locations. Government says 78 people dead now, hundreds injured. The attacks are apparently coordinated, and taking place simultaneously all over the city. One Indian terrorism analyst on CNN now saying: “The whole city is being held hostage.”
It does not seem be over yet. The death toll now stands at 80 dead with 900 injured. Updates here.
Edit: Watch this Clip for a good overview.
Takes more skill than I would have thought. I always imagined you had someone on a platform stack them for you.
Let’s see, Bloomberg said yesterday that the Federal government had committed $7.4 trillion to lending facilities and guarantees. The total is now $8.2 trillion thanks to new programs announced today to aid borrowing by consumers, small businesses, and homeowners.
This modesty on the part policy makers is getting disgusting. Since people seem to be pulling numbers out of their hats, why are the numbers they keep pulling out just under a trillion? Why is no one out there promising a trillion dollar fix for a problem? What makes a trillion dollars too much to spend fixing a problem, but we can promise hundreds of billions of dollars every day?
As if things weren’t chaotic enough in the Gulf of Aden: a suspected pirate ship that was sunk last week by the Indian Navy now appears to have actually been a Thai fishing trawler, according to CNN, which cites the ship’s owner.
Last week, the Indian Navy reported that one of its warships, the INS Tabar, which had been deployed to the region to repulse the growing pirate threat, encountered a flotilla of three pirate vessels some 320 miles south west of the Omani coast. The Tabar fought a battle at sea, sinking one suspect vessel — what it called the “mother ship” — and forcing the pirates to abandon a second as they fled.
The comments are skeptical. But I think this story may be true and India may not care. These are the comments of a retired Indian Admiral….
So eventually when pressure from the Indian navy finally prompted the MEA to allow Indian participation, INS Tabar, a Talwar class frigate was sent to join at the Eastern end of the corridor. Coordination was arranged through diplomatic channels. The big difference in the way INS Tabar operated was that it was given clear instructions on the Rules of Engagement or ROE at it is commonly referred to by Naval Headquarters.
The commanding officer was given wide latitude to use force, at his discretion. Clearly, such explicit ROEs don’t exist for ships of TF 150.
This is a ridiculous situation, as the ROE of the NATO ships worries more about the human rights of the pirates, than about stamping out piracy. Actually there is an 1838 convention that permits any warship to interfere anywhere on the ‘High Seas’ to intercept pirates and try them — without handing them over to the country of origin.
Today’s interpretation by human rights lawyers state that pirates cannot even be handed over to their own state if that state does not respect the human rights of the pirates. This is an absurd situation. The US is not going to amend its rules regarding Centcom and Pacom. The answer appears to lie in New Delhi, where the MEA needs to draw up its own coalition of Indian Ocean powers, under the Indian navy to stamp out the pirates, in their harbours, ruthlessly
Note the ruthless part.
Also, it should be noted that story could be true and the ship could still be a mother ship for the pirates. I doubt the pirates have the sea going skills to go as far as they have been going on their own. Moreover, as Thai fishing trawler who would suspect you?
With retailers struggling to find credit and ordinary Russians being forced to change their spending, a vast lake of undrunk vodka is accumulating in distilleries across Russia.
Official statistics indicate a collapse in demand for vodka over the past two months. November inventories of unsold vodka stock have risen to 82 million litres, a 600 per cent increase from 2007, according to the National Alcohol Association.
This is a good thing. It might help cut down the alcohol related mortality that plagues Russia. Alcohol related mortality is a significant contributer to Russia’s demographic problems.
On the other hand, the same economic problems that keep the Russians from drinking are also going to cut down on the number of Russians willing to have children. So I overall Russia’s demographic problems are likely to get worse.
The objectives issued by DARPA are for a vehicle that would have an airborne tactical radius of 1,000 nautical miles, a low-level flight radius of 100 nautical miles (which may leverage surface effects), and a submerged tactical radius of 12 nautical miles. The sum of these must be achieved within eight hours. Endurance on the surface has to be 72 hours in sea states up to five between inserting and extracting personnel. The craft’s payload objective is eight men and their equipment with a total cargo weight of 2,000 pounds.
They obviously want this thing for sneaking commandos into a country off of a sub. As such, it is a waste of money to even try to create such a thing.
Sneaking commandos into a country with a plane flown off of a sub implies truly sending them in with out support (otherwise you could insert them with out needing something that can fly through the air and underwater). This country does not have political courage to send in American soldiers without any hope of support.
Wow.
Police dash cam of Meteor over Edmonton, Canada
(Editor’s Note (i.e not Br’er Licky) You can read more about the event here.)
A new disease that is passed from rats to humans via fleas, much like the Black Death, has been discovered by scientists.
The bacteria can cause serious heart disease in humans are being spread by rat fleas, sparking concern that the infections could become a bigger problem in humans.
Research published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology suggests that brown rats, the biggest and most common rats in Europe, may now be carrying the bacteria.
The Federal government has said that it is willing to lend or backstop up to $7.4 trillion to get the credit markets moving again. This figure comes from Bloomberg as a tally of all the commitment ALREADY made. Note that many of these have not been drawn down, hence the Fed’s and Treasury’s balance sheet have not (yet) expanded correspondingly. And some of these are in the form of guarantees, such as $1.4 trillion by the FDIC. Note the Bloomberg article fails to provide a tidy table showing how it came up with this figure. Critics will argue that the mixing of guarantees and borrowing facilities is an apples and oranges comparison, but the flip side is that the guarantees are treated by the authorities as a cost-free exercise, which is also incorrect.
From later on in the same post….
US debt to GDP stood at 350%. as of March 31, 2008. There are some items that are arguably overstated (lines of credit are included at their full amount, but second and third mortgages not included, and perhaps most important, contingent exposures like AIG’s credit default swap guarantees). It isn’t unreasonable to assume they net out.
The Fed’s proposed intervention is a bit more than half of GDP. However, note it (and the Treasury) has already made, and will continue to make, considerable commitments to non-US parties. AIG., for instance, has over $300 billion in CDS exposures in guarantees that permit European banks to evade minimum capital requirements (and AIG also has other, substantial non-US exposures). Similarly, the most likely cause of a Citi meltdown would be withdrawals of uninsured deposits, which were primarily overseas. Moreover, the Fed has also provided considerable indirect support to non-US entities via providing unlimited dollar swap lines to other central banks.
That is a long winded way of saying that not all of that $7.4 trillion applies to exposures that fall in the 350% debt to GDP figure cited above. Just to pick a number, say $6 trillion of the total goes to US debt. The US debt was $49 trillion. The Fed can commit less than 1/8 of the outstanding debt to solve the problem
As a nation we owe more then we can ever afford to pay. This comes from growing debt faster then GDP for many years. There are only to ways out of this mess. We can inflate our way out or we can allow many people to default. There is no third choice.
As for me, I prefer the default option to the massive inflation. At least under the default option there is a chance that the people who caused this mess will suffer more then those who played it straight. By contrast, massive inflation will benefit those with heavy debt and wipe out those who tried to save.
Given that the US is a democracy and a net debtor nation, I have no doubt about which solution this nation will chose in the end.