In a typically English setting, the grounds of a mock-Tudor country mansion, thousands of pilgrims are celebrating what organizers claim is the biggest Hindu festival outside India.

More than 60,000 people were expected to attend the two-day Janmashtami festival on Sunday and Monday, celebrating the god Lord Krishna's birth, at the Bhaktivedanta Manor temple outside suburban Watford, northwest of London.

An Indian activist on a hunger strike that sparked a popular campaign against corruption said Saturday that he was feeling physically weak but resolved in his demand that the government adopt his version of a bill setting up an anti-graft watchdog.

Hundreds surrounded Anna Hazare on his fifth day of a fast that began Tuesday in jail after his arrest for planning a protest without police approval. He was released within hours but refused to leave the jailhouse until police eventually granted him permission for a 15-day public fast — a protest he has called a "revolution" and "new freedom struggle."

Iran has received "two thirds" of India's 4.8 billion dollar (3.3 billion euro) oil arrears piled up by sanctions-related payment problems, central bank head said Monday on ISNA news agency.

"Two thirds of the oil arrears owed to Iran by India have been received. The rest is on its way and there are no problems in this regard," Mahmoud Bahmani said.

Bollywood stars turned out in force on Monday to pay their respects to actor Shammi Kapoor, the heart-throb actor of the 1950s and 1960s who died at the weekend.

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, a family friend, helped carry Kapoor's flower-covered body from his home in the upmarket Malabar Hill area of south Mumbai to a waiting ambulance for the short trip to a nearby crematorium.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad admitted Wednesday that his security forces had made "some mistakes" in battling protests, as he met with several U.N. Security Council members.

The deputy foreign ministers from the three emerging powers of Brazil, India and South Africa met Assad and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in Damascus to call for an "immediate end to all violence" in Syria, a statement said.

Religious-linked violence and abuse rose around the world between 2006 and 2009, with Christians and Muslims the most common targets, according to a private U.S. study released Tuesday.

"Over the three-year period studied, incidents of either government or social harassment were reported against Christians in 130 countries (66 percent) and against Muslims in 117 countries (59 percent)," said the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life study.

Asian stocks rallied on Wednesday, part of a global uptick after the U.S. Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates near zero for at least two years.

Tokyo rose 1.05 percent, or 94.26 percent, to 9,038.74, Sydney added 2.64 percent, or 106.5 points, to 4,141.3 and Seoul gained 0.27 percent, or 4.89 points, to 1,806.24.

India, Brazil and South Africa said they are launching a mission to Syria on Wednesday in a bid to halt a deadly crackdown on anti-regime protests.

The governments of the three nations, under an initiative of the IBSA forum of emerging economies, are seeking to help open a dialogue between Syrian authorities and the public to help bring months of brutal violence to an end, a Brazilian foreign ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

Six years after leprosy was declared officially eliminated in India, officials and doctors are warning that the disfiguring disease is spreading in poverty-stricken pockets of the country.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in India, Nata Menabde, told Agence France Presse in an interview that nearly a third of India's districts needed urgent attention to address the spread of new infections.

On a rainy monsoon morning, 70-year-old Joaquina Colaco clutched an umbrella and walked through the crowded lanes of Margao market in the Indian state of Goa, hoping for a full day's work.

After wading through puddles, she sat down next to a carpenter's shop, waiting expectantly for customers who need a porter or "coolie" to carry their wares.