India floods: Uttarakhand helicopter crash kills eight

Eight people have been killed in northern India when a rescue helicopter involved in flood relief efforts crashed near a pilgrimage site.

The Indian Air Force says five crew members and three civilians died when the helicopter hit the side of a mountain and fell into a river.

It was on a rescue mission near Gaurikund in the state of Uttarakhand.

The army is leading the evacuation of thousands of stranded people, including pilgrims visiting holy sites.

More than 800 have died in the flooding so far.

Officials fear the death toll could rise as more bodies are recovered from remote areas. About 97,000 people have been rescued since devastating floods hit the state on 15 June.

Early monsoon rains in India are believed to be the heaviest in 80 years.

Swollen rivers have swept away entire villages in Uttarakhand, where there were many travellers in what is peak tourist season.

A spokesman for the air force in the state says the reasons for Tuesday's crash of the Russian-made Mi-17 are being investigated.

At least 45 air force helicopters are being used in the rescue effort, which has been hampered by bad weather.

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• In pictures: India floods rescue

Authorities were also forced to delay planned mass funerals for many of those killed and officials said the air force was unable to fly helicopters to the temple town of Badrinath to rescue 5,000 pilgrims still stuck there.

'Decomposing bodies'

But officials have said that they need to get to the affected areas urgently as time is running out for survivors.

"I just need two to three days of good weather and I can get everyone out," Air Commodore Rajesh Issar, who heads Operation Rahat (Relief), said.

Police say lots of bodies are piled up around the temple in Kedarnath and many of them have begun decomposing, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder reports from Dehradun.

Many of them remain unidentified so they are being photographed and DNA samples are being taken and preserved for the families of those still missing, our correspondent adds.

Distraught relatives clutching photographs of missing family members have been waiting for days outside Dehradun airport hoping for news.

So extensive is the damage that, even a week after the floods and landslides, there is still no clarity on the true number of people missing or dead.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the situation as "distressing" and announced a 10bn rupee ($170m; £127m) aid package for Uttarakhand.

Every summer, hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus make a pilgrimage known as the Char Dham Yatra to four temple towns in Uttarakhand.

The pilgrims usually return before monsoon rains begin in July.

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Can one million managers plug Africa's skills gap?

Rapid economic growth, rich stores of natural resources and a fast-growing population have all helped usher in a new era of optimism around Africa's future. But is there a missing link that's preventing the continent's economies from boosting their business potential and achieving their development goals?

"Yes," claims the African Management Initiative, pointing out the continent's "acute shortage" of high-quality, well-trained local managers.

The Johannesburg-based group wants to tackle the continent's talent gap by creating one million skilled African managers over the next 10 years.

"The demand is there," says Rebecca Harrison, director of the non-profit organization. "We meet business owner after business owner across the continent who tell us that, if they are growing, then getting good managers is the biggest challenge right now."

Read this: Hotels, the latest African gold rush

Harrison describes poor management in Africa as one of the biggest "bottlenecks for growth" across a range of organizations -- from large companies and multinationals to governments and NGOs.

But more importantly, she says, it's holding back the "engine of job creation" in most countries: small and medium-size businesses.

"We read headlines every day about 'Africa Rising,' we are seeing African economies take off and we are just finding on the ground that these small and medium-size companies are unable to grow, create more jobs and expand their businesses because of that lack of middle-management capacity."

Aiming high

For sure, creating one million well-trained, locally grown managers by 2023 to spearhead Africa's business development is an overly ambitious proposition in a continent where top business schools are few and far between -- there are about 90 institutions offering an MBA in Africa, according to an AMI report, whereas India has more than 1,500.

The AMI, which says it has a network of more than 5,000 African managers and entrepreneurs, estimates that there are about 10 million people in managerial and supervisory positions across the continent.

"If we can reach one in 10 of the 10 million managers out there indirectly, if we can have one in 10 African managers operating really effectively, then the continent will be a different place," says Harrison.

Educating future managers

To achieve its target, the AMI, which gets most of its funding from the Lundin Foundation, in Canada, has started launching a series of initiatives designed to expand access to key education tools, including a virtual campus tailored specifically for African managers and entrepreneurs.

What we want to do is leapfrog the traditional bricks and mortar approach to business schools and business training.

"What we want to do is leapfrog the traditional bricks-and-mortar approach to business schools and business training," says Harrison.

"We want to leverage technology to deliver high-quality practical relevant management education at a price that people can afford, combining online content with offline peer support."

On June 17, the AMI began its pilot of a two-week course where participants access free web-based practical tutorials in the form of video, audio or text to sharpen their management skills.

The "Launchpad: Success@Work in 21st Century Africa" module, which will have low bandwidth requirements and be available on mobile, will cover topics such as effective communication, goal setting and time management.

Harrison says it is part of the AMI's efforts to eventually develop Africa's first full-blown Massively Open Online Course (MOOC), in conjunction with three of Africa's leading business schools -- Nigeria's Lagos Business School, Kenya's Strathmore Business School and South Africa's Gordon Institute of Business Science

"The idea is to partner with the business schools in the continent and get the business teachers to deliver their content online and then to support that with offline learning," says Harrison. "So the model is the learning is free but if you want a certificate you pay a small fee."

The AMI says about 600 people have signed up for the pilot MOOC

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Pakistan: 10 foreign tourists, local guide killed

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Islamic militants disguised as policemen killed 10 foreign climbers and a Pakistani guide in a brazen overnight raid against their campsite at the base of one of the world's tallest mountains in northern Pakistan, officials said Sunday.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack at the base camp of Nanga Parbat, saying it was to avenge the death of their deputy leader in a U.S. drone strike last month.

The attack took place in an area that has largely been peaceful, hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the Taliban's major sanctuaries along the Afghan border. But the militant group, which has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years, has shown it has the ability to strike almost anywhere in the country.

The Taliban began their attack by abducting two local guides to take them to the remote base camp in Gilgit-Baltisan, said Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. One of the guides was killed in the shooting, and the other has been detained for questioning. The attackers disguised themselves by wearing uniforms used by the Gilgit Scounts, a paramilitary force that patrols the area, Khan said.

Around 15 gunmen attacked the camp at around 11 p.m. Saturday, said the Alpine Club of Pakistan, which spoke with a local guide, Sawal Faqir, who survived the shooting. They began by beating the mountaineers and taking away any mobile and satellite phones they could find, as well as everyone's money, said the club in a statement.

Some climbers and guides were able to run away, but those that weren't were shot dead, said the club. Faqir was able to hide a satellite phone and eventually used it to notify authorities of the attack.

Attaur Rehman, the home secretary in Gilgit-Baltistan, said 10 foreigners and one Pakistani were killed in the attack. The dead foreigners included three Ukrainians, two Slovakians, two Chinese, one Lithuanian, one Nepalese and one Chinese-American, according to Rehman and tour operators who were working with the climbers. Matt Boland, the acting spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, confirmed that an American citizen was among the dead, but could not say whether it was a dual Chinese national.

The shooting — one of the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in recent years — occurred in a stunning part of the country that has seen little violence against tourists, although it has experienced attacks by radical Sunni Muslims on minority Shiites in recent years.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack, saying their Jundul Hafsa faction carried out the shooting as retaliation for the death of the Taliban's deputy leader, Waliur Rehman, in a U.S. drone attack on May 29.

"By killing foreigners, we wanted to give a message to the world to play their role in bringing an end to the drone attacks," Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The U.S. insists the CIA strikes primarily kill al-Qaida and other militants who threaten the West as well as efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan. In a recent speech, President Barack Obama outlined tighter restrictions on the highly secretive program.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who wants to pursue peace talks with militants threatening his country, has insisted the U.S. stop the drone strikes, saying they violate Pakistan's sovereignty and are counterproductive because they often kill innocent civilians and stoke anti-U.S. sentiment in this nation of 180 million.

Sharif responded to the attack on the camp by vowing "such acts of cruelty and inhumanity would not be tolerated and every effort would be made to make Pakistan a safe place for tourists."

Officials expressed fear the attack would deal a serious blow to Pakistan's tourism industry, already struggling because of the high level of violence in the country.

The interior minister promised to take all measures to ensure the safety of tourists as he addressed the National Assembly, which passed a resolution condemning the incident.

"A lot of tourists come to this area in the summer, and our local people work to earn money from these people," said Syed Mehdi Shah, the chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan. "This will not only affect our area, but will adversely affect all of Pakistan."

He said the base camp was cordoned off by police and paramilitary soldiers after the attack, and a military helicopter searched the area.

Volodymyr Lakomov, the Ukrainian ambassador to Pakistan, also condemned the attack and said, "We hope Pakistani authorities will do their best to find the culprits of this crime."

Many foreign tourists stay away from Pakistan because of the country's reputation as being a dangerous place. But a relatively small number of intrepid foreigners visit Gilgit-Baltistan during the summer to marvel at the towering peaks in the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, including K2, the second-highest mountain in the world.

An even smaller group tries to climb them. Nanga Parbat is over 8,000 meters (26,250 feet) tall and is notoriously difficult to summit. It is known as the "killer mountain" because of numerous mountaineering deaths in the past.

Pakistan has very close ties with neighboring China and is sensitive to any issue that could harm the relationship. Pakistani officials have reached out to representatives from China and Ukraine to convey their sympathies, the Foreign Ministry said.

The government suspended the chief secretary and top police chief in Gilgit-Baltistan following the attack and ordered an inquiry into the incident, said Khan, the interior minister.

The shooting was one of the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in the last decade. A suicide attack outside a hotel in the southern city of Karachi killed 11 French engineers in 2002. In 2009, gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in the eastern city of Lahore, killing six Pakistani policemen, a driver and wounding several players

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One dead as shooting mars Albania's election

Albania's national elections Sunday were marred by violence after an exchange of gunfire wounded a candidate and killed a supporter of a rival party, tainting what had been a largely peaceful campaign and threatening to undermine the country's bid to join the European Union.

The violence near a polling station, which drew condemnation from an EU official, added to the existing uncertainty surrounding the election. Though the leader of the main Socialist Party has claimed victory, it's unclear when the results will be announced because the body that oversees elections in the Balkan country hasn't enough members to certify them constitutionally following a political dispute. However, the law mandates they be revealed no later than three days after the polls.

Election day has been overshadowed by the violence. A police spokesman said Gjon Gjoni, 49, died after being shot in an exchange of fire that also wounded Mhill Fufi, 49, a candidate for Prime Minister Sali Berisha's governing Democratic Party. An opposition party leader identified Gjoni as a supporter. Another man, Fufi's relative Kastriot Fufi, 39, was also wounded.

Details surrounding the incident, which took place in the city of Lac, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Tirana, were sketchy. However, the police spokesman confirmed that it started with an argument.

A spokeswoman for the ruling Democratic Party, Laura Vorpsi, said Fufi was trying to move away some opposition supporters who were trying to bribe voters, and alleged that they "responded with shooting rounds."

"The Democratic Party harshly denounces any act of violence," Vorpsi said.

Once one of the world's most hardline communist countries, Albania has had a rocky road to democracy over the past couple of decades. Corruption has plagued the impoverished country, and its elections have been marred by violence and vote-rigging.

Some 3.3 million registered voters were eligible to vote, the eighth national polls since the fall of communism in 1990. The monthlong contest had been relatively calm until election day, though there had been reports of civil servants and even school children being pressured to attend pro-government rallies.

Some polling stations remained open after the original close time but most have closed and ballot boxes have started to be transported to counting centers nationwide.

The conservative prime minister, Berisha, and his close rival, Socialist Party leader Edi Rama, have both expressed the hope that Albania can gain eventual entry to the EU, and Sunday's election was seen as a test of whether the country can run a fair and safe vote.

Berisha declined to comment on the killing after casting his ballot, saying he needed more information first. The prime minister invited all Albanians to take part in the vote and turn Sunday "into a day of festivities and good understanding."

"I assure you that your vote will be fully respected," Berisha said.

Later Berisha expressed condolences to the victim's family and called on his opponents not to exploit the death "for political capital."

"I ask police and prosecutor's office to investigate with absolute priority the event, discover the truth and the circumstances and the responsibility of each one," he said.

Rama, meanwhile, denounced "certain segments of police" for collaborating with "criminals" and insisted that participation in the vote was the best way to respond.

"It is barbarous that in an election day, in the midst of Europe, a human is shot dead from criminals supported from police," he told reporters.

In the evening Rama came to claim victory "based on operational data" and called on police and election authorities to guarantee the process.

"We are here as unshaken and invincible guarantors of each ballot which has been cast today to take Albania at the address set from its fate — the European Union," he said in front of his supporters at party headquarters.

Ilir Meta, the leader of the Socialist Movement for Integration, confirmed that Gjoni, the man who died, was a supporter. Meta, whose party allies with Rama's, also blamed police and "criminal elements" of the ruling Democrats, whom he alleged were exerting pressure at polling stations.

"Sali Berisha is not Albania's premier any more. He cannot leave power without shedding blood," Meta said.

The shooting wasn't the only incident: A journalist was reportedly not allowed to enter a polling station, while a camera belonging to a private TV station, Top Channel was broken and the cameraman reported to have been beaten.

Albania's president called for unity in wake of Sunday's violence. "Peace, calm, citizens' life is important," Bujar Nishani said. "I appeal for calm and maturity because, we may vote for different parties, but we are one nation."

But the EU's top diplomat in Albania took a hard stand on the violence.

"I want to say something very clear, very firm. Among the international and European standards for elections, there is the refusal of violence," said Ettore Sequi, the EU ambassador to Tirana.

Albania joined NATO in 2009. But it has failed to gain candidate status from the EU, which is pressing for broader democratic reforms and an improved election record.

Some 400 international observers and about 8,000 local ones are monitoring Sunday's election

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Scientists have identified three new planets around a star they already suspected of hosting a trio of worlds.

It means this relatively nearby star, Gliese 667C, now has three so-called super-Earths orbiting in its "habitable zone".

This is the region where temperatures ought to allow for the possibility of liquid water, although no-one can say for sure what conditions are really like on these planets.

Gliese 667C is 22 light-years away.

Astronomers can see it on the sky in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion).

Previous studies of Gliese 667C had established there were very likely three planets around it, with its habitable zone occupied by one super-Earth - an object slightly bigger than our home world, but probably still with a rocky surface.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of Göttingen, Germany, and Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has re-examined the system and raised the star's complement of planets.

The researchers used a suite of telescopes including the 3.6m telescope at the Silla Observatory in Chile. This incorporates the high-precisionHarps instrument. Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky.

Full to bursting

The planets' presence needs to be disentangled from this complex signal but the Harps instrument is recognised as having tremendous success in identifying smaller worlds.

Gliese 667C is a low-luminosity "M-dwarf" star just over one-third the mass of our Sun.

The Harps instrument has had great success at identifying super-Earths

This means its habitable zone can be much closer in before temperatures make liquid water impossible. The team is now confident that three rocky worlds occupy this region at Gilese 667C.

"Their estimated masses range from 2.7 to 3.8 that of the Earth's," Mikko Tuomi told BBC News.

"However, we can only estimate the physical sizes by assuming certain compositions that is, well, only educated guessing.

"Their orbital periods are 28, 39, and 62 days, which means that they all orbit the star closer to its surface than Mercury in our own system. Yet, the estimated surface temperatures enable the existence of liquid water on them because of the low luminosity and low mass of the star."

These planets are said to completely fill the habitable zone. There are no more stable orbits in which to fit another planet.

That said, the team has found tantalising evidence for what may be another rocky world on the inner-edge of the zone. This would be a seventh planet in the system.

Fruitful targets

The planets would need an atmosphere to sustain liquid water on their surfaces, but at a distance of more than 200 trillion km, there are no means currently to determine what the precise conditions are like or whether life would have any chance of establishing itself.

Nonetheless, Dr Tuomi believes M-dwarf stars are good candidates to go hunting for potentially habitable worlds.

They are small enough that close-in rocky planets will show up well in the Harps Doppler spectroscopy data, but they are also dim enough that those close-orbiting worlds will not be roasted.

"This discovery single-handedly demonstrates that low-mass stars can be hosts of several potentially habitable planets," explained Dr Tuomi.

"In practice, it means that we might have to double or treble our estimates for the occurrence rate of habitable-zone planets around M-dwarf stars.

"There might, in fact, be more habitable-zone planets in the Universe than there are stars, which makes it much easier for the future space missions to obtain images of these planets.

"So, although only a rather simple discovery, its implications might force us to re-think how common habitable-zone planets are in the Universe."

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Snowden remains in Moscow airport, is 'free man,' Russian president says

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who spilled U.S. surveillance secrets to the world, is a "free man" biding his time in a Moscow airport, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters Tuesday in Finland.

Putin said that Snowden, who flew to Moscow from Hong Kong on Sunday, remains in the "transit area" of Sheremetyevo International Airport -- the zone between arrival gates and Russia's passport control checkpoints. And while he said Russia won't hand Snowden over to the United States, he seemed eager to have the focus of international intrigue off his hands.

"The sooner he selects his final destination point, the better both for us and for himself," Putin said of Snowden, who is wanted by U.S. officials on espionage charges for disclosing classified details of U.S. surveillance programs.

Putin's confirmation ends, for now at least, the international pastime of "Where's Snowden?" and speculation that the former CIA worker and National Security Agency contractor had perhaps duped the world into thinking he was in Moscow to throw pursuers off his trail as he seeks a safe haven from U.S. prosecution.

Read more: Dozens of journalists heading for Cuba ... without Snowden

Noting the United States and Russia do not have an extradition agreement, Putin said Snowden can't be turned over to U.S. authorities and has committed no crimes on Russian soil.

But he also said Russian security forces have not been "working with" Snowden and expressed hope that the incident would not "affect the cordial nature of our relations with the U.S."

A senior Obama administration official called Putin's comments "potentially positive" while reiterating hopes that Snowden would be expelled from Russia and returned to the United States.

U.S. officials believe Russian authorities have a "clear legal basis to expel Mr. Snowden, based on the status of his travel documents and the pending charges against him," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to reporters while traveling in Saudi Arabia, said the United States isn't looking to Russia to enforce U.S. law, only to "allow him to be subject to the laws of our land and our Constitution."

"We are not looking for confrontation, we're not ordering anybody," Kerry said. "We're simply requesting under a very normal procedure for the transfer of somebody, just as we transferred to Russia seven people in the last two years that they requested, that we did without any clamor, without any rancor, without any argument and according to our sense of the appropriateness of meeting their request."

Snowden left Hong Kong on Sunday after a couple of weeks spent doling out details of classified U.S. intelligence programs to journalists.

With his passport revoked by U.S. officials, Snowden traveled out of the semiautonomous Chinese territory on refugee papers issued by Ecuador, one of the countries from which he is seeking asylum.

International tiff

His travels have sparked an international dust-up between the United States and Russia and China, with U.S. officials accusing China of making a "deliberate choice" to let Snowden go free and Russian authorities of failing to hand him over in a spirit of international cooperation.

Measured tones mask Washington's fury with Hong Kong over Snowden

On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman rejected the U.S. claims as "unreasonable," according to the official Xinhua news service.

"The accusation that the U.S. side made against the Central Government of China fell short of proof. The Chinese side will absolutely not accept it," spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the U.S. complaints "absolutely groundless and unacceptable."

We want to know: Where's Ed?

Did the U.S. drop the ball on Snowden?

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White House upset about Snowden travels

"I want to say, right away, that we have nothing to do with Mr. Snowden or his movements around the world," Lavrov said.

The White House is eager to avoid a repeat of what happened in Hong Kong, where authorities let Snowden leave despite a U.S. request for his arrest and extradition. Washington has described that move as a "serious setback" to building trust between the United States and China.

Lawmakers say tenuous ties shaken further as Snowden lands in Russia

But the Obama administration doesn't have much leverage with Moscow, said Matthew Rojansky, an expert on U.S. and Russian national security at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"We really need Russian cooperation, I think, much more in most areas than the Russians need us," he said.

4 options for the U.S. to get Snowden back

U.S. diplomatic headache

Washington is also telling other countries where Snowden might end up -- notably Ecuador, which says it's analyzing an asylum request from Snowden -- that they should hand him over if he lands on their soil. They note that his U.S. passport has been revoked.

"The U.S. is advising these governments that Mr. Snowden is wanted on felony charges and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel other than is necessary to return him here to the United States," Carney said.

But CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the issue now "is much more of a political and diplomatic matter than it is a legal matter."

"In an ordinary case, sure, you need a passport to get around," Toobin said. "But here, where this case is causing increasing embarrassment for the United States, governments that want the United States to be embarrassed are only too happy to waive some of the technical legal rules."

The leak controversy

Snowden has acknowledged that he leaked classified documents about the NSA's surveillance programs to the Guardian newspaper in Britain and to The Washington Post.

The documents revealed the existence of programs that collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and monitor the Internet activity of overseas residents.

The disclosures shook the U.S. intelligence community and raised questions about whether the NSA is eroding American civil liberties.

Snowden worked as a Hawaii-based computer network administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor, before he fled to Hong Kong last month with laptops full of confidential information.

The South China Morning Post newspaper published a story Monday quoting Snowden as saying he took the job to gather evidence on U.S. surveillance programs.

He told the Guardian that he exposed the surveillance programs because they pose a threat to democracy, but administration officials said the programs are vital to preventing terrorist attacks and are overseen by all three branches of government.

Carney questioned Snowden's assertion that he acted in defense of democratic transparency, saying his argument "is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen -- China, Russia, Ecuador."

"His failures to criticize these regimes suggests that his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States, not to advance Internet freedom and free speech," Carney told reporters.

Snowden's search

Snowden is seeking asylum from Ecuador, Iceland and other, unspecified countries, a WikiLeaks attorney said Monday.

Interactive: En route with Snowden

Ecuador has already given WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange freedom if he can find a way out of the country's embassy in London.

In his aslyum request read by Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo, Snowden compared himself to Pvt. Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of leaking classified information through WikiLeaks.

He said U.S. officials have treated Manning inhumanely by holding him in solitary confinement, and he predicted a similar "cruel and unusual" fate for himself if he falls into U.S. hands.

Snowden has come under some criticism for seeking out help from nations with questionable histories on free speech and press freedom.

For instance, The Committee to Protect Journalists has criticized Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa's government for pushing legislation that would roll back press freedoms, calling its policies increasingly repressive.

Snowden isn't looking for "political nirvana," said Glenn Greenwald, the columnist for the Guardian who broke his revelations.

"He's searching for a place where he can be safe and remain free and participate in the debate, and Ecuador seems to be the place he has chosen," Greenwald told CNN's "The Lead."

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