WASHINGTON (TIP): U.S. Senator Richard Burr will step aside as chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, after the FBI seized his mobile telephone in a major escalation of a probe of his stock trades before the downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Burr contacted him on Thursday morning to inform him of his decision to move aside temporarily during the investigation.
“We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee and will be effective at the end of the day tomorrow,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement.
Mr. Burr has denied wrongdoing and said he relied solely on news reports to guide decisions on stock sales, amid reports he and other senators sold shares after private briefings on the risks of the coronavirus crisis.
He told reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, May 14, he decided to step aside because he did not want the investigation to distract the intelligence committee from its work.
“I thought this was the best thing to do,” Mr. Burr said.
Mr. Burr’s attorney, Alice Fisher, said in a statement that Mr. Burr was “actively cooperating” with the government inquiry.
Known for bipartisanship, the Senate panel is soon to release an extensive report led by Mr. Burr on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence determined that Moscow sought to meddle in the campaign to boost the Trump candidacy.
Moscow denies such actions. President Trump dismisses the allegations as a hoax.
Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic committee vice chairman who has worked closely with Mr. Burr, told reporters he thought Mr. Burr had made the right choice in temporarily stepping aside, and hoped the matter would be resolved as quickly as possible.
The Republican senator turned over his phone to FBI agents after they served a search warrant at his Washington home.
The warrant marked a significant step-up in the investigation of Mr. Burr’s stock sales in mid-February, when he and other lawmakers were receiving regular briefings on the coronavirus outbreak and President Donald Trump and some of his political allies were downplaying the threat to the public.
Mr. Trump said he did not know anything about Mr. Burr’s decision and had not discussed Mr. Burr’s situation with anyone at the Department of Justice.
“I know nothing about it… That’s too bad,” he told reporters.
A senior Justice Department official said the FBI did not conduct a raid but paid a visit to Mr. Burr’s home to collect his cellphone. Approval of the warrant — significant because it was served on a sitting senator — was obtained at the “highest levels” of the Justice Department, the official said.
The Intelligence Committee chairmanship is one of the most important positions in the Senate. The panel approves the president’s nominees to lead the country’s spy agencies and handles oversight of their operations, conducting most of its business behind closed doors.
It was not immediately clear who would step in as chairman. The three senators next in line for seniority on the Republican-led intelligence committee — Jim Risch, Marco Rubio and Susan Collins — all chair other committees.
The Senate’s Republican leadership will decide who will take the position.
Other senators whose stock trades have been scrutinized have denied trading on coronavirus information.
Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler has forwarded documents and information about stock trades by her and her husband to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee, CNBC quoted a representative for Ms. Loeffler as saying on Thursday.
Ms. Loeffler has denied wrongdoing in connection with her sales of millions of dollars in shares in the weeks after lawmakers were first briefed on the virus.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, an intelligence committee Democrat, has turned over documents to the FBI about stock trades by her husband that show she was not involved, a spokesperson for Ms. Feinstein said on Thursday.
Mr. Burr’s decision called to mind the decision of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez to step aside as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2015 as he faced corruption charges. Those charges were eventually dropped.
WASHINGTON (TIP): U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday accused China of “stealing” U.S. intellectual property and data related to COVID-19 research.
Mr. Pompeo’s allegations came a day after the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that organizations conducting research into COVID-19 may be targeted by computer hackers linked to the Chinese government.
The U.S. condemns attempts by cyber actors and non-traditional collectors affiliated with People’s Republic of China (PRC) to steal U.S. intellectual property and data related to COVID-19 research, Mr. Pompeo said in a statement.
The United States calls on China to cease this malicious activity, Mr. Pompeo said, adding that the potential theft of this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective, and efficient treatment options.
China on Thursday termed as slanderous the U.S. accusation that hackers backed by Beijing may be attempting to steal COVID-19 related research and vaccine materials and said that “smearing and scapegoating” others will not make the deadly virus go away.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said U.S. officials are shifting the blame on Beijing as they struggled to handle the coronavirus pandemic back home.
The U.S. claims have added fuel to tensions between the two nations, which are engaged in a war of words over the origin of the coronavirus that has killed over 300,000 people globally. Mr. Pompeo alleged that China’s behavior in cyberspace is an extension of its counterproductive actions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Pompeo in the strongly-worded statement said while the U.S. and its allies and partners are coordinating a collective, transparent response to save lives, “China continues to silence scientists, journalists, and citizens, and to spread disinformation, which has exacerbated the dangers of this health crisis.
The FBI said that it is “investigating the targeting and compromise of U.S. organizations conducting COVID-19-related research by China-affiliated cyber actors and non-traditional collectors.”
“These actors have been observed attempting to identify and illicitly obtain valuable intellectual property (IP) and public health data related to vaccines, treatments, and testing from networks and personnel affiliated with COVID-19-related research,” the FBI said.
The potential theft of this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective, and efficient treatment options, it said.
Meanwhile, President Trump, annoyed with China’s handling of the pandemic, has ruled out renegotiating a trade deal with China.
“The Chinese said somewhere that they would like to renegotiate the (trade) deal. We are not going to renegotiate,” Mr. Trump told Fox Business News on Thursday, May 14.
“Look, I’m not happy about anything having to do with that particular subject (China) right now. Everything I said turned out to be right. You look at other countries they charge us tariffs to do business and we are not allowed to charge them,” he said.
Responding to a question, Mr. Trump said the Chinese have always stolen Intellectual Property (IP) from the U.S. “They were never called (out). Now they are being called out,” he said.
“We can stop them; they are going to try doing it. I mean you could also stop doing business with them, that is one thing. Look, we have lost a fortune dealing with China. We have rebuilt China,” he said.
The President said he does not want to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping right now. “I have a very good relationship, but I just — right now I don’t want to speak to him,” he said.
Gives a call for being ‘vocal for local’ and for self-reliance
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, May 12, said a new-look Lockdown 4.0 beyond May 17 was in the offing, while announcing an economic stimulus package for ₹20-lakh-crore (estimated at 10% of the GDP), with a clearly defined leap towards economic reforms that will, in his words, lead to Atmanirbhar Bharat, or a self-reliant, resilient India.
This amount includes packages already announced at the beginning of the lockdown incorporating a slew of measures from the RBI and the payouts under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.
Addressing the nation on television, Prime Minister Modi said the whole world was reeling from the crisis engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic, as was India. In this crisis, however, India had had an opportunity to look at systems and institutions that were in existence before the crisis hit and how they crumbled. “We have been hearing for many years that the 21st century will be India’s century, and this crisis is, I believe one that carries a message, that we have to move forward not just to combat the crisis but to prevail,” Mr. Modi said. “That can happen when we are self-reliant.”
He gave the example of India’s ramped-up capacity in producing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) kits and N-95 masks required by medical personnel and frontline health workers to illustrate his point that India could achieve this.
“When the first case hit us, we didn’t produce either of these things. Now, within weeks we have the capacity to produce 2 lakh of PPE and 2 lakh of N95 masks every day,” Mr. Modi said.
Clarifying that by self-reliance he did not mean insularity and suspicion of the world as in the past but embracing the world in the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family).
“Self-reliance in this sense is neither exclusionary nor isolationist, it is for helping the world, with our actions. In the past whenever we have acted it has impacted the world in a positive way — be it solving the Y2K riddle in 1999, or our campaigns against open defecation, tuberculosis and polio,” Mr. Modi said.
He said that the new edifice of this self-reliant India would be based on the five pillars of the economy, infrastructure, demography, technologically driven systems and to strengthen demand and supply chains, with the supply chains being based on local sourcing.
“In the past few days we have seen how local supply chains and shops are the only things that have helped,” he said.
The Prime Minister said the economic package would not be based on incremental changes, but a quantum leap in bold reforms with regard to land, labor, law and liquidity.
“In the last few days we have seen the suffering of our workers, migrant labor, street vendors and daily wagers and farmers. This package will be aimed at them. It will be aimed at the honest taxpayer, at our industry that makes its capital work,” he said.
Mr. Modi signed off on a strong note to buy local, and to be vocal about it. “Local production helped us in this crisis, and when you look at several global brands, they began as local but were marketed and raised to a global level. We have to do the same with our produce. We need to be vocal about local,” he said. “We must and will make India self-reliant,” he said.
A day after PM Modi made the announcement, the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on May 13, announced a ₹3 lakh crore collateral free loan scheme for businesses, especially micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), as part of a ₹20-lakh-crore economic stimulus package to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
For salaried workers and taxpayers, some relief was provided in the form of an extended deadline for income tax returns for financial year 2019-20, with the due date now pushed to November 30, 2020. The rates of tax deduction at source (TDS) and tax collection at source (TCS) have been cut by 25% for the next year, while statutory provident fund (PF) payments have been reduced from 12% to 10% for both employers and employees for the next three months.
Apart from MSMEs, other stressed business sectors which got attention were non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), power distribution companies, contractors and the real estate industry.
MSMEs will get the bulk of the funding. The ₹3 lakh crore emergency credit line will ensure that 45 lakh units will have access to working capital to resume business activity and safeguard jobs, Ms. Sitharaman said. For two lakh MSMEs which are stressed or considered non-performing assets, the Centre will facilitate provision of ₹20,000 crore as subordinate debt. A ₹50,000 crore equity infusion is also planned, through an MSME fund of funds with a corpus of ₹10,000 crore.
NBFCs, housing finance companies and microfinance institutions — many of which serve the MSME sector — will be supported through a ₹30,000 crore investment scheme fully guaranteed by the Centre, and an expanded partial credit guarantee scheme worth ₹45,000 crore, of which the first 20% of losses will be borne by the Centre.
Power distribution companies, which are facing an unprecedented cash flow crisis, will receive a ₹90,000 crore liquidity injection. Contractors will get a six-month extension from all Central agencies, and also get partial bank guarantees to ease their cash flows. Registered real estate projects will get a six-month extension, with COVID-19 to be treated as a “force majeure” event.
Nirmala Sitharaman with MoS Anurag Thakur outlines stimulus plans at a news conference on Thursday, May 14. Photo Credit/ Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
On May 14, the Finance Minister announced another round of stimulus.
The Centre will help create affordable rental housing for the urban poor and provide relief worth ₹1,500 crore to small businesses through an interest subvention scheme, apart from extending credit for street vendors, farmers, and middle-class housing.
Apart from free food for migrant workers, these are the major highlights of the second tranche of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan stimulus package, announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday, May 14.
Noting that migrant workers and other urban poor face difficulties in finding affordable housing, the Finance Minister said a scheme to build rental housing complexes through public private partnership mode would be launched under the existing Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme. Both public and private agencies will be incentivized to build rental housing on government and private land, while existing government housing will be converted into rental units.
The credit linked subsidy scheme for lower middle class housing under PMAY will also be extended by one year to March 2021, and is likely to benefit 2.2 lakh more families, said Ms. Sitharaman, expressing the hope that this would also create jobs and stimulate demand for the steel, cement and construction industries.
Street vendors who have been hit hard by the lockdown will be given access to easy credit through a ₹5,000 crore scheme, which will offer ₹10,000 loans for initial working capital.
The scheme will be launched within a month and will benefit 50 lakh vendors, said the Finance Minister.
Small businesses who have taken loans under the MUDRA-Shishu scheme, meant for loans worth ₹50,000 or less, will receive a 2% interest subvention relief for the next year, which will cost the government ₹1,500 crore.
The Centre plans a drive to enroll 2.5 crore farmers who are not yet part of the Kisan Credit Cards scheme, along with fish workers and livestock farmers, and provide them with ₹2 lakh crore worth of concessional credit. NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) will also extend additional refinance support worth ₹30,000 crore to rural banks for crop loans, Ms. Sitharaman said.
“The only fiscal outlay in today’s announcements are the ₹3,500 crore for food grains to migrants and ₹1,500 crore for the MUDRA loanees. So only ₹5,000 crore is actually coming from government coffers, while the rest are credit-based measures,” said Himanshu, an economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Economic Studies and Planning.
Terming the government’s approach as “stingy and half-hearted”, he noted that at a time when demand is down, any moves to provide liquidity are not going to help, adding that putting cash in people’s pockets would have been a better approach.
“Banks are parking money with the RBI (Reserve Bank of India), so the problem is not liquidity, but rather the appetite of people to take credit at this time,” he said. “Effectively, the burden of revival has been passed on to the people most affected by the lockdown,” he added.
Meanwhile, Congress spokesman said Govt’s ‘jumla package’ fell way short of what PM Modi had promised.
A senior spokesperson of the party, Anand Sharma, said the country believed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was serious when he made the “dramatic” announcement of giving 10 per cent of the GDP as a package to revive the economy and support workers and migrant laborers, and that expectations had soared.
“The Finance Minister’s announcement dashed all hopes,” he said.
Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcements were nothing but a “jumla package”.
Senior party leader Ahmed Patel said: “It is not an economic package. It is an empty package wrapped with speeches since the last three days.”
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari pointed out that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman articulated the second tranche of the bailout or economic package that this government had conceptualized.
“It is unfortunate that the entire press conference (of Sitharaman) was a classic display of arrogance, ignorance and insensitivity,” he said addressing reporters via a video link.
“We expected that the Finance Minister would come out with what the government is doing to ferry the migrants who are walking on the roads back to their homes safely. But nothing like that happened,” Tewari said.
NEW DELHI / NEW YORK (TIP): Government of India said , Thursday, April 23 that the rise in coronavirus cases in the country has been more or less linear, not exponential.
The country is experiencing 4.5 per cent positive cases among the tested people, which is similar to the situation a month ago before the lockdown was imposed, added the Centre.
“No new case of Covid-19 was reported from 78 districts in the last 14 days. A total of 388 patients were cured in one day, the recovery rate is 19.89 per cent. There are 33 new districts in nine states from where no new case was reported in the last 14 days,” said Luv Agarwal, Joint Secretary at the Union Health Ministry.
The total number of confirmed cases in India is 21,393. While 4,257 people have been cured so far, 681 persons have succumbed to the dreaded virus. The number of active cases in the country is 16,454. In the last 24 hours, 1,409 positive cases were reported from across the country.
“We have scaled up nearly 33 times in 30 days. We need to consistently ramp up testing”,
CK Mishra, Chairman of Empowered Group 2, at a press conference said, “On March 23, we had done 14,915 tests across the country and on April 22, we did more than 5 lakh tests, and as per a rough calculation, we have scaled up nearly 33 times in 30 days. We need to consistently ramp up testing.” Mishra said.
Mishra said the focus of the government is on the districts.
“Our focus is on the districts now. The way positive cases moved in India, the growth is more or less linear and not exponential. Certain strategies are in work to contain it to a particular level. Beyond this, looking at the story of positive cases in these 30 days, we are more or less in the same position where we were one month ago. Among those tested, 4.5 per cent cases have returned positive,” added Mishra.
He insisted that through the lockdown, the government has been able to minimize the spread of the infection, cut the transmission rate and increase the number of days in doubling of the cases.
“One crucial weapon we employed during the 30-day lockdown period is RT-PCR test to ascertain if one has contracted the disease or not.”
Of the empowered groups formed to suggest measures to ramp up healthcare, put the economy back on track and reduce misery of people once the lockdown is lifted, Mishra is the chairman of Empowered Group Two tasked with coordinating availability of hospitals, isolation and quarantine facilities, disease surveillance, testing and critical care training.
“The growth of Covid-19 cases has been more or less linear, not exponential; this indicates that the strategies we adopted have succeeded in containing the infection to a particular level. Post imposition of lockdown, while the number of new positive cases has increased by 16 times, testing increased by 24 times,” Mishra said in his presentation.
“During the 30 days of lockdown, we have been able to cut transmission, minimize spread and increase the doubling days of COVID-19. We have been able to consistently ramp up our testing and utilize our time preparing for the future in case the virus spreads further,” he said.
Mishra also said that in the last month, the number of dedicated hospitals for treating coronavirus patients has been increased 3.5 times and the number of isolation beds rose by 3.6 times.
“Despite a 24-fold increase in testing, percentage of positive cases is not rising. The percentage of positive cases as a ratio of testing is more or less the same as that a month ago,” he said.
Mishra also claimed that India has done better than a majority of developed countries with respect to the percentage of test cases yielding positive results.
“We need to evolve our strategy based on the current position… We seem to be doing well so far with our strategy which is intensely focused on areas where we see a lot of positivity and action happening. Our testing strategy has been focused, targeted and continues to expand,” he said.
The assessment of medical specialists is that the containment has worked well, considering the low number of new cases surfacing. However, in view of the scant scope for testing , the number of those infected may not be known too soon. The coming weeks will unfold both the number of news cases and the rate of deaths. They caution that the seeming situation may prove deceptive if the guard is taken off. They will like the government not to hurry to get the nation back to work.
NEW YORK (TIP): New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday, March 20 ordered that all employees of all non-essential businesses must stay at home and urged residents to stay indoors as much as possible as the coronavirus cases in the state reached over 6,800, with fatalities standing at 22. The rapidly rising number of coronavirus cases forced the governor to announce the extreme measures which he has been resisting despite of requests from the New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“I will sign an Executive Order mandating that 100% of workforce must stay home, excluding essential services. This order excludes pharmacies, grocery stores, and others,” Cuomo said.
He also announced Matilda’s Law, named after his mother, to mandate people aged 70+ and those with compromised immune systems to remain indoors and pre-screen visitors by taking temperature.
Visitors should wear masks and stay 6 feet away from others, he said.
“I call it Matilda’s Law. My mother’s name is Matilda. Everybody’s mother, father, sister, friend (are) in a vulnerable population – this is about protecting them. What you do, highly affects their health and wellbeing,” Cuomo said.
The Governor ordered cancellation of all non-essential gatherings of any size for any reason.
He said if people do go out for reasons such as buying groceries, they are required to stay six feet away from each other.
“We are laser focused on protecting those most at risk,” Cuomo said.
Total COVID-19 cases in the US now stand at 10,442 and there have been 150 fatalities.
Cuomo said public transportation will keep running for nurses, doctors, law enforcement officers and other essential personnel.
“Everyone else: Limit the use of public transportation to only when absolutely necessary,” he said, adding that such measures will put the state in “PAUSE – Policies, Assure, Uniform, Safety for Everyone”.
He warned that the state will enforce the orders effective Sunday night.
“These are not helpful hints. I am not kidding about this,” he added.
These provisions will be enforced,” Cuomo said. “Your actions can affect my health.”
Even as he offered a dire assessment of the crisis, the governor sparred with reporters who asserted that the new measures amounted to exactly what he said he was avoiding.
Cuomo said he was seeking to limit contact between New Yorkers to reduce the spread of the deadly virus — and compared the rise in cases to a plumbing valve.
“Tighten the valve more,” Cuomo said. “We’re closing the valve.”
Earlier, yesterday, Governor Cuomo announced that mortgage payments will be waived for 90 days for those with financial hardships as the state ramps up measures to mitigate the health and economic impacts of the new coronavirus. He added that overdraft fees on ATMs and credit cards will also be waived.
(With inputs from PTI))
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