With a single-day rise of 35,342 cases, India's COVID-19 tally climbed to 3,12,93,062 on Friday, while 483 more fatalities pushed the death toll due to the viral disease to 4,19,470, according to the Union Health Ministry.

The number of active cases has declined to 4,05,513, accounting for 1.3 per cent of the total caseload and the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 97.36 per cent, the ministry's data updated at 8 am showed.

Various online platforms in the country, including Zomato and Paytm, faced temporary disruption in services late Thursday evening due to a global outage at internet infrastructure company Akamai Technologies.

In a tweet around 10 PM IST, Akamai said it was experiencing a service disruption. It said it was actively investigating the issue, and clarified that this was not the result of a cyberattack on its platform.

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday inaugurated a tea packaging unit of Tata Consumer Products Ltd at Gopalpur in the state's Ganjam district.

The plant was commissioned in a span of 18 months with an investment of Rs 100 crore, officials said.

The Supreme Court on Thursday said India can't have a dual judicial system -- one for the rich and the other for the poor, and pulled up Madhya Pradesh Police for attempting to shield Govind Singh, the husband of a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA, accused of murdering Congress leader Devendra Chourasia.

A bench headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said the judiciary must remain free from political pressures and influences.

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.

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