Chinese media ups the ante, asks India to withdraw with dignity

London, Apr 22: The UK government on Tuesday announced a 20 million pounds funding for a University of Oxford project working on developing a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, which is now ready for acceleration as it begins human trials from Thursday.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the daily Downing Street briefing that the Department for Health was “throwing everything” at trying to find a vaccine because it is a critical aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic fight and lifting the strict lockdown measures in place to curb its spread.

Another 22.5 million pounds is being made available to Imperial College London to support its phase-two clinical trials for them to begin the work on a very large phase three trial.

"Normally it would take years to get to this point," said Hancock.

"The UK is at the forefront of the global effort – we've put in more money than any other into the global search for a vaccine. Nothing about this is inevitable. Vaccine production is a matter of trial and error. But the UK will throw everything it has at trying to find one,” he said.

The announcement came as Britain had another major daily leap in the hospital death toll from coronavirus, up by 823 to hit 17,337 on Tuesday.

But the Cabinet minister said the government's plan to control the rapid spread of the virus and prevent the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) from being overwhelmed is working as the number of hospitalisations with COVID-19 was showing a downward trajectory.

In reference to a major issue in the last few weeks of a critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses on the frontlines of COVID-19 treatment, the minister said the supply problems are being addressed by actively engaging with thousands of companies, including 159 UK manufacturers.

“We are determined to get people the PPE they need. This is a 24/7 operation, one of the biggest cross-government operation I have ever seen," said Hancock.

Washington, May 6: At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has squeezed them, multi-national companies in America are laying off workers while paying cash dividends to their shareholders. Thus making the workers bear the brunt of the sacrifices while the shareholders continue to collect.

The Washington Post said in one of its reports that five big American companies have paid a combined USD 700 million to shareholders while cutting jobs, closing plants and leaving thousands of their workers filing for unemployment benefits.

Since the pandemic was declared an emergency, Caterpillar has suspended operations at two plants and a foundry, Levi Strauss has closed stores, and toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker has been planning layoffs and furloughs.

Steelcase, an office furniture manufacturer, and World Wrestling Entertainment have also shed employees.

Executives of those companies told the Post that the layoffs support the long-term health of their companies, and often the executives are giving up a piece of their salaries. Furloughed workers can apply for unemployment benefits.

But distributing millions of dollars to shareholders while leaving many workers without a paycheck is unfair, critics argue, and belies the repeated statements from executives about their concern for employees' welfare during the coronavirus crisis.

Caterpillar, for example, announced a USD 500 million distribution to shareholders April 8, about two weeks after indicating that operations at some plants would stop. The company however declined to divulge how many workers are affected.

"We are taking a variety of actions globally, but we aren't going to discuss the number of impacted people," spokeswoman of the company, Kate Kenny, said in a reply to an email by the Post.

This spate of dividends is also likely to revive long-standing debates about economic rewards.

"There are no hard-and-fast rules about this," said Amy Borrus, deputy director of the Council of Institutional Investors, a group that argues for shareholder rights and represents pension funds and other long-term investors.

Many large US companies choose to issue a regular, quarterly dividend to shareholders, often increasing it, and they boast about these payments because they help keep the share price higher than it might otherwise be. Those companies might be reluctant to announce that they are cutting or suspending their dividend during a crisis, Borrus was further quoted as saying.

But "companies have to be mindful of the optics of paying dividends if they're laying off thousands of workers," she added.

On March 26, Caterpillar had announced that because of the pandemic, it was "temporarily suspending operations at certain facilities." Two plants, in East Peoria, Ill., and Lafayette, Ind., were coming to a halt, as well as a foundry in Mapleton, Ill., according to news reports.

"We are taking a variety of actions at our global facilities to reduce production due to weaker customer demand, potential supply constraints and the spread of the covid-19 pandemic and related government actions," Kenny said via email.

"These actions include temporary facility shutdowns, indefinite or temporary layoffs," she added.

Similarly, Levi Strauss announced April 7 that the company would stop paying store workers, and about 4,000 are now on furlough. On the same day, the company announced that it was returning USD 32 million to shareholders.

"As this human and economic tragedy unfolds globally over the coming months, we are taking swift and decisive action that will ensure we remain a winner in our industry," Chip Bergh, president and chief executive of the company, also told the Post.

Stanley Black & Decker announced on April 2 that it was planning furloughs and layoffs because of the pandemic. Two weeks later, it issued a dividend to shareholders of about USD 106 million.

The notion that a company's primary purpose is to serve shareholders gained prominence in the 1980s but has come under attack in recent years, even from business executives, the newspaper reported.

Corporate decisions to suspend dividends and buybacks are complex, however, and it is difficult to know whether these suspensions of dividend and buyback programs were motivated by a desire to conserve cash in anticipation of bad times, and how much they are prompted by a sense of obligation to employees.

Over recent decades, the mandate to "maximize shareholder value" has become orthodoxy, for many, and it is often unclear what motivates companies to pare dividends or buybacks for shareholders, said William Lazonick, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, who has been one of the leading critics of companies that distribute cash to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends rather than reinvesting the profits into employees, innovation and production.

Saint Martin's Island, Feb 12: At least 15 women and children drowned and more than 50 others were missing after a boat overloaded with Rohingya refugees sank off southern Bangladesh as it tried to reach Malaysia Tuesday, officials said.

Some 138 people -- mainly women and children -- were packed on a trawler barely 13 metres (40 feet) long, trying to cross the Bay of Bengal, a coast guard spokesman told news agency.

"It sank because of overloading. The boat was meant to carry maximum 50 people. The boat was also loaded with some cargo," another coast guard spokesman, Hamidul Islam, added.

Nearly one million Rohingya live in squalid camps near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar, many fleeing the neighbouring country after a 2017 brutal military crackdown.

With few opportunities for jobs and education in the camps, thousands have tried to reach other countries like Malaysia and Thailand by attempting the hazardous 2,000-kilometre journey.

In the latest incident, 71 people have been rescued including 46 women. Among the dead, 11 were women and the rest children.

Anwara Begum said two of her sons, aged six and seven, drowned in the tragedy.

"We were four of us in the boat... Another child (son, aged 10) is very sick," the 40-year-old told news agency.

Fishermen tipped off the coast guard after they saw survivors swimming and crying for help in the sea.

The boat's keel hit undersea coral in shallow water off Saint Martin's Island, Bangladesh's southernmost territory, before it sank, survivors said.

"We swam in the sea before boats came and rescued us," said survivor Mohammad Hossain, 20.

Coast guard commander Sohel Rana said three survivors, including a Bangladeshi, were detained over human trafficking allegations.

An estimated 25,000 Rohingya left Bangladesh and Myanmar on boats in 2015 trying to get to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Hundreds drowned when overloaded boats sank.

Begum said her family paid a Bangladeshi trafficker $450 per head to be taken to Malaysia.

"We're first taken to a hill where we stayed for five days. Then they used three small trawlers to take us to a large trawler, which sank," she said.

Shakirul Islam, a migration expert whose group works with Rohingya to raise awareness against trafficking, said desperation in the camps was making refugees want to leave.

"It was a tragedy waiting to happen," he said.

"They just want to get out, and fall victim to traffickers who are very active in the camps."

Islam said in the past two months dozens of Rohingya reported approaches from traffickers to his OKUP migration rights group.

"Human smuggling and trafficking in the Bay of Bengal is particularly difficult to address as it requires concerted effort from multiple states," the Bangladesh head of UN agency the International Organization for Migration, Giorgi Gigauri, told news agency.

"The gaps in coordination are easily exploited by criminal networks."

Since last year, Bangladeshi authorities have picked up over 500 Rohingya from rickety fishing trawlers or coastal villages as they waited to board boats.

Trafficking often increases during the November-March period when the sea is safest for the small trawlers used by traffickers.

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal to send back some Rohingya to their homeland, but none have agreed to return because of safety fears.

The charity Save the Children called on Myanmar to "take all necessary steps to ensure the Rohingya community can return to their homes in a safe and dignified manner".

"The tragic drowning of women and children... should be a wake-up call for us all," the group's Athena Rayburn said in a statement.