India, Japan start work on high-speed train during Abe visit

India and Japan launched work on a high-speed train line in the western Indian state of Gujarat on Thursday during a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The “bullet train” will link Ahmadabad, the main commercial city in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native state, to India’s financial capital of Mumbai.

The 500-kilometer (310-mile) project will be financed by a Japanese credit of $17 billion and is expected to be completed by 2022. The loan carries a nominal interest rate of 0.1 percent to be paid over the next 50 years.

48 dead as heavy monsoon rains lash western India

At least 48 people have been killed as large swaths of western India have been lashed by heavy monsoon rains and flooding over the last week, officials said Wednesday.

In Rajasthan, home to a number of popular tourist destinations, the streets of at least four districts have been turned into virtual rivers, trapping tens of thousands of people on the upper floors of residential buildings. Rescue workers were scrambling to rescue thousands of others whose homes have been flooded or destroyed.

By Wednesday, the death toll in the state stood at 19.

Human-eating lions condemned to life in captivity in India

Three lions identified as having eaten villagers in western India have been caged and will never be released back into the wild, forest officials said Thursday.

The male and two females were among 17 lions rounded up after a 14-year-old boy was dragged away while sleeping outside his house near the lion sanctuary in the Gir National Forest in Gujarat state, the world's last refuge for wild Asiatic lions.