Indian authorities investigating a rape case say a sprinter who won a women's relay gold medal at the 2006 Asian Games is actually a man.

Police charged Pinki Pramanik on Monday with raping and assaulting a woman she was living with in the eastern state of West Bengal. The woman alleged Pramanik was a man who had reneged on a promise to marry her.

India has launched a new version of its ultra-low-cost tablet computer with a quicker processor and an improved battery, on sale to students at the subsidized price of $20.

The Aakash tablet, dubbed the world's cheapest computer, has been developed as a public-private partnership aimed at making computing technology available to students in a country where Internet usage is only at around 10 percent.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Thursday urged Syrian opposition groups to unite to halt extremists gaining influence in the country, as new leaders for the movement were elected in Doha.

Hague, speaking during a visit to India, said that opposition factions had to work together to end the conflict in Syria which erupted last year when protesters took to the streets to demand the fall of President Bashar Assad.

In a busy sculpture workshop in west India, there is one unfamiliar face alongside the images of divine figures such as Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Hindu goddess Parvati.

This is Ivy, the late beloved wife of 82-year-old Peter Pereira, and she is being commemorated in a life-size bust. The fibreglass figure is the latest example of a growing trend: commissioning memorial sculptures of the dead.

Volunteers in India armed with drums and whistles are to lead a crackdown on going to the toilet in public under a new scheme in the western state of Rajasthan, a report said Monday.

"We are constructing public toilets... and people will be encouraged to use them," Ramniwas Jat, head of the state's Jhunjhunu district council, told the Times of India.

Torrential rains in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have killed at least 22 people and displaced tens of thousands of villagers over the past week, an official said Monday.

Downpours triggered by a cyclone that hit the coast near Chennai last week left hundreds of villages inundated and 60,000 people in relief camps, Karikal Valaven, a government officer overseeing emergency operations, told Agence France Presse.

Authorities ordered hundreds of schools to close Tuesday and fishermen to remain on land as a tropical storm barreled towards India's southern coastal state of Tamil Nadu on Tuesday.

The storm was centered in the Bay of Bengal, 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of the city of Chennai, with winds of about 55 kilometers per hour, the India Meteorological Department said.

Fifty years ago India tasted bitter defeat at the hands of China in a brief border war, and the memory still spooks New Delhi's leaders as they try to compete with their powerful Asian neighbor.

In 1962, badly-equipped Indian troops were humiliated in the four-week battle over the Himalayan frontier, with Chinese forces pouring through the mountains and advancing as far as the plains of Assam.

A landmine attack by Maoist rebels in eastern India killed five policemen on Thursday in a strike that targeted a convoy heading out on patrol before dawn.

The blast in a forest area of Bihar state came following a lull in attacks on policemen since six officers were shot in May in an ambush in Chhattisgarh state.

Bollywood stars Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan have gotten married after dating for five years.

They were wed in a small ceremony in Mumbai on Tuesday, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. A few friends and family members attended the ceremony at Khan's house, it said.