Times have changed in Bollywood from the days when all that was required to promote a film was a giant, hand-painted poster, a television or cinema trailer and the pulling power of a star actor.

Now, the popular Hindi-language film industry is harnessing the latest technology, hoping that the explosive increase in mobile phones and rapid take-up of the Internet will draw in much-needed audiences.

Hindu holy man Sathya Sai Baba, considered a living god by millions of followers worldwide, died Sunday in a hospital near his southern Indian ashram, a doctor said. He was 86.

Sai Baba had spent more than three weeks on breathing support and dialysis while struggling with multiple-organ failure at the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, near his ashram in Puttaparti village in southern Andhra Pradesh state. He died Sunday morning, hospital director Dr. A.N. Safaya said.

The price of gold topped $1,500 for the first time on Wednesday as a weaker dollar plus fears over high inflation and debt attracted investors into the traditional safe-haven precious metal.

Gold reached $1,505.65 an ounce at 0945 GMT on the London Bullion Market. It later traded at $1,503.60.

At least 18 people died and five others were badly burnt on Tuesday when a helicopter crashed in northeast India close to the border with China, a local police chief told Agence France Presse.

"The numbers of those killed are 18 and five people badly burnt have been taken to hospital in Tawang," said S.B. Singh, police inspector general of Arunachal Pradesh state, amending the earlier death toll of 20.

Indian housewife Sujata Budarapu was shocked when she was told that her two sons were on the verge of developing Type 2 diabetes.

"It had never even occurred to me that this could happen. I had heard that outside India this happens to other people's kids but I never thought it would happen to my own," the 38-year-old from Mumbai told Agence France Presse.

The electricity keeps cutting out, the Internet connection is crackly and the speakers don't always work, but Santosh Kumar knows that 20 pupils far away in eastern India are relying on him.

Once a week, Kumar uses the Skype computer program to teach maths to children in Chamanpura, a poor village in the struggling state of Bihar, 600 miles (970 kilometers) from his two-storey house in the suburbs of New Delhi.

Urgent global action is needed to prevent the spread of a multi-drug-resistant "superbug" after it was found in water supplies in the Indian capital, doctors said in research published Thursday.

The study in The Lancet medical journal said that New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1 (NDM-1) producing bacteria were found in 51 out of 171 samples taken from water pools and rivulets and two out of 50 tap water samples in the city.

One of India's best-known spiritual leaders, famous for his apparent miracles and long list of influential followers, is on life support in a southern hospital, officials said Tuesday.

Satya Sai Baba, 85, who has devotees in more than 100 countries, was admitted to a hospital funded by his organization in the town of Puttaparthi with lung and chest congestion on March 28.

Most Indians are missing out on the "digital revolution" due to poor Internet access for the nation's poor, despite the economy boasting one of the world's strongest growth rates, a study found.

The study said India was at "extreme risk" from a lack of "digital inclusion" -- along with sub-Saharan Africa -- as a vast proportion of its 1.2 billion population were being left behind shut out of the so-called.

India is set to pay Iran for billions of dollars worth of oil imports by channeling funds to Tehran via the German central bank, a German newspaper report said Monday.

Under pressure from the United States to break direct commercial links with the Islamic republic, India intends to place money for its Iranian oil imports in an account with the Bundesbank, the Handelsblatt business daily reported.