India is moving ahead with ambitious plans to spend nearly $5 billion to supply free drugs to patients -- bringing the nation closer to universal health coverage, officials said on Friday.

The "game-changing" scheme, in the words of one top Indian health ministry official, is part of the government's latest five-year spending program (2012-17) and is expected to start in October.

Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui confirmed on Thursday that the breakdown in internet services in Lebanon is due to a malfunctioning IMEWE cable in Alexandria in Egypt.

“We’re working on transferring the services to the cable in Cyprus,” Sehnaoui told LBC TV.

Pakistan rejected Thursday renewed Indian charges that Pakistani "state actors" were involved in planning and coordinating the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 166 people dead.

"I would very strongly reject any insinuation of any involvement of any state agency in acts of terrorism in India," Pakistani Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani told reporters after talks with his Indian counterpart Ranjan Mathai.

Spotlessly clean and decorated with plastic flowers and balloons for its opening ceremony, Priyanka Bharti's toilet is seen as a gleaming symbol of the empowerment of Indian women.

It has been built in the village of Vishnupur Khurd in Uttar Pradesh state due to the determination of Priyanka, a young bride who walked out of her new marital home when she was appalled to find she had to defecate in the open.

At least 79 people have died and 2.2 million forced to leave their homes over the last week as torrential monsoon rains triggered floods across India's northeast, officials said Monday.

Assam state, which borders Bhutan and Bangladesh, has been worst hit with the massive Brahmaputra river breaching its banks, while extensive flooding has also hit the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur.

The pilot of an Air India passenger plane seated his mother in the cockpit for a domestic flight, refusing to take off without her after he could not get her a free ticket, a report said Sunday.

The pilot allegedly demanded that his mother be issued a "dummy boarding card" at Pune airport in western India and placed her in a jump seat reserved for the crew for the two-hour flight to the capital New Delhi.

At least 17 Indian Maoist rebels were killed during a gunbattle Friday with security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh, a hotbed of left-wing extremism, police said.

The gunfight erupted in the early hours of the morning in a thickly forested area of Chhattisgarh's Bastar region, about 295 kilometers (184 miles) south of the state capital Raipur.

An Indian cabinet minister resigned Tuesday after a state court charged him with corruption, in a further embarrassment for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's scandal-tainted government.

"I have given my (resignation) papers to the prime minister (and) now it is up to him to forward it", Virbhadra Singh, the minister for small, micro and medium industries, told reporters.

A major fire gutted a 200-year-old, revered Sufi Muslim shrine in Indian Kashmir Monday, sparking clashes between police and residents in the region's summer capital Srinagar, police said.

Nearly two dozen people were injured in the violence, triggered by anger at the perceived delayed response of firefighters in battling the blaze.

In the far north-east of India, cut off from the rest of the country except via a narrow land bridge, perhaps the only way to make yourself heard is loud, really loud, rock music.

For White Fire's drummer Elangbam Kumar, that explains why their cover version of the Guns N'Roses song "Welcome To The Jungle" has become an anthem for the band and a big hit with their fans in the remote state of Manipur.