India sees highest single-day spike of 17,296 COVID-19 cases, tally reaches 4,90,401

New Delhi, July 4: India on Friday reported its highest single-day spike of COVID-19 cases with 22,771 cases reported in the last 24 hours, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

With these new cases, India's coronavirus cases tally has gone up to 6,48,315, out of which there are 2,35,433 active cases in the country and 3,94,227 cases have been cured/discharged or migrated.

As many as 442 deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported in the last 24 hours taking the number of patients succumbing to the deadly virus across the country to 18,655.

As per the Union Health Ministry, Maharashtra -- the worst affected state due to COVID-19 -- has a total of 1,92,990 cases which is inclusive of 8,376 deaths. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu, the second worst-affected state, has a total of 1,02,721 cases and 1,385 fatalities. Delhi's tally of coronavirus cases stands at 94,695 which is inclusive of 2923 deaths due to the virus.

The Centre said that the recovery rate has further improved to 60.80 per cent. The recoveries/deaths ratio is 95.48 per cent : 4.52 per cent.

The Indian Council of Medical Research, earlier on Saturday, said that the total number of samples tested up to July 3 is 95,40,132, out of which 2,42,383 samples were tested yesterday.

Mumbai, Jul 24: Reliance India Limited (RIL) on Friday overtook ExxonMobil to become the world's second most valuable energy company and 46th among the world's largest companies by market capitalisation.

RIL's market capitalisation stood at Rs 14.16 lakh crore (USD 189.3 billion) at market close on Friday. ExxonMobil's current market value is USD 184.77 billion.

"Reliance Industries, with a market capitalisation of USD 189.3 billion now is the second-most valuable energy company in the world. Reliance Industries now stands at 46th among the world's largest companies by market capitalisation ahead of well-known names like ExxonMobil, Abbott Laboratories, Oracle Corp, Chevron and Unilever Plc, and just below PepsiCo," RIL said in an official release.

RIL continued its rally on Friday, notwithstanding overall weak market conditions.

RIL shares made a new all-time high of Rs 2,163 and were last traded at Rs 2,148.8 on NSE with a gain of 4.4 per cent. The market capitalisation of fully paid-up shares stands at Rs 13.62 lakh crore (USD 182.06 billion), the release said.

Reliance partly paid-up shares gained 9.33 per cent on NSE today to last trade at Rs 1289.95. The partly paid-up shares now have a market capitalisation of Rs 0.55 lakh crore (USD 7.29 billion).

"Reliance's share price had touched a bottom of Rs 867 on March 23, 2020, when the total market value of the company stood at Rs 5.5 lakh crore or $73.5 billion. Thus, RIL has added $115.9 billion to shareholder wealth within just four months - one of the highest value creation feats in the world in such a short time," the release said.

Reliance had earlier raised Rs 212,809 crore through Rights Issue, combined investments in Jio Platforms and investment by bp.

Lucknow, Jan 12: The controversy over renowned Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz's iconic poem 'Hum dekhenge' may have caused an upheaval in the literary world but it has also helped in resurrecting the famous poet for the young generations.

Students and young professionals are making a beeline for books on Faiz, his biography and his poems and book sellers are ordering supplies of Faiz books.

"Earlier, we sold hardly one book in a month or on Faiz but after the controversy, people are curious to know more about the poet and his poems. We have placed orders for the entire literary range on Faiz Ahmad Faiz," said a leading book seller in Hazratganj in Lucknow.

The bookseller said that the highest demand was for books written in Devnagri script.

"Not many in the young generation can read or write Urdu so they prefer Devnagri," the book seller said.

In Kanpur, most of the leading bookshops have already run out of stocks and book stalls in the ongoing Handloom Expo are drawing huge crowds for Faiz books.

Suchita Srivastava, B.Ed student in Kanpur said, "I have never been fond of Urdu poetry because I do not understand much of the language but after the controversy, I want to read poems of Faiz to understand what he wanted to say. I am taking help of Google to understand difficult words in Urdu."

Krishna Rao, another student at the Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, said that since books on Faiz had been sold out, he had ordered a Kindle edition and was reading them.

"Reading his poems actually widens one's perspective of things and becomes even more precious if you take into account the time and context in which they were written," he said.