Political strategist Prashant Kishor is close to firming up ties with the Congress ahead of the Assembly polls in five states scheduled for next year.

Kishor has met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at least thrice in the last one week and discussed the revival of Congress, according to sources.

The union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands reported only a single COVID-19 case in the last 24 hours, pushing the tally to 7,535, a health official said on Saturday.

The archipelago now has eight active COVID-19 cases and all the eight patients are in the South Andaman district. The other two districts - North and Middle Andaman and Nicobar - are now COVID-19 free as both don't have any active case, the official said.

With a single-day rise of 41,649 new cases, India's COVID-19 tally climbed to 3,16,13,993 on Saturday, while the death toll due to the viral disease shot up to 4,23,810 with 593 more people succumbing to it, the Union health ministry said.

The number of active coronavirus cases in the country registered an increase for the fourth consecutive day, according to the ministry's data updated at 8 am.

Markets regulator Sebi on Friday extended timelines for compliance with certain regulatory requirements by stock brokers, clearing members and KYC registration agencies in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

The deadline for maintaining call recordings of orders or instructions received from clients has been extended by one month till September 30, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in a circular.

Only 1.5 per cent of the whole population of Africa has been vaccinated against Covid-19, and the continent might not even reach 10 per cent coverage by December 2021, although the World Health Organization (WHO) wanted to cross that threshold by September of this year, WHO officials warned on Friday.

A new study of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows the Delta variant produced similar amounts of virus in vaccinated and unvaccinated people if they get infected.

The study, published by the CDC on Friday, focused on 469 Covid-19 cases identified among Massachusetts residents who had travelled to Barnstable County, a summer vacation destination, during July 3 to 17, the Xinhua news agency reported.

For the fourth straight day, Kerala on Friday logged over 20,000 cases of COVID-19. Kerala logged 20,772 COVID cases and 116 deaths from coronavirus. The high test positivity rate (TPR) in Kerala stands at 13.61 percent.

This comes as weekend lockdown in the southern state comes in effect from today. Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala has imposed a complete lockdown in the state for the weekend, July 31 and August 1, to check the spread of coronavirus.

Global hunger will surge by about a third this year, driven by lingering income losses from the pandemic, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

The department’s annual assessment of food security in 76 middle- and low-income nations that are past or current recipients of US food aid estimates an additional 291 million people in those countries won’t have enough to eat in 2021.

The overall global Covid-19 caseload has topped 196.5 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 4.19 million and vaccinations soared to over 3.99 billion, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Friday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload, death toll stood and vaccination tally stood at 196,543,425, 4,196,442 and 3,993,341,219, respectively.

International community came forward with offers of solidarity and assistance for specific medicines and equipment that were not immediately available in the country during the second wave of COVID-19 and material from 52 countries have been received till date, the government told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said in a written reply that India has imported 31.5 lakh units of Sputnik Component 1 and 4.5 lakh units of Sputnik Component 2 vaccine till date.

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