<p><strong>Covid In India:</strong> India reports 41,506 new cases in the last 24 hours. The active caseload is currently at 4,54,118. Total Recoveries across the country so far are 2,99,75,064.</p> <p>India recorded 895 deaths today, as per Union Health Ministry.</p> <p>Total active cases: 4,54,118</p> <p>Total discharges: 2,99,75,064</p> <p>Death toll: 4,08,040</p> <p>Total Vaccination : 37,60,32,586</p> <p>41,526 patients have recovered during the last 24 hours. Recovery Rate has increased to 97.20%. Weekly Positivity Rate remains below 5%, currently at 2.32%. Daily positivity rate at 2.25%, less than 3% for 20 consecutive days</p> <p>Meanwhile, Delhi recorded 76 fresh COVID-19 cases and one death due to the disease on Saturday, while the positivity rate slipped to 0.09 per cent, according to data shared by the health department. The COVID-19 positivity rate had dropped to 0.11 per cent on Friday from 0.12 per cent the day before when 93 cases and three deaths were recorded in the city. </p> <p>West Bengal's COVID-19 tally rose to 15,11,205 on Saturday as 997 more people tested positive for the infection, while 17 fresh fatalities pushed the death toll to 17,903, a bulletin issued by the health department said.<br /><br />At least 1,336 more people were cured of the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries in the state to 14,77,998, it said.<br /><br />The recovery rate among coronavirus patients in West Bengal now stands at 97.80 per cent.<br /><br />The state now has 15,304 active cases.</p> <p>Amid fears of a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the Centre on Saturday reviewed the steps taken to check the spread of Covid-19 at hill stations and tourist locations.</p> <p>The review meeting assumes significance as pictures from tourist destinations in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have come to the fore over the last few days wherein the people could be seen violating the Covid-19 norms.</p> <p>Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla sounded a note of caution in view of media reports showing blatant disregard of Covid-appropriate behaviour in hill stations and other tourist locations.</p>
Daniel Milian, from right, Miguel Martinez, and Laura De Armas chat as they relax on South Beach in Miami Beach, FL on Friday, June 19, 2020. Miami Beach reopened on June 10th after being shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
The last time the US had back-to-back days of over 20,000 COVID-19 cases was in May.
The country recorded more than 20,000 daily cases for the past four days.
Close to 48% of the population is fully vaccinated but the Delta variant is spreading quickly.
The trend comes as the more transmissible Delta variant spreads across the US and is expected to become the most dominant strain, CNN reported.
The last time the US had 20,000 cases a day for several days in a row was in May.
Experts urged residents to get vaccinated to help protect themselves and their communities from the variant that could cause more severe disease.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said pockets of the country with low vaccination rates are at the biggest risk.
"I'm concerned as this variant becomes more dominant, those select areas of the country that have a very low level of vaccination, like 30% or so, you're going to start seeing mini-surges that are localized to certain regions," Fauci told CNN.
Fauci also stressed that vaccination not only gives the recipient a high rate of protection but it also limits further mutations.
"It's so easy to get vaccinated. Viruses don't mutate if they can't replicate, and you can prevent them from replicating by vaccinating enough people so that the virus has nowhere to go," Fauci told NPR.
<p><strong>New Delhi: </strong>The Centre on Saturday informed the Delhi High Court that the governments of all states and Union Territories have been directed to ensure strict compliance with the national directives for management of the Covid-19 pandemic.</p> <p>The Centre, which filed a status report in response to the High Court’s notice, added that states and Union Territories can take necessary actions under the Disaster Management Act (DMA).</p> <p><strong>ALSO READ:</strong> <strong><a href="https://ift.tt/3htLKOT style="color: #e03e2d;">Decision On Emergency Use Listing Of Covaxin Likely In 4-6 Weeks, Says WHO</span></a></strong></p> <p>“MHA issued order dated 29.06.2021 directing state/UT governments and state/UT authorities to consider the implementation of targeted and prompt actions for Covid-19 management till 31.07.2021 as conveyed through MoHFW advisory dated 28.06.2021, and also take necessary measures under DMA, 2005,” PTI reported the Centre as saying.</p> <p>Defending the decision to open up activities following a decline in daily Covid-19 cases, the Centre called it an “essential” process.</p> <p>The Centre in its response, however, added that the states and Union Territories should ensure that the “whole process is fully calibrated”.</p> <p>The government said the Covid-19 management national directives, include face covering, social distancing, not spitting in public faces, work from home, staggering of business/work hours, screening and hygiene, and frequent sanitisation.</p> <p>Clarifying that the decision to impose or ease restrictions has to be based on the assessment of the ground situation, the Centre also informed the High Court about the “framework for implementation of prompt and target action” which, it said, was shared with the states and Union Territories.</p> <p>“The framework also emphasises that Covid-19 management can succeed only through a whole of government and whole of society approach,” said the report filed in response to a notice issued earlier on June 18 to the Union government and the Delhi government, seeking their response over the violations of Covid-19 protocols in the markets of the national capital.</p> <p><strong>ALSO READ |</strong> <span style="color: #e03e2d;"><strong><a style="color: #e03e2d;" href="https://ift.tt/36uYNJE Is Taking COVID Vaccine Important For Pregnant Women? Experts Inform About Infection Risk</a></strong></span></p> <p>Taking suo-moto cognisance of the violations, a vacation bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Asha Menon had observed that such breaches would only “hasten the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic”.</p> <p>The High Court bench also took notice of the violation after a doctor from Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) shared with one of the judges photographs of the street vendors disobeying the Covid protocols in the markets.</p>
With summer underway, people are looking to head out on the water in greater numbers.
The pandemic has only sparked even more interest, as people looking for a break from lockdowns turned to boating. Last year, there was a 35% jump in the number of boat purchases made by first-time buyers, according to the industry publication Trade Only Today.
Insider spoke with three boat owners who derive at least part of their income from renting out or chartering these vessels.
Nijole Adler's boat charter business was set in motion in 2012, when she and her husband, Rimas, bought a 36-foot sailboat for roughly $10,000.
Nijole Adler
The boat needed significant repairs, but after fixing it up to make it operational, the Chicago couple chartered it part-time while Nijole held her job in hospitality and Rimas worked as a mechanic.
"This really developed without us thinking about it," Nijole told Insider. "We just started sailing and inviting friends. Then they started inviting their friends and asking us if we could take them out maybe for a birthday or if they had guests in town. They started offering us money, and they started asking us to go out on their time. Then we decided to make a charge."
Five years ago, the Adlers decided to take the business full-time during sailing seasons.
Nijole Adler
In the off-seasons, Nijole and Rimas still work their hospitality and mechanic jobs.
They list their services on the online boat rental marketplace GetMyBoat, doing charter trips about 10 times per week on average. Their typical yearly costs include $1,600 for insurance and around $2,500 for maintenance. They also shell out $3,000 per season to moor their boat in the marina and $2,500 in the winter for storage. Other expenses include fees for their website, advertisements, and necessary licenses, among other things.
Because they're present on every charter trip, they don't sail on their own as much as they did before.
Nijole Adler
"In the season, we sail so much with charters that we don't go out just us," she said. "After sailing eight hours per day, we don't just go out for a couple more hours."
In 2020, the Adlers made the most they have ever made by chartering their boat.
Nijole Adler
They owe part of this success to an uptick in business from people feeling stir-crazy because of the pandemic.
"People were getting cabin fever; there was no place to go, nowhere to travel, and everybody wanted to go somewhere, so they just came locally to sail with us," she said. "Instead of going to the Caribbean, they came to Lake Michigan," she joked.
In Miami, boat captain Marcel Perdomo earns his living by doing bareboat charters, where no crew or provisions are included.
Marcel Perdomo
He owns two boats and brokers rentals for 34 other vessels owned by other captains.
Perdomo got his start in the business around four years ago, when he bought a used jet boat for $7,000.
Marcel Perdomo
He listed it for rentals on Craigslist and made around $650 a week offering up the boat for use.
"All of a sudden, people started calling; every weekend, people called, and then it was easy money," Perdomo said. "I was doing everything on my own. I didn't know anybody in the business."
Some time later, Perdomo stumbled across GetMyBoat and moved his listings there. He sold the jet boat and bought a new vessel to list on the platform.
As business took off, Perdomo quit his job selling traffic safety equipment in late 2019 to focus on the charters full-time.
Marcel Perdomo
He had been making $70,000 a year in that role before leaving.
"It was pretty scary," he said. "It was a big risk."
When the pandemic struck a few months later, his usually steady list of bookings disappeared.
Marcel Perdomo
"The business went down to zero," he said. "All the reservations were getting cancelled."
It wasn't long, though, before reservations started coming in again.
Marcel Perdomo
Perdomo chalks this up to restlessness from being stuck at home due to COVID-19.
"Residents were tired of isolation," he said. "They couldn't go to parks, they couldn't go to beaches. So they started Googling boat rentals."
Florida's sometimes-lax approach to handling COVID-19 was another key factor in getting business booming again.
Marcel Perdomo
"Having very few restrictions on COVID was the biggest thing," Perdomo said.
Even so, he says boats provided a way to have fun outdoors while safely keeping distance from other people.
"Boats can't be that close to each other," he said. "So it was a natural way of being apart."
Requests multiplied quickly, which prompted Perdomo to start brokering charters for other boat captains.
Marcel Perdomo
Today, he handles roughly 300 charters each month, raking in between $50,000 and $60,000 in gross sales per week. The vessels range in size from 21 to 92 feet, with the cheapest yacht going for about $120 an hour and the priciest running a tab of $1,200 per hour.
The two Yamaha jet boats Perdomo owns generate roughly $30,000 combined each month.
Marcel Perdomo
For each of the two boats, monthly costs include $1,500 for fuel, $6,000 for captains' salaries, $800 for marina slips, and $1,500 for maintenance. Insurance for his two boats runs him about $4,000 per year.
Perdomo estimates he'll gross around $2 million from charters this year. Business from GetMyBoat makes up roughly 70% of his income today, supplemented by bookings on his website and word-of-mouth referrals.
As Perdomo's operation grew, so too did his staff.
Marcel Perdomo
He now employs a handful of people in the Philippines who handle his web traffic, contracts, cancellations, and customer service. He also has a couple of salespeople working with him locally in Miami.
"It's big business right now," he said. "Going out boating is sort of like a lifestyle. When you go to Las Vegas, you go to a casino. A lot of tourists come here knowing that they're going to get on a boat."
In the UK, Poole resident Adam Dolman makes money renting out his 20-foot yacht named Skate, although he primarily works as a teacher.
Adam Dolman
Dolman and his wife bought the boat for around £8,500 (about $11,800) three years ago and have been renting it ever since.
"A lot of the yachting has gone luxury, but there's still a lot of people who still just want to go sailing; they don't want it to cost a fortune, and they want to enjoy it," Dolman said. "We thought to ourselves, 'There has to be a market for that.'"
Since mid-April, the couple has rented out the boat roughly five or six times per month, charging $175 per day.
Adam Dolman
They mainly advertise rentals on the online marketplace Borrow A Boat. Costs related to their yacht run the Dolmans about $3,500 per year. Last year, they broke even after business took a hit during the pandemic.
Before buying this yacht, Dolman owned a boat for the better part of two decades.
Adam Dolman
This, combined with his background as a yacht skipper and a stint as a sailing instructor, means it is particularly meaningful for him to see clients find the same happiness in sailing that he has long felt.
"It's actually quite enjoyable to be able to set that up," Dolman said, noting that he loves interacting with clients and helping them see "a different side to things" out on the water.
<p><strong>Chennai:</strong> The cadres of Makkal Needhi Maiam on Saturday (10 July) held a demonstration against the spiraling fuel prices and they carried placards demanding Union Government to slash the prices.</p> <p>Heading the protest at Vallurvarkottam, party's vice president AG Mourya said that his party has been supporting the public welfare and had also approached courts against the Central and the state governments on the issues related to the public concern.</p> <p>Pointing out at a petition that his party filed against the opening of the TASMAC during the first wave of Covid-19. he said that MNM chief Kamal Haasan has given direction to protest against high taxes imposed by the Union and state governments on fuel leading to high prices.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">Chennai | Makkal Needhi Maiam cadres protested against fuel price hike. <br /><br />We are on the roads asking the govt to reduce the fuel prices. We have asked for a reduction in the prices but we are not being heard. We will be protesting on the streets: AG Mourya, Vice President <a href="https://t.co/yQJY03YVmy">pic.twitter.com/yQJY03YVmy</a></p> — ANI (@ANI) <a href="https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1413739564548562946?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2021</a></blockquote> <p> <script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" async="" charset="utf-8"></script> </p> <p>“We are on the streets asking the Union and the state governments to cut the fuel prices including domestic LPG cylinder. We have asked for a reduction in the prices but we are not being heard. We will continue the protest on the streets,” Mourya said.</p> <p><strong><a title="Also Read | WATCH | DK Shivakumar Slaps Party Worker Who Put Hand On His Shoulder; BJP Calls Cong Leader 'Rowdy'" href="https://ift.tt/3hQnpBY" target="">Also Read | WATCH | DK Shivakumar Slaps Party Worker Who Put Hand On His Shoulder; BJP Calls Cong Leader 'Rowdy'</a></strong></p> <p>He urged the central government to roll back the taxes on petrol and diesel to reduce the burden on the common people. “We urge the newly-elected DMK-led state government to reduce prices, as promised at the time of the election. We would like to warn that if both the governments do not reduce these prices immediately, the cost of essential commodities will go up and people will suffer further due to the rising cost of transportation,” MNM Leader said.</p>
Prices for lumber suffered another weekly loss and descended to levels not seen in roughly six months as the market contends with signs of softening demand and easing shortages.
Lumber prices on Friday fell about 4% to trade at $689 per thousand board feet. That move brought lumber below $700 for the first time since mid-January. Lumber during the holiday-shortened week had pushed higher, stoking the possibility of finding relief. But the advances proved short-lived, leading to the material notching its ninth consecutive weekly loss.
Prices have tumbled by roughly 60% since their peak of $1,670 per thousand board feet on May 7.
One potential factor in pushing lumber lower is consumers allocating funds to businesses such as those specializing in hospitality and travel as more Americans get vaccinated against COVID-19. About 48% of the population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Our recent research … suggests a combination of high housing and wood product prices and the shift of expenditures to services in the reopening (from do-it-yourself [DIY] home projects) has negatively impacted new and repair/remodel construction expenditures," wrote Bank of America analysts on Friday.
Meanwhile, dealers and builders are likely decelerating purchases leading up to a slowdown in construction that's typical in summer months, they said. "This is especially true given long lead times - the concern being that today's order of lumber shows up at the beginning of August just as prices move down at an even stronger pace."
Signs of easing in lumber shortages have also fostered the pullback in prices. Sawmills have reportedly ramped up output after the pandemic prompted producers to stop work.
Lumber prices leapt to nearly $1,700 this year in part on a surge in demand for the building material as people stuck at home by the pandemic took up home improvement projects.
I never thought I'd own a printer. Then the pandemic hit.
In my mind, it was a dusty household staple that my parents owned when I was a kid. As a 20-something living in the digital age, what need did I have for physical copies of anything?
But after a year shut inside my apartment, which followed years of already slowly growing addicted to shopping online, I got fed up. The friction involved in returning something I ordered online was too much - especially when some stores stopped accepting in-person returns for digital orders.
How many times have you lazily put off printing a return label, only for the window to close, leaving you with something that doesn't fit and your wasted money in the retailer's pockets? Be honest.
So I pulled the plug, and I bought a $70 HP DeskJet from Amazon, which came with ink cartridges, and a package of copy paper.
It's made me feel like I can rule the world, or at least lets me more easily get my money back on something I don't want.
6 out of 8 colleagues told me they didn't have a printer
I know I'm not the only one with a pile of online orders sitting in the corner...
Katie Canales/Insider
As a quick test, I asked my teammates on Slack if they owned a printer. Six people said they didn't, and two people said they did.
Obviously, owning a printer isn't a novelty - plenty of people do. In 2019, 62% of American households had one in fact, according to Deloitte.
But I'm likely not the only one who was driven to buy one during the pandemic when stores and offices closed and people flocked in droves to shopping online.
As Bloomberg's Tara Lachapelle noted in a mid-2020 column about a printer comeback, the surge in online shopping "brought with it the inconvenience of needing to make returns and print shipping labels. That's something office workers may have tended to do - shh! for I must whisper this part - at the office."
Deloitte estimated that the home printer market would surge 15% in 2020 to $29 billion. I took a bite out of that market last month when I bought my printer.
I can print labels from my iPhone. It's so easy.
Easy peezy.
Katie Canales/Insider
My HP DeskJet is Bluetooth-enabled, meaning I can print things wirelessly from my iPhone. The HP Smart app helped me easily set everything up and showed me how to insert the ink cartridges.
I buy most things on the internet: shoes, clothes, skincare products. And since I moved recently, I'm also buying bath mats, shower curtains, sheets, and other household items. Not everything looks good or turns out to be what I wanted.
Take, for example, a blue-green shower curtain I bought from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It didn't make the cut, so I downloaded the return label on my iPhone and selected HP Smart as my printing option.
Then, with my handy dandy packaging tape dispenser in hand, I attached the label to the package and taped it shut.
Don't judge my taping job...
Katie Canales/Insider
I stack the packages by the door and run them to UPS, FedEx, or USPS whenever I'm headed out.
It's worth noting that some retailers won't make you return items but will still give you your refund - Amazon has done this to me a couple of times in the past. And also, some - including Amazon - won't require you to print a return label. They'll simply ask you to take it to a carrier that will handle that for you (though sometimes for a fee).
But some retailers won't let you return certain items in-store, only online.
So at the end of the day, it's nice to have the printer in the apartment, where I can print the label and affix it to the package in one go.
Sydney Dunham, a 20-year-old student at Colorado College, embarked on her first rock-climbing trek this January as she and her friends drove to the limestone cliffs on Shelf Road, CO.
"I fell halfway through, I really didn't think I could go any further," Dunham told Insider. "But I decided to muster all my remaining strength and give it one final go ... finishing that climb was one of the most intensely satisfying experiences of my life."
Dunham, like many others, decided to pick up a new hobby during the pandemic. Searching for a thrill beyond bread baking or crochet, she joined a bouldering gym close to her college.
"Throwing myself into climbing became a way of releasing all the built-up tension from being cooped up during the pandemic," she said. "I felt an extreme sense of excitement at just being able to try something new, especially something that pushed me as a person."
Rock climbing is just one sport fueling the adventure economy, an industry with an estimated 490 million participants. The most popular activities include ziplining, rafting, rock climbing, hot air ballooning, and sky diving.
Alistair Gosling, CEO of the adventure sports company Extreme, told Insider that he has seen a "major increase" in adventure and extreme sports around the world.
Gosling believes that the significant change in consumer demand for more adventurous activities is a result of last year's indoor confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
NY Zipline Canopy Adventure Tours told Insider that it has more customers than ever and typically sells out a week or two in advance. Owner Bradd Morse said the main challenge is staffing - he usually requires 70 employees but was only able to hire 28.
"Maybe people are just saying 'you know what, I'm going to check this off, I don't know how long life is here for,'" Dr. Luana Marques, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, told Insider. "I think the reality of that uncertainty may push people to do more risky behaviors."
Research shows that when people arrive at a skydiving facility, they feel high levels of stress and anxiety. However, immediately after landing participants experience "peak happiness," as the brain is flooded with adrenaline and dopamine.
"Although we don't have concrete data that documents that the percent of people seeking extreme sports is higher now compared to before the pandemic, we could hypothesize that people's constant reassessing of their lives over the past year ... might lead people to want to live more in the moment and to take higher risks," Marques said.
Companies supplying the adventure-sports industry, such as GoPro, have also seen huge spikes in revenue. GoPro's May 2021 earnings show a revenue increase of 71% year-over-year, totaling $204 Million. The company's best-selling product was the Hero9 Black, a $400 action camera.
Extreme said 2020 extreme-sports equipment sales were double those of the year before, leading many stores to sell out. According to a Research Dive report, the global adventure-tourism industry is projected to more than double over the next six years.
"I appreciated the bread baking and self-reflection that came with the isolation of the pandemic," Dunham said. "But that also built up to a need to get out there and live life to its extremes."
