President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that U.S. ties with India will be “one of the defining relationships” of the 21st century as he welcomed India’s prime minister for the first state visit of his administration.

Archibald Harnamsingh Benson came to the United States from India in 1955 as a student armed with a quick intelligence and a strong will to succeed. The native of Mohamdabad in Uttar Pradesh province had earned a bachelor’s degree at 17 at the University of Allahabad, where he also earned his law degree at 21. He joined the Virginia Union University humanities faculty in 1960 after earning master’s degrees in journalism at Syracuse University and in labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois.

FABER Nearly a year after terrorist bullets killed her husband and daughter, Kia Scherr hopes her new Web site will help others. Scherr helped create the One Life Alliance site to promote discussion of the “sacred nature and interconnectedness” of human life in response to the Nov. 26 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, that killed her family. She designed the site with Master Charles Cannon, founder of the Synchronicity Foundation. The group, based in Nelson County, espouses meditation and peaceful, holistic living. Scherr is a longtime foundation member, as were her family members.

A rail official says an overhead pipeline has collapsed on a passenger train near Mumbai, killing at least one person and injuring 11 others.

A passenger train in northern India crashed into another train’s rear carriage reserved for women and disabled passengers, killing 22 people and injuring 16 who remained trapped for hours Wednesday near Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal, police said.

The death toll from flooding in southern India rose to 222 on Monday after days of torrential rain left vast tracts of land devastated and displaced millions of people, officials said.

During the 1970s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan served as U.S. ambassador to India. When Indira Gandhi imposed martial law, Moynihan called Washington to offer congratulations to his colleagues as the U.S. had just become the world’s most populous democracy. Democracy has returned to India, a country with more than 1.1 billion citizens. Although India suffers from sectarian strife and confronts challenges relating to poverty and other social ills, it remains one of the freest nations in an often unruly neighborhood. More than one Muslim has lamented that his co-religionists enjoy more freedom in India, where Hindus form the majority, than in Pakistan, which considers itself an Islamic state. India boasts robust elections and has a thriving, diverse press.

Two boats capsized in flooded rivers in eastern India’s Bihar state during a major Hindu festival, killing at least 27 people and leaving around 24 missing, police said Tuesday.

An earthquake shook the remote mountain nation of Bhutan and India’s northeastern Assam state, sending people running into the streets and cracking some buildings. It was not clear if there were any injuries.

WAYNESBORO—It is thousands of miles apart in geography and a quantum dose of culture shock when comparing northwest India to the Shenandoah Valley, but for Dr. Bruce Bowman, a passionate practice of veterinary medicine is the same anywhere. The Waynesboro veterinarian and owner of Commonwealth Veterinary Clinic spent three weeks in June and July in Kashmir.

Security-services company The Brink’s Co. has gone on a buying spree. The Henrico County-based company bought an additional 38 percent stake in India’s Brink’s Arya, bringing its holdings in the Mumbai-based cash handling and logistics company to a 78 percent majority interest. Brinks’s also acquired a majority stake in ICD Limited, a provider of commercial security services in the Asia-Pacific region. Brink’s didn’t disclose its stake.

Hundreds of anxious people, many with young children, crowded a hospital Wednesday to be tested for swine flu in a western Indian city that reported the country’s first fatality two days ago.

The Indian government threatened Tuesday to take action against Continental Airlines after it emerged that former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was frisked before boarding a flight to the United States.

Off the injured list and back on the world stage, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday gave an impassioned defense of American demands that India and other countries do more to tackle terrorism and global warming.

Opposition leaders accused police of abetting bootlegging in western India, saying they were partly responsible for the recent deaths from illegally brewed poisonous liquor. The death toll rose to 112 on Friday.