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Inventory Trades Reported by Almost a Fifth of Congress Present Potential Conflicts

Stock Trades Reported by Nearly a Fifth of Congress Show Possible Conflicts

Despite their influence and extensive access to information, members of Congress can buy and sell stocks with few restrictions.

A New York Times analysis found that 97 lawmakers or their family members bought or sold financial assets over a three-year span in industries that could be affected by their legislative committee work.

Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama and a member of the agriculture committee, regularly reported buying and selling contracts tied to cattle prices starting last year, even as the panel, by Mr. Tuberville’s own account, had “been talking about the cattle markets.”

Representative Bob Gibbs, an Ohio Republican on the House Oversight Committee, reported buying shares of the pharmaceutical company AbbVie in 2020 and 2021, while the committee was investigating AbbVie and five rivals over high drug prices.

The timing of one trade by the wife of Representative Alan Lowenthal, Democrat of California, was especially striking: His disclosure statement said she had sold Boeing shares on March 5, 2020 — one day before a House committee on which he sits released damaging findings on the company’s handling of its 737 Max jet, which was involved in two fatal crashes.

These lawmakers — all of whom defended the transactions as proper — are among 97 current senators or representatives who reported trades by themselves or immediate family members in stocks or other financial assets that intersected with the work of committees on which they serve, according to an extensive analysis of trades from the years 2019 to 2021 by The New York Times.

The potential for conflicts in stock trading by members of Congress — and their choice so far not to impose stricter limits on themselves — has long drawn criticism, especially when particularly blatant cases emerge. But the Times analysis demonstrates the scale of the issue: Over the three-year period, more than 3,700 trades reported by lawmakers from both parties posed potential conflicts between their public responsibilities and private finances.

A selection of stock trading disclosures by members of Congress, with potential conflicts identified by The Times highlighted in yellow.

In some cases, the transactions appear to be routine or to have only a tangential connection to any influence the lawmaker might have had on an issue. In others, the trades were conducted by trusts or brokers who, the lawmakers say, were operating without any instructions or input from them.

But many instances show how legislative work and investment decisions can overlap in ways that at a minimum can leave the appearance of a conflict and that sometimes form a troubling pattern — even if they technically fall within the rules.

Under a 2012 law known as the STOCK Act, members of Congress are allowed to buy and sell stocks, bonds and other financial instruments as long as they do not trade on inside information and disclose any transactions by themselves or immediate family members valued at $1,000 or more within 45 days.

Like everyone else, members of Congress are subject to laws against insider trading. Even knowledge that would fall short of the legal definition of inside information, though, has the potential to create ethical dilemmas for members of Congress who, on any given day, might be able to glean insights through legislative work, classified briefings or meetings with constituents, donors, corporate executives, regulators and other government officials.

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Both the House and the Senate have been trying to develop legislation to tighten the rules, but whether a bill will be passed by both chambers and make it to President Biden’s desk this year remains in doubt, despite rare bipartisan support.

“The American people don’t want us day trading for profit, and engaging in active trading of the very equities that are connected to the policies that we are deciding on and voting on every day,” said Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican. He is co-sponsoring a bill in the House that would require members to put individual stocks, bonds and many other financial assets in a blind trust, a portfolio that is managed by an outside adviser with no involvement by the owner.

To examine the potential for conflicts, The Times used a comprehensive database called Capitol Trades, which was compiled from congressional trading disclosures by the German financial data firm 2iQ Research.

The Times then matched the trades against committee assignments, hearings and investigations to construct a picture of how members’ congressional work and their personal financial transactions could potentially intersect.

Some committees have broad purview over matters like tax policy, which affects every company and individual in the U.S. economy but which the Times analysis would not have flagged. And members of Congress have wide-ranging influence, and access to sensitive information, that their committee assignments may not reflect.

Yet even with those omissions, the 3,700 potentially conflicted trades identified by the analysis amounted to more than 10 percent of the transactions by members of Congress in the Capitol Trades database during the three years.

The analysis shows that 13 lawmakers, including Mr. Gibbs and other members of the House oversight panel, reported that they or immediate family members had bought or sold shares of companies that were under investigation by their committees between 2019 and 2021, encompassing years in which Democrats controlled the House and control of the Senate swung from Republicans to Democrats.

Bob Gibbs

Representative, R-Ohio

Reported trades in 36 companies;
16 potential conflicts

Oversight Committee

AbbVie*Johnson & JohnsonMerckPfizer

*
Traded while the committee was investigating the company

Oversight Subcommittee on Environment

Exxon MobilAmerican Electric PowerBPEmerson ElectricEnergy TransferEnergy Transfer PartnersMarathon OilMarathon Petroleum

Transportation Committee

BoeingQuantumScapeFordUnion Pacific Corp.

It also showed that 44 of the 50 members of Congress who were most active in the markets bought or sold securities in companies over which their committee assignments could give them some degree of knowledge or influence.

One of the most vexing issues for lawmakers is trading by their immediate family members, some of whom have independent wealth and careers.

The 97 members the Times analysis identified do not include Speaker Nancy Pelosi; her disclosure filings were not flagged because she does not sit on any legislative committees. Her husband, Paul Pelosi, is a real estate and technology investor who reported buying and selling between $25 million and $81 million worth of stocks, options and other financial assets between 2019 and 2021, according to Ms. Pelosi’s filings. Among them were investments in high-profile companies like Alphabet — the parent company of Google — that are regularly the subject of congressional and regulatory scrutiny.

The husband of Representative Carol Miller, Republican of West Virginia, bought shares in the pharmaceutical company AbbVie during the investigation into drug pricing by the House oversight panel while she was serving on the committee, according to Ms. Miller’s disclosure statement.

So did the wife and children of another member of that committee, Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, his filings show. Mr. Khanna’s family members bought or sold shares in not only AbbVie during the committee’s review, but also in those of seven other companies while they were under scrutiny by the oversight panel or other committees on which Mr. Khanna sat.

A page from a stock trading disclosure submitted by Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California.

Mr. Khanna, whose wife, Ritu Ahuja Khanna, is the daughter of Monte Ahuja, the founder of a successful automotive equipment company, reported that his wife and children — who are young and whose assets are traded by a trust — bought or sold securities at least 10,500 times in the three-year period The Times studied.

Mr. Khanna said in an interview that he never traded himself and was uninvolved in the trading of his family members’ assets. Mr. Khanna said he favored a complete ban on trading by members, but for family members, he said he thought a “highly diversified trust” that is managed by an outsider — the arrangement used by his wife and young children — was an ethical solution.

“If someone’s coming into a marriage with independent resources, I think that’s the appropriate way to deal with the conflict,” he said.

Ro Khanna

Representative, D-Calif.

Reported trades in 897 companies;
149 potential conflicts

Agriculture Committee

Deere & Co.Mondelez InternationalArcher Daniels MidlandIBMCortevaKelloggKraft HeinzConagra BrandsGeneral MillsFMC Corp.Hormel FoodsSyscoMcCormick & Co.Pilgrim’s PrideSmuckerTyson FoodsCampbell SoupHershey Co.Mosaic Co.US FoodsCF IndustriesLamb WestonPost HoldingsScotts Miracle-Gro

Agriculture Subcommittee on Commodity Exchanges, Energy and Credit

CME GroupIntercontinental Exchange

Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock and Foreign Agriculture

Idexx LaboratoriesMcDonald’s

Armed Services Committee

AmazonAlphabetBoeingGeneral ElectricOracleBWX TechnologiesHoneywellGeneral DynamicsNorthrop GrummanRaytheon TechnologiesL3Harris TechnologiesRaytheon Co.TeleflexTextronHexcel Corp.Huntington Ingalls IndustriesWoodwardHeico Corp.Howmet AerospaceSpirit AeroSystemsL3 TechnologiesOshkosh Corp.

Armed Services Committee
Oversight Committee

Lockheed Martin*TransDigm

*
Traded during investigation

Armed Services Committee
Oversight Committee
Agriculture Committee

Microsoft

Armed Services Committee
Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations

Leidos

Oversight Committee

MerckEli LillyWalgreens Boots AllianceAbbVie*Biogen*TwitterAmgen*Vertex PharmaceuticalsBristol Myers SquibbRegeneron PharmaceuticalsAlexion PharmaceuticalsGilead SciencesCapital OneViatrisIncyteAllerganModernaSeagenPerrigoBioMarin PharmaceuticalCelgene*Nektar TherapeuticsJazz PharmaceuticalsCatalentHorizon TherapeuticsAstraZenecaBluebird BioIonis PharmaceuticalsNeurocrine BiosciencesOrganonSage TherapeuticsUnited TherapeuticsAlnylam PharmaceuticalsBioNTechExelixisIntercept PharmaceuticalsNovartis*Ultragenyx

*
Traded during investigation

Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy

PfizerJohnson & Johnson*Intuitive SurgicalAltria Group*MedtronicPhilip Morris InternationalBecton, Dickinson and CompanyEdwards LifesciencesAbbott LaboratoriesBoston ScientificStrykerAbiomedBaxter InternationalZimmer BiometResMedHologicVarian Medical SystemsCantel MedicalDexcomInogen

*
Traded during investigation

Oversight Subcommittee on Environment

Exxon MobilChevron3M CompanyDominion EnergyEmerson ElectricAmetek Inc.GeneracDuPontPhillips 66Eaton Corp.Nextera EnergyRockwell AutomationSouthern Co.American Electric PowerBaker HughesCMS EnergyConocoPhillipsConsolidated EdisonCoterra EnergyDuke EnergyEOG ResourcesEversource EnergyExelonKinder MorganMarathon PetroleumPioneer Natural ResourcesPublic Service Enterprise GroupSchlumberger Ltd.Sempra EnergySensata TechnologiesValero EnergyWilliams CompaniesXcel EnergyBrookfield InfrastructureBrookfield Renewable Corp.Sunrun

Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations

VMware

Note: Stock purchases and sales were made by trusts in the names of Mr. Khanna’s wife and young children.

Whether legislators’ privileged position actually yields financial benefits to those who play the markets is not clear. Although some observers have pointed to specific examples of members who appeared to have made a profit, STOCK Act disclosures often provide insufficient information to make that calculation: They show only wide ranges of values, do not have to specify whether a transaction yielded a profit or a loss and sometimes do not show both a purchase and a sale.

But a Dartmouth College study published earlier this year said the specific stocks that members of Congress reported buying and selling between 2012 and 2020 did not, on average, subsequently perform any better or worse than other, similar stocks.

“You cannot rule out that there’s some serious insider trading going on,” said Bruce I. Sacerdote, an economics professor who was a co-author of the study. “What you know for sure is on average they don’t do particularly well, and these House members and senators would be better served if they were just in index funds.”

A Troubling Recent History

Legal and ethical questions about securities trading by members of Congress have surfaced repeatedly in recent years.

In 2020, Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, was investigated along with three other senators by the Justice Department for selling stocks after a private briefing on the potential harms of the coronavirus. The “well-timed stock sales” allowed Mr. Burr to avert at least $87,000 in losses, according to a recently unsealed affidavit used by the federal government to obtain a search warrant for the senator’s phone in 2020. But charges were never filed and the investigation was eventually closed, as were the investigations into his colleagues. The status of a separate Securities and Exchange Commission review into Mr. Burr is unclear.

A running investigation by the website Insider that began last year reported that 72 members of Congress had fallen out of compliance with the STOCK Act by making trading disclosures late, inaccurately or not at all.

In a rare insider-trading prosecution of a member of Congress, Representative Chris Collins, Republican of New York, resigned in 2019 after pleading guilty to charges related to giving his son insider information about a failed drug trial at an Australian biotech company on whose board the lawmaker served. He served time in prison before being pardoned by President Donald J. Trump.

A Morning Consult poll in January showed that almost two-thirds of respondents would like to see a ban on members of Congress trading.

In the absence of restrictions, Mr. Pelosi’s transactions alone have spawned a cottage industry of social media accounts and trade-tracking services to help investors emulate his market moves — often accompanied by scathing commentary about his wife’s potential conflicts of interest.

“The speaker does not own any stocks,” a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi said, adding that she “has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”

Those critiques are fueled by the fact that as speaker, Ms. Pelosi has immense power over which legislation makes it to the House floor — including various proposals now being considered to tighten the rules for financial trading by her husband, her colleagues and their families.

After initially opposing stricter measures, Ms. Pelosi said in February she would support them but wanted federal judges to be held to similar rules. The Wall Street Journal reported last fall that more than 130 federal judges had overseen cases involving companies in which they or their families owned interests.

A bill passed by Congress this year evened out disclosure requirements between the two branches of government. It was signed into law by Mr. Biden in May.

A legislative proposal now under development by the House’s Democratic leadership, which was outlined in a memo reviewed by The Times, would prohibit lawmakers, their spouses and dependent children from trading stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies and other financial assets tied to specific companies. Under that proposal — which is separate from the bill that Mr. Roy, the Texas Republican, is supporting — members and their immediate families would be obliged to either sell off those holdings or place them in a blind trust.

Ms. Pelosi supports the proposed framework, according to a senior House official.

In the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has voiced support for new measures to curb trading by members, but no bill that could receive the necessary 60 votes for passage has yet emerged.

The House member designated by Ms. Pelosi to generate a compromise bill to address the issue — Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California — was herself among the 97 members identified by The Times’s analysis.

Zoe Lofgren

Representative, D-Calif.

Reported trades in 127 companies;
9 potential conflicts

Judiciary Committee

PfizerGilead Sciences*MerckAbbVie*Johnson & JohnsonWalgreens Boots Alliance*

*
Bond trades

Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet

Qualcomm

Science, Space and Technology Committee

Applied MaterialsIntel

Note: Stock purchases and sales were made in accounts owned by Ms. Lofgren’s husband.

Ms. Lofgren ranked 25th among members of Congress for the number of transactions disclosed, as a result of trades made by her husband. Among those were stocks or bonds issued by five drug manufacturers between 2019 and 2021, a period when the House Judiciary Committee, of which Ms. Lofgren has long been a member, introduced multiple bills to lower the cost of prescription drugs and root out what it called anticompetitive practices in the pharmaceutical industry. (Most of the bills never received a vote, although aspects of one proposal were wrapped into a broader spending bill late in 2019.)

Ms. Lofgren said during an April hearing on how to curb congressional stock trading that her husband’s stocks were managed by “some guy at the bank” without the couple’s knowledge. Her office declined to comment on the specifics of the pharmaceutical sales.

“I have never personally purchased or sold any stock,” Ms. Lofgren said in a statement. She added that she and her husband had instructed their broker to avoid fossil fuels, tobacco and gambling companies.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, has been tasked by the House’s Democratic leadership with generating a compromise bill to address stock trading by members of Congress. Her husband reported trades that intersected with her congressional work.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Six members of Congress said that subsequent to making transactions that were flagged by the Times analysis, they or their family members sold all their individual stock investments and stopped buying new ones. Another five members said that they are placing or have placed assets in a blind trust.

One lawmaker, Representative Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota, said her son had begun buying and selling a range of stocks without her knowledge while he was at college — much to her chagrin.

A few members said there was nothing wrong with their investing in individual companies.

“I’ve had bank stocks and I’ve been strongly against the banks, and they’ve never supported me, and I’ve got drug stocks and I’ve never supported Big Pharma, and they’ve not supported me, and it’s just irrelevant to me,” said Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, who added that he had bought some of the stocks decades ago and believed he had not purchased a new share in at least 10 years.

Mr. Cohen said he had deliberately sold Boeing shares only after its price had fallen while it was under investigation for the 737 Max crashes by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, of which he is a member, to avoid potential criticism.

In some other professions, the rules are much stricter. Corporate law practices, private equity firms, news organizations and hedge funds restrict the trading of securities that could be affected by knowledge gleaned on the job — even in cases where the employer’s interactions with those companies are far removed from the employee who wants to trade. (The Times does not allow employees to hold stock or any other financial interest in a company or enterprise whose coverage the employee regularly provides or oversees.)

Trading prohibitions are even more stringent in the White House, where officials and staff members must sell off individual stock holdings, recuse themselves from matters that could affect their financial interests or, in rare cases, seek a presidential waiver.

“Every single day we have access to information that people share with us because we’re members of Congress,” said Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, whose bill to tighten trading restrictions has attracted 67 co-sponsors from both parties, including Mr. Roy. That information, she said, “can drive markets.”

“And so the whole purpose of this legislation is to say, we have the ability, through this one extra step, to tell the American people that we are trustworthy,” Ms. Spanberger added.

A portrait of Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia

Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, is spearheading a bill to tighten trading restrictions for members of Congress.

Greg Kahn for The New York Times

A portrait of Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas

Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, is one of 67 co-sponsors of the bill.

Greg Kahn for The New York Times

Widespread Conflicts

During the three-year period analyzed by The Times, about a third of members of Congress — when all seats are filled there are 535 voting members — bought or sold stocks or other financial assets.

The 97 members who were flagged by the Times analysis amounted to more than half of the people who reported trades, and nearly a fifth of Congress. The group was split almost equally between Democrats and Republicans.

Some committees had multiple members with potential conflicts.

Three members of the House Committee on Financial Services bought or sold Wells Fargo shares during a year in which the committee was investigating the bank’s consumer practices and risk management.

One of them, Representative John W. Rose, Republican of Tennessee, sold between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of the stock late in 2019, a few months before the committee issued a sharply critical report on the company that coincided with a steep decline in the bank’s share price amid pandemic fears. A spokesman for Mr. Rose did not respond to requests for comment.

John W. Rose

Representative, R-Tenn.

Reported trades in 7 companies;
3 potential conflicts

Financial Services Committee

Bank of AmericaPinnacle Financial PartnersWells Fargo

A quarter of the members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources reported purchases or sales of securities in energy companies like Exxon and Chevron.

More than a third of the members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reported either buying or selling stocks like the oil-field services company Schlumberger, the chemical company DuPont or the manufacturer Illinois Tool Works.

In the House, eight members of the Armed Services Committee reported transactions in defense or aerospace stocks.

Some members reported trades in particular companies over and over.

Dr. Deborah Malumed, the wife of Mr. Lowenthal, the California Democrat, bought or sold Sunrun — which installs solar energy systems in homes — on 97 occasions during a yearlong period, according to his disclosure statements. During that time, Sunrun shares experienced two rallies — one that began late in 2019 and extended into early 2020, and a second, much bigger one after a marketwide rout caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus in the United States in March.

Alan Lowenthal

Representative, D-Calif.

Reported trades in 109 companies;
9 potential conflicts

Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources

SunrunVivint SolarSempra EnergyVistraNextera EnergyBrookfield Infrastructure

Transportation Committee

UberBoeingGeneral Motors

Note: The vast majority of stock purchases and sales were made from accounts owned by Mr. Lowenthal’s wife.

In 2020, Mr. Lowenthal, a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources and the chairman of an energy-related subcommittee, was part of a bipartisan group that pushed for the inclusion of renewable energy companies in pandemic relief measures. (Many of the proposals eventually passed last month as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.) In June 2020, he co-sponsored a bill to provide tax incentives for using renewable energy. It never received a vote.

Sunrun shares began rallying around that time; by October they had reached what at the time was a company high of $80. They cost $9 when Dr. Malumed bought shares earlier that year, in March — the month she sold Boeing shares ahead of the Transportation Committee’s preliminary report on the 737 Max jet crashes.

Mr. Lowenthal said in an emailed statement that the “overwhelming majority” of his trades and those of his wife — including the Sunrun and Boeing trades — were made by their stockbroker and without his involvement.

“I have never discussed any congressional matter, including the Boeing 737 Max investigation, with our broker and would never do so,” he said.

Other members traded more broadly within sectors affected by their committees. Mr. Tuberville, a longtime college football coach who joined the Senate in early 2021, quickly established himself as an active trader with recurring potential conflicts.

Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, at right, reported trades in 20 companies or agricultural commodities that posed potential conflicts, according to the Times analysis.

Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

As a member of the Senate health committee, he bought and sold shares of major pharmaceutical and medical services companies.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, on two occasions he and his wife bought, and then in a third transaction sold, options called puts — which represent the right to sell shares at a specified future price — tied to Microsoft in a five-month period. The second put sale occurred less than two weeks before the software company lost a $10 billion contract with the Defense Department. And as a member of the agriculture committee and its subcommittee on commodities, risk management and trade, Mr. Tuberville bet on the future prices of farm products.

Toward the end of 2021, Mr. Tuberville made a flurry of contract purchases tied to future prices of corn and cattle. He continued buying and selling corn and cattle contracts this year, even as the agriculture committee discussed two bills that could affect cattle prices if passed.

Tommy Tuberville

Senator, R-Ala.

Reported trades in 101 companies or commodities;
20 potential conflicts

Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee

Cattle futuresCorn futuresRed wheat futuresHershey Co.

Armed Services Committee

AlphabetGeneral DynamicsGeneral ElectricHoneywell

Armed Services Committee
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

Microsoft

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee

ChemedJohnson & JohnsonQuest DiagnosticsAlign TechnologyBecton, Dickinson and CompanyBristol Myers SquibbEdwards LifesciencesMerckRegeneron PharmaceuticalsResMedVeeva Systems

In a brief interview at the Capitol recently, Mr. Tuberville said, “I don’t trade stocks, my brokers do.” He said that he did not receive nonpublic information on the agriculture committee and would never share committee information with his brokers in any case.

“I don’t limit them to anything, what they can do, what they can’t do,” he said. “I give them money, say to them: ‘I’m in public service now; you do it. Don’t lose it all!’”

In recent years, some lawmakers or their families have bought or sold stocks that were likely to be affected by events they had been briefed on confidentially.

Representative Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, fell under scrutiny by the Office of Congressional Ethics over a stock trade.

In 2020, Mr. Kelly’s wife, Victoria Kelly, bought $15,000 to $50,000 of stock in the mining company Cleveland-Cliffs — just one day after Mr. Kelly’s office learned that the Commerce Department would initiate a tariff investigation that might benefit the company, which at the time employed about 1,400 workers at a steel plant in Butler, within his congressional district. Mr. Kelly had lobbied Trump administration officials for additional tariff protections, according to an ethics office report.

Ms. Kelly’s purchase — made before the news was public — was the only trade she made in an individual stock that year; records suggest she took a nearly 300 percent profit when she sold eight months later.

The ethics office’s investigation was disclosed last year. While Ms. Kelly’s Cleveland-Cliffs purchase was not flagged by the Times analysis because it did not overlap in an obvious way with her husband’s committee assignments, 23 other transactions made by her in 2019 were purchases and sales of a variety of pharmaceutical, insurance and medical equipment stocks while Mr. Kelly was a member of the health care subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. and Ms. Kelly did not respond to requests for comment, and it is unclear whether the House Committee on Ethics — to which the Office of Congressional Ethics, a separate and independent body, referred the matter last July — is still investigating.

But even ethics committee members in both chambers, who are responsible for ensuring compliance with the STOCK Act disclosure requirements, have potential stock-trading conflicts.

Representative Dean Phillips, Democrat of Minnesota and a member of the House Ethics Committee as well as the Financial Services Committee, traded more than 150 times in tech companies, banks and other financial institutions.

Dean Phillips

Representative, D-Minn.

Reported trades in 276 companies;
34 potential conflicts

Financial Services Committee

Charles SchwabWells FargoBank of New York MellonNorthern TrustGoldman SachsJPMorgan ChaseTruist FinancialE-TradeMetaBank of AmericaCitigroupCitizens FinancialFifth Third BancorpFranklin ResourcesHuntington BancsharesPNC Financial ServicesState StreetComericaFirst Citizens BancsharesInvescoMorgan StanleyAffiliated Managers GroupM&T Bank Corp.PayPalU.S. BancorpCIT Group*CME GroupKeyCorpPeople’s United FinancialRegions Financial Corp.*SVB FinancialSynovus*Wintrust FinancialZions Bancorporation

*
Bond trade

A spokesman for Mr. Phillips said that he “did not direct the sale or purchase of any stocks after being elected” in 2018 “to avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest with his official duties in Congress.” Some of the transactions occurred after January 2020, when the representative said Mr. Phillips began moving most of his stocks into a blind trust, a process that took 18 months.

Representative John Rutherford, Republican of Florida, traded aerospace and defense companies during his time on the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security. His office did not respond to requests for comment.

John Rutherford

Representative, R-Fla.

Reported trades in 60 companies;
3 potential conflicts

Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security

BAE SystemsMicrosoftLockheed Martin

Mr. Rutherford appeared to be late in reporting more than 150 trades, according to an analysis by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which valued the trades involved at between $652,000 and $3.5 million.

In February, the matter was referred to the House Ethics Committee, of which he is a member.

In August, the committee said it had dismissed the matter.

Kate Kelly covers money, influence, and policy as a correspondent in the Washington bureau of The Times. Before that, she spent 20 years covering Wall Street deals, key players and their intersection with politics. She is the author of three books, including “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.” @katekelly

Adam Playford is projects editor for The Upshot, where he works on investigative data projects. He previously worked as an investigative editor at the Tampa Bay Times and a reporter at Newsday and the Palm Beach Post. @adamplayford

Alicia Parlapiano is a graphics editor and reporter covering politics and policy from Washington. She joined The Times in 2011 and previously worked at The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center. @aliciaparlap

Ege Uz is a creative technologist and the 2022 Digital News Design Fellow at The Times.

About the analysis

The Times started with data on financial transactions by members of Congress or their immediate family members between 2019 and 2021. The data was drawn from filings by the senators and representatives, which were digitized and connected to data on the companies’ industries by Capitol Trades, a project of the Frankfurt-based financial data company 2iQ Research. The data was compiled by the company’s team of more than 100 analysts, who reviewed each filing by hand, according to Ahmed Asaad, head of research at Capitol Trades, and Diona Denkovska, 2iQ Research’s head of data strategy.

Times reporters built a database of more than 9,000 examples of how those companies intersected with specific congressional committees and subcommittees. They identified committees that oversee areas of federal policy vital to the companies’ business, and those that oversee or fund federal agencies that gave the companies significant contracts. They also looked at investigations that committees have performed into specific corporations and the company leaders whom those committees called to testify in hearings.

They matched those potential conflicts with data on committee assignments, provided by the ProPublica Congress API, Congressional Quarterly and Charles Stewart III, a professor at M.I.T., to find examples of trades that overlapped with the member’s committee tenure.

The Times did not include trades in municipal bonds, mutual funds or index funds, even those that track a specific sector. It also did not consider trades by members who moved quickly to divest from shares shortly after being appointed to a relevant committee or those whose transactions were all sales, as long as they were entirely divesting themselves of stocks within a 60-day period.

The Times could not account for every committee that affects each company; as a result, the analysis is surely an undercount.

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Politics

U.S. delegation cuts Haiti journey brief after gunshots reported at president’s funeral

U.S. delegation cuts Haiti trip short after gunshots reported at president's funeral

A man attends the funeral of slain Haitian President Jovenel Moise, at Moise’s family home in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, Friday, July 23, 2021.

Matias Delacroix | AP

A U.S. delegation that attended the funeral of late Haitian president Jovenel Moise on Friday is safe and returning to the U.S. following reports of gunshots and crowd control gas as protests took place outside the ceremony, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday.

The delegation, led by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, was forced to end the trip early due to the unrest, a senior administration official told NBC News. However, Thomas-Greenfield was able to meet with Haitian leaders at the funeral, including newly sworn in Prime Minister Ariel Henry and his predecessor Claude Joseph before leaving.

There were no immediate reports of injuries among protesters, authorities or guests at the funeral. 

The U.S. delegation included House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.; Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb.; and NSC Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere Juan Gonzales. It also included Daniel Foote, who was newly appointed as the U.S. special envoy to Haiti by the Biden administration, and U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Michele Sison.

Greenfield, in remarks delivered upon the delegation’s arrival in Haiti, expressed solidarity with the Haitian people and condolences to First Lady Martine Moise.

“Our delegation is here to bring a message to the Haitian people: You deserve democracy, stability, security, and prosperity, and we stand with you in this time of crisis,” Greenfield said

The funeral service was opened by a brass band and church choir, but was disrupted by angry shouts of protesters accusing authorities of being responsible for Moise’s death, according to Reuters.

Haitian officials arriving at the event were met with verbal anger from protesters, with one man calling Haitian police chief Leon Charles a criminal, Reuters reported.

Protests erupted in the northern city of Cap-Haitien leading up to the funeral for Moise, with supporters of the slain president angry over unanswered questions about his assassination, according to Reuters.

“We are deeply concerned about unrest in Haiti,” Psaki said at a Friday briefing. “In this critical moment, Haiti’s leaders must come together to chart a united path that reflects the will of the Haitian people. We remain committed to supporting the people of Haiti in this challenging time.”

This comes over two weeks after Moise was shot dead at his private Port-au-Prince residence, a shocking assassination that plunged the Caribbean nation into political upheaval.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement Friday the U.S. will continue to provide requested assistance, including equipment and training, to the Haitian National Police and government of Haiti. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security will also continue to aid Haitian authorities in their investigation into the killing at the request of the Haitian government.

Sullivan added that the departments will continue working closely with international partners to support the Haitian government’s efforts to hold the perpetrators of the assassination accountable.

The Haitian government has also requested that the U.S. deploy American troops to protect critical infrastructure in Haiti.

Biden announced last week that the U.S. will only send American marines to secure the U.S. Embassy in Haiti and has no plans to send military assistance. 

“The idea of sending American forces into Haiti is not on the agenda at this moment,” Biden said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week. 

Earlier this month, the U.S. sent a delegation of U.S. officials to Haiti to assess the political and security situation in the nation, assist with the investigation of Moise’s murder, and encourage free and fair elections. 

— Reuters contributed to this report.

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Health

The Actual Toll From Jail Covid Circumstances Might Be Greater Than Reported

The Real Toll From Prison Covid Cases May Be Higher Than Reported

An increase in deaths across the country in the past year, past the well-known Covid-19 toll, has led health experts to suggest that some virus cases have gone undiagnosed or have been attributed to other causes. There have also been inconsistencies and changing guidelines on which deaths should be considered coronavirus deaths.

Public health officials say the prospect of missed deaths from viruses linked to the country’s prisons, jails and immigration prisons is particularly risky. It is a challenge, say the experts, to prepare prisons for future epidemics without knowing the full toll. Currently, most of the publicly known death tolls related to incarceration have come from the facilities themselves.

“You can’t make good public policy if you don’t know what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Sharon Dolovich, director of the Covid Behind Bars Data Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, which tracks coronavirus deaths in American prisons .

Prison and prison officials defended their methods of counting inmate deaths from coronavirus, saying they followed all state and local documentation requirements. Some noted that their role was to track deaths in “custody” and suggested that including the deaths of those recently in their care but no longer in their care is both complex and complex It would be impractical and possibly even overstate the number of virus cases related to the facilities.

“It is unfair to expect prisons to somehow take responsibility for what happens to people when they are released from our custody,” said Kathy Hieatt, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Beach Sheriffs Office that held Mr. Melius. “We follow law and the Virginia Department of Corrections’s extensive standards for investigating and reporting those who die in custody. In no way is it necessary to report deaths of former inmates. ”She added,“ It is absurd to think that we could somehow keep an eye on these thousands of people and take responsibility for them. ”

Throughout the pandemic, prison systems have used different methods to publicly report Covid-19-related deaths. Nevada’s prisons say they notify state health officials of inmate deaths from Covid-19 but do not make them public. Mississippi prison authorities said no inmates had died from the coronavirus at their facilities before announcing in January that nearly two dozen prisoner deaths were related to Covid-19.

Updated

July 13, 2021 at 4:53 p.m. ET

And in Texas, a prison medical committee is re-examining any case where a coroner said Covid-19 was one of the causes of death and has sometimes overridden previous findings, according to Jeremy Desel, a spokesman for the state prison system. Shelia Bradley, a 53-year-old prisoner, was reported to have died by a coroner as of “bacterial and possibly fungal pneumonia, a complication of Covid-19”, but the committee concluded that she died of “acute bacterial bronchopneumonia”. without listing Covid-19.

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Health

Brazil Reported One of many Highest Covid-19 Dying Tolls within the World

Brazil Reported One of the Highest Covid-19 Death Tolls in the World

The death toll of Covid-19 in Brazil has now exceeded 500,000, just behind the United States, which recorded 600,000 deaths last week, and India, where the death toll can range from 600,000 to 4.2 million.

Almost 18 million people have become infected so far, and the country is seeing an average of nearly 73,000 new cases and about 2,000 deaths per day, according to official figures. However, many experts believe the numbers underestimate the true scale of the country’s epidemic, as is the case in India.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been heavily criticized for dismissing the threat from the virus despite contracting himself last year. On Saturday, thousands of people protested his response to the pandemic, including his opposition to regulations on wearing masks and the slow adoption of vaccines, according to Reuters. It is believed that only 11 percent of residents are fully vaccinated.

A severe drought has also struck the country, the worst in at least 91 years, and experts say a terrible fire season could further complicate the country’s battle to fight the virus. The smoke could even make cases of Covid-19 worse by increasing inflammation in the lungs.

“It’s a dangerous situation,” said Dr. Aljerry Rêgo, professor and director of a Covid facility in the Amazon state of Amapá. “And, of course, the greatest risk is to further overwhelm the public health system, which is already precarious in the Amazon.”

In a recent testimony to a legislative committee, Brazil’s former Health Minister described Bolsonaros’ confusing belief that an anti-malaria drug would be effective against Covid-19, and a Pfizer executive said the company was offering millions of doses of its Covid-19 vaccine I went to Brazil last year – but received no response from the government for months.

Mr. Bolsonaro shrugged off the revelations. Last month, his government announced that Brazil would host the Copa America soccer tournament later this year after Argentina decided it would be irresponsible to do so while the virus continued to spread.

On Friday, officials reported that 82 people linked to the tournament had contracted Covid-19, according to The Associated Press. The Brazilian Ministry of Health said in a statement that 37 players and employees of the 10 tournament teams and 45 employees are infected.

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Health

Mother and father and caregivers reported psychological well being points extra usually than others through the pandemic, a C.D.C. examine says.

Parents and caregivers reported mental health issues more often than others during the pandemic, a C.D.C. study says.

Parents and unpaid caregivers of adults in the United States reported far higher rates of mental health issues during the coronavirus pandemic than people who held neither of those roles, federal researchers reported on Thursday.

About 70 percent of parents and adult caregivers — such as those tending to older people, for example — and about 85 percent of people who were both reported adverse mental health symptoms during the pandemic, versus about a third of people who did not hold those responsibilities, according to new research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study also found that people who were both parent and caregivers were eight times more likely to have seriously considered suicide than people who held neither role.

“These findings highlight that parents and caregivers, especially those balancing roles both as parents and caregivers, experienced higher levels of adverse mental health symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic than adults without these responsibilities,” the authors said.

“Caregivers who had someone to rely on for support had lower odds of experiencing any adverse mental health symptoms,” they said.

The report follows innumerable anecdotes and several studies suggesting spikes in mental health problems among parents and caregivers during the pandemic. But the new C.D.C. report noted that “without prepandemic mental health data in this sample, whether adverse mental health symptoms were caused by or worsened by the pandemic is unknown.”

The study is based on data from online English-language surveys administered to panels of U.S. residents run by Qualtrics, a company that conducts commercial surveys, for the Covid-19 Outbreak Public Evaluation Initiative, an effort to track American attitudes and behaviors during the pandemic. The data was gathered from Dec. 6 to 27 last year, and from Feb. 16 to March 8 of this year, and relied on 10,444 respondents, weighted to match U.S. demographic data, 42 percent of whom identified as parents or adult caregivers.

The study noted that the results might not fully represent the U.S. population, because of factors like the surveys only being presented online and in English.

The surveys included screening items for depression, anxiety, Covid-19 trauma and stress-related disorders, and asked respondents whether they had experienced suicidal thinking in the past month. About half of the parent-caregivers who responded said that they had recently had suicidal thoughts.

Elizabeth A. Rohan, a health scientist at the C.D.C. and one of the study’s authors, said in an interview that what set this research apart was a large sample size and a broad definition of caregiver, which allowed for a more inclusive picture of people in that role.

“Our net captured more people than other surveys,” Dr. Rohan said.

Dr. Rohan said that the study reinforced the need to destigmatize mental health issues among caregivers and for better support systems. Communication is key, she said, and “it doesn’t have to be professional help.”

She added, “We cannot underestimate the importance of staying connected to one another,” which is helpful whether the person is “a trusted friend, a family member or a professional.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

Categories
Politics

DOJ watchdog will probe reported Trump-era subpoenas of Apple for Democrats’ knowledge

DOJ watchdog will probe reported Trump-era subpoenas of Apple for Democrats' data

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks outside of a closed session before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees of the House of Representatives in Washington, DC on October 28, 2019. Capitol in front of media representatives. Also pictured are (LR) Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA).

Mark Wilson | Getty Images

The Justice Department’s internal watchdog office will investigate after a bomb report alleged that the Trump administration clandestinely summoned Apple over the House Democrats’ data, the office said on Friday.

The investigation will review the “use of subpoenas and other judicial authorities to obtain communications records” by members of Congress, their staff and the news media “in connection with the recent investigations into alleged unauthorized disclosure of information to the media by government officials”. This was announced by Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a statement.

The move follows a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers, including the two whose records have reportedly been subpoenaed, demanding that the Justice Department inspector-general open an investigation into Trump-era behavior.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

The New York Times reported Thursday night that Trump’s Justice Department seized records in 2017 and early 2018 from at least a dozen people associated with the House Intelligence Committee, including the House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-California, and that Committee member Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.

The agency also reportedly obtained data from the accounts of carers and family members, one of whom was a child.

Prosecutors for the DOJ, then headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, were looking for sources of harmful news of contacts between Trump employees and Russia, the report said.

When Trump’s prosecutors investigated the source of the leaks, they reportedly investigated the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, whose members have access to sensitive documents.

The investigation did not link the House committee to the leaks – but Sessions replacement, William Barr, kept the investigation going, the Times reported.

U.S. President Donald Trump (left) speaks with William Barr, U.S. Attorney General, during the 38th annual National Peace Officers Memorial Day service at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, May 15, 2019.

Kevin Dietsch | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Apple was silenced by a gag order that expired earlier this year, according to a company spokesman who confirmed the subpoena in a statement to CNBC on Friday evening.

“It would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the information you want without sifting through the accounts of the users,” said Apple spokesman Fred Sainz. “In accordance with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide content such as emails or images.”

Microsoft similarly confirmed a 2017 subpoena and gag order regarding a personal email account on Friday.

“As soon as the gag rule expired, we notified the customer who told us that he was a congress employee. We then gave a briefing to the agent’s employees after this announcement, ”a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement to CNBC.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco referred the matter to the Department of Justice’s inspector general, an agency official told CNBC on Friday.

Schiff welcomed the move in a statement as “an important first step”. But the watchdog investigation “will not eliminate the need for other forms of oversight and accountability – including public oversight by Congress – and the ministry must work together in those efforts too,” Schiff said.

Monaco, the second official in the Justice Department, was ratified by the Senate in April. Horowitz has been Inspector General since 2012.

Horowitz said Friday that his investigation “will investigate the ministry’s compliance with applicable DOJ policies and procedures, and whether such use or investigations were based on improper considerations.

“If circumstances warrant, the OIG will consider other issues that may arise during the review,” he said, adding, “The review does not replace the OIG’s judgment on the legal and investigative judgments made in matters raised by OIG are checked, have been taken. “

The Times article came weeks after reports that the Trump administration had secretly received records from journalists from several news outlets.

On Thursday evening, Schiff called for an investigation into the Trump DOJ’s actions in “these and other cases that indicate the arming of law enforcement by a corrupt president”.

Trump had “tried to use the ministry as a club against his political opponents and media representatives,” Schiff said in a statement. “It is becoming increasingly clear that these demands have not fallen on deaf ears.”

Swalwell said in his own statement that Apple informed him last month that his files had been turned over to the Trump administration “as part of a politically motivated investigation into his supposed enemies.”

“Like many of the most despicable dictators in the world, former President Trump showed utter contempt for our democracy and the rule of law,” said Swalwell. “This kind of behavior is unacceptable, but unfortunately on the mark for a president who has repeatedly shown that he would put our constitution aside for his own benefit.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., and Senate Justice Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Added Friday that Congress must obtain testimony from Sessions and Barr.

“The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata from members and staff of the House Intelligence Committee and their families, including a minor, is shocking,” Schumer and Durbin said in a joint statement on Friday.

“This is a gross abuse of power and an attack on the separation of powers. This appalling politicization of the Justice Department by Donald Trump and his flatterers must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress, ”said the Senate leaders.

“Former Barr and Sessions attorneys-general and other officials involved must testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee. If they refuse, they will be summoned and forced to testify under oath, ”said Schumer and Durbin.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Also joined calls for a full investigation, saying he plans to introduce laws to increase transparency and reform “abuse of gag orders”.

“The current Justice Department needs to act with much greater urgency to both detect abuses and ensure full accountability of those responsible,” said Wyden.

Read the full New York Times report.

—Sara Salinas of CNBC contributed to this report.

Categories
Business

WHO says it accounts for 50% of reported instances final week

WHO classifies triple-mutant Covid variant from India as global health risk

A Covon-19 coronavirus patient rests in a banquet room temporarily converted into a Covid care center in New Delhi on May 10, 2021.

Arun Sankar | AFP | Getty Images

India’s daily Covid-19 death toll hit another record high on Wednesday as the World Health Organization said the country accounted for half of all reported cases worldwide last week.

Health ministry data showed that at least 4,205 people died within 24 hours – the largest increase in deaths in a day the South Asian country has reported since the pandemic began. However, reports suggest that India’s death toll is under counting.

A total of 23 million cases have been reported in India and more than 254,000 people have died.

The World Health Organization said India accounted for half of all cases reported worldwide last week, as well as 30% of the world’s deaths.

India has reported more than 300,000 cases per day for 21 consecutive days. However, on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health said its data showed a net decrease in total active cases over a 24-hour period for the first time in 61 days.

The second wave began around February and accelerated until March and April, after large crowds, mostly without masks, were allowed to gather for religious festivals and election campaigns in different parts of the country.

India’s health system is under tremendous pressure from the surge in cases despite the influx of international aid, including oxygen concentrators, bottles and generation equipment, and the antiviral drug remdesivir.

To ease pressure on healthcare workers, India is recruiting 400 former medical officers from the armed forces, the Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

WHO update on India, South Asia

In its latest weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic, the UN Department of Health said it was observing “worrying trends” in India’s neighboring countries, where cases are also increasing.

In Nepal, for example, nearly 50% of all people tested for Covid-19 are reported to be infected as the inland struggles with a second wave. Vaccines are said to have run out when India stopped exporting given the situation at home.

The WHO recently classified variant B.1.617 of Covid, which was first discovered in India, as a matter of concern, indicating that it has become a global threat. The variant has three sub-lines, “which differ by a few, but possibly relevant mutations in the spike protein as well as by the worldwide prevalence of detection,” said the WHO in the report.

India’s dramatic increase in cases has raised questions about the role of Covid variants such as the B.1.617 and B.1.1.7, which were first discovered in the UK.

The International Health Authority said it recently carried out a risk assessment of the situation in India and found that the resurgence and acceleration of Covid-19 transmission in the country have several likely factors may have increased portability, as well as mass gatherings and lower compliance with public health and social measures.

“The exact contributions of these factors to increased transmission in India are not precisely known,” said the WHO.

Elsewhere, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not personally attend a G7 summit in the UK next month due to the situation in Covid-19 at home, the Indian Foreign Ministry said. Modi was invited as a special guest by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the ministry said.

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Business

Complete reported circumstances cross 20 million

Total reported cases cross 20 million

A man riding his bike on a street in Old New Delhi on April 19, 2021 as India’s capital is due to impose a week-long lockdown starting tonight, officials said as the megacity struggles to contain a huge surge in Covid-19 Cases with hospitals running out of beds and having low oxygen supplies.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

India exceeded 20 million reported cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health, 357,229 new cases were reported within 24 hours, bringing the total to 20.28 million.

India’s first cases were discovered in late January last year, and a total of 10 million infections went undetected as of December, according to Johns Hopkins University. However, the next 10 million cases were reported in just under five months, mostly in April.

At least 222,408 people have died from the disease to date, but that number is likely lower than the actual death toll. Media reports suggest that crematoriums and burial grounds are overflowing with bodies of people who have died of Covid-19.

“The pandemic has now hit the small towns and villages and we are now quite concerned about how much devastation it will cause in areas where health systems are not well developed enough to provide support, even if some of the big ones . ” Metro has problems with case load from hospitals, “K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, told CNBC’s Capital Connection on Monday.

Some states are banned

During the first wave last year, India imposed a strict national lockdown between late March and May that hampered the country’s growth trajectory and left millions of people without a source of income.

While the central government appears unwilling to impose a second nationwide lockdown, several states have tightened restrictions in recent weeks, including local lockdowns and curfews. These include Maharashtra, India’s hardest hit state, Delhi, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and others.

Some health experts have suggested that India needs a National Home Order and Emergency Medical Declaration to meet current health needs.

The Indian health system has been overwhelmed by the surge in cases due to a lack of hospital beds, oxygen supplies and drugs to treat patients.

Public Health Foundation’s Reddy told CNBC India needs a two-pronged approach to tackling the second wave. First, efforts to vaccinate more than 1.3 billion people must continue.

India is facing vaccine shortages, at least in the short term, and just over 2% of the population have received both doses. From May, India will open vaccinations for people over the age of 18.

Second, India needs a “very strong” containment strategy to reduce the spread.

We turned our backs on the virus, but the virus hasn’t turned our backs on us. And now we’re paying the price.

K. Srinath Reddy

President of the Public Health Foundation of India

“What we need to do right now is to reduce person-to-person transmission by making sure there are no large crowds,” Reddy said, adding that India should not allow more than four people to be in public places and to congregate in areas with high crowds, positivity rates should be placed in full containment mode.

He added that India needs to ensure adequate social support for people recovering from milder symptoms at home.

How did India get here?

India’s second wave started sometime in February when cases started to pick up again. Previously, the country reported an average of 10,000 infections a day. In April there was a steep spike in the curve with nearly 7 million reported cases.

The Indian government has been criticized for gathering large crowds for religious festivals and election campaigns earlier this year. These mass gatherings likely turned into super-spreader events.

Scientists say the increase in cases is also partly due to variants of the coronavirus currently circulating in India. This includes a local variant called B.1.617, which has several sublines with slightly different characteristic mutations.

Reddy stated that India, in its desire to get the economy back on its feet, ignored the looming threat of a second wave.

“I think by early January, when the daily case counts, the daily deaths count, and test positivity rates are falling, there has been a widespread impression that we have ended the pandemic forever,” he said, adding, “We had Turned our backs on the virus, but the virus hasn’t turned our backs. And now we’re paying the price. “

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Health

Lots of Reported Irregular Menstruation After Publicity to Tear Gasoline, Examine Finds

Hundreds Reported Abnormal Menstruation After Exposure to Tear Gas, Study Finds

At some point last summer there were just too many reports of protesters having abnormal menstrual cycles after exposure to tear gas for Britta Torgrimson-Ojerio, a nurse researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, to dismiss them as a coincidence.

A preschool teacher told Oregon Public Broadasting that if she inhaled a significant amount of gasoline at night, she would get her period the next morning. Other Portland residents spoke of weeks of periods and unusual spots. Transgender men described sudden periods defying hormones that had kept menstruation in check for months or years.

Dr. Torgrimson-Ojerio decided that she would try to find out if these anecdotes were outliers or representatives of a more common phenomenon. She interviewed around 2,200 adults who said they had been exposed to tear gas in Portland last summer. In a study published this week in the journal BMC Public Health, she reported that 899 of them – more than 54 percent of those who may be menstruating – said they had experienced abnormal menstrual cycles.

“Even though we can’t say anything scientifically specific about these chemical agents and a causal relationship with menstrual disorders,” said Dr. Torgrimson-Ojerio, “We can definitely say that in our study, most people with menstrual cycles or a uterus reported menstrual irregularities.” after reporting exposure to tear gas. “

Downstream effects such as fertility effects are not known, but “this is our call to action to ask our scientific community to address this issue,” she said.

Dr. Torgrimson-Ojerio was also interested in whether people had other problems more than a few hours after exposure to tear gas. She found that 80 percent of respondents had difficulty breathing, which was one of the most common complaints.

Kira Taylor, a professor of epidemiology and population health in the University of Louisville’s School of Public Health and Information Sciences who is doing a similar study, said Dr. Torgrimson-Ojerio’s study provided “some of the first solid evidence” for tear gas to be associated with menstrual disorders. It is also “the first study to document the longer-term effects of tear gas exposure in a large population,” she said.

Sven-Eric Jordt, Professor of Anaesthesiology, Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University Medical School, who was not involved in the study, welcomed the work.

Most of the research that police and government use to educate them about tear gas safety “are out of date, often 50 to 70 years old, and inconsistent with modern toxicological approaches,” he said. “Most of these studies were conducted on young healthy men at the time, either in the police or the military, rather than women or a general civilian population representing protesters.”

Dr. Torgrimson-Ojerio and her colleagues recruited respondents through social media and links on The Oregonian and Oregon Health Authority websites in July and August.

The researchers asked participants to explain exactly how their periods had affected after exposure to tear gas. Increased cramps, unusual spotting, and unusually intense or prolonged bleeding were the most common reactions. A number of people who normally don’t have periods because of hormone therapy or age have reported unexpected bleeding and blotches, said Dr. Torgrimson-Ojerio.

This study has limitations. It is not a random sample.

“It is possible that people who felt that their health was harmed by tear gas were more likely to react than people who were also exposed but did not have such harmful effects,” said Dr. Taylor. “This means that some of the numbers may be exaggerated.”

Because the subjects were allowed to participate anonymously, the researchers were unable to verify their accounts.

Nor can the study answer how or why tear gas may contribute to menstrual disorders, or the extent to which other factors are involved. The authors acknowledge that, for example, the high levels of stress and anxiety among protesters may also have contributed to the physical response.

“It is possible that pain, stress, dehydration, and exertion play a role,” said Dr. Jordt. Alternatively, tear gas can act as an “endocrine disruptor” and impair normal hormone function.

“The tear gas agent CS, which is sometimes used by the police, is a chlorinated chemical compound and creates additional chlorinated by-products when burned in the canisters used by the police,” he said. “Exposure to chlorinated chemicals can affect menstrual health.”

Alexander Samuel, a molecular biologist in France, has been researching similar issues since French protesters began reporting menstrual disorders.

He mentioned two additional areas for research: whether tear gas is metabolized to cyanide, which can lead to heavy menstrual bleeding, and what role a traumatic event can play in changing menstrual cycles.

Suspicions of tear gas and menstruation arose more than a decade ago during the Arab Spring protests, noted Dr. Jordt firmly.

In 2011, Chile also banned the use of tear gas after a study found that CS gas could cause miscarriages and harm young children. Three days later, Chilean police lifted the ban and insisted that the type of tear gas used was completely safe.

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World News

Japan Earthquake: No Deaths Reported, Prime Minister Says

Japan Earthquake: No Deaths Reported, Prime Minister Says

TOKYO – A large earthquake shook a large area in eastern Japan with its epicenter off the coast of Fukushima late on Saturday evening, near which three nuclear reactors were melted down after a quake and tsunami almost 10 years ago.

No deaths from the quake had been reported by Sunday morning, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said. However, according to the state broadcaster NHK, more than 100 people were injured.

The quake left nearly one million households across the Fukushima area without power, forcing roads to be closed and trains to be suspended. While residents braced themselves for aftershocks, a landslide cut off part of a main artery through Fukushima Prefecture.

Japan’s weather service reported the magnitude of the quake at 7.3 versus its initial 7.1 rating, but said there was no risk of a tsunami.

A little less than a month before the 10th anniversary of the so-called Great Earthquake in eastern Japan and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the quake struck an area that stretched from Hokkaido to the Chugoku region in western Japan.

Greater Tokyo felt the quake for about 30 seconds from 11:08 p.m., but the tremors were felt most in Fukushima and Miyagi.

The quake was a disturbing reminder of the far more powerful 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011, killing more than 16,000 people. After the subsequent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, 164,000 people fled or were evacuated from the vicinity of the plant.

In comments following a meeting on the Sunday morning quake, Mr Suga warned residents to be prepared for aftershocks and take precautionary measures.

“Please remain vigilant for the possibility of other similar sized earthquakes for the next week,” he said, adding, “Don’t be negligent.”

The quake on Saturday happened as Tokyo and nine other major prefectures are in a state of emergency to contain the coronavirus. Residents are encouraged to work from home and not go out at night, while restaurants and bars close at 8 a.m. each evening.

Japan is also preparing to host the Summer Olympics, which will be postponed for a year from 2020. The games are scheduled to open on July 23.

In response, the authorities are precisely mobilizing the nuclear power plants.

The prime minister’s office immediately set up a crisis management office, and Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, which maintains the disabled nuclear power plants, said they are checking their surveillance posts in Fukushima to make sure there are no radiation leaks.

Shortly after midnight, the public broadcaster NHK reported that Tepco had not found “no major anomalies” in any of the Dai-ichi reactors where the 2011 meltdown occurred, or at the Dai-ni plant in Fukushima a few miles away.

Early Sunday morning, Tepco said it found water in some of the pools that store spent fuel spilled on the pool decks in the reactors at both the Dai-ichi and Dai-ni plants. But Tepco said no water leaked outside of the reactors.

Tepco also reported that some small leaks from a tank filled with contaminated water had occurred on the Dai-ichi site, but the leak was contained in a small area.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant on the west coast did not suffer any damage, reported NHK.

According to Katsunobu Kato, Chief Cabinet Secretary of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, around 950,000 households in the affected areas were without electricity. He said that two thermal power plants in Fukushima Prefecture had gone offline. Several high-speed trains were suspended. People in dozens of households have been evacuated to shelters in several cities in Fukushima.

In brief comments to reporters just before 2 a.m., Mr. Suga advised residents not to go outside and prepare for aftershocks.

Aftershocks: What the hours and days can hold before us.

Takashi Furumura, professor at the Tokyo University Earthquake Research Institute, warned in a lecture on NHK that a quake of this size could be followed by a quake of similar magnitude within two or three days.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the epicenter of the quake was about 60 kilometers off the coast of Fukushima and about 34 miles deep. On land the strongest strength was 6 plus.

Speaking at a press conference, Meteorological Bureau official Noriko Kamaya said residents should be prepared for magnitude 6 aftershocks in the coming days. She described the Saturday night earthquake as an aftershock of the 2011 quake.

In Minami Soma, one of the villages in Fukushima evacuated after the 2011 nuclear disaster, NHK reported that violent tremors lasted about 30 seconds on Saturday.

Yu Miri, the author of Tokyo Ueno Station, winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature, posted photos on Twitter of shabby bookshelves in her nearby house and the floors littered with books.

Kyodo News reported that 50 people were injured in the Fukushima and Miyagi areas of the east coast of Japan.

Japan has had a history of devastating earthquakes.

Around a dozen powerful earthquakes have struck Japan in the past decade, some of which triggered tsunamis and landslides that shook parts of the country and destroyed countless buildings.

In 2016, more than 40 people died after two earthquakes hit the southern island of Kyushu. The largest of the two recorded a magnitude of 7.0, close to the intensity of Saturday’s quake, and several died in fires and landslides in the mountainous area.

In 2018, tens and millions died in their homes after a powerful quake caused landslides on the north island of Hokkaido. This summer’s quake came just days after Japan’s largest typhoon in 25 years.

Makiko Inoue, Hisako Ueno, Hikari Hida and Elian Peltier contributed to the coverage.