India is set to amend its hate speech laws following a public outcry over two women arrested for posting comments on Facebook after the death of hardline politician Bal Thackeray.

The new guidelines by the communications and information technology ministry will make it harder for police to arrest people who post allegedly offensive material online.

India suspended two senior police officers and transferred a judge Tuesday over the arrests of two women for Facebook posts in a case that sparked outrage and fierce debate over India's Internet laws.

The women, both 21, were arrested a week ago over comments on the social networking site questioning the shutdown of Mumbai for the funeral of the hardline politician Bal Thackeray.

Global credit ratings agency Moody's said on Tuesday the outlook for India's investment grade credit rating was stable, partly thanks to high investment, sparking a jump in share prices.

Moody's said that the country's Baa3 ranking was underpinned by "strong economic growth" and investment in its annual credit analysis on India.

India's economy logged around 5.5 percent growth in the last financial quarter, the finance minister estimated on Saturday -- a rate that could boost calls for lower interest rates to spur activity.

India's once-booming economy has been hit by high interest rates, Europe's debt crisis that has slowed exports, and sluggish investment caused by domestic and overseas concerns about policy and corruption.

The Delhi government imposed a blanket ban on the use of all plastic bags on Friday in an attempt to tackle the city's mounting rubbish problems, an official said.

Thin plastic bags -- measuring less than 40 microns thick -- were banned in India's capital in 2009, but the new rules will cover all plastic packaging for items such as magazines and greeting cards as well as garbage bags.

The Pakistani Taliban on Thursday threatened to avenge India's execution of Pakistani militant Mohammed Kasab, hanged for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.

The umbrella organization wants Kasab's body returned to Pakistan otherwise it would unleash worse reprisals, spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Agence France Presse by telephone from an undisclosed location, without going into details.

The sole surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks was executed on Wednesday to the relief of survivors and victims' families, nearly four years after 166 people died in the three-day rampage.

Pakistani-born Mohammed Kasab, aged 25, was hanged for his role in the assaults that targeted luxury hotels, a Jewish center, a hospital and a bustling train station in Mumbai.

French health care giant Sanofi Pasteur will soon test a vaccine against dengue fever in India amid concerns about the increasingly global spread of the disease, reports said Monday.

The vaccine will be tried on about 120 adults followed by trials on children before it can be made available internationally as soon as 2015, the Times of India newspaper said.

Four people have been shot dead in India's restive northeast in the latest outbreak of ethnic violence which has claimed 10 lives this week, officials said Saturday.

Heavily armed gunmen attacked the village of Joraibari in the western Kokrajhar district late Friday, 230 kilometers (143 miles) from the state of Assam's main city of Guwahati, authorities said.

India's rural development minister said Friday the country's public health system had "collapsed" in a blunt assessment of his government's failure to extend a social safety net for the poor.

Jairam Ramesh, known as a maverick with often outspoken views, stressed that 70 percent of spending on health was out of people's own pockets, making it the single most important reason for indebtedness in rural areas.