.By Mary Clare Jalonick and Eric Tucker
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., stepped aside as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday after the FBI served a search warrant for his phone as part of an ongoing insider-trading investigation tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the move, saying he and Burr had agreed it was in the Senate's best interests.
FBI officials showed up at Burr's home with the warrant on Wednesday, marking a significant escalation into the Justice Department's investigation into whether Burr broke the law with a well-timed sale of stocks before the coronavirus caused markets to plummet,
The Justice Department declined to comment. His attorney did not respond to phone and email messages, but said last month that the law is clear that any senator can participate in stock market trading based on public information "as Sen. Burr did."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Friday said the coronavirus pandemic has hit a "plateau" but stressed that putting New Yorkers back to work hinges on the level of testing that is available across the state.
Arkansas is one of four states in the U.S. that has not passed any stay-at-home orders to combat coronavirus, and Governor Asa Hutchinson plans to keep it that way unless cases spike.
Gayle Smith, a former National Security Council member in the Obama Administration, is spreading the message that the U.S. must look beyond its borders to stop coronavirus.
Alabama withdrew triage guidelines that recommend deprioritizing care and life-saving equipment for intellectually disabled individuals on Wednesday following backlash from disability advocates.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said the state's number of ICU hospitalizations had fallen nearly two percent over the past 24 hours
The S&P 500 index closed out its best week since 1974 with another gain Thursday after the Federal Reserve launched its latest unprecedented effort to support the economy through the coronavirus outbreak.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been moved out of intensive care, his office says.
Though New York recorded 799 deaths, a record-high number for the third day in a row, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the novel coronavirus has not killed anyone due to a lack of care and said hospitalizations in the state are nearly flat.
Conservative policy analyst Steve Moore says President Donald Trump needs to double down on the economic policies of his first term to win over the electorate amid the pandemic.
The countries reportedly agreed to a cut of 10 million barrels per day for two months. However, the alleged scale of the cut varied widely, from as little as 2 million barrels a day to as much as 20 million barrels a day.
