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India reports six-month high of Covid-19 daily infections

India reports six-month high of Covid-19 daily infections

INDIA reported 81,466 new Covid-19 cases on Friday (2), the highest daily number in six months, as several states are hit by a second wave of the pandemic.

The total number of cases have now surged to 12.3 million, making India the third-most hit country from the virus after the United States and Brazil. The number of death rose by 469 to 163,396.


The health ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities. "Our figures are being reconciled with the Indian Council of Medical Research," the ministry said on its website.

Vaccination programme has been intensified in the country amid the recent surge, with many states considering to impose fresh restrictions.

Maharashtra, the western state of the country that has been worst-hit from Covid-19 so far, reported as many as 43,183 new cases on Friday - its highest since the pandemic outbreak in March 2020. A night curfew over the weekend has been imposed but the state is considering more stricter measures, including shutting down religious places and restricting train travel.

India imposed one of the world's harshest lockdowns to control the spread early last year, but it was eased to salvage the economy, and cases gradually fell later in the year. However, the new surge in cases this year presents a challenge to the government.

Infection numbers were also up on Friday (2) in the states of Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

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Kim Kardashian's SKIMS opens on Regent Street, in the same country her love life won't stop making headlines

Kim Kardashian attends the 2026 Met Gala celebrating "Costume Art" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 04, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

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Kim Kardashian's SKIMS opens on Regent Street, in the same country her love life won't stop making headlines

Key Highlights:

  • SKIMS has opened its first European flagship store, a 12,000 square foot site on London's Regent Street, its biggest single move into the UK market to date.
  • The store was designed by Rafael de Cárdenas, the same architect behind SKIMS' New York flagship, and features a nude sculpture by longtime collaborator Vanessa Beecroft.
  • The opening lands in the same summer Kardashian's relationship with Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton has been playing out publicly across Britain, from the Cotswolds to a shared trip through Tokyo.
There are a handful of people on earth whose store openings and whose love lives both make global news in the same breath. Kim Kardashian is one of them, and this summer, both have happened in the same country at the same time.
SKIMS, the shapewear brand she built into a multi-billion-dollar label, has just opened its first flagship store outside America, taking over a 12,000 square foot corner site on Regent Street. It's a genuine landmark for the brand. It's also, almost incidentally, happening in the exact country where her relationship with Lewis Hamilton has been playing out in public for months.

What does the store actually feel like inside?

Walk in, and the first thing you see is a towering nude sculpture by artist Vanessa Beecroft, lit from above by an oversized ceiling disc, framed by curved walls in the same fleshy, neutral tones SKIMS uses on its packaging. It's the kind of entrance built for a photo, and it's clearly meant to be one. The rest of the two-level store follows the same language throughout: soft curves, cream and beige everywhere, cabinets rounded enough to double as seats. It was designed by Rafael de Cárdenas, the same studio behind SKIMS' Fifth Avenue flagship in New York, so the London store deliberately echoes that one rather than starting from scratch.
Kardashian called London "one of the most inspiring fashion cities" in a statement marking the opening, and the choice to make it SKIMS' first flagship outside America wasn't accidental. Inside, shoppers get access to the brand's full UK range in one place for the first time, shapewear, loungewear, menswear, and the NikeSKIMS collaboration line, rather than piecing it together online.

Why has she been so visible in Britain this year?

Because the store isn't the only reason. Kardashian's relationship with Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton became public in February, and since then the pair have been photographed together at a private members' club in the Cotswolds, walking arm in arm through Tokyo, and browsing a Vivienne Westwood store on the same trip. It's the kind of relationship that seems to generate a new set of paparazzi photos every few weeks, in a different country each time.
Not everyone is convinced it's as simple as it looks. Some entertainment outlets have reported anonymous claims that the relationship functions partly as a "showmance," a strategically timed pairing rather than a purely private one. Neither Kardashian nor Hamilton has addressed that characterisation directly, and the two have a longer history than the recent headlines suggest, having first been photographed together at a London awards show back in 2014, years before either was linked to the other romantically.
SKIMS Regent Street, at a glance
Location245-247 Regent Street, London
Size12,000 sq ft, two levels
DesignerRafael de Cárdenas
Notable featureNude sculpture by Vanessa Beecroft
SignificanceSKIMS' first flagship store outside the US
Product rangeShapewear, loungewear, menswear, NikeSKIMS

Is any of this actually connected?

Not officially. There's no suggestion the store opening and the relationship were planned to overlap, and SKIMS has been building toward a European flagship since at least 2021, when a smaller Paris pop-up tested the same visual identity on a much smaller scale. But the coincidence is hard to ignore: for a few months this year, the two most-photographed parts of Kim Kardashian's life, the brand she built and the relationship everyone's trying to decode, have both been unfolding on the same small island, a few hundred miles apart from each other at most.

For a woman whose entire career has run on being watched, Britain's had an unusually good seat this year.