NEW DELHI, India — It took 10 minutes for word of the Nov. 26, Mumbai terror assaults to reach the top of the government of Maharashtra state, but nearly 10 hours for India's best commando team to reach the scene.

That delay may help to explain why it took three days for India's security forces to overpower 10 assailants who police say killed at least 188 people and wounded more than 280.

Indecision by politicians and the delay in launching the commando force, however, don't fully account for the extent of the slaughter, which now threatens to escalate into conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, where the attacks are thought to have been planned. » read more

HEBRON, West Bank — The Israeli government has arrested Jewish settler Itamar Ben Gvir more than 300 times by his own count.

He's been arrested for holding a public barbeque to celebrate the 2004 death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He's spent months under house arrest and scuffled with Israeli police, and he was temporarily barred from taking part in protests against Israel's decision to dismantle all its Gaza Strip settlements in 2005.

None of it, the 32-year-old father of two now says, has ensured that the Israeli government can't forcibly evict even one more Jewish settler from the West Bank. » read more

NEW DELHI — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought Wednesday to head off Indian retaliation against Pakistan for the Mumbai terrorist attacks as the U.S. stepped up pressure on Islamabad to cooperate "transparently, urgently and fully" in tracking down the perpetrators.

While Rice was in New Delhi, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Islamabad urging Pakistani civilian and military leaders to cooperate fully in the investigation into the attacks and intensify their operations against Islamic extremist groups. He's expected to fly to New Delhi while Rice goes to Islamabad.

Indian officials have suggested that they're contemplating striking the Islamist group in Pakistan suspected of mounting the Mumbai attacks. The Bush administration is fearful that military escalation would compel Pakistan to halt its operations against al Qaida and allied Islamic militants along its border with Afghanistan and rush its troops to its eastern border with India. » read more

NEW DELHI — Sixty hours in Mumbai have begun to change the calculus of global terrorism.

New reports suggest that both Indian and American intelligence agencies had foreseen the threat to Mumbai (formerly Bombay). Yet the manner of the attack — with 10 heavily armed, highly trained fighters clinically fanning out across the city — meant that no "police force anywhere would have been prepared to counter this type of operation," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at Georgetown University in Washington.

Armed sieges are not a new terrorist tactic, but never before has one been used to such effect. Some experts suggest this could be the most sophisticated terrorist attack since 9/11. Now, other militants might consider copycat operations — and the world's cities will have to be ready for them. » read more

BAGHDAD — About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.

Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering, construction and services company, hired the men, who're from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions.

"It's really dirty," a Sri Lankan man told McClatchy, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still wants to work for Najlaa. "For all of us, there are about 12 toilets and about 10 bathrooms. The food — it's three half-liter (one pint) bottles of water a day. Bread, cheese and jam for breakfast. Lunch is a small piece of meat, potato and rice. Dinner is rice and dal, but it's not dal," he said, referring to the Indian lentil dish. » read more