Security forces shot dead two Tibetan brothers who were on the run after protesting against Chinese rule, U.S.-based broadcaster Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, a day after a monk reportedly set himself alight.

The incidents are said to have taken place in two provinces bordering the Tibet autonomous region, as tension in Tibetan-inhabited areas intensifies over perceived religious, political and cultural repression.

A leopard dragged away and devoured a 14-year-old girl in western Nepal in what is thought to be the fifth deadly attack by the same animal in just two months, police said on Thursday.

The youngster was cutting grass in the forest near her home in Baitadi district, on the border with India, when she was attacked by the animal, said Bishnu Bahadur Karki, a local deputy superintendent of police.

Three state ministers from southern India, including one holding a portfolio for women and child development, quit on Wednesday after being accused of watching porn in the local assembly.

The ministers from the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were filmed by television cameras watching graphic footage on their mobile phones on Tuesday while other lawmakers in the house were debating legislation.

Iran has asked OPEC members not to raise oil production to compensate for a European Union embargo against the Islamic republic, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said on Saturday.

Qasemi said the request was forwarded in a letter to Iraq, the current head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

India has the worst air quality in the world, beating even its neighbor China, according to an annual survey based at Yale and Columbia universities in the United States.

Of all the countries surveyed in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which measures the effects of polluted air on human health, India ranked the lowest at 132.

India said Monday it may use its own currency, the rupee, to pay for oil imports from Iran in the face of a U.S.-led sanctions campaign aimed at forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear programme.

India has said it will continue to import oil from Iran, joining China in refusing to bow to intensifying U.S. pressure not to do business with Iran.

Rebels shot dead five people at a polling station in India's northeast on Saturday as voting began in the first of five local elections seen as a popularity test for the national Congress government.

The separatist rebels sprayed the voting booth with bullets, killing three election officials, a paramilitary trooper and a civilian in Thangpi, a village south of Manipur state capital Imphal, police chief Priya Singh said.

Separatist rebels shot dead five people at a polling station in India's remote northeastern state of Manipur on Saturday during local elections, police said.

The heavily armed rebels killed three polling station officials and two others as they sprayed the station with bullets in Thangpi, a village south of the state capital Imphal, authorities said.

A leopard badly mauled two people including a pregnant woman on Friday after straying into the largest city in India's northeast Assam state -- the third such attack there in as many weeks.

The leopard caused panic when it wandered into a densely populated residential neighborhood in Guwahati, where it pounced on a 20-year-old man and a pregnant woman in her second trimester.

The first works by Van Gogh and Picasso to be auctioned by an Indian gallery are on display at a luxury hotel in New Delhi, a sign that dealers in Western art are now chasing local money.

The 1885 Van Gogh landscape "L'Alee aux deux promeneurs" and the 1953 Picasso oil "Le Transformateur" are being previewed ahead of a sale next month when 73 lots by top Impressionist and modern artists will go under the hammer.