Category: National

Passport Offices in Hyderabad to release additional appointments

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Hyderabad: Good news for those who are planning to apply for a passport in Hyderabad or waiting for the appointments as the Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) in the city are going to release 500 additional appointments daily for two weeks starting on April 27. This decision has been taken due to huge demand and long waiting times for appointments in the city.

Due to Dr. Ambedkar Jayanti, the functioning of these PSKs and POPSKs was suspended on April 14, and applicants were advised to reschedule their appointments to the next available date.

However, due to the high demand, the waiting time was long. To tackle this issue, the Regional Passport Office (RPO), Hyderabad, has decided to release the additional appointments.

Passport appointment availability at offices in Hyderabad

These additional appointments will be made available at five Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) in Telangana. Out of five PSKs in the state, three are located in Hyderabad.

The earliest passport appointment available in Hyderabad is June 15.

Location of Passport Offices	Application type/Quota	Earliest appointment date
Ameerpet	Passport/Normal	June 16, 2023
Ameerpet	Passport/Tatkal	May 20, 2023
Ameerpet	PCC	April 28, 2023
Begumpet	Passport/Normal	June 15, 2023
Begumpet	Passport/Tatkal	May 20, 2023
Begumpet	PCC	April 28, 2023
ToliChowki	Passport/Normal	June 15, 2023
ToliChowki	Passport/Tatkal	May 20, 2023
ToliChowki	PCC	May 1, 2023

This means that the demand for passport services in Hyderabad is quite high and applicants need to plan their application process well in advance.

Steps to apply for passport at PSKs in Hyderabad

Visit the official website of Passport Seva

Visit the official website of Passport Seva (click here) and click on the ‘New User Register’ button if you are a new user. If you are an existing user, you can log in to the portal using login credentials by clicking on ‘Existing User Login’.

Apply for fresh passport/re-issue of passport

Once you are logged in, click on the link ‘Apply for Fresh Passport/Re-issue of Passport.’ The application form will appear.

Fill application form

Applicants can fill out the form online or download it, fill it out offline, and then upload it. It is mandatory to fill all the required details accurately.

Pay passport fee

After filling out the form, applicants have to pay the required fees, which vary for different categories of passports. The fees can be paid online through credit/debit cards, internet banking, or SBI Challan.

For normal passport of 36 pages, the fee is Rs. 1500 whereas, for tatkal, it is Rs. 3500. In case of 60 pages passport, the normal fee is Rs 2000 and tatkal fee is Rs 4000.

Book passport appointment alots at PSKs

Once the payment is done, applicants can book passport appointment slots at PSKs. The applicants can select the PSK of their choice.

Visit the PSK

On the day of the appointment, applicants have to visit the PSK at the specified time. They have to carry all the required documents, including proof of address and proof of identity.

Pass through various stages

At PSK, applicants have to pass through three stages for biometric data capture and document verification

Police verification and dispatch of Passport

After the completion of all the stages, police verification will be conducted at the applicant’s address. Once the police verification is completed, the passport will be dispatched to the address mentioned in the application form.

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#Passport #Offices #Hyderabad #release #additional #appointments

( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 26, 2023

Maha: 111 people held during protest against refinery; Sena (UBT) says stop ‘atrocities’

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Mumbai: Police on Tuesday arrested 111 people, most of them women, during a protest against a proposed oil refinery at Barsu village in Maharashtra’s coastal Ratnagiri district, an official said.
More than 100 women were among the protesters who tried to block a road in Barsu and Solgaon areas of the district, around 400km from Mumbai, by lying on the ground to stop government vehicles from entering the proposed site of the refinery, he said.
The protesters were booked under IPC sections related to unlawful assembly, rioting, disobedience to an order lawfully promulgated by a public servant, wrongful restraint and relevant provisions of the Maharashtra Police Act, the official said, adding they will be produced before a court at Rajapur town in Ratnagiri district on Wednesday.

Local residents fear the mega project will adversely affect the fragile biodiversity of the coastal Konkan region and also hit their livelihood. The Opposition Shiv Sena (UBT) came out in their support and demanded an immediate end to “atrocities” against protesters.
A government team was scheduled to conduct a survey at the site in Barsu and Solgaon areas of Rajapur, on Monday, but locals started staging protests, the official said.
During the protest, women lay on the ground to prevent vehicles of the district administration and police from entering the areas, he said.
Considering the law and order situation, hundreds of police personnel were deployed at the project site, the official said.

Ratnagiri Superintendent of Police Dhananjay Kulkarni and other senior police officials were at the spot to avoid any untoward incident, he said.

Opposition leader Ajit Pawar of the NCP earlier in the day demanded that protests by locals against the refinery project be handled sensitively and urged that the state government stop the survey work till a peaceful solution was found.
Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut demanded an immediate end to “atrocities” against locals and asserted his party will not sit quietly on the issue and back the people.
Talking to reporters, Raut alleged the protesters were being pressurised by Industries Minister Uday Samant with the help of police.
“This is a government with a perverse mentality. They want a Jallianwala Bagh-like massacre. We are with people and the Shiv Sena (UBT) will not sit quiet,” Raut said.
He said Chief Minister Eknath Shinde thinks he is a “messiah” of the poor, but has left on a three-day “leave” in a helicopter, a reference to the CM going to his hometown in Satara district.
Shinde should instead take the helicopter to Barsu and meet the protesters there, said the Rajya Sabha member.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and former minister Aaditya Thackeray said, “The government should stop atrocities on people and also the soil survey.”
The former state environment minister said the government should start a dialogue with the agitating local residents.
The previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government had put some conditions before giving a nod to the project which included taking the locals into confidence and explaining the details of the venture and its benefits, Thackeray said.
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#Maha #people #held #protest #refinery #Sena #UBT #stop #atrocities
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 26, 2023
BuzzFeed News’ business model turned to dust because they were always at the whim of mercurial tech titans | James Hennessy
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The announcement of the demise of BuzzFeed News last week felt unlike the cavalcade of media closures and layoffs of the past decade. In a sense, it represented the death of an entire era.
BuzzFeed News, launched in 2011, imagined a format which would marry the intense virality and relentless social media focus of digital native publications with the serious reporting of major mastheads. The bet was that the site’s endless fountain of Harry Potter quizzes, viral news stories, celebrity gossip and pop culture gifs could subsidise a serious news operation, which would in turn lend real credibility to BuzzFeed as a whole.
The timing was perfect. Legacy media, already shaky after the financial crisis, was increasingly finding itself at the mercy of Facebook and Google, who had reshaped content distribution and the ad industry in their favour. Digital-only upstarts such as BuzzFeed, Mashable and Business Insider had built themselves to take advantage of those same trends and had secured a dominant share of millennial eyeballs as a result.
Suddenly, BuzzFeed News and a legion of imitators – buoyed by venture capital investment and the seemingly bottomless Facebook audience spigot – were making significant plays into the world of real news reporting; breaking stories left and right and adroitly packaging them for an extremely online audience. In those heady days, you could even imagine I Can Haz Cheeseburger opening a national security desk.
It’s difficult to understate the panic BuzzFeed’s foray into hard news inaugurated among the media old guard. In 2014, The New York Times distributed a “dire” internal report sounding the warning bell about the paper’s struggles to adapt to journalism’s digital revolution, which mentioned BuzzFeed two dozen times. (True to form, the existence of this report was first detailed by BuzzFeed.) Even the most storied news brands found themselves following the BuzzFeed playbook for distribution. Even the NYT was doing listicles!
BuzzFeed needed Facebook far more than Facebook needed BuzzFeed
Over the years, the cracks in BuzzFeed’s model started to show. The grand vision of a serious news organisation precariously balanced on top of a viral content shop was always a challenging one, and the company found it increasingly difficult to build a sustainable business. The venture capital injections weren’t enough, and it didn’t help that BuzzFeed’s advertisers were much happier to see their content run alongside the fun quizzes than, say, the Kevin Spacey exposé.

Another problem was talent. While BuzzFeed served as an incubator for some incandescently skilled young reporters with both a keen eye for the online world and classic reporting chops, it became clear to the old publications that they could simply… poach them. And so they did: the past few years has seen a generation of wunderkinds graduate from the BuzzFeed News universe into the old-school news businesses it once planned to topple.

But the bigger story here is one largely outside BuzzFeed’s control. It, alongside the tranche of other digital media startups of its era, threw in its lot vigorously with Facebook. It heartily embraced the new distribution model which had so frightened old-school publishers, surfing the waves of traffic generated by Facebook and other social apps such as Snapchat – which at one point evinced similar ambitions towards being a news platform.
This worked extremely well right up until it didn’t. While Mark Zuckerberg once saw news content as an excellent way to juice Facebook’s platform credibility and user engagement, escalating scandals eventually turned it into a serious political liability. The axe came down. As the Warren Buffet saying goes: only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked. BuzzFeed needed Facebook far more than Facebook needed BuzzFeed.
BuzzFeed News is ultimately a casualty of that lopsided relationship. It never built a subscriptions business to account for the decline in social media traffic, and its model made less and less sense in an industry that was turning away from social media advertising dollars towards paywalls and good-old-fashioned direct monetary relationships with readers.
It’s quite likely we will remember BuzzFeed News and its ilk not as the revolutionary disrupters of the industry they were once thought to be, but as a decade-long intermission to the whim of the famously mercurial tech titans who briefly offered them patronage.
But that’s the nature of the news business. What BuzzFeed News did very successfully was change the way news was reported for the digital age, and it quite successfully bridged the gap between what was happening in real life and what was happening online. It helped train a generation of journalists who innately understood how those two worlds could speak to one another, and the reverberations of that understanding will be felt through the media for some time to come.
That will be BuzzFeed News’ ultimate legacy, even as its business model turns to dust.
- James Hennessy is the co-host of the podcast Down Round, and writes The Terminal, a newsletter about tech culture
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#BuzzFeed #News #business #model #turned #dust #whim #mercurial #tech #titans #James #Hennessy
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
April 26, 2023
Singapore executes man over plot to smuggle 1kg of cannabis

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Singapore has hanged a prisoner for conspiracy to smuggle one kilogram of cannabis, authorities said, ignoring international protests and concerns that he lacked full access to a lawyer or interpreter.
The United Nations Human Rights Office had called for Singapore to “urgently reconsider” the hanging and British tycoon Richard Branson had urged the city state halt it.
Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, was sentenced to death in 2018 after a judge found he was the owner of a phone number used to coordinate an attempt to traffic the cannabis.
He was executed at Changi prison complex on Wednesday, Singapore Prisons Service told Agence France-Presse.
Campaigners had cited various concerns over the handling of his case, including claims he was questioned by police without legal counsel, and claims made in court that Suppiah, a Tamil speaker, was questioned by police in English without an interpreter.
In November last year, when Tangaraju filed an application for his case to be reviewed after an unsuccessful appeal, he represented himself in court. Activists say he is one of a growing number of death row prisoners doing so, because of difficulties in accessing lawyers.
On Tuesday night, Tangaraju’s family filmed a video appeal, asking the public to continue calling on Singapore’s president, Halimah Yacob, to stop his execution. They would not give up hope, said his niece. “They will kill him at 6am, we’ll keep the hope until 5.55am,” she said. “My uncle is a very good man, he didn’t have education or money but he worked very hard to look after us.”

Phil Robertson from Human Rights Watch called the execution outrageous. “Singapore’s continued use of the death penalty for drug possession is a human rights outrage that makes much of the world recoil, and wonder whether the image of modern, civilised Singapore is just a mirage,” he said.

The Singaporean government maintains that the death penalty is an effective deterrent against drug-related crime and that it is widely supported by the public.
Last year Singapore executed 11 people for drug-related cases, including Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a Malaysian man with learning difficulties whose case caused a global outcry as well as a rare protest in Singapore.
Maya Foa, director of non-profit organisation Reprieve, said Tangaraju’s execution “will only lead to increased opposition to the death penalty in Singapore”.
“Singapore claims it affords people on death row ‘due process’, but in reality fair-trial violations in capital punishment cases are the norm: defendants are being left without legal representation when faced with imminent execution, as lawyers who take such cases are intimidated and harassed,” she said.
Ming Yu Hah at Amnesty International also condemned the execution, saying there were “many flaws in the case”.
Branson, a member of the Geneva-based Global Commission on Drug Policy, wrote Monday on his blog that Tangaraju was “not anywhere near” the drugs at the time of his arrest and that Singapore may be about to put an innocent man to death.
Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry responded on Tuesday, stating that Tangaraju’s guilt had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The ministry said two mobile phone numbers that prosecutors said belonged to him had been used to coordinate the delivery of the drugs.
It accused Branson of disrespecting Singapore’s courts, which it said had “thoroughly and comprehensively” examined the case over more than three years.
In many parts of the world – including neighbouring Thailand – cannabis has been decriminalised, with authorities abandoning prison sentences.
Rights groups have been heaping pressure on Singapore to abolish capital punishment. The Asian financial hub has some of the world’s toughest anti-narcotics laws and insists the death penalty remains an effective deterrent against trafficking.
The United Nations says the death penalty has not proven to be an effective deterrent globally and is incompatible with international human rights law, which only permits capital punishment for the most serious crimes
The UN’s Office of the high commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday: “The death penalty is still being used in a small number of countries, largely because of the myth that it deters crime.”
With Agence France-Presse

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#Singapore #executes #man #plot #smuggle #1kg #cannabis
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 26, 2023
India invited to join regional group on Afghanistan: Lavrov

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United Nations: Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that India has been invited to join the core group of four countries neighbouring Afghanistan that say they seek to bring stability there.
The Quartet of Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran has been working together on Afghanistan “and we invited India as well” to join making it a quintet, he said at a news conference at the UN in New York on Tuesday.
“We want this Quintet to be constituted as something of a core for the format of neighbouring states,” he said.

The foreign ministers of the Quartet met in Samarkand in Uzbekistan earlier this month under the chairmanship of China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang and offered to cooperate with the Taliban regime in reconstruction and in economic matters.
But the ministers also expressed concern over the presence of terrorist organisations in Afghanistan that “continue to pose a serious threat to regional and global security”.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was at the meeting, while Pakistan was represented by Minster of State Hina Rabbani Khar.
Their statement included criticism of the West that said that “the NATO countries should bear primary responsibility for the predicament in Afghanistan” and should immediately lift sanctions on Afghanistan and return its frozen assets.

Posing a dilemma for India in joining a “Quintet” is that the four countries in the Quartet have the makings of a distinct anti-West grouping and two of them, Pakistan and China are hostile to New Delhi.

Lavrov said that while the Taliban regime, which has no international recognition, is a “reality on the ground and there’s a need to talk with them”, Russia will not recognise it “until they comply with (and) honour their own pledges”.
He made political inclusivity that extends beyond ethnicities to political groups a condition.
They will have to “ensure inclusivity in the governing structures, not just inclusivity at the ethnic level, but also at the political level”, he said.
While they include minorities like Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbek they are all members of the Taliban, and “it is very important for there to be strong representation and political forces”, he added.
There is also the issue of human rights, including the rights of women and girls, he said.
These issues will be discussed at a meeting of special representatives for Afghanistan convened by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Doha next month, he added.
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#India #invited #join #regional #group #Afghanistan #Lavrov
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 26, 2023
Israel marks 75th Independence Day amid protests

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Jerusalem: Israel marked its 75th Independence Day amid protests and political divisions between supporters and opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “contentious plan to overhaul the judiciary”.
The celebration on Tuesday began at sundown, with an official torch-lighting ceremony held at the Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. As Netanyahu spoke at the state ceremony for the fallen soldiers at Mount Herzl, protesters rallied outside the site, Xinhua news agency reported.
Tens of thousands of Israelis rallied in the city of Tel Aviv for what the organisers called an “Independence Party” to protest the overhaul plan. The Tel Aviv police blocked parts of the Ayalon Highway and several main streets.

Over the past few days, Netanyahu and opposition leaders called for putting their differences aside. However, the day was still marked by clashes as bereaved families laid wreaths and lit candles at cemeteries across Israel.
In Beersheba, where hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke, clashes erupted between some bereaved families and the supporters of the judicial reforms.
“Ben-Gvir came here despite repeated calls by bereaved families over the past days, asking him not to do so. It a disgraceful provocation that shows no respect for our fallen sons,” Shaula Levi, a bereaved mother, told Channel 12 TV news.
In the Druze town of Isfiya in northern Israel, protesters prevented Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel from entering the military cemetery. Gamliel had to leave without delivering her scheduled speech.

The far-right government’s plan to “overhaul” the judicial system has torn apart the Israeli society, sparking mass weekly demonstrations over the past four months.

Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, but it marks the Independence Day on different dates every year based on the Hebrew calendar.
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#Israel #marks #75th #Independence #Day #protests
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 26, 2023
US lawmaker Khanna takes jab at talk of ‘Hinduphobia’

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Washington: Ro Khanna, a US lawmaker of Indian descent, has urged those among the Indian diaspora who have been raising the bogey of growing “Hinduphobia” lately, to focus on unifying issues.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a day-long conference he is hosting on Capitol Hill on India-US elections, the lawmaker also indicated that he will push for an invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address a joint session of Congress during his June visit, which, to be clear, has not been announced officially.
Khanna is one of US Congress’s three Hindu Americans and his home state California is currently a battleground for Hindu Americans who are trying to prevent the enactment of a proposed law that seeks to ban caste-based discrimination, which they have blamed on, among other things, those opposed to Hindus.

The phrase “Hinduphobia” is used by these Hindu Americans to describe and define all and any real or imagined slights.
“I grew up Indian American, Hindu American, in the 1980s, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was 97 per cent, white and Christian. And I didn’t know the word Hinduphobia or feel Hinduphobia at any single point in my life growing up,” he said recalling something he said in an earlier conversation with someone. “So now we’ve got all these Hindu Americans and it’s all over the…,” he added, leaving that sentence hanging.
“I think that what we have to focus on as a community is how do we contribute to the American project? How do we be proud of our identity? And obviously if someone feels that they are discriminated against, they should speak up, but my personal experience has been one of great hope for the American people, that they have been very embracing and understanding of people of different faiths. I think you’ve got Indian Americans leading the most important companies in the world. Now, there was a time you know, back in the 1980s, where people couldn’t meet a staffer for a member of Congress. They didn’t cry Hinduphobia.”
The lawmaker clearly has no sympathy for those crying “Hinduphobia”, which include elements of rightwing Hindu Americans tied to the wider sangh parivar.

On Modi’s upcoming visit, Khanna said the India caucus, which he co-chairs, could write to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to invite the Indian Prime Minister to address the joint session of Congress, which is an honour that is not extended to every visiting head of state or government.

Prime Minister Modi first addressed the US Congress in 2016, Khanna’s suggestion, if it goes through, will make him the first Indian Prime Minister accorded this honour twice. All the others had to make do with only one each – Jawaharlal Nehru (1949), Rajiv Gandhi (1985), P.V. Narasimha Rao (1994), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (2000) and Manmohan Singh (2005).
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#lawmaker #Khanna #takes #jab #talk #Hinduphobia
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 26, 2023
PM Modi, Shah, Kharge condole demise of Parkash Singh Badal

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and a host of other leaders condoled the demise of former Punjab Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal chief Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday.
Badal died late on Tuesday evening. He was 95.
Condoling his death, Prime Minister Modi tweeted: “Extremely saddened by the passing away of Shri Parkash Singh Badal Ji. He was a colossal figure of Indian politics, and a remarkable statesman who contributed greatly to our nation. He worked tirelessly for the progress of Punjab and anchored the state through critical times.”

The Prime Minister added that Badal’s passing away was a personal loss for him.
“I have interacted closely with him for many decades and learnt so much from him. I recall our numerous conversations, in which his wisdom was always clearly seen. Condolences to his family and countless admirers,” he said further.
Home Minister Amit Shah tweeted: “The passing away of veteran leader, Shri Parkash Singh Badal Sahab is deeply saddening. His career spanning several decades was dedicated to the welfare of the poor. His demise is an irreparable loss to Indian politics. My heartfelt condolences are with his family and followers.”
Shah added that he was fortunate to meet Parkash Singh Badal on several occasions.

“His unparalleled political experience was very helpful in public life and always a delight to listen to. The memories of those meetings will always remain with me,” he said.

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said: “Parkash Singh Badal ji was a veteran of Indian politics. Although we differed in our ideologies, he earned immense respect among the people of Punjab for his simplicity and loyalty to his cadre, as he served multiple terms as chief minister. Our deepest condolences to his family.”
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also expressed sadness at Badal’s death.
Describing him as a tall leader of Punjab, Gandhi expressed his condolences to his son Sukhbir Badal and his family.
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#Modi #Shah #Kharge #condole #demise #Parkash #Singh #Badal
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 26, 2023
‘Don’t get in our way,’ Harris urges in speech at Howard University

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“They’re also saying they’re going to ban abortion. Six weeks into a pregnancy? Well, clearly most of them don’t even know how a woman’s body works because most women don’t even know they’re pregnant at that stage of a pregnancy,” Harris said to a raucous applause.
For Harris, the event was a bit of a homecoming. The first vice president to hail from a historically Black college or university spoke to a packed auditorium of students and reproductive rights advocates on Howard’s campus in Washington, D.C., to multiple standing ovations and shouts of “H-U!” She responded: “You know!”
Attendees who’d seen Harris speak before say she felt like a different speaker Tuesday: That she was laid back in a way they hadn’t seen before and tied that to her being in the same auditorium that she had freshman orientation in.
“I feel like when she’s around Howard students, she feels at home. She feels comfortable around us because unlike the outside world, we don’t judge her,” freshman student Jomalee Smith said. “She is one of our heroes. When she’s here, she sees kids that look up to her. So, of course she’s going to be comfortable, be herself, walk around, crack jokes in the middle of a sentence.”
Alencia Johnson, a former Biden campaign senior adviser, said she hopes the administration (and campaign) takes Harris’ performance and the reception as proof positive they need to make sure they let her loose during the next 18 months.
“It’s clear abortion is a key issue for not just women, but young people and Black people of all ages given the packed auditorium with less than 2 days’ notice,” Johnson said. “And Vice President Harris is the perfect messenger in this moment in history. She was on fire. When they let her loose, especially on abortion, she connects with voters in a way many electeds can’t.”
The event also is an extension of Harris’ leading the administration’s push to protect reproductive access since POLITICO reported on the draft opinion that eventually became the 2022 Dobbs decision dismantling a federal right to abortion.

And administration aides say the choice to have the vice president speak about abortion to a group of young Black people at her alma mater was no accident. Though Harris had just one line about the reelection, (“I stand here, proud to run for reelection with President Joe Biden … so we can finish the job”), for the crowd, the impending fight was undergirding her appearance.

“What I saw was an experienced prosecutor who knows the case in front of her and capably prosecuted that case in front of this audience today,” EMILY’s List president Laphonza Butler said. “I’m excited about this reelection because that is the vice president that America is going to get a chance to get to know for the first time because she didn’t get to do it during the pandemic.”
In the first campaign video announcing his reelection campaign, Harris was featured largely throughout, a rarity for vice presidents and proof that the president will be leaning on his second-in-command during the campaign. It was also a not-so-veiled jab at the naysayers who doubt how close the two are and whether Biden sees her as an asset to his campaign.
Parts of Harris’ speech harkened to elements of the message Biden shared in that video about their reelection being about issues of freedom and democracy. Since the Dobbs decision, Harris has worked to tie the conversation of abortion access to a larger fight about privacy and the dismantling of democracy in the United States. On Tuesday, she said it was part of “an extremist plan to take this to a national agenda.”
“This agenda includes attacking your very right and freedom to express your voice through your vote at the ballot box,” she said. “Don’t think it’s not a national agenda when they start banning books to stand in the way of teaching America’s full history so the truth can be spoken. Standing for ideas that say that people cannot openly love the people they love — you know what’s happening with teachers down in Florida.”
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#Dont #Harris #urges #speech #Howard #University
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 26, 2023
Montana House cancels session after rally for trans lawmaker

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“Currently, all representatives are free to participate in House debates while following the House rules,” Regier told reporters. “The choice to not follow the House rules is one that Rep. Zephyr has made. The only person silencing Rep. Zephyr is Rep. Zephyr. The Montana House will not be bullied.”
Under Regier’s leadership, the House has not allowed Zephyr to speak since last week when she said that those who voted to ban gender-affirming care for young people would have “blood on their hands.” He and other Republicans said the remark was far outside the boundaries of appropriate civil discourse and demanded she apologize before being allowed to participate in legislative discussions.
Zephyr’s remarks, and the Republican response, set off a chain of events that culminated in a rally outside the Capitol at noon Monday and seven arrests later that afternoon when protesters interrupted House proceedings after Zephyr was denied the right to speak on a bill. The scene at the Statehouse galvanized both those demanding she be allowed to speak and those saying her actions constitute an unacceptable attack on civil discourse.
Much like developments in the Tennessee Statehouse weeks ago — where two lawmakers were expelled after participating in a post-school shooting gun control protest that interrupted proceedings — Zephyr’s punishment has ignited a firestorm of debate about governance and democracy in politically polarizing times.
It has showcased the growing power of the Montana Freedom Caucus, a group of right-wing lawmakers that has spearheaded the charge to discipline Zephyr. The caucus re-upped its demands and rhetoric Monday. In a statement they said that Zephyr’s decision to hoist a microphone toward the gallery’s protesters amounted to “encouraging an insurrection.”
It’s unclear if Regier and House leaders will follow the Freedom Caucus’s demand. Republican Rep. Casey Knudsen, the chair of the House Rules committee, said Monday’s cancellation gave leadership time to respond to Monday’s events. House Democratic Leader Kim Abbott said she saw leadership’s decision to cancel as giving lawmakers “some time to regroup.”
The House is scheduled to meet again on Wednesday afternoon, the chamber’s Republicans announced Tuesday.

Although several protesters resisted law enforcement officers trying to arrest them on Monday, Abbott pushed back at characterizing the activity as violent. She acknowledged it was disruptive, but called the demonstration peaceful. She said public protests were a predictable response to a lawmaker representing more than 10,000 constituents not being allowed to speak and questioned bringing in officers in riot gear to handle the chanting protesters.

“It was chanting, but it absolutely was not violent,” she said. “Sometimes extreme measures have a response like this.”
There were no reports of damage to the building and lawmakers were not threatened.
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#Montana #House #cancels #session #rally #trans #lawmaker
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 26, 2023