Islamabad: Pakistan President Arif Alvi on Wednesday returned a bill seeking to curb the powers of the chief justice of the Supreme Court to parliament for a second time, saying that the matter was now subjudice.
“The matter of competency of legislation and validity of the bill is subjudice now before the highest judicial forum of the country. In deference to the same, thereto no further action is desirable,” the President was quoted as saying in his reply by the Dawn newspaper.
The bill, titled the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Bill 2023, is aimed at depriving the office of the CJP of powers to take suo motu notice in an individual capacity and form a panel of judges for hearing of cases.
It was initially passed by both houses of parliament and sent to the president for his assent. However, the president sent it back, saying that the proposed law travelled “beyond the competence of parliament”.
The bill was, however, passed again by a joint sitting of parliament with certain amendments on April 10 and sent to the president.
But three days after the passing of the bill by the joint parliament session, an eight-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC), including CJP Umar Ata Bandial, issued an order that bars the government from implementing the bill after it becomes a law.
The bench observed that prima facie the proposed law infringed the powers of the apex court to frame its own rules and it merits a hearing by the court.
The court in its order after hearing stated that any intrusion in its practice and the procedure, even on the most tentative of assessments, would appear to be “inimical to the independence of the judiciary, no matter how innocuous, benign or even desirable the regulation may facially appear to be”.
“It is therefore hereby directed and ordered as follows. The moment that the bill receives the assent of the president or (as the case may be) it is deemed that such assent has been given, then from that very moment onwards and till further orders, the act that comes into being shall not have, take or be given any effect nor be acted upon in any manner,” the court stated.
The parliament passed a resolution calling for the dissolution of the eight-judge larger bench. The resolution tabled by the Pakistan Peoples Party lawmaker Agha Rafiullah was approved by a majority vote.
Pakistan is witnessing a rift between the judiciary and the government after a three-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Bandial fixed May 14 as the date for elections to the Punjab Assembly and quashed the Election Commission’s decision to extend the date of the poll from April 10 to October 8.
The bill states that every cause, matter, or appeal before the apex court would be heard and disposed of by a bench constituted by a committee comprising the chief justice and the two senior-most judges. It added that the decisions of the committee would be taken by a majority.
On exercising the apex court’s original jurisdiction, called suo motu powers, the bill said that any matter invoking the use of Article 184(3) would first be placed before the committee.
SRINAGAR: Apni Party President Syed Mohammad Altaf Bukhari on Thursday called on people from all walks of life to unite against the ongoing drug menace in the Kashmir and protect the young populationfrom falling prey to this grave evil. He emphasised that society can no longer afford to lose youngsters to drugs and urged everyone to play his/ her role in eradicating the menace.
While talking to reporters on the sidelines of an event, Syed Mohammad Altaf Bukhari said, “Apni Party has decided to take a range of initiatives, including skill development training for the youth, with the aim of empowering the youngsters and protecting them from the ongoing drug abuse in J&K.”
He said, “We are not taking these initiatives for political benefits or electoral gains; rather, this is a sincere effort to shoulder our responsibility towards society. Given the severity of the drug menace and its impact on society, I think every one of us ought to play his/her role in eradicating this destructive evil.”
Apni Party President made a promise that he would extend his assistance in rehabilitating the drug victims. He said that if anyone approaches him seeking help for the rehabilitation of an addict, he will provide support while ensuring the victim’s identity remains confidential.
Bukhari urged the administration to take serious measures to nab each and every person who is responsible for the smuggling and sale of drugs in society.
He said these criminals are playing with the lives of people, and they must face severe punishment.
Hyderabad: The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) has written to the Telangana government to take effective steps in managing COVID-19 infections.
In a letter to the state government, the ministry’s secretary Rajesh Bhushan pointed out the rising case of COVID-19 infections in Telangana.
According to the ministry, the number of cases registered on March 8 to March 15 rose from 132 to 267, which is a 0.31% positivity rate.
“The ministry advises the Telangana state government to examine COVID-19 infections at a micro level (district and sub-districts) and maintain focus on implementing measures for prompt and effective management. The state should maintain a strict watch and take pre-emptive action if required,” Bhushan said.
The letter asked the government to launch adequate and proactive testing centers and track new emerging COVID-19 variants and influenza-like illness as well as Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI).
Genome sequence should be taken up. Proactive promotion of vaccines and COVID-19-appropriate behaviour particularly in enclosed spaces must be implemented, the letter stated.
But, the agency acknowledges that the $772 million annual cost would, at least initially, be borne by American households through higher water charges.
“It’s time,” Radhika Fox, EPA’s top water official, said in an interview. “The American people want this. They want their drinking water to be safe.”
The regulatory proposal unveiled by EPA Tuesday would require utilities to cleanse their drinking water supplies of any detectable levels of the two most notorious chemicals in the class, known as PFOS and PFOA, which were used for decades in water repellent Scotchguard and Teflon, as well as firefighting foam, before being phased out of production in 2002 and 2015, respectively.
EPA’s new proposal also includes a surprise provision aimed at limiting the chemicals that the industry shifted to using after the PFOA and PFOS phase-out, which chemical companies argued were safer, but that federal scientists have concluded pose severe dangers of their own.
EPA had previously only singled out PFOA and PFOS as warranting federal regulation. But in the three years since the Trump administration first made that determination, evidence has mounted of those other chemicals’ prevalence and harms, and several states have enacted their own limits.
Because of structural differences in their chemistry, ridding water supplies of these newer substances can require different treatment approaches. Drinking water experts feared that if EPA didn’t address them under this proposal, water utilities could invest in upgrades that failed to deal with the whole PFAS problem. But the administration’s choice to regulate the chemicals in an accelerated and novel fashion could risk putting the regulation on legally shaky ground.
The proposed regulation would require communities to monitor water supplies for four of these chemicals – known as GenX, PFBS, PFHxS and PFNA – and then plug those results into a “hazard index” calculation. That calculation is aimed at dealing with the fact that different types of PFAS are often present in water at the same time, and scientists have found that those mixtures can be even more dangerous than just the sum of their parts.
Using that hazard index, utilities would see whether dangerous combined levels of the chemicals are present, which would require them to treat their water to reduce levels of those chemicals or switch to alternate sources.
Environmental groups and public health advocates heralded the proposal as a major step towards dealing with the sprawling contamination problem Tuesday. And the move was also backed by a top Republican on Capitol Hill whose state has been burdened by PFAS pollution.
“After years of urging three consecutive administrations of different parties to do so, I’m pleased a safe drinking water standard has finally been issued for PFOA and PFOS,” West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said in a statement.
Chemical manufacturers, whose past and current products are targeted by the proposal, have come out in opposition. The industry group American Chemistry Council said in a statement it has “serious concerns with the underlying science” used to develop the proposal.
None of the proposal’s requirements would come cheaply to drinking water utilities or their customers, and groups representing water managers are already raising concerns. EPA estimates that it would cost $772 million per year to upgrade water treatment plants and cover the ongoing monitoring and treatment costs to comply with the rule. That’s less than the $1.2 billion the agency estimates will be saved by removing the chemicals, primarily in the form of reduced healthcare costs and premature deaths. But it represents real pocketbook pain, particularly for customers already struggling to pay their water bills.
The drinking water utility serving the city of Wilmington, N.C., where Regan unveiled the proposal Tuesday, spent $43 million on upgrades to its water treatment facilities to filter out PFAS that a chemical manufacturing plant had poured into the Cape Fear River. The plant’s managers estimate it will cost up to $5 million more annually to operate the system, adding an average of $5 per month to customers’ bills.
In a statement, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies suggested EPA is low-balling its cost calculations, arguing that if just 16 drinking water utilities had to install upgrades similar to Wilmington’s, the cost would exceed the agency’s cost estimate.
“AMWA is concerned about the overall cost drinking water utilities will incur to comply with this proposed rulemaking,” the group’s CEO, Tom Dobbins, said in a statement.
In the near term, some new federal funds available through the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law could help offset this cost, including $5 billion for small and disadvantaged communities.
“We recognize that’s not enough for every single water utility in the country, but it’s a shot in the arm,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said as he announced the proposal.
Ultimately, the Biden administration is working to hold polluters accountable. EPA last summer proposed designating PFOA and PFOS as hazardous under the Superfund law, and the agency is exploring doing the same for other types of PFAS. That would allow EPA and other entities to force those responsible for the pollution to pay to clean it up.
But even if the regulations are put in place as proposed, that money likely wouldn’t flow until years — or decades — after utilities and their customers have footed the bill for upgrades.
And whether the drinking water regulation itself will even be finalized is far from guaranteed. The Defense Department, which faces potentially massive cleanup costs for its decades of contamination at more than 700 sites across the country, has stalled and weakened previous EPA efforts on PFAS.
The new drinking water proposal was stuck in interagency review at the White House for five months, and was only released after pressure from environmental groups, activists and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. That included a publicity blitz by actor Mark Ruffalo — who starred in the 2019 film “Dark Waters” about PFOA — as well as a private pressure campaign on the White House led by Capito and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a friend of President Joe Biden.
Environmental groups are already defending the new regulation from anticipated attacks.
“Today’s proposal is a necessary and long overdue step towards addressing the nation’s PFAS crisis, but what comes next is equally important,” Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, an attorney with the nonprofit group Earthjustice, said in a statement “EPA must resist efforts to weaken this proposal, move quickly to finalize health-protective limits on these six chemicals, and address the remaining PFAS that continue to poison drinking water supplies and harm communities across the country.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: In view of soaring student suicides, the Girls Islamic Organisation (GIO) on Friday requested the establishment of grievance redressal cells within the campuses to curb the incidents.
A representation was submitted to the Telangana education minister Sabitha Indira Reddy by the GIO members who requested redressal cells in accordance with the guidelines of the University Grants Commission (UGC).
They also urged the minister to ensure existing cells be restructured to include elected student representatives, making them more approachable and student-friendly.
The representation suggested the expansion of the scope of redressal to include more student-related issues beyond the currently specified ones while highlighting the need for counseling units in colleges.
According to the UGC guidelines, every higher education institution in the country must establish a student’s grievances and redressal cell, as per the Student Redressal Regulation 2018, Section 4(A)(I).
These cells are tasked with investigating complaints and taking action in cases related to harassment in institutions.
While some colleges have initiated online redressal portals, the recent trend of student suicide cases has called into question the efficiency of these cells.
President of the National Federation of GIO, Sumaiya Roshan said, “The absence of a safe environment becomes a threat for students from taking advantage of these opportunities effectively.”
“The minister accepted the memorandum and confirmed an appointment to discuss the issue in detail while the GIO plans to include student representatives in the meeting to share their personal experiences,” she added.
SRINAGAR: In a bid to curb the drug menace and maintain a strict vigil, the Drug Control officers have suspended the licenses of dozens of medical shops involved in selling drugs without prescription in Kashmir valley.
Official sources said that it is an ongoing process and for the past six months owners of scores of medical shops have faced the music.
They said in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district alone, seven licenses were suspended of medical shops by the Drug Control officers for selling drugs without a prescription, especially to those habitual of taking drugs. ‘Same action has been initiated in other districts as well, officials said.
They said that the operation of Drug Control Officers against illegal medical shops and drug abuse will be carried further and no one will be spared for playing the lives of people. (KNT)
AUSTIN, Texas — Die-hard transparency advocates are expressing guarded optimism that the scandals over sensitive documents found at the homes of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence could spur action to fight a long-running problem — arbitrary and excessive secrecy around government records.
One sign of potential opportunity: The high-profile political and legal imbroglios have prompted the typically nerdy debate over government secrecy and overclassification to spill into pop culture.
Even “Saturday Night Live” has gotten in on the act, noting during its opening skit over the weekend that once-daunting markings like “Top Secret” seem to have lost their luster.
“Some have said the federal government classifies too many documents — about 50 million a year,” comic Mikey Day declared, impersonating Attorney General Merrick Garland. “This has led some to ask: Does recovering these documents even matter?”
Those questions were front and center as a motley band of former senior intelligence officials, historians, archivists, journalists, open-government activists and even UFO researchers gathered at the University of Texas last week to assess the possibilities that the newfound attention to the issue could provided the impetus needed to rein in the national security classification system.
“We were a bit worried we’d be talking to ourselves, but I think things have changed a bit,” said Ezra Cohen, a former senior intelligence official appointed by Trump to an obscure panel that wrestles with issues of classification and transparency, the Public Interest Declassification Board. “There’s things going on in the news that, hopefully, will be another watershed moment to get a lot of these kinds of systematic reforms to the classification system across the finish line.”
PIDB member Carter Burwell, former chief counsel to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), told the attendees: “We’re grateful that you’re interested in classified information now.”
Cornyn also turned out to speak to the group, lamented the excesses of the current system for classification and expressed hope that more focus on the issue could inspire changes.
“This could not be a more timely discussion, given everything that’s going on,” Cornyn said on Friday. “But it also, I think, perhaps will lead to what I consider to be some important debates and discussions and potential reforms of the classification system.”
The Texas Republican also offered some theories about why hundreds of documents with classification markings were taken to Trump’s Florida home. What appear to be smaller numbers of records with such markings have turned up in recent weeks at Biden’s Delaware home and a think tank office he used in Washington, as well as at Pence’s home in Indiana.
Garland has appointed separate special counsels to investigate the stashes of files at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and the discovery at Biden’s residence. Justice Department investigators appear to be handling the Pence matter, at least for now.
Cornyn, who joined the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017, said the wayward presidential records might stem from the dubious sensitivity of many classified briefings. That has led many in Washington to question the legitimacy of the classifications that intelligence agencies apply to their work, he said.
“One of the reasons why perhaps people become lackadaisical and less than vigilant in protecting classified information is the experience of most members of Congress when you go … get briefed [in a] secure facility on whatever it is the administration wants to brief you on and you come out of there saying, ‘I could have watched cable news and read the newspaper as much as they were willing to tell me,’” the senator said. “And so, they think, ‘Well, this is not that big a deal. You say it’s secret, but this is not a secret. It’s open source stuff. …’ But I think that’s part of why we find ourselves in the strange place we are today.”
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines traveled to Texas to speak at the conference and bemoaned the overclassification problem. She said it had grown so severe that it was an obstacle not only to public accountability, but also to information-sharing within the government and with allies in desperate need of U.S. intelligence, like Ukraine.
“I’m just uniquely qualified as a consequence of my position, I think, to make the case for how overclassification can negatively impact national security, particularly given the current threat landscape,” Haines told the event organized by the University of Texas’ Clements Center for National Security. “Not only is this an important issue for our democracy; it is also critical to our national security.”
There are signs that some in Congress may be tuning in. The new chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), and ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) have agreed to work together on legislation to create a new layer of oversight, potentially through the National Archives, over the process for separating a president’s personal and political records from official ones at the end of a presidency.
“We have to reform the way that documents are boxed up when they leave the president and vice president’s office and follow them into the private sector,” Comer said on Monday at an event at the National Press Club in Washington. “This is something I think will be a bipartisan legislative fix.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, questioned whether the Archives should have someone “be there at the very beginning saying before you take anything out of here, we’re going to look at it and give you a yay or nay.”
“We obviously have a problem in our system,” he added. “When are we going to talk about that? That’s where I am.”
A drive to go even further and tackle overclassification could draw together strange bedfellows. Such a move would be a logical part of a broader GOP effort to assert legislative prerogatives against the executive branch. And some Democrats who harbor longstanding doubts about the intelligence community could welcome greater sunlight on its work.
Further reforms to the classification process could become part of what many in Congress and the national security community regard as a must-pass piece of legislation that is expected to work its way through the House and Senate this year: an extension of surveillance authority known as Section 702, which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to tap into email, social media and other U.S.-based tech providers to monitor foreigners suspected of terrorism, ties to foreign governments and for other reasons.
Many Republicans are already looking for greater assurances that Americans aren’t targeted by U.S. intelligence agencies, but Cornyn suggested some reforms to the classification system could also be part of such a package.
“We can have part of a larger conversation — that 702 can be a piece of — to provide some reassurance that we’re being responsive to concerns that have been raised,” Cornyn said.
Still, the odds of major changes being enacted seem long given that national security officials, lawmakers and academics have been lamenting the problem for more than 60 years and that during that time it has, by all accounts, only grown worse.
A Defense Department committee set up to tackle the issue in 1956, during President Dwight Eisenhower’s first term, said overclassification had reached “serious proportions” and recommended an overhaul. “The use of even Top Secret has gone far beyond that contemplated,” the group wrote.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) took up the crusade again during the 1980s and 1990s, launching a higher-profile commission that warned government secrecy was getting out of control, spurring conspiracy theories and fetishization of all things classified.
“In a culture of secrecy, that which is not secret is easily disregarded or dismissed,” Moynihan declared as he slammed intelligence agencies. “A culture of openness will never develop within government until the present culture of secrecy is restrained by statute. … The culture of secrecy in place in the Federal Government will moderate only if there comes about a counterculture of openness; a climate which simply assumes that secrecy is not the starting place.”
Congress has never passed a law comprehensively addressing classification. Indeed, legislation alone probably won’t do the trick. Questions about classification are wrapped up in unresolved constitutional issues about presidents’ executive powers, so any laws passed on the have to step gingerly around claimed presidential prerogatives or could face opposition from the White House.
For decades, national security secrets have been regulated by presidential executive orders. One that President Barack Obama issued in 2009 was never changed and remains in effect today, over 13 years later.
As Obama’s presidency wound down in 2016, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper floated a modest reform: eliminating the “Confidential” classification, the lowest of three major tiers of secrets. The proposal was never implemented.
While Trump often railed against classification of what he said amounted to evidence of misconduct by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and as he battled with the so-called Deep State to wield his presidential prerogative to force disclosures, neither he nor his aides managed to implement significant reforms to the classification bureaucracy.
The bipartisan nature of the current scandals could make it easier to advance changes that limit the number of classified records and force disclosure of more secrets sooner.
Democrats have historically been skeptical about the actions of intelligence agencies, although many lawmakers on the left rallied to the side of those agencies in the face of Trump’s claims that he was unfairly scrutinized. Republicans who have been trusting of the intelligence community and law enforcement often grew more questioning during the Trump years.
Still, in the current political climate, the possibilities for partisanship to disrupt a coalition seeking reform abound. For example, if criminal charges are filed against Trump over the recovered documents or his actions related to them, the heat around the issue would likely grow so intense that any reform would be derailed. (Biden is unlikely to face charges regardless of what investigators find. Longstanding Justice Department legal opinions preclude criminal charges against a sitting president.)
In her remarks in Austin, Haines underscored the urgency of reform to the handling of government secrets. And she praised those pressing for sweeping changes, notwithstanding the dusty stack of government reports that have piled up over the issue for half a century, while never managing to prompt action.
“The fact that you are here is a testament to your capacity to fight cynicism on this issue,” she declared.
Jordain Carney, Olivia Beavers and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The bill would prohibit non-emergency releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve unless the government approves a corresponding increase in domestic oil and gas production on federal lands.
The extensive floor time spent on the SPR bill — the second such measure passed by the House this month — showcased the GOP plans to target Biden’s broader efforts to wean the economy off the fossil fuels that drive climate change, which Republicans say is leaving the country vulnerable to supply shortages.
Republicans’ decision to open up the vote to free-wheeling debate through a “modified open rule” prompted Democrats to submit dozens of amendments aiming to curtail a GOP drilling push.
The House passed legislation two weeks ago that would ban sales from the reserve to China. Lawmakers adopted an amendment Thursday as part of H.R. 21 that would extend the ban to Russia, Iran and North Korea. Both of those efforts drew significant Democratic support.
Republicans cast the new bill in national security terms, accusing Biden of recklessly making politically timed releases ahead of the midterm election. They contend he has depleted the emergency reserve, which was created in 1975 in response to the Arab oil embargo.
“If there’s a hurricane that hits the Gulf [and] disrupts the oil markets, you’ve got oil there to make sure you can continue to flow oil to your refineries to keep the supply going. It’s not there to mask bad policies,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise
(R-La.) said on the House floor Thursday during debate on the bill.
Biden has proposed a plan for replenishing the stockpile after ordering the biggest crude oil releases by far in the history of the reserve — it has fallen by 266 million barrels from 638 million barrels since he took office. Its current level of 372 million barrels is its lowest level since 1983.
But he’s far from the first president to draw down supply — Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all released barrels from the reserve. And Congress in recent years turned to the reserve as a way to pay for unrelated priorities, with lawmakers of both parties approving sales to pay for needs such as funding the government.
Democrats said the GOP’s latest proposal would hamstring presidents from using the reserve in the event of an emergency that could drive up gas prices during a future oil shortage, arguing Biden appropriately and effectively used the SPR to tame high prices that worsened after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Treasury Department has estimated that the Biden administration’s releases reduced gasoline prices by up to 40 cents per gallon.
“We know as prices went up, we should use every tool in our arsenal to bring them down,” Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a floor speech Friday. “That’s what President Biden did. He decided to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to provide more supply and bring down prices and it succeeded in doing that. Why would the Republicans want to deny the president, not just President Biden, but any president that opportunity?”
The GOP bill, though, would provide an exception “in the case of a severe energy supply interruption,” caused by hurricanes or other natural disasters, which Republicans argued are the scenarios that should prompt SPR withdrawals.
House Republicans are next expected to devote time to moving their broader energy agenda centered on easing permitting rules to expand energy production and mining of critical minerals.
“This is a direct approach on a specific issue with the SPR,” House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said in an interview. “Americans probably have heard more about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve this week than they ever knew or cared to know. But we are going to be looking at much broader energy bills where we will not just focus on onshore and offshore oil and gas production, but also the other component that goes with renewable energy and with electrification and decarbonization and that’s mining.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Bengaluru: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has submitted a complaint to the State Election Commission of Karnataka, seeking “severe punishment” against political parties that are enticing voters with incentives such as cookers, sarees, bangles, and silver Ganesha idols.
“It is challenging to identify when and where corrupt politicians distribute items such as cookers and sarees to voters,” AAP’s Karnataka unit working president Mohan Dasari said while addressing the media on Friday.
“Our honest volunteers were able to investigate and uncover such instances. Despite the difficulties, we were able to convince voters to return the items and bring them to light. It’s concerning that politicians are giving away items like silver Ganesha idols, leading to questions about the fairness of the election. The Election Commission needs to take immediate action against these practices,” he added.
“The BJP, Congress, and the JD-S are undermining the principles of democracy by offering gifts to voters,” Dasari said.
Stating that voters should make their decisions based on the background, ideology, accomplishments, and promises of politicians, not by the gifts they receive, the AAP leader said: “These politicians are using the tax money of the public, which they have looted during their tenure, to bribe voters. The public should not be swayed by such tactics and instead vote for honesty and integrity.”
“Politicians are taking advantage of the fact that the model code of conduct is only enforced once the election process begins. They are offering bribes even before the code of conduct is in place.
“To ensure a fair election, the Election Commission should take action to stop these bribes before the model code of conduct comes into effect. There should be an investigation to reveal the source of the funds used to make these lavish offers,” he added.
