It seems that India's effort to reach Islamic world is showing good results.

Three top dignitaries from the Islamic World are visiting India in the coming days. They include are Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Visit of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is seen as a crucial step towards strengthening bi-lateral relationship between these two countries. The Egyptian President is visiting India after 25 years. Egypt alone accounts for almost 40% of India's trade with northern Africa. But Chinese influence is growing day by day in Egypt. India is hoping that ties between two nations will reach a new high after Mubarak's visit.

World slowdown has severely impacted the steel industry across the globe. Steel companies are facing slow demand following the decline in demand from automobile and real estate sector.

Many steel giants have decided to employ cost cutting measures including production cut and retrenchment of additional staff. Steel prices currently stand at $500 a tonne in the international market as compared to $1,250 a tonne in March-April.

Europe based steel giant, Corus has decided to cut production by 30 per cent following slow in demand.

According to a Pakistan newspaper reports Monday, two Taliban leaders being held in Afghanistan on terrorism charges were let go in return for the safe release of Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) reporter Mellissa Fung, who was freed on Saturday.

Though the CBC says Fung’s kidnappers were likely criminals rather than members of the Taliban. Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper quoted Taliban sources on Monday as saying a violent tug-of-war for Fung erupted between insurgents and the criminals after she was taken hostage.

Zhu Weiqun, vice-minister of the Communist party’s United Front Work Department, has clearly stated that China had no interest in engaging with the Dalai Lama’s call for “genuine autonomy” for Tibetans, terming it as an attempt to promote “ethnic splitting.”

Branding the Dalai Lama a would-be ethnic cleanser, the senior Communist party official denounced the Himalayan region’s exiled spiritual leader as a scheming “splittist.” Zhu said the Dalai Lama’s representatives were to blame for the failure last week of the latest talks between the two sides.

The fact that Europe and Russia need each other economically, especially as the global financial crisis reorders priorities, is obvious as the European Union (EU) said Monday that it would resume negotiations with Russia that it had halted during Russia’s war with Georgia.

On September 1, EU leaders decided to postpone the talks indefinitely after Russia, responding to a Georgian attack on the pro-Moscow enclave of South Ossetia, invaded Georgia, and then recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.