From the Times of Indian….

MUMBAI: Two NSG personnel, including an officer, were today martyred and six other commandos injured during operations against terrorists in Mumbai, the first casualties suffered by the elite force during the siege. ( Watch )

Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, 31, was martyred while engaging terrorists this morning at the Taj hotel, an NSG spokesperson said.

This is just the latest in a long string of high ranking Indian police and army personal dying on the front lines. I am sure this is a great credit to their bravery but it strikes me as kind of odd. Don’t the Indian’s have any good NCOs? It seems like a major is a rather high rank to be leading from the front in a close quarters combat situation.

Also what is up with this? This is not the way i am use to seeing elite unites handle a gun. But this is not an isolated incident. I saw similar tactics being used on a video clip of the assault on Nariman House. Unfortunately, I can’t find that clip now.

From the Times of India…

The shootout on Wednesday found around 100 cops of the Railway Police Force (RPF) as well as Government Railway Police (GRP) ill-equipped to tackle two AK-47-wielding terrorists. Only six of those cops were armed with either Self-Loading Rifles (SLRs) or automatic weapons. The rest had lathis.

J N Lal, divisional railway manager of Central Railway, said no one imagined such fidayeen attacks at CST. “We were buying gadgets to tackle bomb blasts. Now we will surely think of modern weapons for our security personnel,” said Lal.

Click here to read what a Lathis is. Basically, it is not much more than a stick.

Kim is widely thought to have be incapacitated by a stroke. The question is, what does this mean for the future of North Korea? One possiblity is a Chinese invasion of North Korea. From Spiegel…..

It is quite possible that this regime will collapse without Kim. To prevent a wave of starving refugees from crossing into China, Beijing has increased its troop levels along the border with North Korea. One of the scenarios now being discussed in Tokyo, Seoul and Washington is an invasion by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. If North Korea were to descend into anarchy, China, as a “stabilizing force,” could attempt to gain control over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons. Russia is believed to have approved of this plan.

My question is why wait for the regime to collapse? North Korea has got to be one of few places on earth where having Chinese overlords would be an improvement for just about everyone except for a privileged few.

From Alice the (British) Architect…..

These days, thanks to a draconian law brought about by people with beards wearing tweeds and sandals, lobbying the government on a day the government just wanted something to do, disturbing a single bat is a crime worthy of hanging. Well, not quite that bad, you understand, but a severe fine and a criminal record is more than enough to make someone think twice about waking the little critters from their daily slumber.

I notified English Nature, as the law dictates, and they sent a ‘bat worker’ round to spend the evening monitoring. The builders continued to work elsewhere, away from the roof, as quietly as possible (digging a foundation, if you must know). Despite charming assurances from the Bat People on the telephone, I received a horrible letter saying that all work must cease at once, and could not start again until the bat season was over, and how dare we even consider repairing the roof when the bats needed it. (There was no mention of the people who also happened to live there, and for whom the building was actually constructed).

From later on in the post….

We got off lightly. There are some kinds of bats that are so rare, that some buildings are simply not allowed to be worked on at all (according to a colleague who this happened to) even if it is listed and in danger of falling down. There are some people with colonies of 300 bats in their roof, all peeing and pooing into the insulation. Despite what the nicey nicey literature on English Nature’s website says about bat poo being ambrosia from heaven, it actually stinks. Many churches have bats, and whilst in some parts of the building they do not cause much of a problem (the belfry!) bat droppings all over the ancient furnishings are not particularly desirable. English Nature’s advice? Put cloths over everything.

Unlike most people, I like bats. I never had the problems with them that most people seem to have. There is something cool about seeing bats flying around and I always figured that anything eating bugs was a friend of mine. But if they had laws like this in America I would be killing every bat I could find. There are ways of killing the buggers without being caught.

But it is no surprise that England has laws like this on the book. If they let pirates go because they are afraid of violating their human rights, they ought to treat the bats at least as well.

From the New York Times…

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.

From Rod Dreher….

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.

From The New York Times….

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?

From The Wall Street Journal….

The U.S. is alone among the five declared nuclear nations in not modernizing its arsenal. The U.K. and France are both doing so. Ditto China and Russia. “We’re the only ones who aren’t,” Gen. Chilton says. Congress has refused to fund the Department of Energy’s Reliable Replacement Warhead program beyond the concept stage and this year it cut funding even for that.

From later on in the article…

Gen. Chilton pulls out a prop to illustrate his point: a glass bulb about two inches high. “This is a component of a V-61” nuclear warhead, he says. It was in “one of our gravity weapons” — a weapon from the 1950s and ’60s that is still in the U.S. arsenal. He pauses to look around the Journal’s conference table. “I remember what these things were for. I bet you don’t. It’s a vacuum tube. My father used to take these out of the television set in the 1950s and ’60s down to the local supermarket to test them and replace them.”

And here comes the punch line: “This is the technology that we have . . . today.” The technology in the weapons the U.S. relies on for its nuclear deterrent dates back to before many of the people in the room were born.

I am not sure what to make of this. Sometimes old school works far better then the new fangled stuff. On the other hand, I would really hate to see the safety mechanisms degrade. The only thing worse than having a nuclear weapon go off on purpose would be for one to go off by accident.