Three French nationals, an Italian and a Spaniard were among 23 foreigners killed in cloudburst and flash floods that devastated Leh last Friday even as 73 injured people, including security personnel, were today flown out of the region by IAF for medical help.

The toll in the tragedy rose to 166 with 400 people still missing, official sources said.

Three French citizens — Augavelis Henri, Hellot Jacques and Daniel Hauri, an Italian identified as Riccardo Titton and Maromas Maria Lousdes from Spain have been declared dead, they said.

Sixteen of those killed are from Nepal, namely Nema Zangmo, Tsering Neklal, Bakta Bahadur, Kama Lama, Ajay Raina, Khunchok Gelak, Lakpa Gyalmo, Shekhar, Mahurdin Ansari, Manee Patel, Ramesh Patel, Narai Badur Sume, Santosh Kumar, Nel Badur, Saryanareyan Chaudhary and Anil Chaudhary, they said.

Two other victims were Tibetans. They were identified as Pasang Tsering and Tsering Yangkyid, the sources said.

Meanwhile, 73 people, including 49 security personnel, who were injured at different places following cloudburst, were brought to Udhampur from Leh for treatment in an IL-76 transport aircraft this morning, Group Captain of IAF P M Vithalkar said.

A special control room has been set up in the Ministry of External Affairs to streamline the collation and dissemination of information on foreigners affected by the tragedy.

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Kosovo, the young Balkans nation, is on the right path to become “India of Europe” in terms of information technology development and customer service call center for Europe, especially the German speaking states.

In Kosovo, currently are operating 28 companies as call centers, while the trend of opening of these businesses is growing. In these companies have over 600 employees, whose average age ranges 18-25 years.

These companies provide services to the field of Telemarketing, customer service, billing and account maintenance and technical support.

Vjollca Cavolli, executive director of the Association for Information and Communication Technologies in Kosovo said that Kosovo has the potential and capacity to provide services to call for European countries, in particular the German states.

The number of Kosovars who speak the German language is the highest in the Balkans.

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At least 60 people were killed and over 90 passengers injured when a train in high speed tore through the rear of another at the Sainthia station in Bhirbhum district of West Bengal, after it apparently overshot the signal in the small hours of Monday.

Driver M C Dey and assistant driver N K Mandal of the Sealdah-bound Uttarbanga Express, which collided with the Ranchi-bound Vananchal Express, were among the dead in the accident for which railways are not ruling out sabotage as the cause.

The guard of the Vananchal Express A Mukherjee also died in the mishap which was so severe that the roof and the sides of one of the compartments mounted the road overbridge across the tracks in the station, 191 kms from Kolkata, in Eastern Railway.

A part of another compartment of the Vananchal Express split and fell on the road along the tracks after being thrown over the bridge.

“A total of 60 persons, including three railway employees, have lost their lives in the accident when three rear coaches including one luggage van and two unreserved general second class coaches of the Vananchal Express were affected,” an Eastern Railway release said here.

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In the wake of outrage over failure to get former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson, extradited to India, government on Tuesday asserted that case against him in connection with the Bhopal gas tragedy was not over and he can be procured and tried.

Maintaining that the case is not over, the Law Minister said in case he can be “obtained” he can still be tried.

In 2003, a request for extradition of Anderson was made to the US side under India-US bilateral extradition treaty. This request has already been reiterated on more than one occasion, MEA sources said today.

Asked whether government was making or would make efforts to extradite Anderson, he said he could not comment on the issue.

Nearly 26 years after world’s worst industrial disaster left over 15,000 dead, former Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and six others were yesterday sentenced to two years imprisonment. The outcome of the case came under attack from civil rights activists and political parties.

89-year-old Anderson, the then Chairman of Union Carbide Corporation of USA, who lives in the United States, appeared to have gone scot-free for the present as he is still an absconder and did not subject himself to trial. There was no word about him in the judgement of the Bhopal court.

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Sixty-eight passengers of a Mumbai-bound express train were killed and 200 injured in a Maoist attack Jhargram early on Friday that derailed 13 coaches, five of which were hit by a goods train coming from the opposite direction.

Maoist-backed People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) claimed responsibility for the derailment of the Howrah-Kurla Lokmanya Tilak Gyaneshwari Super Deluxe Express that occurred in West Midnapore district, about 150 kms from Kolkata.

Confusion prevailed over whether a bomb blast or an act of sabotage by removal of fish plates led to the derailment, in yet another Naxal attack targeting railways.

“PCPA has left two posters near the rail tracks clearly owning responsibility for the derailment,” IGP (Law and Order) S Karpurakayastha said in Kolkata. The posters read, “We had demanded withdrawal of joint security forces from Jangalmahal (West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura) and end of CPI(M) atrocities. But those demands were not met”.

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A strategy by 18 African countries to develop a joint textile manufacturing chain will make products from the region more competitive in the world market.

The plan that aims at producing “garments manufactured in Africa” will see the value chain from the cotton seed to finished garments broken into stages and each assigned to different countries with a comparative advantage.

The new strategy by the Africa Cotton & Textile Industries Federation (ACTIF) is a departure from the current scenario where African countries have largely exported cotton to other continents for processing into clothes.

“We are only good at providing raw material without adding value. We should capture the entire value chain from the cotton seed to the shirt,” ACTIF chairman Jaswinder Bedi said.

Africa grows 12 per cent of the cotton in the world, out of which 95 per cent is exported in that form.

Players in the industry are looking into strategies of setting up factories in strategic parts of the continent to use up the tonnes of cotton grown in Africa to produce fabrics in huge volumes for the regional markets.

ACTIF programme manager Fred Kong’ong’o said the initiative dubbed “Brand Africa” hopes to take advantage of the East African Community Common Market and efforts towards regional integration.

He added that the manufactured garments would be promoted as products of an eco-friendly process from the farm to the time they leave the factory as clothing.

However, this plan faces stiff competition from secondhand clothes and imports that are preferred to the locally manufactured clothes.

The situation is further complicated by the high cost of manufacturing in parts of the region. Industry players want the government to create demand for locally manufactured garments.

Already, the government has indicated that it intends to buy uniforms for hospitals, the disciplined forces and other large users from local manufacturers.

Recently, Prime Minister Raila Odinga announced plans to roll out a stimulus package for the textile industry, besides implementing recommendations of a study conducted in 2005 for the industry’s revival.

About 41 textile factories have collapsed over the years, rendering about 400,000 people who worked there unemployed.

Mr Bedi said that it might prove necessary to establish a textile upgrading fund since the collapsed firms do not have up to date technology.

ACTIF intends to stage a workshop for fashion designers that will culminate in fashion shows in Nairobi this month as part of its launch in an effort to brand locally manufactured merchandise.

It is meant to showcase garments made in Africa besides fostering closer collaboration between fashion designers and garment manufacturers.

The event’s concept paper indicates that it aims at tapping into the potential of various African cultures and production of organic cotton products.It adds that similar strategies where fashion designers have been used to boost textile and apparel business has been successfully used in China, Turkey, India, South Africa and Mauritius.

According to ACTIF the high cost of power in Kenya has seen factories relocate to other countries in the region with lower costs. While Kenya levies US$0.24 per unit of power, it costs US$0.12 in Tanzania, US$0.04 in Egypt and US$0.03 in Ethiopia.

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Blood stains, spent shells, mismatched shoes and swatches of discarded camouflage gear still litter the wide field 3 km from Chintalnar village in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district where Maoist rebels killed 76 personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force’s 62nd Battalion. At the battalion’s campsite, jawans barricaded the entrance with concertina wire and refused to speak with the press.

Indian Air Force helicopters buzzed overhead, bringing in fresh troops and supplies to assist the besieged camp.

While information regarding the exact chronology of Tuesday’s attack is still unclear, in a press conference in Jagdalpur, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram reeled out a sequence of events slightly at odds with reports carried by The Hindu on Tuesday.

Unlike previously reported, Tuesday’s mission was conducted entirely by the CRPF with only one accompanying head constable from the Chhattisgarh police. However, the operation was jointly planned by the police and the CRPF, which resulted in the initial confusion regarding the nature of the so-called “joint-operation.”

Of the 82 CRPF men who went on the original mission, 75 were killed and seven injured.

While a high-ranking police officer based in Raipur told The Hindu that an additional 40 men from the Chhattisgarh police had accompanied the force into the forest, he appeared to have been confused by the additional troops sent as reinforcements.

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Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has expressed the confidence that the government would be able to obtain a multi year security assistance package from the United States.

Speaking in Senate on the recent concluded strategic dialogue between Pakistan and the United States, the foreign minister said the Pakistan side was able to convince the US administration about the country’s genuine security needs.

He said the United States has agreed on fast track delivery of the equipment needed by Pakistan.

The minister said it has been agreed that the United States would release substantial amount under Coalition Support Fund by the end of this month and all the backlog for the last year would be cleared by June, 2010.

He said during the dialogue Pakistan side not only tried to convey what kind of challenges the country is confronting because of its wholehearted involvement in the war on terror but also the urgent need for assistance.

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Terrorism and militancy are being fanned to destabilise the economy of the country which is at the threshold of a double digit growth, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said.

He said hostile forces seek to undermine the security and stability of our nation.

“Even while they (hostile forces) challenge our borders and our boundaries, they make attempts to destabilize our economy. Terrorism and militancy are being fanned to hinder the growth of our country,” Chidambaram said in his address at the CISF Raising Day Parade here.

He said since the 1980’s, India has emerged as one of the most happening economies of the world. “The past decade has seen good growth and our economy is on the threshold of a double digit growth,” Chidambaram said.

He said the country’s growth depends on infrastructure and the CISF, which guards some of the most critical installations, is securing India’s future.

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Indian external affairs minister S.M. Krishna has reiterated that the Sri Lankan government should empower the Tamil-speaking people through a political process, reports Colombo Today.

By that, the government should open a new chapter in the country’s history, he has told the media in Chennai.

According to PTI, Mr. Krishna has said that India was for the implementation of the 13th amendment to the constitution conferring equal rights to people.

Asked if India sought to play a key role in Lankan affairs, he said New Delhi would “assist the friendly power in whatever manner possible.”