Wanted Sri Lanka radical Hashim dies in hotel attack

London, Apr 27: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson returns to work on Monday more than three weeks after being hospitalised for the coronavirus and spending three days in intensive care.

Johnson, one of the highest-profile people to have contracted the virus, returned to 10 Downing Street on Sunday evening and will chair a meeting on Monday morning of the coronavirus "war cabinet", his colleagues confirmed.

Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary who has deputised in Johnson's absence, told the BBC on Sunday that his return would be a "boost for the government and a boost for the country".

Raab also claimed the prime minister was "raring to go".

Johnson, 55, was admitted to hospital on April 5 suffering from "persistent symptoms" of the deadly disease.

His condition worsened and he later admitted after being put in intensive care that "things could have gone either way".

He was discharged on April 12 and has been recuperating at his official residence, west of London.

In a video message after leaving hospital, Johnson thanked "Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal" for helping him recover.

On medical advice, he has not been doing official government work during his convalescence but has spoken to Queen Elizabeth and US President Donald Trump on the phone.

The British leader was diagnosed with the virus late last month but initially stayed at Downing Street and was filmed taking part in a round of applause for health workers in the days before he went to hospital.

New Delhi, May 9: Three promoters of Ram Dev International, recently booked by the CBI for allegedly cheating a consortium of six banks to the tune of Rs 411 crore, have already fled the country before the State Bank of India reached the agency with the complaint, officials said on Saturday.

The CBI had recently booked the company engaged in export of Basmati rice to the West Asian and European countries and its directors Naresh Kumar, Suresh Kumar and Sangita on the basis of complaint from the State Bank of India (SBI), which suffered the loss of more than Rs 173 crore, they said.

The company had three rice milling plants, besides eight sorting and grading units in Karnal district with offices in Saudi Arabia and Dubai for trading purposes, the SBI complaint said.

Besides SBI, other members of consortium are Canara Bank, Union Bank of India, IDBI, Central Bank of India and Corporation Bank, they said.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) did not carry out any searches in the matter because of the coronavirus-induced lockdown, the officials said.

The agency will start the process of summoning the accused, incase they do not join the investigation, appropriate legal action will be initiated, they said.

According to the complaint filed by SBI, the account had become non-performing asset (NPA) on January 27, 2016.

The banks conducted a joint inspection of properties in August and October, nearly 7-9 months later only to find Haryana Police security guards deployed there, they said.

"On inquiry, it has been come to notice that borrowers are absconding and have left the country," the complaint filed on February 25, 2020, after over a year of account becoming NPA, the officials said.

The complaint alleged that borrowers had removed entire machinery from old plant and fudged the balance sheets in order to unlawfully gain at the cost of banks'' funds, it said.

Jun 11: The total death toll in the US from the novel coronavirus pandemic could hit the grim figure of 200,000 by September and expecting a dramatic decrease in COVID-19 cases in the country will be a "wishful thinking , an eminent Indian-American professor has warned.

Ashish Jha, the head of Harvard's Global Health Institute, told CNN on Wednesday that he is not trying to scare people to stay at home rather urged everyone to wear masks, adhere to the social distancing rules and called for ramping up testing and tracing infrastructure.

Anybody who's expecting a dramatic decrease in cases is almost surely engaging in wishful thinking. And if it (COVID numbers) stays just flat for the next three months, we're going to hit 200,000 deaths sometime in September and that is just awful, Jha said.

Jha said the 200,000 death toll is not just a guess . Currently 800-1000 people are dying daily in America from the virus and all data suggest that the situation is going to get worse.

We're gonna have increases, but even if we assume that it's going to be flat all summer, that nothing is going to get worse... even if we pick that low number of 800 a day, that is 25,000 (deaths) a month in three and a half months. We're going to add another 88,000 people and we will hit 200,000 sometime in September, Jha said.

The United States is by far the hardest-hit country in the global pandemic, in terms of both confirmed infections and deaths.

According to data by the Johns Hopkins University, the number of coronavirus cases in the US currently is nearly two million and about 112,900 people have died in the country, the most in the world.

When asked about an improvement in states like New York, which had been the epicenter of the COVID19 pandemic in the US, Jha said while coronavirus cases are declining in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the numbers are increasing in states such as Arizona, Florida, Texas, North and South Carolina while the country as a whole is pretty flat.

He said, people should take measures as that will help suppress the virus and ensure people could get back outside safely but he voiced concern that this was not the situation in reality.

We're not doing that and so we're going to unfortunately have another 25,000 deaths a month until September, and then it'll keep going. It's not going to magically disappear. We've got a turn around. This is not the future I want, he said.

Jha said he had expected the situation to improve in the summer months but on the contrary the numbers have continued to rise even in the warm weather.

Summer was supposed to be our better months - warmer weather, people outside, a little less transmission. This is not the time (summer) I was expecting a lot more cases. We're seeing a lot more cases, especially in states like Arizona where the numbers look really scary, he said.

Jha added that he was hopeful that maybe the summer months would give us more of a break. I think I may have been too optimistic on that.