An Indian company has launched what it says is the world's first "cash machine" that dispenses gold and silver coins and diamond-studded jeweler.

The Gitanjali Group launched the Gold and Diamond automatic teller machine at a central Mumbai shopping mall for the annual Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, on Wednesday.

As the global population hits seven billion, experts are warning that skewed gender ratios could fuel the emergence of volatile "bachelor nations" driven by an aggressive competition for brides.

The precise consequences of what French population expert Christophe Guilmoto calls the "alarming demographic masculinization" of countries such as India and China as the result of sex-selective abortion remain unclear.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that his country would support Pakistan if it was attacked by either the United States or India.

"If America, India or anyone else attacked Pakistan, we will stand by Pakistan," Karzai said in an interview aired by Pakistan private television channel Geo late Saturday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai sought Wednesday to reassure Pakistan about his country's new partnership deal with India, which will see New Delhi help train Afghan security forces.

"Pakistan is a twin brother, India is a great friend. The agreement that we signed yesterday with our friend will not affect our brother," Karzai told an audience in New Delhi.

India's rupee has slid nearly 10 percent in three months against the dollar, a consequence of global economic uncertainty that will stoke already high inflation in Asia's third-biggest economy.

The rupee's tumble makes import prices of everything from oil, fertilizers to food staples such as pulses, fuelling near-double-digit inflation and causing bigger hardship for India's poor millions.

Indian-owned luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover is to open a factory to build low-emission engines in Britain with the creation of up to 750 jobs, the company said on Monday.

The £355 million ($410 million, 560 million Euros) facility will be based near Wolverhampton in central England, with work due to start early next year.

The death toll from a 6.9-magnitude quake that hit the India-Nepal border has risen to 63, officials said Monday, with much of the affected area cut off by landslides.

At least 35 people were killed in India's northeastern state of Sikkim in Sunday's quake, Home Secretary R.K. Singh told a press briefing in New Delhi, while building collapses and landslides claimed another 13 lives in adjoining Indian states.

A suspected bomb exploded at a hospital in the northern Indian city of Agra on Saturday injuring several people, witnesses said, though no deaths were immediately reported.

The blast came less than two weeks after a powerful bomb in a briefcase ripped through a crowd outside New Delhi's High Court, killing 15 people and wounding dozens of others, many of them waiting for legal hearings.

An Indian Supreme Court panel on Friday sharply criticized security surrounding a vast underground treasure trove found at a Hindu temple, saying it could be vulnerable to "tunneling attempts."

The staggering hoard of golden Hindu deities, precious stones and other treasures valued at up to $22 billion was unearthed in June in the vaults of the 16th-century temple in the southern coastal state of Kerala.

Indian railway officials on Wednesday blamed driver error for a late-night collision between two packed passenger trains that killed nine people and injured more than 80.

Tuesday's crash saw a speeding train ram into a stationary one at a station near Arakkonam, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) from Chennai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.