As many as 56 Air India employees have died due to COVID-19 till July 14, Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh said on Thursday.

A total of 3,523 employees of Air India Limited have been affected by COVID-19. Out of this, 56 employees succumbed to this pandemic till July 14, 2021, he stated in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

A group of 200 farmers reached Jantar Mantar in central Delhi on Thursday to protest against the Centre's three contentious farm laws as the Monsoon session of Parliament was underway.

Police threw a ring of security around central Delhi and kept a tight vigil on the movement of vehicles.

Financial services platform Paytm's Gross Merchant Volume (GMV) is growing at over a 100 per cent in a year, according to its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP), filed last week.

In Q1FY22, Paytm’s GMV hit Rs 1,46,900 crore, from Rs 69,700 crore in the same period last year. In the whole of FY21, Paytm’s GMV was Rs 4,03,300 crore, highest in the payments industry as per research firm Redseer.

Smartphone shipments in India fell 13 per cent to 32.4 million units in the April-June 2021 period over the previous quarter as the second wave of COVID-19 stifled demand, according to research firm Canalys.

Given that the April-June 2020 had an almost two-month nationwide lockdown (amid the first wave of the pandemic), the year-on-year comparison was extremely favorable with shipments up 87 per cent, Canalys said in its report.

China rejected on Thursday a World Health Organization (WHO) plan for a second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which includes the hypothesis it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, a top health official said.

The WHO this month proposed a second phase of studies into the origins of the coronavirus in China, including audits of laboratories and markets in the city of Wuhan, calling for transparency from authorities.

Shares of Gland Pharma rallied 8 per cent to Rs 4,087.65 on the BSE in intra-day trade on Thursday after the company reported strong revenue growth of 31 per cent year-on-year (YoY) at Rs 1,154 crore for the quarter ended June 2021 (Q1FY22). It had posted a revenue of Rs 884 crore in the year-ago quarter.

The stock was trading at its highest level since listing on November 20, 2020. In the past one month, it has outperformed Sensex by surging nearly 30 per cent as against a 0.44 per cent gain in the index.

Shares of IDFC soared 19 per cent to its 52-week high of Rs 62.60 on the BSE in intra-day trade on Thursday after the company said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has allowed it to exit as the promoter of IDFC First Bank as the five-year lock-in period expires. The stock of the non-banking finance company surpassed its previous high of Rs 60.25 touched on May 25, 2021.

IDFC currently owns a 100 per cent stake in IDFC Financial Holding Company, which, in turn, holds 100 per cent in IDFC Asset Management and 36.6 per cent in IDFC First Bank.

Over 4 million children in the US have tested positive for Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to a latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association.

As of July 15, almost 4.09 million children have been infected with Covid-19. After decreases in weekly reported cases over the past couple of months, the country began to see increases in cases in July, according to the report.

India saw a single day rise of 41,383 coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,12,57,720, while the active cases registered an increase for the second consecutive day and were recorded at 4,09,394, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday.

The country's COVID-19 death toll rose to 4,18,987 with 507 fresh fatalities.

Two Indian-American doctors and one of the largest hospital systems in the US have agreed to pay nearly USD 37.5 million to settle allegations of kickbacks for patient referrals, the Department of Justice said.

The settlement resolves allegations that Prime Healthcare Services system overpaid for California interventional cardiologist Dr Siva Arunasalam's physician practice and surgery centre because the company wanted him to refer patients to its Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville, California, it said.

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