US and Indian trade teams started negotiations on Friday as tensions mount over protectionist measures taken by both sides.

At least 29 people were killed and 18 others injured when a bus careered off a notorious Indian highway after the driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel, officials said Monday.

Angry protests erupted in one of India's poorest states Tuesday over the deaths of more than 100 children from a mysterious brain fever potentially linked to lychees.

High winds and heavy rains pounded western India on Thursday as a major cyclone expected to hit the coast veered away instead into the Arabian Sea.

Vayu, classified as a very severe cyclonic storm, moved north-northwestwards in the night over the Arabian Sea, and was around 110 kilometres (70 miles) from the coast of Gujarat state.

At least 31 children have died in northern India in the last 10 days from a deadly brain disease believed linked to a toxic substance found in lychee fruit, health officials said Wednesday. 

Three people died in fresh political violence between members of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party and a local rival in restive West Bengal state, authorities said Tuesday.

Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Trinamool Congress -- which runs the state -- have accused each other of instigating weeks of violence during and since India's recent election.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a second term in office after responding to a suicide attack on Indian paramilitary forces in troubled Kashmir with an airstrike inside Pakistan, allowing him to turn voters' attention away from the country's highest unemployment rate in decades.

Now, after his swearing-in on Thursday, he will need to deftly navigate a trade war between the United States and China and rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran, an important source of cheap oil for India's fast-growing economy. Modi will also face pressure to protect India's traditional sphere of influence in South Asia.

Indian police on Saturday charged the owners of a private school after a fire killed 20 teenagers, some who died jumping from the building in a desperate bid to escape the flames, officials said.

Voting in one of India's most acrimonious elections in decades entered its final day Sunday as Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrambled to hang on to his overall majority.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a spiritual break Saturday as India's acrimonious marathon election wound to a close after almost seven weeks awash with insults, violence and fake news.

On the eve of the seventh and final day of voting in the world's biggest democratic exercise, local media reports said Modi, 68, would also spend some time in a "mediation cave".