Prince Harry has long alleged that the royal family – “the Institution”, as he calls it – is locked in a trap of appeasement with the tabloid media. In their Netflix documentary, both he and Meghan talked about how they were savaged by the redtops, while the palace made no attempt to curtail their racist insinuations. In his memoir Spare, and interviews around it, Harry accused Camilla of leaking stories about him in order to massage her own reputation.
Last month, in papers filed to the high court as part of his case against News Group Newspapers, who publish the Sun, Prince Harry claimed members of the royal family struck a secret deal over the circumstances in which it would sue over phone hacking. News Group denies that and says there is no evidence to support that claim. But claims made by Harry in court documentsthis week go even further: that in 2020, Prince William was paid a “very large sum of money” by Rupert Murdoch to settle a phone-hacking case out of court.
There are elements of this saga that make no sense – chiefly, if William was paid, what would he need a “very large sum of money” for? In all the privations of his role – of privacy, of self-determination – surely the one thing he’s not short of is a bob or two? But mostly, this appears to be anentirely familiar tale: blackmail of the royals by sections of the print media, diverging from regular extortion only in the respect that it’s happening in plain view, its currency not cash but compliance. This dynamic has always, until Harry took it on, appeared to be impossible to fight.
Tampongate, in 1993, was the moment the gloves really came off in the battle with the media. Sure, maybe there was a public interest case that people ought to know about Charles and Camilla’s affair, but it wasn’t necessary to transcribe this incredibly intimate, embarrassing conversation between them – especially as the affair was already common knowledge. This was a calculated humiliation, and it’s hard to see what the legal recourse would have been for the then Prince Charles, given that the contents of the tape had already surfaced in an Australian weekly.
Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
The attitude of the tabloids was brazen: they would perform their elaborate patriotism, revel in the flag-waving, genuflect before the royals, while at the same time never missing an opportunity to heap shame on them. They never saw any moral contradiction between these completely dichotomous stances of respect and contempt, because they weren’t a moral agent, they were a newspaper, whose only logic is to sell itself. Periodically, some huffing royal watcher would be wheeled out to square the circle, with the line that it was the Queen they felt sorry for, her dignity undermined by the capers of her children.
If the 1993 debacle had established the tabloids as amoral, and left the royals petrified of taking them on, the years of phone hacking that followed destroyed trust within the family. This is a story familiar to many who were hacked by the News of the World: unable to figure out where the papers were getting their intelligence, victims accused those around them. Jude Law knows, now, that Sadie Frost wasn’t leaking details of their divorce.
Should Harry maybe give Camilla the benefit of the doubt, given that per his own testimony, multiple members of the family were being hacked? Perhaps. But it’s always been quite fundamental to the tabloids’ power that, in the absence of a fresh scandal, they can generate a propulsive narrative by pitting one member of the family against another – Diana against Camilla, Kate against Meghan, William against Harry, bold splashes of black and white in which the reader is invited to pick their team. You would have to be quite a solid royal crew to resist, particularly if you had no way of knowing where the information was coming from, and no way of correcting untruth.
Harry is now pursuing three separate legal cases against British newspaper groups in a move of either bravery or slash-and-burn recklessness. He may think the press has done its worst: revealed under infra-redtop every stain on his character, from the Nazi fancy dress to the stint in rehab; essentially exiled his wife by repeatedly alluding to her fictional gangster roots, not to mention hounded his mother to her untimely death.
But there is no hard limit to the reputational damage a person can sustain when he is by definition remote, a figurehead, and when he moves through the world an uneasy amalgam of his own personal qualities and the mutable associations of his position. Newspapers haven’t even needed a smoking gun, just an absence of positive stories, the odd insinuation of greed or attention-seeking: Harry and Meghan’s popularity has been tanking in the UK and went off a cliff in the US.
I think, in the long run, it will be worth it: in two years’ time we won’t be able to remember what we were supposed to dislike about the couple. But even if that turns out not to be true, you have to wonder what a reputation is worth, with Murdoch’s and other empires holding it hostage.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Hyderabad: A 45-year-old man died by suicide after a quarrel with his live-in partner over the exhaustion of a domestic gas cylinder in his house at Yellamma Thota in Medchal.
According to the Medchal police, “The victim, Sanjay Kumar, a daily wage worker was living with a woman for ten years. On Saturday night, the couple allegedly had a heated argument over the exhaustion of their LPG cylinder.”
“Following this, Kumar hanged himself from the ceiling fan in the hall. Further investigation is on,” police added.
Hyderabad: Mild tension prevailed at Arundhathi colony Uppuguda of old city Hyderabad following a fight between two groups on Sunday night.
Tension started around midnight after members of the same family were fighting on the road in front of their house at Arundhati colony. Annoyed by the noise another resident who belongs to another community objected to the loud noise and asked them to sit and sort out the issue in their house. One of the persons attacked the resident after which his family members attacked the people who were quarreling. The other local people informed the police. Immediately the police swung into action and dispersed them. Senior police officials reached the spot and posted pickets.
The Commissioner’s Task Force and local police were deployed.
Leaders of BJP and AIMIM who came to the spot were taken into preventive custody and shifted to Kanchanbagh police station.
Republicans, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, can point to polls showing only tepid backing for raising the debt ceiling and preference for spending cuts over tax increases to bring down the budget deficit. On President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ side: overwhelming support for lifting the cap once poll respondents are told breaching it could lead to a default.
That’s a mixed bag of public opinion: 54 percent of Americans opposed raising the debt ceiling in a new CBS News/YouGov poll this week, but that number dropped to only 30 percent when respondents were asked if they would let the U.S. default. But in Washington, polling uncertainty about the political fallout can have serious consequences. In the debt limit fight, it’s emboldening both sides.
Biden is in an especially precarious position, as he reportedly prepares to roll out his reelection campaign as soon as next week. He’s entering this fight with lower approval ratings than Obama’s ahead of the 2011 crisis, and voters remain worried about inflation and the economy — which, along with government dysfunction, could supplant more Democratic-friendly issues like abortion in the news in the coming weeks.
A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from late February underscored the volatility of the situation — and the current disincentive for either party to cave: Asked whom they would blame if the U.S. defaulted, a plurality of voters, 37 percent, said they’d hold both parties equally responsible. Another 30 percent said Democrats would be most to blame, while 24 percent said the GOP would be.
It’s a different climate from 12 years ago. A Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll from mid-June of 2011 — about six weeks before the crisis was ultimately resolved — found more Americans said they would blame Republicans (42 percent) than Obama (33 percent) if the debt limit wasn’t raised.
In that debate, Obama and Democrats were generally seen as more in line with public opinion, backing a combination of spending reductions and tax increases on the wealthy — a generally popular plank — in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, compared with Republicans’ more drastic budget cuts.
That combination hasn’t been floated this year, given Republicans’ aversion to new taxes and Biden’s lack of engagement with McCarthy so far. Broadly, Americans are split when asked to choose between the two: tax hikes or spending cuts, with a slight preference to trimming spending.
A NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist College poll in February found that half of voters, 50 percent, thought in order to close the national debt the government should “mostly cut programs and services,” while 47 percent said it should “mostly increase taxes and fees.”
In that poll, 52 percent of voters favored raising the debt ceiling “to deal with the federal budget deficit” — slightly different wording than the CBS News poll that yielded slightly stronger support. But only 26 percent of Republicans supported raising the debt ceiling, even as McCarthy seeks support for his plan in the House next week among a bloc of members who even opposed hiking it under then-President Donald Trump.
What could make 2023 different from 2011, Republicans say, is inflation.
“There is one really important change that’s occurred,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster and adviser to former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and John Boehner. “When you go back to prior discussions [about the debt ceiling], the national debt is still an abstraction.”
But now, Winston said, “There is a clear connection that the electorate has between spending and inflation.”
The GOP catered much of its 2022 midterm economic message around trying to connect government spending with the rapid increase in prices over the past few years.
There’s some evidence that’s worked, to a degree: A YouGov poll from last October, just weeks before the midterms, found that 53 percent of Americans assigned “a lot” of blame for inflation to “spending from the federal government” — though that was fewer than blamed “the price of foreign oil” (60 percent) and roughly equal to those who held “large corporations trying to maximize profits” (52 percent).
For Biden and Democrats searching for the upper hand, there are some encouraging signals in the polling. An ABC News/Washington Post poll from late January and early February asked Americans if Congress should only raise the debt ceiling if Biden agrees to spending cuts, or if “the issues of debt payment and federal spending” should “be handled separately?”
The public took Biden’s side on the strategic question: Only 26 percent said Congress should only raise the debt limit if Biden cut spending, while 65 percent said the debt payments and spending should be separate.
Moreover, while reducing spending might be broadly popular, there’s the issue of what to cut. In this week’s CBS News/YouGov poll, not only do seven-in-10 respondents want the country to avoid a default, but majorities actually support increasing spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as part of the budget notifications. Even on defense spending, more Americans want to see it increased (41 percent) than decreased (26 percent). A third, 33 percent, want it to remain the same.
But Biden is also less popular than Obama — who was still enjoying a bounce in his poll numbers after the killing of Osama bin Laden entering the final three months of the 2011 debt crisis — at this point in the process. Biden’s average approval rating is 42 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, while Obama in May 2011 was sitting on majority approval. And even Obama’s approval rating slipped as the country approached the debt ceiling that summer — a potential preview of what’s to come.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Greene is far from alone among Republicans cheering clean energy investments created by Democratic policies they all snubbed. And that’s creating some awkward dynamics for GOP lawmakers who are seeking to wipe out Biden’s clean-energy spending plans as part of any deal to avert a U.S. debt default.
The White House, and supporters of Biden’s clean energy programs, are eagerly seizing on the contradiction.
“The Biden Clean Energy Plan has helped create more than 140,000 clean energy jobs across the U.S. — the majority of which are in Republican-held districts,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of the group Climate Power, citing its own estimates of the law’s economic impact.
“Now MAGA extremists are threatening to implode our country’s economy — and the clean energy manufacturing boom that’s happening in their communities — to protect their own corporate, anti-climate interests,” she said.
According to data provided by Climate Power, which was then reviewed, vetted and confirmed by POLITICO’s E&E News, at least 37 congressional districts now represented by Republicans have welcomed expansions of new clean energy operations fostered by three major Biden-era laws — last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law or the CHIPS and Science Act.
A POLITICO analysis early this year similarly found that Republican districts were home to about two-thirds of the major renewable energy, battery and electric vehicle projects that companies had announced since Biden signed the IRA in August.
House Republicans all opposed the Inflation Reduction Act. All but 13 opposed the infrastructure law, and all but 34 voted against the CHIPS and Science Act.
Three House Republicans who are poised to see new chip manufacturing booms in their districts — Reps. Mike Simpson of Idaho, John Curtis of Utah and Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee — were among those who scorned CHIPS.
In its reporting, E&E News found that 21 projects in Republican-led districts were a result of benefits from the IRA, while 15 were made possible by the infrastructure law. Some Republicans had multiple projects in their districts due to one or both of these laws.
Eleven Republicans responded to requests for comment or made themselves available for interviews to explain how they squared their opposition to these laws with their support for the jobs in their districts. They include Greene, who denied that any contradiction exists in her stance on Biden’s programs.
“I don’t think the government should be controlling our energy sector,” Greene said in an interview Thursday on Capitol Hill.
‘Height of hypocrisy’
Greene also insisted that the climate law’s enactment was not the catalyst for the expansion of QCells, despite the company’s statements asserting as much.
“Those jobs were jobs in my district under the Trump administration,” she said. “QCells … gave all the credit to the local counties there that helped them get started, and [Republican] Gov. [Brian] Kemp and the Trump administration.”
The company announced in January that it would add to existing facilities in Greene’s Dalton district, plus add a new facility in Cartersville, the district of Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk. Qcells said at the time that the action “follow[ed] the passage of the Solar Energy Manufacturing in America Act within the Inflation Reduction Act.”
In April, Qcells further celebrated a deal that would require the Dalton plant to manufacture 2.5 million solar panels — the largest community solar order in American history — made possible by the 2022 climate spending law. Vice President Kamala Harris attended the festivities.
“It’s the height of hypocrisy for [Republicans] to be blasting the president and all he’s done to address climate change and build a clean energy economy that is directly benefiting people in their districts,” Craig Auster, vice president for political affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, said of the GOP lawmakers.
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates similarly scorned the GOP position in a memo Thursday that was later provided to news outlets including POLITICO’s E&E News. “Killing newly-created American manufacturing jobs just so the super wealthy and big corporations can enjoy tax welfare would be a gut-punch to America’s competitiveness and to thousands of working families in red states,” he wrote.
In South Charleston, West Virginia, GreenPower Motor Co. has said its electric school bus facility benefited from the infrastructure law’s clean school bus program, and it has highlighted how its buses can also get tax credits worth up to $40,000 from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Republican Rep. Carol Miller, who represents that area, said in a statement that while “hardworking businesses like GreenPower Motor are responding to the rules set by the federal government to bring much needed investment to West Virginia … we should have provided them with the ability to grow without sending American tax dollars to the Chinese Communist Party.” (The administration insists its agenda is meant to provide jobs and economic security inside the U.S., not China.)
Miller added that “the jobs West Virginia is creating through the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ come nowhere close to replacing the opportunities that liberal activists destroyed in my state. The faster we can repeal these IRA tax credits and replace them with incentives that fully support American manufacturing and energy production, the better.”
Elsewhere in West Virginia, Sparkz Inc. — an energy startup producing lithium-ion batteries — is growing operations in Republican Rep. Alex Mooney’s district.
In March, Sparkz CEO Sanjiv Malhotra told an audience at the premier annual energy conference CERAWeek by S&P Global that he had Biden and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to thank for the Inflation Reduction Act, which led to the massive investment the company has made in the state.
Mooney, who is vying to unseat Manchin in 2024, issued a statement that didn’t address how he reconciled his opposition to the climate law with jobs coming to his community.
“The Inflation Enhancement Act is a $745 billion spending spree that alone adds $146 billion to the national debt,” he said. “West Virginians are paying more at the pump and the grocery store as they suffer from Biden’s regressive inflation tax.”
Justifying the disconnect
Not every Republican had an explanation ready for how they squared their positions.
In Clarksville, Tenn., for instance, which is part of Rep. Mark Green’s district, Texas-based Microvast Holdings plans to expand an existing facility with a new plant for battery components. The Department of Energy picked the plant in October for a $200 million award under an infrastructure law program meant to boost battery materials processing and battery manufacturing.
GOP lawmakers are scrutinizing that award because of Microvast’s significant presence and operations in China. DOE officials have said the money has not yet gone out while the agency continues to vet all of the award recipients.
Green said while he was concerned about the China connections, he didn’t feel prepared to talk about how the existence of the facility colors his view of the infrastructure law, which he voted against.
“I have to get some more information on it to answer the questions,” he said.
Others, however, sought to justify the disconnect.
Republican Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada has two battery manufacturing facilities in his district that received incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act — Zinc8 Energy Solutions and Redwood Materials. The district is also home to a lithium manufacturing plant from Lilac Solutions because of the infrastructure law.
Despite all this activity, he said, “when you look at the overall policy, let’s just say for Nevada, these two pieces of funding do not make up for the damage these two pieces of legislation can do or are threatening to do.”
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, the top Republican on the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, was emphatic that a grant made possible by the infrastructure law for Novonix Ltd. to produce battery components in his district did not depend on protecting that piece of legislation in the long term.
In fact, he argued, the appropriations process has been filling the coffers of this project and others like it for some time now.
The infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act “were like a false positive, if you will … the money’s there.”
Rep. Dan Newhouse, the chair of the Congressional Western Caucus, represents Moses Lake, Wash., where Sila Nanotechnologies received a $100 million award through an infrastructure law Energy Department program. Separately, REC Silicon, a solar-grade polysilicon manufacturer, said last year that the Inflation Reduction Act “underpinned” its decision to reopen its own closed plant in Moses Lake.
“Rep. Newhouse had fundamental disagreements with the massive infrastructure package that spurred a socialist spending spree and led to record-high inflation,” said spokesperson Mike Marinella.
“While he acknowledges that the bill did more harm than good for the American people, he will always recognize and applaud economic opportunity for the hardworking men and women in his district.”
Concerns for projects despite ‘no’ votes
Some Republicans also laid bare how complicated the dynamics can be.
Just outside Charleston, S.C., in Rep. Nancy Mace’s district, the battery minerals recycling company Redwood Materials is working to build a $3.5 billion manufacturing campus.
“When paired with the benefits of the recent Inflation Reduction Act, this strategic location also allows us the opportunity to invest more heavily at home while potentially exporting components in the future, allowing the U.S. to become a global leader in this manufacturing capability,” the company said in announcing its plans.
J.B. Straubel, the company’s CEO, told The Wall Street Journal that the Inflation Reduction Act “has gently shifted our priorities to really accelerate investment in the U.S. a little bit ahead of looking overseas.”
Mace, in an interview, said the Redwood plant doesn’t change her opposition to the climate law: “It doesn’t do anything for inflation,” she said. “It was really just a gift to the Green New Deal.”
On the other hand, Mace is leaning against supporting House GOP leadership’s debt limit deal because of its rollbacks to the IRA’s clean energy provisions.
“I’m concerned about some of the things that’ll hurt some green energy like solar,” she said. “Solar is huge — not only in the Lowcountry, but across the entire state of South Carolina, it’s huge. This would adversely affect solar.”
Curtis, the chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, has a semiconductor wafer plant from Texas Instruments booming in his Utah district thanks to an investment from the CHIPS and Science Act.
In a statement this week, he intimated that he would support the GOP debt limit bill but acknowledged it “also proposes cuts to clean energy tax credits” that he supported in previous legislative iterations before they were packaged in the partisan Inflation Reduction Act.
“I … will continue to advocate for policies that lead to affordable, reliable, clean energy,” Curtis said.
‘Candy apples’ and ‘toads’
Many of the GOP’s allies in the advocacy and industry community are likewise gritting their teeth at the party’s demands in the debt standoff.
“In the last nine months, the clean energy industry has announced 46 major manufacturing facilities and scores of clean energy projects in communities across the country,” said Jason Grumet, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association — the largest clean energy trade group — in a statement. “If enacted, [the GOP bill] would jeopardize these investments and thousands of good paying American jobs.”
But Heather Reams, president of the right-leaning Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, said in an interview Thursday that she couldn’t fault Republicans for rejecting the one-sided political process that surrounded the drafting, and enactment, of the Inflation Reduction Act.
“I don’t think you’re seeing Republicans turn their backs entirely as a party on clean energy; I think you’re seeing conservatives turning their backs on out-of-control spending, and the IRA being ground zero for partisan spending,” she said.
Luke Bolar, who leads external relations and communications at the conservative clean energy group ClearPath, dwelled on Republicans’ complicated relationship with the IRA’s clean energy tax credits during a keynote speech in March at the Conservative Climate Leadership Conference.
He urged citizen lobbyists to press for implementation of elements of the climate law, but conceded: “That’s a tricky one, right? Zero Republicans supported that. … However, some of the tax incentives that were included in the IRA had tremendous Republican support.”
Bolar mentioned the law’s incentives for carbon capture and sequestration, which can offer fossil fuel companies payments for corralling greenhouse gases.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) put the GOP’s green jobs predicament more colorfully.
“I always refer to pieces of legislation as having either candy apples or toads,” Griffith observed. “If there’s enough candy apples, you can swallow a toad or two. Some of the renewable or biofuels tax credits, those are the toads you may have to swallow in order to set the stage and have some candy apples and try to rein in some of this government spending.”
Jeremy Dillon contributed to this report.
A version of this report first ran in E&E Daily. Get access to more comprehensive and in-depth reporting on the energy transition, natural resources, climate change and more in E&E News.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Mumbai: After meeting with Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal, former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday said that the two parties despite all differences in their ideologies will come together in the “fight for democracy”.
Venugopal on Monday met Thackeray at his ‘Matoshree’ residence in Mumbai, in what can be termed as yet another step in the direction of forming “opposition unity”.
Addressing a press conference, Thackeray said, “First of all, I want to welcome him (Venugopal) here at Matoshree. There are differences in our ideology but it is a democracy and we have to come together with hardly a year left for the election. They (BJP) only want power and we Shiv Sena are here to save democracy”.
He said that the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thakarey) and Congress will come together in the “fight for democracy”.
The former Chief Minister also accused BJP of betrayal.
“We maintained a relationship with the BJP for 25-30 years. But they did not understand who was a friend and who was an opponent. We will together fight for democracy in the country,” he said.
“Last time when BJP chief JP Nadda came to Mumbai, he said that there will be only one party and that is BJP. This is the biggest betrayal to all other parties. The way they tried to finish Shiv Sena and betrayed the party, they are trying to do the same with other parties too,” he said.
KC Venugopal also addressed the press conference and said, “I have requested Uddhav ji to come to Delhi and meet Sonia ji and Rahul”.
Earlier on April 13, as part of efforts to forge opposition unity to take on the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, NCP chief Sharad Pawar met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party leader Rahul Gandhi. During the meeting, discussions centred on the need to talk to other parties and to move together in the fight for various issues concerning people.
On the same day, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav met Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, as part of efforts to unite as many opposition parties to take on the BJP.
Washington: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said an idea becomes a mass movement when it moves from “discussion tables to dinner tables” as he called for people’s participation and collective efforts in the fight against climate change.
He also told a gathering of world leaders on Friday that when people become conscious that simple acts in their daily lives are powerful, there will be a very positive impact on the environment.
“People across the world hear a lot about climate change. Many of them feel a lot of anxiety because they do not know what they can do about it. They are constantly made to feel that only governments or global institutions have a role. If they learn that they can also contribute, their anxiety will turn into action,” Modi said while addressing the World Bank-organised “Making it Personal: How behavioral change can tackle climate change” conference.
Citing “Mission Life”, which was launched by him and the UN secretary general last year October, Modi said the programme is about democratising the battle against climate change.
“Climate change cannot be fought from conference tables alone. It has to be fought from the dinner tables in every home,” he told the conference being held on the sidelines of the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
“When an idea moves from discussion tables to dinner tables, it becomes a mass movement”, making every family and individual a part, and their choices can help the planet as well as provide scale and speed, he said.
Prime Minister Modi said when people become conscious that simple acts in their daily lives are powerful, there will be a very positive impact on the environment. The people of India have done a lot in this matter, he said.
“In the last few years, people-driven efforts have improved the sex-ratio in many parts of India. It was the people who laid a massive cleanliness drive, be it rivers, beaches, or roads. They are ensuring public places are free of litter, and it was the people who made the switch to LED bulbs a success. Nearly 370 million LED bulbs have been sold in India,” he said.
This helps in avoiding nearly 39 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year, the prime minister said.
Farmers of India ensure coverage of nearly 7,00,000 hectares of farmland through micro-irrigation. Fulfilling the mantra of per drop more crop, this has saved a huge amount of water, he pointed out.
“Under Mission Life, our efforts are spread across many domains, such as making local bodies environment friendly, saving water, saving energy, reducing waste, and e-wastes, adopting healthy lifestyles, adoption of natural farming, promotion of millets,” Modi said.
These efforts will save over 22 billion units of energy, save nine trillion litres of water, reduce waste by 375 million tons, recycle almost one million tons of e-waste, and generate around 170 million of additional cost saving by 2030, he said.
“Further, it will help us reduce wastage of 15 billion tons of food,” Modi said, noting that the global primary crop production in 2020, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, was about nine billion tons.
He said global institutions have an important role to play in encouraging countries across the world.
The World Bank Group is looking to increase climate finance from 26 per cent to 35 percent as a share of total financing. The focus of this climate finance is usually on conventional respects, he noted.
The prime minister said adequate financing methods need to be worked out for behavioral initiatives and a show of support by the World Bank towards behavioral initiatives such as Mission Life will have a multiplier effect.
New Delhi: The Communist Party of India, which recently lost its national party status, will contest the Karnataka election on its ‘ears of corn and sickle’ symbol, party MP Binoy Viswam said Friday.
The CPI was recognised as a ‘national party’ in 1989. It is the only political party to contest all general elections on the same electoral symbol and has maintained an uninterrupted presence in the Lok Sabha. It was the first non-Congress party to form government in any state and since then has been part of many governments.
To use its poll symbol in a state where it is not a recognised party, CPI will have to seek the Election Commission’s permission.
“In the Karnataka election, CPI will contest on the symbol ‘ears of corn and sickle’ that used to be the party’s election symbol ever since 1952… The CPI will strive hard to retain it,” Viswam said in a tweet.
While the CPI’s state party status has been withdrawn in West Bengal and Odisha, it continues to enjoy the status in Kerala, Manipur and Tamil Nadu.
The major advantage of a ‘national tag’ is that the party can have a common symbol across the country for its candidates thus making it easier for people to recognise it.
The nomination process for the May 10 Karnataka Assembly poll began on April 13 with April 20 being the last date to file the papers.
New Delhi: Before deleting all legacy Blue tick marks on April 20, Twitter on Friday introduced a feature that allows posts with 10,000 characters for paid Blue subscribers.
Twitter now supports tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, “with bold and italic text formatting,” the company informed.
In February, the micro-blogging platform introduced 4,000-character-long tweets for Blue subscribers.
“Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable Subscriptions on your account to earn income directly on Twitter. Tap on ‘Monetization’ in settings,” said the Elon Musk-run company.
Musk on Thursday announced that ‘Subscriptions’ are now enabled on the platform — a way for people’s most engaged followers to help them earn money from Twitter for their contributions on the platform.
“We’re firing up creator subscriptions bigtime! Works for longform text, pics or video,” Musk posted.
The decision to introduce 10,000-character-long tweets comes as Twitter is embroiled in a fight with popular subscription newsletter platform Substack.
Substack hit back at Twitter for blocking the ability to like or retweet any posts containing the word ‘Substack’, saying the whole situation is “very frustrating.”
The company CEO Chris Best responded to Musk with a post on Substack Notes, saying Substack links have been obviously severely throttled on Twitter.
The Twitter move has become a huge problem for Substack writers, who use the Musk-run platform to promote their newsletters.
Pune: The need of the hour was to fight hate and the “violence of thoughts” by inculcating ‘ahimsa’ (non violence) in our minds and action, Tushar Gandhi, the great grandson of the Mahatma, said on Sunday.
He also lamented the “spread of hate” and the direction in which “New India” was moving and said Godse would be the father of such a nation rather than Gandhiji.
“The most dangerous violence is the violence of thoughts. These days, we see that people have something in their hearts but they utter something else. Thus, we need to understand the meaning of ahimsa and inculcate it in our minds,” he said.
“New India is in the making but hate is driving politics, which is a big worry. Even in Maharashtra, we see this hate being spread,” he said.
There is a need to coin a new slogan ‘nafraton Bharat chhodo’ and vanquish hate or else it will make citizens its slave, Gandhi said.
“The direction in which New India is moving, the father of the nation will not be Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi but Nathuram Godse (the Mahatma’s assassin). We should be worried that hate and grudges are creating new spaces in our minds,” he said.
Speaking at a function where he was presented with an award, Gandhi also decried the misconceptions and misinformation about the Mahatma, including a recent statement by a person in authority that the latter never had a degree.
“These days, whenever my mobile phone rings I start thinking about which question about Bapu now remains unanswered. Some 10 days ago, a question was raised over his degree. Several incomprehensible things are circulated about the Mahatma,” he said.
He also condemned the use of “vadh” by some segments of society for the killing of Gandhiji as this ancient word is employed to describe the slaying of demons and not humans.
Gandhiji respected every religion and learnt about them, Tushar Gandhi said, adding people must ensure they live with the right ideals in order to have a bright future.
