Tag: Boss

  • Bigg Boss OTT 2: Names of two contestants out, see here

    Bigg Boss OTT 2: Names of two contestants out, see here

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    Mumbai: Fans of Bigg Boss are in a treat as makers are reportedly bringing back the OTT version of the reality show soon. Yes, you read that right! Bigg Boss OTT 2 is all set to return this year. The show, which will be streamed exclusively on the digital platform Voot, has been making waves among the audience since speculations of its launch date, which is reportedly in June end or July first week, went viral.

    Bigg Boss has always been known for its high entertainment value and drama, and this season promises to be no different. Adding to the excitement is the speculation around the list of contestants, which has been generating a lot of buzz among the telly audience.

    Bigg Boss OTT 2 Contestants

    First two names of the celebrities that are popping up on the internet are — Munawar Faruqui and Gulshan Gautam. While there is no official confirmation about them, the latest buzz has it that makers have approached these two celebrities to take part in Bigg Boss OTT 2.

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    If everything goes well, then the audience will get to see Munawar, who is Lock Upp 1 winner, creating his magic in the controversial reality show. Gulshan, on the other hand, is Archana Gautam’s brother who entertained the audience in the 16th season of Bigg Boss.

    The show’s fans are eagerly waiting to see who among their favorite celebrities will enter the Bigg Boss OTT house and create a stir in the coming weeks.

    Stay tuned to Siasat.com for more interesting scoops and updates on Bigg Boss and Khatron Ke Khiladi 13.

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    #Bigg #Boss #OTT #Names #contestants

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Here’s why Priyanka Chahar Choudhary dint win Bigg Boss 16

    Here’s why Priyanka Chahar Choudhary dint win Bigg Boss 16

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    Mumbai: Priyanka Chahar Choudhary is a popular television actress who has won the hearts of many with her performances on the small screen. She recently participated in the highly anticipated reality show, Bigg Boss 16, where fans were rooting for her to take home the coveted title. However, to the disappointment of many, Priyanka lost out on the title to MC Stan. This left fans wondering what led to her loss and what the real reason behind it could be.

    Prize money of Bigg Boss 16 winner is…
    Bigg Boss 16 contestant Priyanka Chahar Choudhary (Instagram)

    Former Bigg Boss contestant and actor Apurva Agnihotri was quizzed about BB16’s winner in his latest interview to which he replied saying, “Itna predictable ho gaya tha ki in logon ne last me apna winner mere khayal se change kar diya hoga.” Fans are now wondering if he just spilled beans about MC Stan’s last minute win and how makers flipped the coin.

    In case you are not aware, Priyanka Chahar Choudhary was a participant in Bigg Boss 16, where she emerged as the second runner up. The show got concluded in February where Shiv Thakare was declared as the first runner up of the show, while the coveted trophy was lifted by MC Stan. Although she did not win the title, Priyanka’s stint on the popular reality show was highly impressive and managed to capture the hearts of millions of fans who were rooting for her.

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    #Heres #Priyanka #Chahar #Choudhary #dint #win #Bigg #Boss

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Exclusive: Bigg Boss OTT 2 to begin from THIS date

    Exclusive: Bigg Boss OTT 2 to begin from THIS date

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    Mumbai: Bigg Boss fans rejoice! Popular reality show Bigg Boss OTT is set to return with its second season, and the latest buzz around it has lefts super excited. The show, which was a digital spin-off of the popular TV show Bigg Boss, premiered in 2021 and was hosted by filmmaker Karan Johar. The show was a huge success, and now inside sources suggest the makers are gearing up for its second season.

    Bigg Boss OTT 2 Premiere Date

    According to our exclusive sources close to the show, BB OTT 2 is currently in the pre-production stage, and the makers are approaching celebrities to participate in the show which is said to begin in June. The format of the show remains the same, with contestants living together in a house for a specified period and competing in various challenges and tasks to win the title of the winner.

    Other Details Of Karan Johar-Hosted Show

    The first season of Bigg Boss OTT was a hit among audiences, and the makers are hoping to repeat the success with the second season. The show was praised for its unique format and engaging content, which kept viewers hooked throughout the season. It was won by actress Divya Agarwal.

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    Karan Johar, who hosted the first season of the show, is expected to return as the host for the second season as well. Karan’s wit and charm were appreciated by viewers, and he brought a new dimension to the show with his hosting style.

    Are you excited for Bigg Boss OTT 2? Comment below.

    Stay tuned to Siasat.com for more interesting scoops and updates on Bigg Boss OTT 2.

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    #Exclusive #Bigg #Boss #OTT #date

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Richard Sharp was Boris Johnson’s toxic legacy – never again should politicians pick a boss for the BBC | Jonathan Freedland

    Richard Sharp was Boris Johnson’s toxic legacy – never again should politicians pick a boss for the BBC | Jonathan Freedland

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    A word of advice for anyone who has worked hard to acquire a reputation they cherish: if Boris Johnson approaches, if he comes anywhere near, run a mile. Richard Sharp is the latest proof that, even out of office, Johnson continues to act as reputational napalm, laying waste to careers and turning good names bad.

    Sharp joins a long list that includes Christopher Geidt, who had the poison task of serving as Johnson’s adviser on ethics; Allegra Stratton, whom the former prime minister said had “sickened” him when she joked about a party in Downing Street, even though he had attended several himself; and the one-time rising star civil servant and current cabinet secretary, Simon Case, quoted this week as having said of Johnson, “I don’t know what more I can do to stand up to a prime minister who lies”. Each entered Johnson’s circle as a respected figure; each was diminished by their contact with the reverse Midas, the man who rots everything he touches.

    One question left by Sharp’s resignation as chair of the BBC is: what took him so long? He hardly needed to wait for today’s report by Adam Heppinstall KC, with its verdict that Sharp’s failure to disclose his role in brokering an £800,000 loan arrangement for Johnson represented “a breach of the governance code”, to know that he could not possibly continue in a job whose defining duty is to maintain the independence of the BBC. As the former director general John Birt said a month ago, Sharp was “unsuitable” for the role, thanks to “navigating a loan for the prime minister at exactly the same time as applying for the job at the BBC. It’s the cosiness of that arrangement that made it unsuitable, and I wish the cabinet secretary had called it out.” (The cabinet secretary being Case, serially Midased by Johnson.)

    According to those inside the BBC, Sharp had been a capable chair. But the manner of his appointment meant he could never do the job properly. Witness last month’s row over Gary Lineker’s tweet, aimed at Suella Braverman’s language on migrants. That was a moment when you might expect the chair to lead from the front, publicly explaining either why impartiality is central to the BBC’s mission or why it was vital that the BBC not succumb to government pressure – or both. Instead, Sharp was mute and invisible, too hopelessly compromised as the man who had helped bail out a fiscally incontinent Tory prime minister to say a word.

    It’s baffling that all of this did not occur to Sharp himself long ago – including right at the start, when he submitted his job application and was required to identify any conflicts, or perceived conflicts, of interest. The fact that he didn’t mention his role in the Johnson loan, even though he had discussed the issue with Case, suggests he knew that it looked bad – that it would give rise to the “perception that Mr Sharp would not be independent from the former prime minister, if appointed,” as Heppinstall puts it. Given he knew the importance of perceived, as well as actual, neutrality for the BBC, that silence was itself disqualifying.

    Boris Johnson
    ‘Many have been diminished by their contact with Boris Johnson the reverse Midas, the man who rots everything he touches.’ Photograph: Charles McQuillan/PA

    His grudging resignation statement suggests the penny has still not dropped. Dominic Raab may have started a fashion for passive-aggressive Friday departures, because Sharp was insistent that his breach of the rules was “inadvertent and not material”. Still, he invited our admiration for his decision “to prioritise the interests of the BBC” since “this matter may well be a distraction from the corporation’s good work were I to remain in post”. Er, yes, just a bit. Again, if preventing a distraction was Sharp’s concern, he should have gone the moment this story broke. As it is, he’s left multiple questions still to answer – including whether Johnson should not have recused himself from the appointment process on the grounds that he had an egregious conflict of interest, given that he knew Sharp had helped him out with the loan.

    What’s needed now is not just a new BBC chair, but a new way of doing things. Even if he hadn’t got involved in Johnson’s personal finances, Sharp was hardly a non-partisan figure. He is a longtime, high-value donor to the Tory party, to the tune of £400,000. True, political parties, Labour included, have been appointing allies and chums to this role since the 1960s, but that practice needs to stop. Lineker distilled the case nicely: “The BBC chairman should not be selected by the government of the day. Not now, not ever.”

    This goes wider than the BBC: there’s a slew of public jobs that might appear to be independently appointed, but that are quietly filled on the nod, or whim, of Downing Street. But it’s with the BBC that independence matters acutely. To understand why, look across the Atlantic.

    This week’s announcement by Joe Biden that he will seek a second term had to fight for media attention with the firing of Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. That’s because Carlson had become second only to Donald Trump in influence over the Republican party, able to make senior elected officials and aspirant presidential candidates bend to his agenda and ideological obsessions – even when mainstreaming previously fringe, and racist, ideas like the “great replacement theory”, with its claim of a deliberate, if shadowy, plot to replace white Americans with a more diverse and pliant electorate.

    Fox News itself, with its repeated amplification of the big lie of a stolen election, is partly responsible for why nearly two-thirds of Republican voters do not believe a demonstrable fact: namely, that Biden won office in a free and fair contest in 2020. Today’s America is a land of epistemic tribalism: knowledge is not shared across the society, but rather dependent on political affiliation. There are red state facts and blue state facts, and which you believe comes down to which media you consume – which social media accounts you follow, which TV networks you watch.

    In Britain, there have been efforts to lead us down that gloomy path. There are partisan, polemical TV channels now, desperate to do to Britain what Fox has done to America. And Johnson was Trumpian in his contempt for the truth, determined to create a world of Brexit facts that would exist in opposition to the real one. But if those efforts have largely failed – and if Johnson was eventually undone by his lies – that is partly down to the stubborn persistence in this country of a source of information that is regarded by most people as, yes, flawed and, yes, inconsistent, but broadly reliable and fair. Trust levels in the BBC are not what they were, and that demands urgent attention, but it is striking nonetheless that, according to a Reuters Institute study, aside from local news, BBC News is the most trusted news brand in the US. It seems that in an intensely polarised landscape, people thirst for a non-partisan source.

    The BBC should be defended – and that process starts with governments treating it as the publicly funded broadcaster it is, rather than the state broadcaster some wrongly imagine it to be. That means giving up the power to pick its boss – and getting politicians out of the way. The BBC is a precious thing – so precious, we might not fully appreciate it until it’s gone.



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    #Richard #Sharp #Boris #Johnsons #toxic #legacy #politicians #pick #boss #BBC #Jonathan #Freedland
    ( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

  • Italian police arrest ’Ndrangheta mafia boss after five years on the run

    Italian police arrest ’Ndrangheta mafia boss after five years on the run

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    Italian authorities have announced the arrest of a top boss of the ’Ndrangheta mafia after he spent almost five years on the run.

    Pasquale Bonavota, 49, who featured on the police’s list of most dangerous criminals, had been sought since November 2018 after escaping an arrest warrant for homicide and mafia association issued by a magistrate in Calabria, southern Italy.

    He was arrested on Thursday morning in the northern port city of Genoa, carabinieri officers said. Local media said Bonavota was leaving the city’s cathedral when he was arrested and was carrying a fake ID.

    Bonavota is considered the brains of the ’Ndrangheta’s Bonavota clan, which includes his two brothers, based in the Sant’Onofrio area of the Calabrian province of Vibo Valentia.

    The clan also operates around Rome and in the northern regions of Piedmont and Liguria, which includes Genoa.

    The ’Ndrangheta is Italy’s most powerful and wealthy mafia, controlling the bulk of cocaine flowing into Europe. It operates in more than 40 countries.

    It has successfully expanded well beyond its traditional domains of drug trafficking and loan sharking, now using shell companies and frontmen to reinvest illegal gains in the legitimate economy.

    Bonavota went on the run shortly after being sentenced by a lower court to life in prison for two murders committed in 2014 and 2004 of a lower-ranking member of his clan and a rival boss of a nearby clan.

    That sentence was overturned in 2021 by a court of appeal while he was on the run. However, Bonavota was the last remaining fugitive suspect implicated in a massive case against the Vibo Valentia ’Ndrangheta that led to the 2021 maxi-trial against more than 300 alleged mafia members and their helpers. The trial is ongoing.

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    In that indictment, Bonavota is described as being a leader who “took the most important decisions” along with other top ’Ndrangheta bosses, and “looked after the interests of the association in the Rome area and in the gambling sectors and drug trafficking”.

    The arrest of Bonavota comes three months after the high-profile capture of the Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro. The Cosa Nostra boss had been a fugitive for 30 years.

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    #Italian #police #arrest #Ndrangheta #mafia #boss #years #run
    ( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

  • China must act against rising global hunger, new WFP boss McCain says

    China must act against rising global hunger, new WFP boss McCain says

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    BRUSSELS — China and other powerful countries need to step up to help steer the world away from a potentially “catastrophic” hunger crisis this year, the new head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme said.

    Cindy McCain, an American diplomat and the widow of the late U.S. Senator John McCain, also told POLITICO that the EU and U.S. should see world hunger as a national security issue due to its impact on migration. She furthermore accused Russia of using hunger as a “weapon of war” by hindering exports of Ukrainian grain.

    McCain, formerly the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies, took the helm of the WFP on April 5 and begins her five-year term at a time of increasing world hunger. The number of people facing food insecurity around the world rose to a record 345 million at the end of last year, up from 282 million in 2021, according to the WFP’s figures, as Russia’s war in Ukraine deepened a food crisis driven by climate change, COVID-19 and other conflicts.

    This year could be worse still, McCain warned, with the Horn of Africa experiencing its worst drought in 40 years and Haiti facing a sharp rise in food insecurity, among other factors. “2023 is going to be catastrophic if we don’t get to work and raise the money that we need,” she said. “We need a hell of a lot more than we used to.”

    Non-Western countries, which have traditionally contributed much less to the WFP, need to step up to meet the shortfall, McCain said, pointing specifically to China and oil-rich Gulf Arab countries. China contributed just $11 million to WFP funds last year, compared to $7.2 billion donated by the U.S. 

    “There are some countries that have just basically not participated or participated in a very low fashion. I’d like to encourage our Middle Eastern friends to step up to the plate a little more; I’d like to encourage China to step up to the plate a little more,” said McCain. “Every region, every country needs to step up funding.”

    Her entreaty may fall on deaf ears, however, given rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. The WFP’s last six executive directors have been American, dating back to 1992, and Beijing may prefer to distribute aid through its own channels. Last summer, for example, China shipped food aid directly to the Horn of Africa following a drought there.

    National security

    Countries hesitant to throw more money into food aid should think about the alternative, McCain said, particularly those in Europe that are likely to bear the brunt of any new wave of migration from Africa and the Middle East.

    “Food security is a national security issue,” she said. “No refugee wants to leave their home country, but they’re forced to because they don’t have enough food, and they can’t feed their families. So it comes down to if you want a stable world, food is a major player in this.”

    The WFP is already having to make brutal decisions despite raking in a record $14.2 billion last year — more than double what it raised in 2017. In February, for instance, it said a funding shortfall was forcing it to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh.

    The problem is compounded by surging costs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which sent already-high food prices soaring further, as grain and oilseed exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports plunged from more than 5 million metric tons a month to zero.

    A U.N.-brokered deal allowing Ukrainian grain exports to pass through Russia’s blockades in the Black Sea has brought some reprieve, but Moscow’s repeated threats to withdraw from the agreement have kept prices volatile.   

    GettyImages 1243429843
    Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South | Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

    The deal, initially brokered in July last year, was extended for 120 days last month; Russia, however, agreed to extend its side of the Black Sea grain initiative only for 60 days. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov threatened, once again, to halt Moscow’s participation in the initiative unless obstacles to its own fertilizer and food exports are addressed.

    Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions — those targeting Russia’s fertilizer oligarchs and its main agricultural bank, as well as others excluding Russian banks from the international SWIFT payments system — are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South. 

    Ukraine and its Western allies have countered that Russia is deliberately holding up inspections for ships heading to and from its Black Sea ports, creating a backlog of Ukraine-bound vessels off the Turkish coast and inflating prices. 

    These delayed food cargoes are hindering the WFP’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises, said McCain, who did not hold back on the issue.

    “Let’s be very clear, there are no sanctions on [Russian] fertilizer,” she said. “It is not sanctioned and never has been sanctioned.” 

    Russia is “using hunger as a weapon of war,” said McCain. “it’s unconscionable that a country would do that — any country, not just Russia.”



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    #China #act #rising #global #hunger #WFP #boss #McCain
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

  • Shiv Thakare recounts ‘Bigg Boss 16’ journey in his music video ‘Aai Shapphat’

    Shiv Thakare recounts ‘Bigg Boss 16’ journey in his music video ‘Aai Shapphat’

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    Mumbai: Shiv Thakare, known for participating in the reality show ‘Bigg Boss 16’, has collaborated with music composer Mayur Jumani for the one-minute music video ‘Aai Shapphat’, which captures his journey on the reality show.

    While MC Stan lifted the trophy on ‘Bigg Boss 16’, Shiv emerged as the first runner-up.

    He shared a friendly bond with Abdu Rozik and a close bond with Nimrit Kaur on the show. The video captures a few of his catchwords also.

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    Talking about the peppy track, Shiv said: “One day I got a call from Mayur, he said I have made this song called ‘Aai Shapphat’ which captures your ‘Bigg Boss season 16’ journey, can you meet and discuss the same? I always appreciate and respect people around me. So I took time and went to meet him and when I listened to what he had made, I was so happy and felt blessed about it.”

    Shiv has also participated in reality shows like MTV’s Roadies Rising’, ‘Bigg Boss Marathi 2’, and recently became a guest commentator in one of the matches of IPL 2023 between Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Capitals.

    Sharing more about his collaboration with Mayur, Shiv said: “I know Mayur. He is a very creative person and does make such things. In one minute, he has shown my full journey of Bigg Boss, from words like ‘Aai Shappath’, ‘Aai Cha Gawat’, ‘O Mandali’ to love from people and Ganpati Bappa. He just asked me for my time to shoot the video.”

    Talking about what he liked about the video, Bigg Boss 16 finalist said: “The way I was portrayed in it.”

    “The way he presented Shiv Thakare I really enjoyed watching it and people also loved it. Within an hour of posting it, people started sharing, liking, and commenting on it. Also, it has gone viral to the extent that people have started calling me and complimenting me personally,” Shiv said.

    Praising Mayur, he said: “While shooting for the video also, Mayur was so concerned about me. He keeps asking me whether I am comfortable with certain dance steps or not.”

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    #Shiv #Thakare #recounts #Bigg #Boss #journey #music #video #Aai #Shapphat

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Biopic on Pakistani queer anchor, former ‘Bigg Boss’ contestant Begum Nawazish Ali in works

    Biopic on Pakistani queer anchor, former ‘Bigg Boss’ contestant Begum Nawazish Ali in works

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    Mumbai: A new biopic based on Pakistani queer television personality Ali Saleem is in the works. Ali is a Pakistani television host, actor, scriptwriter and impressionist who broke into the mainstream audiences through his impersonations of late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and went on to play the cross-dressing Begum Nawazish Ali on various television channels.

    Ali, who was biologically born a male to a retired colonel father in Pakistan Army, has sometimes called himself gay, bisexual or at other times even a transsexual. He was also a contestant in ‘Bigg Boss 4’ back in 2010.

    Deepak Pandey, CEO of EORTV, who has announced a biopic, has expressed his desire to cast Mallika Sherawat for the part.

    He said, “This is a strong story, a story of boldness and courage. The character is multifaceted and needed someone as courageous and undaunted as the Begum thyself. I am planning to approach Mallika Sherawat for this role as she would be apt for a fearless performance like this. It is important to create stories like these that can encourage more and more people to be open about their sexuality and sexual preferences. This is going to be a story of an unapologetically fearless man who’s leading a life of his own choice in spite of living in a politically warm environment”.

    He further mentioned, “Begum Nawazish Ali’s background and childhood is interesting but the journey he makes in due course of his life is even more interesting. He has interviewed the who’s who from business, politics, entertainment with gusto. He has courted satire and controversy but managed to make a place in the hearts of the common man. His life will make for very compelling content on screen”.

    EORTV works to build awareness among the society towards the Queer community and educate people about them. The platform showcases queer stories on screen with an aim to normalise it within mainstream society.

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    #Biopic #Pakistani #queer #anchor #Bigg #Boss #contestant #Begum #Nawazish #Ali #works

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Senate’s new budget boss is also a climate hawk

    Senate’s new budget boss is also a climate hawk

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    “I just have a very strong general sympathy for underdogs,” Whitehouse said during a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office, which features a collection of Yacht Club bottles (Rhode Island’s official state soda) and walls adorned with moody lighthouse photos.

    The junior Ocean State senator is hardly an underdog himself. His father, Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, was an ambassador to Laos and Thailand. After attending an elite boarding school in New Hampshire, Whitehouse studied at Yale University and the University of Virginia law school.

    His victory over a GOP incumbent in 2006 played a key role in turning New England its current shade of blue. But even though Whitehouse is a pugnacious partisan at times, he still maintains surprising GOP friendships.

    He led a delegation to Munich with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) earlier this year. When his arch-rival in many environmental debates decided to retire last year, Whitehouse described former Sen. Jim Inhofe as “a key ally on my oceans and infrastructure measures.”

    Meanwhile, Whitehouse has also made waves about inequity in a surprising place: within his own party’s caucus. He sparked an internal Democratic battle in 2020 by arguing that Sen Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) shouldn’t helm the Judiciary panel while also serving as the party’s whip. Two years later, he sought to downgrade the ability of the party’s top four leaders to chair prime committees.

    Whitehouse lost both fights. If you ask him, though, they were worth waging: “The overall effort was successful in sharing authority more broadly and fairly around the caucus.”

    It doesn’t appear that his propensity to pick those internal battles rattled his leader’s confidence in his ability to wield the Budget gavel. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described Whitehouse as “smart, persistent, passionate, and articulate.”

    “He’s got a unique way of taking the complex federal budget and breaking it down to show it impacts the lives of everyday Americans,” Schumer added in a statement.

    Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, was one of Schumer’s star recruits as Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair. The Rhode Island Democrat has yet to announce or rule out a fourth term in 2024.

    A reelection bid could shine a brighter light on his work at the Budget panel — particularly the still-pending decision on whether Senate Democrats will write their own fiscal proposal or work from President Joe Biden’s blueprint. Asked earlier this month about the looming decision, all Whitehouse would say is “TBD.”

    So for the moment, after giving nearly 300 “Time to Wake Up” speeches on the floor, Whitehouse is planning to devote still more attention to climate change on the committee. He also intends to use the gavel to home in on health care spending and better health outcomes for Americans, in addition to correcting a “corrupted tax code.”

    Of course, the power of the Budget chair to effect any concrete policy changes is limited: Sanders tried to get a $6 trillion party-line policy bill done last Congress and eventually settled for something a fraction of the size.

    And so far, Whitehouse isn’t getting bipartisan rave reviews.

    “I call the committee kind of a useless appendage,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), arguing that the new chair’s professed interest in budget reform still plays “second fiddle” to Whitehouse’s “main concern, which is climate.”

    “I always believe that you should be doing what’s central to the committee itself,” Braun added.

    Whitehouse says he’s serious about his budget reform goals — which Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also praised — and signaled he’d like to revive a push to set overall budget goals for Congress, such as limiting the country’s level of public debt compared to its GDP.

    But he also counters skeptics by saying that his unorthodox focuses as chair speaks to a “throughline” of his career: “a very strong belief in government integrity.” The Rhode Island Democrat rails on what he calls a “concerted effort to pack the Supreme Court,” the subject of the book he published last year.

    The failure of Congress to adequately respond to climate change, he maintains, has demonstrated “a dramatic lack of integrity, almost entirely due to the malign political influence of the fossil fuel industry operating semi-covertly through dark money channels and front groups.”

    Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Whitehouse is relishing the ability to use a chair’s microphone to spread his often-mellifluous message. The senator has a way with words when it comes to battling with Republicans.

    “They’re relying on a new magic budget word. That word is ‘woke,’” Whitehouse said at a press conference earlier this month. “Call everything ‘woke’ and then try to cut its funding seems to be the strategy … The woke screen is a smoke screen.”

    It was a cutting enough remark to earn an “oooh” of approval from Schumer.

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    #Senates #budget #boss #climate #hawk
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Priyanka Gandhi’s PA booked for ‘misbehaving’ with Bigg Boss fame Archana Gautam

    Priyanka Gandhi’s PA booked for ‘misbehaving’ with Bigg Boss fame Archana Gautam

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    Meerut: Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s personal assistant has been booked for allegedly misbehaving and threatening former Bigg Boss contestant and Congress leader Archana Gautam, said police on Tuesday.

    Archana Gautam’s father Gautam Buddha had registered a case against Vadra’s PA Sandeep Singh at Partapur police station in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh under sections 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code and also under sections 3(1)(d) and 3(1) of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

    Her father in a complaint to police alleged that Sandeep Singh not only used casteist words to his daughter, but also threatened to kill her.

    “My daughter Archana Gautam was called to Raipur, Chhattisgarh, on February 26 by Sandeep Singh to participate in the Congress General Convention on the invitation of Priyanka Gandhi. My daughter asked for an appointment with Priyanka Gandhi but he refused and misbehaved with her. He also used casteist indecent language, humiliated my daughter and threatened to kill her in front of everyone on the convention stage. The video proof of which is available with the cameraman present there,” her father told the police.

    Her further alleged that when her daughter met Priyanka Gandhi and said that she had been trying to meet her for a long time, then Singh threatened to put her in jail.

    “Due to this my daughter’s mental condition has been deeply affected, as well as my daughter’s reputation has been hurt. Such insulting casteist remarks in front of everyone deeply hurt me and my family. Sandeep has even threatened to put my daughter’s family in jail and has also threatened to destroy my daughter’s career,” the complaint read.

    Meerut police officials said that the an FIR has been filed against Sandeep Singh based on the complaint of Archana Gautam’s father.

    “Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s PA has been booked for allegedly threatening former Bigg Boss contestant Archana Gautam,” Meerut SP Piyush Kumar Singh said.

    “Further probe into the matter is on,” he added.

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    #Priyanka #Gandhis #booked #misbehaving #Bigg #Boss #fame #Archana #Gautam

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )