Patna: The District Magistrate in Bihar’s Saran has barred all government employees from wearing jeans to office.
The employees have also been asked to wear identity cards around their neck so that they could be easily identified. They have been asked to wear formal dress and stay in the offices during the working hours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The idea of the initiative is to change the work culture in the offices.
The District Magistrate said that he will undertake surprise inspections of particular departments and could also do video conferencing or video calling to check the status of the directive. He has warned the employees to strictly follow the new guidelines, especially the dress code, and warned that offenders would be penalised.
New Delhi: A court here has convicted a father-son duo for rioting and arson in a case of the 2020 North East Delhi riots, saying the prosecution proved the charges against them beyond a reasonable doubt.
The case against Mithhan Singh and his son Jony Kumar was being heard by Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Pulastya Pramachala.
The duo was accused of being part of a riotous mob that set many properties on fire in lane number 4 in Khajuri Khas on February 25, 2020.
“I find that it is proved beyond doubt against both the accused that they were part of the mob which burnt the property (of complainant Shabana Khatoon). Thus, they are held guilty of the offences under sections 147 (rioting) 148 (rioting, armed with a deadly weapon) 436 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy house, etc) read with section 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) of the Indian Penal Code and convicted accordingly,” the judge said.
The court posted the matter for filing affidavits on April 19, following which the proceedings on sentencing will commence.
An unlawful assembly was established with the shared goal of harming the properties of a specific community, according to ASJ Pramachala, who took note of the statements of various public witnesses. The riotous mob also committed acts of vandalism and arson, according to the judge.
Regarding the claim that the two were members of the mob, the judge stated that none of the complainants, locals, or other witnesses backed the prosecution’s evidence and refused to label the accused as mob members.
The judge stated that prosecution witnesses Mohd. Tahir and Constable Rohtash were the only witnesses to identify the duo as mob members.
He said Tahir’s testimony was “reliable” to show both accused were out in the lane and that they had joined the riotous mob raising slogans, while Constable Rohtash was the beat officer of the area and saw the duo as part of the mob that torched Khatoon’s property.
Because there was no entry in the daily diary or formal report on the occurrence, the judge ruled that the police official’s testimony could not be discarded.
Based on the evidence of the two witnesses, there was “no doubt that both accused persons were part of the mob” that indulged in the incident of arson at Khatoon’s property, the judge said.
” Nahin kuch subha-o-zunnaar ke phande mein geerai Wafadaari mein sheikh-o-barhaman ki aazmaaish hai ” – Mirza Ghalib
Today, 19th April, will be the High Noon for the the Pakistan Supreme Court, the day when it will be tested for its wafaadaari ( faithfulness ) to the Pakistan Constitution. the day when it will be seen whether it will either enforce the Constitution, or whether it will chicken out, and show it was only paying lip service to it in its earlier verdict that elections to the Punjab Provincial Assembly must be held on 14th May ?
Article 224(2) of Pakistan’s Constitution states :
” When the National Assembly or a Provincial Assembly is dissolved, a general election to the Assembly shall be held within a period of ninety days after the dissolution, and the results of the election shall be declared not later than fourteen days after the conclusion of the polls ”.The Punjab Provincial Assembly had been dissolved on 18th January 2023, so in view of the clear mandate of Article 224(2) elections to it should have been held by 18th April. The Election Commission of Pakistan fixed elections for 30th April, which itself was a violation of Article 224(2). But thereafter, obviously under some pressure, it further postponed the elections to 8th October. The Supreme Court of Pakistan rightly declared this unconstitutional, and fixed elections for 14th May.
However, the ruling PDM ( Pakistan Democratic Movement ) Government, knowing it will be routed in the polls ( as all opinion polls indicate ), has said it will not abide by this verdict, and Pakistan’s National Assembly ( dominated by the PDM ) has refused to release the funds for holding the elections as directed by the Court.
This being the situation, which is clear contempt of court, the question is what will the Court do next ? Will it show its wafaadaari to the Constitution by sacking the Government for contempt of court ( following the precedent of the dismissal of then PM Yusuf Raza Gilani for contempt of court ), or will it fold its hands and turn a Nelson’s eye to this brazen unconstitutional and egregious behaviour of the PDM Government ? There is no middle ground. Today is the day of the aazmaaish ( test ) of the Pakistan Supreme Court to know what metal it is made of. Today is its High Noon.
Justice Markandey Katju
AuthorJustice Markandey Katju is former Chairman , Press Council of India and former Judge , Supreme Court of India.
“I am grateful that we reached an agreement with UTLA in a manner that reflects the dedicated work of our employees, provides a better academic experience for our students and raises the standards of compensation in Los Angeles and across the country,” Carvalho said in a statement.
It was a critical moment for Carvalho, who received acclaim for his work in Miami but faces an entirely different labor environment in Los Angeles. A three-day support staff strike last month shuttered Los Angeles schools and kept more than 350,000 students out of class. He escaped a repeat by reaching an agreement with the powerful UTLA.
“I’m hopeful that he learned some very valuable lessons,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in an interview. “Because he could have had two strikes within two months, and what would that have said about his leadership?”
The superintendent has spoken frequently about the need to make up instructional time lost during the pandemic since arriving in Los Angeles. Another strike would have dealt another setback to that goal and put his fragile relationship with labor at risk.
“I think he’s done an excellent job of positioning himself as an action-oriented leader, but I think he greatly underestimated the difference in the strength of labor unions at the bargaining table in California relative to Florida,” said Eric Premack, founder of the California Charter Schools Development Center, who used to do consulting work for Los Angeles Unified and other school districts.
Carvalho came to the U.S. from Portugal as an undocumented immigrant after he graduated from high school, settling in South Florida. He worked construction and restaurant jobs, and was at times homeless before becoming a teacher. He later did communications work and lobbied for the Miami-Dade School District, which he went on to run for 13 years.
He gained national prominence in the role, rebuffing entreaties to run for Congress and lead New York City Schools. But it wasn’t until 2022 that he left Miami, exhausted by his clashes with Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican politicians over school mask policies, curriculum restrictions and the treatment of LGBTQ students.
“I had been approached regarding LAUSD four times over the past decade, and concerning the political dynamic in Florida — a state I love, great people, great talent — I thought this would be a better match for me,” Carvalho told reporters last week in Sacramento, where he came to lobby for more school funding and other education proposals.
His 14-month tenure has been full of challenges, including a cyberattack that exposed families’ personal data, a student’s fatal opioid overdose at school and sliding enrollment and chronic absenteeism.
But he’s faced the steepest learning curve with bargaining.
In March, teachers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers walked picket lines, some holding cardboard signs deriding Carvalho’s fine suits and $440,000 salary. One included a picture of the superintendent surrounded by cartoon money bags with the caption “Mr. Miami Vice Grip.”
The superintendent’s administration, meanwhile, was negotiating on behalf of a school board in which the majority of members are aligned with UTLA. Labor-friendly President Jackie Goldberg told reporters the board is “completely overjoyed” with the agreement reached by the union and superintendent.
Carvalho has avoided another strike, for now. But for California superintendents and unions, the bargaining never really stops. The contract for support staff expires after next year, along with a massive chunk of federal coronavirus relief funding, compounding financial pressure on the district.
But he insists that he’s happy to have Florida and its politics at a 2,000-mile distance.
“We don’t ban books here. We don’t restrict curriculum. We acknowledge all individuals, regardless of gender, persuasion, whatever it is,” Carvalho said last week. “I think dealing with a different, more forceful union is a decent tradeoff I’m willing to take any day.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
A hundred million here, a hundred million there, might crimp your finances. But in the Murdoch universe, paying such settlements is just the cost of doing business Murdoch-style. The alternative to settling with Dominion for telling a series of lies about voting fraud would have been a painful and long courtroom drama. A stream of ugly would have been on the Fox image, day after day, as Dominion made its case. Even after the case concluded and went to appeals, the Fox brand would have been further stigmatized, and shame and disparagement would have been leveled at Murdoch, Fox executives and Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham and Bret Baier, all of whom Dominion planned to put on the witness stand. Getting out from under all of that hurt for $787.5 million is a kind of bargain for a company with a market cap of $17.3 billion. Fox has $4.1 billion in cash and warrants on hand, says the New York Times.
According to early press reports, Fox won’t have to apologize or acknowledge wrongdoing in any fashion. Like the phone-hacking scandal, like the sexual harassment cases, like the Seth Rich case, like the coupon case, this settlement will allow the Fox media machine to return to cruising speed and even continue its sleazy ways. When Murdoch was shamed over the phone-hacking scandal and closed the News of the World, observers hoped that maybe he or one of his children would amend the company’s manner. But here we are a decade-plus later, and the Murdoch enterprise is just as contaminated as it ever was.
There have already been whisperings that the settlement will tame the Murdoch beast. That Fox News will tread more carefully. That Fox’s shame will bleed into the media diets of their most faithful viewers and they’ll start looking at Fox News with new eyes as the enlightenment burns into their consciousness. Don’t kid yourself. If you had a machine that tossed off the sort of money Fox does, you wouldn’t tamper with it.
Sure, Fox might throttle back for a few months as it fills the big sack with the settlement cash for Dominion. But you can already imagine Murdoch, after a decent interval, mounting a copy-paper pedestal and giving a “Succession”-like speech to the Fox team about it being time to put the bad news behind them and urging them to gear up for the 2024 presidential election as it reverts to its tainted formula of lies and distortions. How can we so confidently predict this turn? Because ever since Rupert Murdoch busted out of Adelaide, Australia, ever since he conquered the newspaper market in England, ever since he came to dominate cable news with Fox, he’s paid his way out of jams. The Dominion case and the similar Smartmatic case that awaits its place in the defamation docket, are not aberrations for Fox. It’s all a part of Murdoch’s way of doing business.
Fox will remain an indispensably valuable part of the Murdoch enterprises. Most, if not all, of the Fox hosts that helped push Donald Trump’s stolen election lies on a gullible viewership will continue to anchor their shows. Fox will continue to air its swill. The Fox viewers who lost faith in the network over the election lies will forget the interval the way mothers forget the trauma of childbirth and return to the network because it so brilliantly stimulates their fears and grievances.
And Rupert Murdoch, the indestructible Rupert Murdoch, will carry on as he always has. He will have won once again.
******
Is Murdoch immortal? Send speculations to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed watches the NFL on Fox. My Mastodon and Post accounts owe me $787.5 million. Substack Notes are saying I owe it $787.5 million. My RSS feed was not surprised at the settlement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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Dominion had alleged that the network defamed the election technology company in the wake of the 2020 election, focusing on a series of segments in which Fox hosts allowed lawyers affiliated with Donald Trump to falsely claim that the company had rigged the election against the former president. After two years of pretrial litigation, the network found itself struggling to defend itself: A recent decision by presiding judge Eric M. Davis substantially bolstered Dominion’s position heading into trial by concluding that the evidence from pretrial discovery had already established that several key issues — including whether the claims at issue were actually false — were indisputable at trial. The ruling was a major win for Dominion and a major loss for Fox, which no doubt helps to explain today’s settlement.
Before the settlement was announced, there were some unexpected antics that appeared to provide even more reason to think that Fox was in for a very rough ride if the case had gone forward. Caley Cronin, a spokesperson for Fox News, was thrown out of the Wilmington, Del. courtroom after she violated a court order that prohibited taking photographs in the courtroom. It was just the latest embarrassing incident in which representatives for the network had antagonized the judge, who had otherwise drawn praise from observers for his steady hand and even temperament presiding over the case.
The trial was expected to focus on whether Fox News or Fox Corporation acted with “actual malice” in disseminating the false claims against Dominion. Under Supreme Court precedent, this would have required Dominion to show that individuals responsible for broadcasting the segments either knew that they were false or acted with “reckless disregard” as to the falsity of the claims.
This has traditionally been a very difficult standard for defamation plaintiffs to satisfy, since First Amendment law generally provides wide latitude to media organizations engaged in traditional newsgathering, but legal analysts broadly agreed that Dominion had put together an unusually compelling case on this point. In particular, the company’s lawyers amassed internal communications among Fox executives, hosts, and employees with editorial responsibilities in which they appeared to acknowledge in real time and to varying degrees that the claims aired against Dominion were false. Those communications involved some of the most prominent people at the network, including Rupert Murdoch himself and primetime hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. The prospect of these people taking the witness stand and having to explain them away could not have been appealing for Fox.
One reason that Dominion succeeded in getting this far while other defamation plaintiffs have not is that the underlying false claims made against the company were unusually ridiculous — like the assertion that former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez had played a key role in creating the company, or that Dominion had a secret algorithm that allowed it to switch votes from Trump to Joe Biden. The company’s lawyers also appeared to have succeeded in casting a wide net in the course of discovery, which allowed them to obtain the internal communications that became central to the case. Murdoch, for instance, at one point watched the infamous press conference hosted by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell in November 2020 in which they peddled similar falsehoods. The network’s owner wrote, “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.” There were plenty more of these colorful and embarrassing exchanges among the network’s boldface names.
In recent months, Fox had insisted that a victory for Dominion would pose a broader threat to media protections in this country, but it is not clear whether or to what extent this is correct. The reason is that, despite hundreds of pages of pretrial filings, Fox never managed to identify a single instance of legitimate newsgathering that would have been credibly endangered in the future if Dominion prevailed, as the company has now done. And, of course, the backdrop here is that Fox’s business model has for years drawn intense criticism from media analysts who have argued that the network routinely crosses the boundaries of responsible reporting by pandering to its mostly conservative audience and elevating dubious but politically convenient claims.
The settlement appears to have less to do with other media outlets than it does with the particularly outrageous facts and circumstances surrounding the conduct of Fox, its executives, and employees toward Dominion. This was a stunning case of media malpractice, and Fox is now paying for it.
This article first appeared in an edition of The Nightly newsletter.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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The numbers closely mirrored those from last year, when the Bidens reported paying $150,439 in federal income taxes on $610,702 for an effective tax rate of 24.6 percent.
White House officials again released copies of the first family’s tax returns on Tax Day as a demonstration of transparency. Former President Donald Trump had refused to do so while in office and during the 2016 presidential campaign, claiming repeatedly that he was under government audit. With the release of their 2022 taxes, Biden has shared 25 years worth of tax returns that include his years as vice president and an earlier presidential run, according to the White House.
Much of the couple’s income was via the president’s $400,000 salary. Jill Biden was paid $82,335 for her teaching position at Northern Virginia Community College.
The Bidens, who filed their returns jointly, also reported paying $29,023 in state income tax in Delaware, where they have two homes. The first lady reported paying $3,139 in Virginia income tax.
The Bidens hit the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, called SALT, a product of Trump’s tax law and derided by Democrats in high-cost states. They also paid more than $2,000 in additional federal taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act.
Other charitable donations include $4,000 to Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors; $2,000 to the Fraternal Order of Police Foundation; $1,680 to St. Joseph on the Brandywine (the Bidens’ home parish); $1,125 to Westminster Presbyterian Church; $1,000 each to Cranston Heights Fire Company and Ministry of Caring.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, paid $93,570 in federal income taxes last year, with an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent.
Their combined federal earnings were $456,918, including Harris’ vice presidential salary and a reported $169,665 from Georgetown University, where Emhoff, an intellectual property and business lawyer, joined the Law Center’s teaching ranks in January 2021.
The couple paid $17,612 in California income taxes, and Emhoff paid $9,697 in District of Columbia income tax.
The couple contributed $23,000 to charity during the year. They owed $611 to the IRS.
The income figures for Harris and Emhoff were far below what they reported in prior years when Emhoff was still practicing law. When Harris campaigned for president in 2019, they released 15 years of tax returns, including earning about $2 million in 2018.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“It is unfathomable how Ms. Debrow can offer competent and adequate counsel to her client who has been accused of further crimes,” Willis argues in the filing.
It’s the first whisper from Willis about the probe since January, when she described charging decisions in the investigation as “imminent.” Her comments at the time followed the conclusion of a special grand jury’s investigation into Trump and his bid to reverse the election results. While the special grand jury recommended criminal charges against an untold number of people whose identities remain secret, the panel had no power to issue the charges itself. Instead, Willis must present evidence to a traditional grand jury in order to issue formal charges, which may or may not align with the special grand jury’s recommendations.
Willis’ special grand jury probe stretched for nearly a year as she hauled in a slew of figures in Trump’s inner circle, suggesting that her probe went beyond the immediate allegations of potential Georgia election law violations that Trump may have committed. She fought some of those witnesses — from Sen. Lindsey Graham to former chief of staff Mark Meadows to former national security adviser Mike Flynn to Rudy Giuliani — in state and federal courts to secure their testimony. Willis is particularly interested in Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021 phone call in which he urged Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to reverse the outcome of the election.
Willis’ concerns about the legal representation of the false electors is not new. She raised an alarm in November that some of them might have different degrees of legal exposure and could be called on to testify against each other or otherwise have interests that would require separate representation. At the time, the judge overseeing the matter, Robert McBurney, permitted 10 of the electors to remain represented by a single attorney. But he agreed to require another, Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer, to get separate representation because his degree of criminal exposure appeared to be greater than the others.
The false electors were a key aspect of Trump’s bid to remain in power, despite losing the 2020 election. By convening a set of pro-Trump electors in several states Trump lost, his allies pointed to the “competing“ slates of electors to argue that Congress or then-Vice President Mike Pence should pick between them on January 6, 2021, when lawmakers met to count electoral votes and finalize the results of the election. The challenges lodged by Trump’s congressional allies failed, and Pence ultimately rejected Trump’s repeated insistence that he had the single-handed authority to halt the certification himself, ending Trump’s last-ditch bid to stay in power.
Many of the false Republican electors were party activists or chairs in those states, and they helped convene the Republican electors in December, when Biden’s certified electors also met to formalize his victory in those states. The false electors in at least five of the Biden-won states — including Georgia — signed certificates claiming that they were the legitimate presidential electors from those states. While many of the false electors have claimed they weren’t told that they were going to become components in Trump’s Jan. 6 plans — only that their actions were necessary to preserve legal challenges — others were more intimately involved with figures in Trump’s inner circle.
Many of them have already been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors probing Trump’s election gambit as well, and dozens of them were subpoenaed by and testified to the Jan. 6 select committee.
Trump has already been indicted in New York for alleged crimes related to hush money payments and covering up an affair just before the 2016 election. But the Fulton County and federal probe may present more acute legal threats in the long run as prosecutors edge closer to final charging decisions.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
