Lahore, Dec. 12 : The Mumbai attacks have prompted some Western officials to step up vigilance against the type of low-tech assault the 10 gunmen mounted last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Since the attacks in Mumbai, Al Qaeda websites and chat-rooms have lit up with aspiring militants urging more such attacks, the report quoted the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group as saying.

Washington, Dec 12 : Actor Jeremy Piven is reeling after his cell phone erased a personal message from US President-elect Barack Obama that included his personal phone number.

Obama had sent a thank you message to the ‘Entourage’ star for his election campaign along with his five numbers, which got deleted from the actor’s Blackberry.

“I was lucky to stump for Barack in Indiana and to introduce him in Chicago. Barack left me five numbers. It was the greatest voicemail that I''ve gotten in my life by the way... I saved it and I went back to listen to it and my BlackBerry had erased all of Barack Obama''s phone numbers,” Contactmusic quoted him as saying.

London, Dec 12 : A dedicated son fulfilled his dying dad’s last wish – to have his ashes buried in the bar.

Pub landlord Jack Woodward’s mortal remains lie beneath a flagstone with a plaque reading: “Stand here and have a drink on me.”

Jack, from Stoke Bruerne, near Towcester, Northants worked in the 17th-century Boat Inn since he was 14.

He wanted the public bar to be his final resting place.

“Dad is in an oak casket exactly where he wanted to be,” The Sun quoted eldest son Andrew, who runs the pub, as saying.

“He was born in the pub and spent almost his whole life here.

New York, Dec 12 : President-elect Barack Obama has distanced himself from the political scandal swirling around Governor Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, saying that he never talked to the governor about who would replace Obama in the Senate.

Obama added that he was “absolutely certain” his staff was not involved in any deal-making regarding his successor, The New York Times reported.

“That would be a violation of everything that this campaign has been about,” he said at a news conference in Chicago.

Peshawar, Dec 12 : A key Taliban commander Mustafa Kamal Kamran Hijrat, has been reportedly arrested in Peshawar.

Hijrat has been accused of masterminding attacks on cargo terminals harbouring NATO supplies. He allegedly carried out two attacks on three cargo terminals, the Daily Times reports.

According to sources, he is also responsible for hijacking two US military Humvees and 13 truckloads of wheat that were on their way to Afghanistan.

Peshawar Police have not confirmed his arrest.

Washington, Dec 12 : NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year prime mission on the red Planet, during which it found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments.

The orbiter has returned 73 terabits of science data, more than all earlier Mars missions combined.

The spacecraft will build on this record as it continues to examine Mars in unprecedented detail during its next two-year phase of science operations.