1100 feet-long flag unfurled in Surat

While Google is still working on a coronavirus screening and tracking website, Microsoft Bing team has already launched a web portal for tracking COVID-19 infections worldwide.

The website, accessible at bing.com/covid, provides up-to-date infection statistics for each country.

The COVID-19 Tracker currently lists 168,835 as total confirmed cases, 84,558 active cases, 77,761 recovered cases and 6,516 deaths.

There are at least 3,244 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus in the US and at least 61 deaths.

"Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info," Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft, was quoted as saying in a ZDNet report on Sunday.

An interactive map allows site visitors to click on the country to see the specific number of cases and related articles from a variety of publishers.

Data is being aggregated from sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Microsoft announced the website two days after US President Donald Trump said Google has begun working on COVID-19-related portal for US citizens.

Google's website is being built by Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on healthcare services.

"More than 1,700 engineers are currently working on the site", Trump said during a press briefing last week.

The tool will triage people who are concerned about their COVID-19 risk into testing sites based on guidance from public health officials and test availability.

Initially, there was some confusion on Google's coronavirus portal but the company later announced that it is "partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk, and testing information."

Social media platform WhatsApp assured the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it will not roll out its payment services without complying with all payment regulations and norms in the country.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices Indu Malhotra and Hrishikesh Roy took up the matter through video conferencing. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the social media platform, said "WhatsApp Inc makes a statement on behalf of his client that they will not go ahead with the payments' scheme without complying with all the regulations in force."

The statement was made during the hearing of a petition seeking a ban on payment through WhatsApp, as it does not conform to the data localization norms. The top court took the assurance made by WhatsApp on record.

WhatsApp made the statement during the hearing of a plea seeking a ban on its payment service, for not being in line with data localization norms.

In 2018, WhatsApp was granted a beta licence to launch its payment service, but a dedicated and separate app is yet to be launched. A petition was moved in the apex court that WhatsApp's existing model for its payments service should be declared inconsistent with the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) Scheme, as a separate dedicated app has not been offered by the company.

The petitioner NGO, Good Governance Chambers, argued that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) must change its model on the lines of the UPI payment scheme, and its operations may be suspended until these conditions are met.

The apex court today asked the Centre, Facebook and WhatsApp to file their replies within three weeks and it will take up the matter thereafter. The court noted that the government may process the applications filed by WhatsApp in accordance with the law and there is no stay on the same. Facebook was represented by senior advocate Arvind Datar.

The petitioner argued that lapses have been found in relation to WhatsApp's claims of having a secure and safe technological interface for securing sensitive user data.

New Delhi, Jul 19: Three of the 10 most valued companies added a total of Rs 98,622.89 crore to their market valuation last week, led by stellar gains in IT major Infosys.

Seven companies from the coveted list witnessed a decline in their market valuation last week, but their cumulative loss of Rs 37,701.1 crore was less than the total gain made by three firms -- Reliance Industries Limited, Hindustan Unilever Limited and Infosys.

The market capitalisation of Infosys zoomed Rs 52,046.87 crore to Rs 3,85,027.58 crore. Shares of Infosys had rallied over 9 per cent on Thursday after the company posted a stronger-than-expected 12.4 per cent rise in the first quarter consolidated net profit.

Hindustan Unilever Limited added Rs 25,751.07 crore in its market valuation which stood at Rs 5,48,232.26 crore at close on Friday. Reliance Industries' m-cap jumped Rs 20,824.95 crore to Rs 12,11,682.08 crore.

In contrast, HDFC's valuation plunged Rs 13,920.21 crore to Rs 3,13,269.70 crore and that of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) declined Rs 7,617.34 crore to Rs 8,26,031.21 crore.

The valuation of ICICI Bank tumbled Rs 4,205.71 crore to Rs 2,29,156.24 crore and that of Kotak Mahindra Bank by Rs 4,175.28 crore to Rs 2,62,864.37 crore.

Bharti Airtel's m-cap dipped Rs 4,009.83 crore to Rs 3,09,521.05 crore and HDFC Bank's by Rs 3,403.97 crore to Rs 6,03,463.97 crore.

The valuation of ITC declined by Rs 368.76 crore to Rs 2,38,469.29 crore.

In the ranking of top-10 firms, RIL was at the number one rank followed by TCS, HDFC Bank, HUL, Infosys, HDFC, Bharti Airtel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, ITC and ICICI Bank.

During the last week, the 30-share BSE index advanced 425.81 points or 1.16 per cent.