From CNN.com:

Heather Ferreira works in the slums of Mumbai, India, where she has watched thousands of women live under a “curse.”

The women she meets in the squalid streets where “Slumdog Millionaire” was filmed are often treated with contempt, she says. They’re considered ugly if their skin and hair are too dark. They are deemed “cursed” if they only have daughters. Many would-be mothers even abort their children if they learn they’re female.

Yet lately she says Indian women are getting another message from the emergence of another woman thousands of miles away. This woman has dark skin and hair. She walks next to her husband in public, not behind. And she has two daughters. But no one calls her cursed. They call her Michelle Obama, the first lady.

“She could be a new face for India,” says Ferreira, program officer for an HIV-prevention program run by World Vision, an international humanitarian group. “She shows women that it’s OK to have dark skin and to not have a son. She’s quite real to us.”

Those who focus on Michelle Obama’s impact on America are underestimating her reach. The first lady is inspiring women of color around the globe to look at themselves, and America, in fresh ways.

Click here for more.

Pakistan acknowledged for the first time that the Mumbai terrorist attacks were launched from its shores and at least partly plotted on its soil, saying Thursday that it had arrested most of the chief suspects including one described as “the main operator.”

Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said Pakistan has started criminal proceedings against eight suspects _ some of them also named by India as the masterminds of the attacks _ but he reiterated that authorities needed more evidence from New Delhi to secure convictions.

The revelations suggest Pakistan is serious about punishing those behind the November attacks, which killed 164 people and stirred fear that the nuclear-armed neighbors could slide toward war and that Pakistan might be distracted from its struggle against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

India and the U.S. have pressed Pakistan hard to dismantle Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Pakistan-based group fighting Indian rule in the divided Kashmir region that is widely blamed for the Mumbai carnage. Islamabad and New Delhi have fought two out of their three wars since 1947 over the region.

India’s Foreign Ministry called Pakistan’s announcement “a positive development” and said it would consider Islamabad’s request for further information.

Malik said investigators had traced a boat engine used by the attackers to sail from Pakistan to India and busted two hideouts of the suspects near the southern city of Karachi.

Other leads pointed to Europe and the United States, and Malik said Pakistan would ask the FBI for help.

“I want to assure the international community, I want to assure all those who have been victims of terrorism that we mean business,” Malik said, waving a copy of Pakistan’s initial findings at reporters gathered inside his ministry.

“We will continue our investigation, but we want tenable evidence from India. We want full cooperation from India so that this kind of ring be smashed.”

India says all 10 gunmen _ only one of whom was captured alive _ were Pakistanis and that their handlers in Pakistan had kept in close touch with them by phone during the three-day assault.

New Delhi provided a dossier of evidence to Islamabad, testing Pakistan’s insistence that it would do all in its power to punish those responsible _ and that it has truly abandoned its past sponsorship of Islamist militants including the Taliban.

In Pakistan’s first detailed response, Malik said criminal cases had been opened against eight suspects on charges of “abetting, conspiracy and facilitation” of a terrorist act.

He said six of them were in custody, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarrar Shah, both Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders named by India as the masterminds of the attack, and a person who sent an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attacks.

Indian media said at the time that they received an e-mail in the name of the previously unknown Deccan Mujahideen _ a name which suggested an Indian rather than Pakistani group was behind the attacks and which now appears to have been a decoy.

Malik said the culprits were “non-state actors,” a phrase used by Pakistani authorities to counter allegations that its intelligence agencies had a hand in the attacks.

Malik said the assailants used three boats to travel from Pakistan to Mumbai.

He said detectives had traced an engine recovered from one of the vessels to a shop in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi. He said the shopkeeper had provided the phone number of the buyer which led to a bank account in the name of Hammad Amin Sadiq.

Malik said authorities had arrested Sadiq and obtained from him information that led them to bust two “hide-outs of the terrorists,” one in Karachi and one about two hours drive away.

He described Sadiq, a 37-year-old who had been living in Karachi, as “the main operator” but didn’t elaborate.

He said the detainees had told of how the group used a spot on the Pakistani coast to practice their sea-borne attack.

To stiffen its case, Pakistan was sending 30 questions to India about the attacks, Malik said. Among the additional details sought are the DNA of the 10 gunmen and information on intercepted phone conversations between the militants and their handlers.

He also asked New Delhi to investigate what contacts _ and help _ the attackers had inside India. The terrorists also used phones with Indian SIM cards, he noted. Their two suspected handlers are still at large.

India’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the government will consider Islamabad’s request. “After that examination, we will share whatever we can with Pakistan,” the statement said.

On Thursday, Malik also suggested a wider international dimension to the crime.

One suspect, Javed Iqbal, had been “lured” back from Barcelona, Spain, where he had been living, and was now in Pakistani custody. While in Spain, Iqbal had arranged Internet telephone accounts used in the attacks and bills had been paid in Italy, Malik said.

Suspects also used a digital teleconferencing system whose service provider is based in Houston, Texas, while a Thuraya phone was issued in a Middle Eastern country, he said.

Other bills were paid by a company in Islamabad and two people have been arrested as a result, Malik said.

“It is not only Pakistan, but the system of the other countries has also been used,” Malik said.

The revelation could add to pressure on Islamabad to either bring Zarar Shah and other suspects to trial or extradite them to India.

“(Shah) has made some statement that he was involved,” said the government official, without providing specific details. “I can tell you that he is singing.”

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the disclosure, which was first reported in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday

A senior intelligence officer said Shah and another suspect, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, were cooperating with investigators, but cautioned that authorities had not reached a definite conclusion as to their involvement yet.

He too asked for anonymity. Indian officials were not immediately available for comment.

Gunmen targeted 10 sites including two five-star hotels and a Jewish center during the November siege on Mumbai‘s financial capital, killing 164 people in a three-day reign of terror.

India and the United States say the militants who planned and carried out the attacks were Pakistani and are demanding Islamabad root out and punish those responsible.

The official also told The Associated Press that India has shared some evidence of its suspicions but he said it was “very very little.” Pakistan’s president and other top officials have said India has yet to provide any evidence.

The intelligence officer also said the country had received “information” on the attacks from other, unspecified, nations.

“They (India) gave us a list of numbers and phone calls, most of them useless,” the official said.

Shah and Lakhvi have been identified as members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned militant group accused by India of carrying out the Mumbai attacks and others on its soil.

They were taken into custody soon after the attacks.

India says both were involved in planning the siege but hasn’t made any evidence public or provided many details about their role in the plot.

Accusations of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s involvement have put Islamabad in a difficult position because the group is widely believed to have been created by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to battle Indian-rule in Kashmir, a Himalayan region claimed by Pakistan and India.

The United States and its Western allies are concerned Pakistan will lose focus on the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban if tensions with India persist.

Washington has called for calm on both sides, but has made it clear it wants to see Pakistan crack down on the attackers. On Wednesday, President George W. Bush called his counterparts in India and Pakistan to discuss the situation.

“All three leaders … agreed that no one wanted to take any steps that unnecessarily raise tensions,” White House deputy press secretary Gordon Johndroe told reporters.

President Asif Ali Zardari told Bush that Pakistan would not tolerate any one using its territory to launch attacks on other countries, said Zardari spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

A list of about 20 people — including India’s most-wanted man — was submitted to Pakistan’s high commissioner to India on Monday night, said India’s foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

India has already demanded Pakistan take “strong action” against those responsible for the attacks, and the U.S. has pressured Islamabad to cooperate in the investigation. America’s chief diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will visit India on Wednesday.

The Indian government faces widespread accusations of security and intelligence failures after suspected Muslim militants carried out a three-day attack across India’s financial capital, killing 172 people and wounding 239.

Also Tuesday, Israelis began burying the six Jews killed in one of those attacks, the assault on a Jewish center run by the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement.

Several thousand ultra-Orthodox mourners gathered in Jerusalem for the first funeral, that of Leibish Teitelbaum, an American who lived in Jerusalem.

Four Israelis and a Mexican Jewish woman were also killed. A memorial ceremony was scheduled for later Wednesday for the 29-year-old rabbi who ran the Jewish center, Gavriel Holtzberg, and his 28-year-old wife, Rivkah.

Indian officials continued to interrogate the only surviving attacker, who reportedly told police that he and the other nine gunmen had trained for months in camps in Pakistan operated by the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India’s foreign intelligence agency received information as recently as September that Pakistan-based terrorists were plotting attacks against Mumbai targets, according to a government intelligence official familiar with the matter.

The information was then relayed to domestic security authorities, said the official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the details and spoke on condition of anonymity. But it’s unclear whether the government acted on the intelligence.

The famous Taj Mahal hotel, scene of much of the bloodshed, had tightened security with metal detectors and other measures in the weeks before the attacks, after being warned of a possible threat.

But the precautions “could not have stopped what took place,” Ratan Tata, chairman of the company that owns the hotel, told CNN. “They (the gunmen) didn’t come through that entrance. They came from somewhere in the back.”

A day after soldiers finishing removed the last bodies from the hotel, where the standoff finally ended Saturday morning, wood boards covered its marble latticework and seafront entrance as plain-clothes police searched for evidence.

The building was the last to be cleared, following the five-star Oberoi hotel, the Jewish center, and other sites struck in this city of 18 million.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has promised to strengthen maritime and air security and look into creating a new federal investigative agency, met Tuesday with top security aides to review any government lapses.

Among those sought by India is fugitive Dawood Ibrahim — a powerful gangster, the alleged mastermind of 1993 Mumbai bombings, and India’s most-wanted man.

Also included is Masood Azhar, a terror suspect freed from an Indian prison in exchange for the release of hostages aboard an Indian Airlines aircraft hijacked on Christmas Day 1999.

In the past, Pakistan has denied harboring the men. However, Pakistan said it would consider India’s request and respond after receiving the list.

“We must try to dampen down the discourse of conflict and work toward regional peace,” said Pakistani Information Minister Sherry Rehman.

While the cross-border rhetoric between Pakistan and India has increased since the attacks, both countries — by their often-bellicose standards — carefully refrained from making statements that could quickly lead to a buildup of troops along their already militarized frontier.

Mukherjee appeared to tone things down further Tuesday, telling reporters that “nobody is talking about military action,” according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Mukherjee, responding to questions on what actions India would take, said only “time will show.”

India had summoned Pakistan’s high commissioner late Monday, telling him India “expects that strong action would be taken against those elements,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash.

In Pakistan, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi pledged full cooperation.

Qureshi said Pakistan has offered a “joint investigative mechanism and joint commission.” He didn’t say when the offer was made or if India had responded.

With the investigation still under way, and FBI and Scotland Yard teams assisting, more details emerged about the suspects and the attacks.

The sole surviving attacker, Ajmal Qasab, told police his group trained over about six months in camps operated by Lashkar in Pakistan, learning close-combat techniques, hostage-taking, handling of explosives, satellite navigation, and high-seas survival skills, according to two Indian security officials familiar with the investigation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the details.

Lashkar was outlawed in Pakistan under pressure from the U.S. in 2002, a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist group.

Qasab told investigators the militants hijacked an Indian vessel and killed three crew members, keeping the captain alive long enough to guide them into Mumbai, the two security officials said.

The men, ages 18-28, then came ashore in a dinghy at two different Mumbai areas before slipping into the city in two teams, officials said.

The gunmen hired two separate taxis after reaching Mumbai, planting bombs that later exploded in each vehicle, officials said. Two more unexploded bombs were found outside the Taj Mahal hotel.

The gunmen struck at several sites, including a train station, where they mowed down police and passers-by; the Jewish center; and the two luxury hotels, representing the city’s wealth and tourism, reportedly seeking out Westerners.

The 19 foreigners killed were Americans, Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Mexico, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia, Singapore and Mexico.

Tensions between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India flared after the attacks last week in Mumbai that killed at least 172 people and wounded 239 others.

“Such a tragic incident must bring opportunity rather than the defeat of a nation,” Zardari said in an interview with Aaj television. “We don’t think the world’s great nations and countries can be held hostage by non-state actors.”

A top Indian police officer said Sunday that the only gunman captured after the attacks said he belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group with links to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir

Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria added that the gunman, Ajmal Qasab, said he was trained at a camp in Pakistan.

Lashkar has long been seen as a creation of the Pakistani intelligence service to help fight India in Kashmir. The group was banned in Pakistan in 2002 under pressure from the U.S., a year after Washington and Britain listed it a terrorist organization.

Other Indian leaders have blamed “elements in Pakistan” for the attack, but have not said whether they believe the terrorists had the backing of any state agencies.

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said his country “would itself take action against the miscreants if there is any evidence against a Pakistani national,” according to a statement released by his office.

He also cautioned that India should not make allegations in the media. “The blame game should be avoided at all costs as (it) may affect the state of relations between the two countries,” he said.

Zardari’s spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, said Islamabad has “demanded evidence of the complicity of any Pakistani group” but has received none.

The nuclear-armed nations have fought three wars since the subcontinent was divided at the end of British colonial rule in 1947, two over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

The United States is watching the situation closely, knowing that any flare-up in tensions between the two countries could damage its hopes of defeating al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she expects Pakistan to cooperate fully with any probe, something Islamabad has already said it will do so long as India gives it the evidence.

“What we are emphasizing to the Pakistani government is the need to follow the evidence wherever it leads,” Rice told reporters in London. “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions myself on this, but I do think that this is a time for complete, absolute, total transparency and cooperation and that’s what we expect.”

Rice is cutting short a European trip to visit India later this week

Pakistan’s prime minister, president and foreign minister have reached out to their counterparts in Asia, the U.S. and Europe since the attack to talk about the tensions.

Prime Minister Gilani has called for a meeting of all political party leaders Tuesday to reach consensus on post-Mumbai policy.

Parliamentary opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ahmed Khan urged the government to be firm with India, saying any evidence of involvement by a Pakistani citizen should be presented to the country.

“Put up or shut up,” he said.

From UK’s Telegraph:

She has been in contact with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in recent days to ease tensions between the nuclear states, and this is expected to be a dominant theme in her meetings with Indian officials.

Earlier, Mr Bush called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to again offer US support and condolences for the victims and their families of the attacks, which claimed the lives of nearly 200 people and injured scores more.

Five Americans were killed in the attacks in which gunmen stormed Mumbai’s top luxury hotels, its biggest railway station, a Jewish center, and several other sites in the financial capital.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Ms Rice decided to “modify” her European trip, cutting out meetings in Rome to go personally to India.

“We thought it was important to take this moment to travel to Delhi to express the condolences of the U.S. people directly to the government of India and its people and to hold face-to-face meetings,” Mr McCormack said.

“It is very sad that India has experienced this level of terrorism. There will be discussions about how to move forward.”

MUMBAI, India (AP) — It took just 10 young men armed with rifles and grenades to terrorize this city of 18 million and turn its postcard-perfect icons into battlefields until security forces ended one of the deadliest attacks in India’s history early Saturday.

After the final siege at the luxury Taj Mahal hotel, adoring crowds surrounded six buses carrying weary, unshaven commandos dressed in black fatigues, shaking their hands and giving them flowers. One of the commandos said he had been awake for nearly 60 hours since the assault began Wednesday. Another sat sipping a bottle of water and holding a pink rose.

“What happened is disgusting,” said Suresh Thakkar, 59, who reopened his clothing store behind the hotel Saturday for the first time since the attacks. “It will be harder to recover, but we will recover. Bombay people have a lot of spirit and courage.”

The bloody rampage carried out by suspected Muslim militants at 10 sites across Mumbai, the nation’s financial capital formerly known as Bombay, killed at least 195 people and wounded 295. Among the dead were 18 foreigners, including six Americans.

Orange flames and dark smoke engulfed the Taj Mahal after dawn Saturday as Indian forces killed the last three militants with grenades and gunfire. Hours after the fire fight, parts of the landmark hotel were in shambles, its corner facade charred black and a red carpet leading to double doors littered with broken glass.

“Suddenly no one feels safe or secure,” said Joe Sequeira, the manager of a popular restaurant near the Oberoi hotel, another site targeted in the attacks. “It will take time. People are scared but they will realize it’s no use being scared and sitting at home.”

While soldiers scoured the massive 565-room Taj Mahal for any remaining captives and defused booby traps, a city known for its resilience in the face of tragedy began mourning and cremating its dead. At least 20 killed in the fighting were members of security forces.

A previously unknown Muslim group called Deccan Mujahideen – a name suggesting origins inside India – has claimed responsibility. But Indian officials said the sole surviving gunman, now in custody, was from Pakistan and voiced suspicions of their volatile neighbor. Nine other attackers were killed, they said.

Each new detail about the attackers raised more questions. Who trained the militants, who were so well prepared they carried bags of almonds to keep their energy up? What role, if any, did archrival Pakistan play in the attack? And how did so few assailants, who looked like college students, wreak so much damage?

Pakistan denied it was involved and demanded evidence for Indian charges. Islamabad has pledged to share intelligence with its rival neighbor but went back on its initial promise to send its spy chief to aid the probe, saying it would send a lower ranking official instead.

As officials pointed the finger at neighboring Pakistan, some Indians looked inward and expressed anger at their own government.

“People are worried, but the key difference is anger,” said Rajesh Jain, chief executive officer at a brokerage firm, Pranav Securities. “People are worked up about the ineffectiveness of the administration. Does the government have the will, the ability to tackle the dangers we face?”

On Saturday, officials said they believed that just 10 gunmen had taken part in the attacks. The sole survivor, identified a Pakistani national, Mohammad Ajmal Qasam, was being interrogated, officials said.

The gunmen were as brazen as they were well trained, using sophisticated weapons, GPS technology and mobile and satellite phones to communicate, authorities said.

“They were constantly in touch with a foreign country,” said R.R. Patil, deputy to the chief of Maharashtra state’s chief, without giving further details.

“Whenever they were under a little bit of pressure they would hurl a grenade. They freely used grenades,” said Dutt.

Suspicions in Indian media quickly settled on the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, long seen as a creation of the Pakistani intelligence service to help wage its clandestine war against India in disputed Kashmir.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said some “signatures of the attack” were consistent with Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group that has operated in Kashmir. Both are reported to be linked to al-Qaida.

U.S. officials were worried about a possible surge in violence between Pakistan and India – the nuclear armed rivals have fought three wars against each other, two over Kashmir – and were sending FBI agents to India to help investigate.

President George W. Bush pledged full U.S. support for the investigation, saying the killers “will not have the final word.”

“As the people of the world’s largest democracy recover from these attacks, they can count on the people of world’s oldest democracy to stand by their side,” Bush added in a brief address from the White House.

Indian security officers believe many of the gunmen may have reached the city using a black and yellow rubber dinghy found near the attack sites.

The Indian navy said it was investigating whether a trawler found drifting off the coast of Mumbai, with a bound corpse on board, was used in the attack.

The trawler, named Kuber, had been found Thursday and was brought to Mumbai, a peninsula surrounded by the Arabian Sea, said Navy spokesman Capt. Manohar Nambiar. Authorities suspect the boat had sailed from a port in the neighboring state of Gujarat.

The fighting narrowed to the Taj Mahal hotel on Friday night, hours after elite commandos stormed a Jewish center and found at least eight hostages dead Friday.

The bodies of New York Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were found at the Jewish center. Their son, Moshe, who turned 2 on Saturday, was scooped up by an employee Thursday as she fled the building. At least two Israelis and another American were also killed in the house, said Rabbi Zalman Schmotkin, a spokesman for the Chabad Lubavitch movement, which ran the center.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said nine bodies had been found in the center.

Among the foreigners killed in the attacks were six Americans, according to the U.S. Embassy. The dead also included Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.

By Saturday night the death toll was at 195, the country’s deadliest attack since 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai killed 257 people. But officials said the toll from the three days of carnage was likely to rise as more bodies were brought out of the hotels.

In the southern city of Bangalore, black clad commandos formed an honor guard for the flag-draped coffin of Maj. Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was killed in the fighting at the Taj Mahal hotel.

“He gave up his own life to save the others,” said J.K. Dutt, director general of India’s elite commando unit.