Faded and forgotten Western brands are being dusted off and brought back to life by companies in Asia targeting the burgeoning number of people looking for labels to match new middle class lifestyles.

Asians have been buying or licensing fashion names — many of them European with long and rich histories including royal connections or haute couture origins — that have fallen out of favor back home, as they seek to lure the region's newly affluent.

A powerful bomb hidden in a briefcase ripped through a busy crowd outside New Delhi's High Court on Wednesday, killing 11 people and injuring 66, many of them petitioners waiting for legal hearings.

The device had been placed near an entrance gate reception area, where more than 100 people were queuing for passes to the court complex, located in the heart of the Indian capital.

In the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu, a street vendor offering snacks and drinks is secretly selling cigarettes to two customers -- a transaction that could put him in jail for five years.

In hushed tones, the young men ask for a packet of 10 and the contraband is handed over wrapped in paper and hastily shoved inside the large pouch at the front of their traditional tunics.

The BRICS group of emerging powers are determined not to allow a Libyan-style solution to the crisis in Syria, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday.

"If it's up to the BRICS, the Libyan scenario won't be repeated," Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying in a joint press conference with his Brazilian counterpart Antonio Patriota.

India has fully paid its $5 billion oil arrears to Iran without bartering to bypass sanctions-related payment problems, the official news agency IRNA reported Sunday quoting Iran's central bank chief.

"While all of India's $5 billion oil arrears have been paid to Iran, the country will always have some leftover debt (to pay) due to fresh oil sales," Mahmoud Bahmani said.

Three Pakistani soldiers were killed and one Indian trooper was hurt in an exchange of fire by the rival militaries across their sensitive border in divided Kashmir, authorities said Thursday.

Both sides accused each other of starting the hostilities in the first deadly incident across the de facto border in the Himalayan region in more than three months.

Global death rates among newborns under one month old are dropping, a study by the World Health Organization showed Tuesday.

"Newborn deaths decreased from 4.6 million in 1990 to 3.3 million in 2009," the U.N. health agency said in a statement.

Indian-administered Kashmir's first major literature festival has been canceled after local writers and artists said it would give the false impression that basic freedoms are allowed in the troubled region.

The Harud literary festival was scheduled for Sept. 24-26 in Srinagar, Kashmir's largest city and the main hub of opposition to Indian rule.

Terrified passengers jumped out of a plane in India on Monday after it skidded to halt on landing, trying to escape before emergency ladders were put in place, officials said.

Seven passengers were injured in the pre-dawn incident when the Gulf Air flight from Bahrain to Kochi in the southern Indian state of Kerala landed badly in wet weather conditions and veered onto muddy grassland.

Indian anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare ended his 13-day hunger strike on Sunday triggering wild celebrations among supporters after parliament agreed to consider his demands.

Hazare's fast at an open-air venue in New Delhi attracted tens of thousands of people every day as a nationwide protest movement emerged to back his cause, leaving the government appearing badly out of touch with public opinion.