India

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) India unit said it would hire 50,000 temporary workers to meet a surge in online shopping in the country, where customers have been stuck indoors for two months in a lockdown to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

E-commerce firms faced massive disruption in the initial days of the lockdown in India, but a slow easing of the stringent regulations has allowed them to resume large parts of their operations.

KOLKATA/DHAKA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi, peering down from his aircraft on Friday, saw the devastation and flooding caused by the most powerful cyclone to strike India and Bangladesh in more than a decade, before he landed in the stricken city of Kolkata.

Cyclone Amphan killed at least 96 people in the two countries after it swept in from the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday, most in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

The toll is expected to rise as communications are restored and authorities reach villages cut off by blocked roads.

KOLKATA/DHAKA, May 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The most powerful cyclone to strike eastern India and Bangladesh in over a decade killed at least 82 people, officials said, as rescue teams scoured devastated coastal villages, hampered by torn down power lines and flooding over large tracts of land.

Mass evacuations organised by authorities before Cyclone Amphan made landfall undoubtedly saved countless lives, but the full extent of the casualties and damage to property would only be known once communications were restored, officials said.

NEW DELHI (AP) — Wide swaths of coastal India and Bangladesh were flooded and millions were without power Thursday as Cyclone Amphan, the most powerful storm to hit the region in more than a decade, killed over 80 people and cut a path of destruction that is still being assessed.

Many parts of the Indian metropolis of Kolkata, home to more than 14 million people, were under water, and its airport was closed briefly by flooding. Roads were littered with uprooted trees and lamp posts, electricity and communication lines were down and centuries-old buildings were damaged.

New Delhi, May 21 (PTI) Cyclone Amphan' should be declared a national calamity, the CPI(M) demanded on Thursday and said people in West Bengal and Odisha need the support of the Centre.

The extremely severe cyclone 'Amphan' has left at least 12 people dead and ravaged Kolkata and several parts of West Bengal and Odisha.

New Delhi, May 21 (PTI) A 50-year-old Assistant Sub-Inspector of the Central Reserve Police Force has succumbed to COVID-19 here, officials said on Thursday.

This is the second death linked to the pandemic in the country's largest paramilitary force, which has 3.25 lakh personnel, and the seventh among the five paramilitary or Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) of the CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP and SSB.

The officials said ASI Panchdev Ram breathed his last on Wednesday at the Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi.

Raipur, May 21 (PTI) Two naxals, carrying cash rewards on their heads, were gunned down in an encounter with security forces in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district on Thursday, police said.

The shootout occurred at around 2.30 pm in a forest near Neelguda village under Gidam police station area, where a team of the District Reserve Guard (DRG) was out on a counter-insurgency operation, Dantewada superintendent of police Abhishek Pallava told PTI.

Nagpur, May 20 (PTI) The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) here has arrested officials of the Government Ayurvedic College and Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran in separate cases of bribery.

Bandu Desai Pawar (55), who was holding charge as assistant director, Ayurveda, had allegedly demanded bribe from a man who had applied for appointment as a sanitation worker at Dayabhai Maoji Majithia Ayurvedic College, Yavatmal.

For the appointment, Pawar's permission was needed, an ACB official said.

Lucknow, May 20 (PTI) UPCC President Ajay Kumar Lallu was granted bail by an Agra court on Wednesday and released before being rearrested by a team of Lucknow police in a second case filed here in connection with the Congress' standoff with the UP government over arrangement of buses for migrant workers.

Media convenor of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) Lallan Kumar said Lallu was granted bail and released by a local court in Agra on a personal bond of Rs 20,000 on Wednesday afternoon.

Shimla, May 20 (PTI) A 56-year-old man was arrested for allegedly raping a five-year-old girl in Himachal Pradesh's Kullu district on Wednesday, police said.

The man was arrested on the basis of a complaint lodged by the girl's mother, Kullu Superintendent of Police Gaurav Singh said.

In her complaint, the woman alleged that her neighbour sexually assaulted her minor daughter when she was alone at home, he said.