Hanoi - The president of India, who is on a four-day state visit to Vietnam, on Thursday condemned the terrorist attacks on Mumbai that left 101 people dead and paralyzed much of India's largest city.

"This mindless attack is the work of those who have no regard for human lives and are pursuing a path of destruction," President Pratibha Devisingh Patil said at a press conference in Hanoi.

In a landmark decision, the Union Health ministry on Tuesday released the first India-specific guidelines for prevention and management of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

As per the new standards released by the Ministry, a person with a body mass index of 23 kg/m2 will be considered overweight and below that as one with normal BMI - unlike the cut-off limit of 25 kg/m2 earlier. Now, those with BMI of 25 kg/m2 will be clinically termed obese (as opposed to 30 kg/m2 at the international level) and those with BMI of 32.5 kg/m2 will require bariatric surgery to eliminate excess.

Mumbai, Nov. 27: The gunmen who killed over 80 people in Mumbai on Wednesday night are said to have ordered hotel guests: “Put your hand up if you’re British or American.”

According to The Sun, frightened hostages were marched off to undisclosed locations within the hotel, their fate unclear. Reports said they were up to 40 British and other foreigners.

The Trident and Taj Mahal Palace hotels were among at least seven locations attacked simultaneously by wild-eyed terrorists carrying machine guns and grenades.

At the Oberoi, Britisher Alex Chamberlain — who works for the Indian Premier League cricket website — told how he managed to slip away as up to 40 guests were herded up
18 flights of stairs at gunpoint.

New Delhi - Elite commandos prepared to storm the Trident hotel in India's financial hub of Mumbai Thursday as police said several guests were still on the premises.

The Trident along with the iconic Taj hotel were among the targets of heavily armed gunmen who carried out coordinated attacks on at least 10 sites in Mumbai beginning late Wednesday, killing 101 people and injuring 287, an official at Mumbai's police control room said.

The official said six foreigners were among the dead but they had not yet been identified.

Sydney  - Australian soap opera star Brooke Satchwell described Thursday how she hid inside a bathroom cupboard as gunmen were shooting other guests at Mumbai's Taj Mahal Hotel.

Two Australians were in hospital and six members of a trade delegation were missing after multiple, coordinated terrorist attacks late Wednesday on 10 sites in India's financial capital.

"I came back in [the hotel] and went via the bathrooms, which were on the ground floor next to the lobby, and as I stepped inside the lobby, gunshots were starting to go off," the 28-year-old Neighbours actor told a local television station.

Around 80 people, including a foreign tourist and four top police officers, were killed and more than 250 wounded as terrorists struck in yet another series of planned and synchronised gun battles flared in Mumbai's financial district late Wednesday.

Attackers were reported to be holding tourists and other guests hostage in two five-star hotels, the Taj Intercontinental and Trident (formerly Oberoi), confronting the waterfront across the Arabian Sea close to the Mumbai’s crucial landmark, the Gateway of India.