Maruti hikes select model prices by up to Rs 10,000

In an unprecedented crisis despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi assuring the continuation of essential services like food and groceries, online marketplaces like Flipkart and Amazon along with delivery platforms like Bigbasket, Grofers and FreshToHomes hit a major blockade on Wednesday as local authorities shut warehouses and sent delivery boys back, even harassed them.

Millions of people across cities were left helpless at homes as essential items like fruits and vegetables, dairy and milk, meat and fish etc did not reach their doors despite placing orders well in advance. Later, the orders went dry.

While Grofers' warehouse in Faridabad was closed by the local law enforcement agencies, Bigbasket complained that the police stopped its delivery partners and "some of them were even beaten up by for no fault of theirs".

"We are not operational due to restrictions imposed by local authorities on movement of goods in spite of clear guidelines provided by central authorities to enable essential services. We are working with the authorities to be back soon,' Bigbasket tweeted.

In a statement to IANS, Bigbasket said that it will help to have better coordination between the Centre and state, and between the state and local police to "ensure that our delivery vans and bikes don't get stopped by the police. Bigbasket and bb daily are not taking new orders".

Furious people stormed the social media platforms, writing their plight to NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Twitter.

"Sir, all e-commerce are down. Believe me I tried everything (Grofers, Bigbasket, Flipkart, Amazon, Big Bazaar), no delivery till 31st March or Server Down or No Service. Need to think how we can enable them through digital India," tweeted one user.

Kant tweeted back to Bigbasket: "They should give me specifics - State & location. I will act on it by getting in touch with concerned authorities & sorting it out. Govt guidelines exempt them. We will ensure that citizens are not impacted".

Kant also responded to Grofers: "Cold storages & Warehouses as well as delivery of all essentials goods including food, pharma thru E-Commerce are exempted under MHA order. I have spoken to CS & DGP, Haryana . They have taken immediate action to ensure that supply chains efficiently function for the citizens".

The subscription-based hyperlocal delivery startup FreshToHome sent messages to its customers, saying that despite the government declaring food delivery as essential, "we are facing hardships in continuing our operations".

"Please bear with us as we are working hard to unblock local authority hurdles," said the FreshToHome team.

Reports later surfaced that the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has initiated talks with the state Chief Secretaries asking them not to restrict movement of people engaged in home delivery of essential items, mentioned in the list of exempted items circulated by the Home Ministry.

Meanwhile, Flipkart said it has temporarily suspended its operations and services - including grocery items. The marketplace has decided to halt all orders from March 25 for all three supply chains -- groceries, non-large goods and large items.

"Flipkart has temporarily suspended orders as we assess the possibilities of operating in the lockdown. We are prioritising the safety of our delivery executives and seeking the support of the local governments and police authorities to meet the needs of our customers as they stay home during this lockdown," Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Flipkart, said in a statement.

E-commerce giant Amazon said the company has to "temporarily stop taking orders and disable shipments for lower-priority products.

"For all pending customer orders on lower-priority products, we are reaching out to customers and giving them a choice to cancel their orders, and receive a refund for prepaid items," said the company.

Witnessing a surge in demand, supermarket chain Biz Bazaar entered the fray, with launching doorstep delivery services in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurugram.

However, within no time, Big Bazaar was flooded with calls, forcing the company to issue a statement, saying that "In light of the recent announcement, we are receiving an unprecedented number of requests for doorstep delivery. There could be a delay due to the restrictions on movements".

Already battling massive surge in demand, the online delivery platforms faced other issues too, including zero access to several high-rises across the country which have gone under complete lockdown with all entry and exit gates locked.

The Mars Colour Camera (MCC) onboard ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission has captured the image of Phobos, the closest and biggest moon of Mars.

The image was taken on July 1 when MOM was about 7,200 km from Mars and 4,200 km from Phobos.

"Spatial resolution of the image is 210 m.

This is a composite image generated from 6 MCC frames and has been color corrected," ISRO said in an update along with the image.

Phobos is largely believed to be made up of carbonaceous chondrites.

According to ISRO, "the violent phase that Phobos has encountered is seen in the large section gouged out from a past collision (Stickney crater) and bouncing ejecta."

"Stickney, the largest crater on Phobos along with the other craters (Shklovsky, Roche & Grildrig) are also seen in this image," it said.

The mission also known as Mangalyaan was initially meant to last six months, but subsequently ISRO had said it had enough fuel for it to last "many years."

The country had on September 24, 2014 successfully placed the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft in orbit around the red planet, in its very first attempt, thus breaking into an elite club.

ISRO had launched the spacecraft on its nine-month- long odyssey on a homegrown PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 5, 2013.

It had escaped the earth's gravitational field on December 1, 2013.

The Rs 450-crore MOM mission aims at studying the Martian surface and mineral composition as well as scan its atmosphere for methane (an indicator of life on Mars).

The Mars Orbiter has five scientific instruments - Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), Mars Colour Camera (MCC) and Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer

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."