Morning News Roundup (12 July)

• Two of the main Muslim militant groups operating in Kashmir--Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba--today denied involvement in yesterday's train attacks in Mumbai, which killed at least 183 people and injured some 700. Security sources in India have said the synchronised bombings were likely to have been carried out by militants connected to one or more of the dozens of armed Kashmiri separatist groups. [Guardian]
  
  
  
  
• Hizb-ul-Mujahideen is an umbrella grouping based in Pakistan of around a dozen Kashmiri militant groups. Other militant groups active in Kashmir, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, largely recruit from Pakistan's central Punjab province and do not belong to Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and both countries claim the territory in full. [ITV]
  
  
• Xenia Dormandy (in the WaPo) comments on the strained relations between India:
  

  [H]ow long can India, Indians and the Singh government withstand the constant pressure from militant groups before they have to react? By any measure of international diplomacy, they've already been extraordinarily patient; compare their restraint with Israel's response to the kidnapping of its soldier or to the U.S. and Japanese responses to North Korea's missile tests.
  
  Now is a moment when Pakistan really needs to respond. It wants to be taken seriously as an important player on the international scene. It has repeatedly asked the United States for a nuclear energy deal similar to the one we are working on with India. But until Pakistan -- and this means not only President Pervez Musharraf but also the military, the people and the political parties, including the religious party, the MMA -- gets serious about shutting down, arresting and otherwise dismantling the militant groups that operate from its territory, it cannot expect to be treated as a responsible player in the region. Pakistan is working on it, but it could do so much more.
  
  A good -- or at least stable -- India-Pakistan relationship is one of the most important elements for long-term global stability. Given that both are nuclear powers, their region is one of the most dangerous in the world. And with attacks such as this, it is also one of the most volatile. India has taken great strides to tamp down this volatility. Pakistan needs to do more.

  
  
• More than 50 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in violence that included a double suicide bombing near busy entrances to the fortified Green Zone, scattered shootings, mortar attacks, a series of car bombs and the ambush of a bus with Shiite mourners returning from a burial.
  
  Tuesday’s killings, many of them apparently carried out with sectarian vengeance, raised the three-day death toll in the capital alone to well over 100, magnified the daunting challenges facing the new government and deepened a sense of dread among Iraqis. [NYTimes]
  
  
• The federal antiterrorism database includes potential “targets” like Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street,” a new inspector general report shows. Indiana is listed as the most target-rich state in the U.S., with “50 percent more listed sites than New York.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Pearl Jam has promised to donate $100,000 to several groups that focus on climate change, renewable energy and other environmental causes as part of an effort to offset carbon emissions the band churns out on tour. Cascade Land Conservancy and EarthCorps, which work to protect and replenish Puget Sound-area forests, are among nine organizations Pearl Jam picked to receive donations. [WaPo]
  
  
• There is as much wind power potential (900,000 megawatts) off our coasts as the current capacity of all power plants in the United States combined, according to a new report entitled "A Framework for Offshore Wind Energy Development in the United States" (download PDF), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and General Electric.
  

  Most of the total potential offshore wind resources exist relatively close to major urban load centers, where high energy costs prevail and where opportunities for wind development on land are limited. This is especially true in the densely populated Northeast, where nearly one-fifth of that national populations lives on less than 2% of the total land area.

  
  
• David Cameron, the fresh-faced leader of Britain's main opposition Conservatives, was given the go-ahead Tuesday to install a wind turbine and solar panels on his plush London house. The environmentally-conscious 39-year-old got the green light from Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council's Planning Services Committee during a public meeting, despite local opposition. [TerraDaily]
  
  
• And finally, who says that this is a Do-Nothing Congress? The House easily approved a bill yesterday to curb online poker games, sports betting and other Internet-based wagering that gained infamy as a central focus of a major lobbying scandal. The 317-to-93 vote came nearly six years to the day after a similar measure went down to surprise defeat. [WaPo]