Tuesday, November 10, 2009 NEW DELHI: India is launching a joint maritime security exercise this week to prevent future Mumbai-style terror attacks and test various measures taken during the past one year to secure the 7,500-kilometre coastline. The exercise, involving the Indian Navy and Coast Guards, state police of the nine coastal states and several other agencies, would be carried out on both east and west coasts. It would test how and at what pace various agencies shared intelligence and acted on it to prevent terrorists and smugglers from infiltrating. Sources said the exercise, to check coordination among the agencies at various stages of an operation, would be launched formally by the end of November to avoid any possible terrorist attack on the Mumbai attacks’ first anniversary on November 26. This exercise would be bigger than the state-wise tests being carried out by the navy and other agencies to determine the response to any attacks from the sea. It would include simulated attempts by mock terrorists to sneak into Indian waters through various sea routes and how the navy, Coast Guards, Customs, port authorities, state police, Intelligence Bureau, Fisheries Department and the lighthouse directorate foil the attempts.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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