The European Commission has contacted the Swedish authorities after it emerged they were planning to deport a 74-year-old British woman with severe Alzheimer’s because she did not have her post-Brexit paperwork in order.
At the same time, the office of the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, is trying to ascertain the exact circumstances that have led to the removal threat faced by Kathleen Poole, who cannot speak, walk or feed herself and is bedbound in a care home.
Fears that the authorities in Sweden may carry out the threat to deport Poole were fuelled after the police got in touch with the Swedish embassy with a “formal request” for a travel document for her.
Poole’s son, Wayne, said he was concerned that if he applied for a new passport for her it would make inevitable and speed up the deportation process, which he was trying to delay in the hope someone steps in to save his mother.
“I am just exhausted by all of this,” he said. “The whole thing is draining. The hope is always there and we will do whatever we can to stop it.”
The British embassy has now told him “they are legally obliged to issue travel documents after the police request without your consent”, according to an official.
Poole said he doubts the police would be able to get his mother on a plane because of the huge logistics involved. She cannot walk and needs a hoist to be moved from her bed to a wheelchair in the care home.
“It is just not right,” he said.
The case has been described as “shocking” by Labour MP and former Brexit select committee chair Hilary Benn, who on Monday called on both London and Brussels “to put a stop to the deportation of a vulnerable British citizen”.
A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “We are aware of this case and looking for any ways to make progress for the family.”
It is also understood that the foreign minister David Rutley, the MP for Macclesfield where Kathleen Poole is originally from, has also been in touch with her family to offer support.
Poole and her late husband sold up and bought a new home in Sweden 18 years ago to be close to her son and Swedish daughter-in-law and four young grandchildren. She developed Alzheimer’s at 63 and has been in a care home for the past 10 years.
She had permanent residency in Sweden but was required to renew that paperwork post-Brexit.
The application made by her family on her behalf was rejected on the grounds that her passport was not up to date and there was no financial paperwork showing she was self-sufficient.
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Angelica Poole, Kathleen’s daughter-in-law, said they appealed against the decision, explaining that the 74-year-old was incapacitated, bedbound and did not update her passport because “she wasn’t going anywhere”.
They were shocked when the police turned up at the care home to make an inventory of her wardrobe and personal belongings.
The European Commission said it could not comment on individual cases but added: “We are aware of this case and are in touch with the Swedish authorities.”
A spokesperson said that protections were put in place to protect UK citizens who had been lawfully in an EU member state before Brexit happened.
They said: “The withdrawal agreement has robust safeguards that ensure that any refusal must be proportionate and appealable to an independent domestic court.”
The treaty “protects those UK nationals who resided in an EU member state according with EU law before the transition period and who continue to reside there in accordance with the withdrawal agreement”, the spokesperson added.
The Swedish government has been contacted for a response, but said “by law” it was not allowed to comment on individual cases.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
San Francisco: Microsoft is reportedly planning to demonstrate its new Prometheus model to its core productivity apps such as Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
In the coming weeks, Microsoft will detail its productivity plans for integrating OpenAI’s language AI technology and its AI Model, reports The Verge, citing sources.
The company may make an announcement in March, highlighting how quickly Microsoft wants to reinvent search and its productivity apps through its OpenAI investments.
Previous reports indicated that the GPT models were being tested in Outlook to improve search results, along with features like suggesting replies to emails and Word document integration to improve writing.
Moreover, the report said that the tech giant is moving quickly with this integration mainly because of Google.
Microsoft had planned to launch its new Bing AI in late February, but moved the date up to this week, just as Google was preparing to make its own announcements, the report mentioned.
Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced its new Bing powered by “next-generation” ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI), and also updated its Edge browser with new AI capabilities.
The AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser are now available for preview at Bing.com, to “deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content”.
Hailakandi: A 17-year-old girl allegedly died by suicide in Assam’s Cachar district after her family prevented her from going ahead with wedding plans with her lover, police said on Monday.
The incident occurred amid the state government’s crackdown on child marriage, which also led to the cancellation of several weddings of underage girls in Assam’s Barak Valley comprising Hailakandi, Cachar and Karimganj districts.
At least 2,441 people have been arrested in the state till Monday in the continuing operation against child marriage, launched on February 3.
In Dhalai area of Cachar district, a 17-year-old girl hanged herself on Saturday after her family refused her permission to marry her lover now, a police officer said.
“She had prepared to elope with her lover, but the family came to know about it and prevented her. There have been about 19 arrests in child marriage cases in neighbouring villages,” a relative of the girl said.
The number of arrests till Sunday evening was 243 in Barak Valley 80 in Cachar, 82 in Hailakandi 82 and 81 in Karimganj.
A number of people have cancelled scheduled weddings since the drive started, according to owners of wedding halls owners.
One such wedding was called off in Srimantakanishail village in Karimganj as the bride will be completing 18 years in two months.
“When the bride’s family brought this point up, both the families decided to postpone the wedding till the girl attains the legal age for marriage,” the owner of a wedding hall said.
The MLA of Sonia constituency in Cachar district, Karim Uddin Barbhuiya, urged Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to exempt those married for many years from police action.
In a statement, he said families are being disrupted and the future of the children of such families is at stake.
Barbhuiya urged the chief minister to stop harassing the poor and weaker sections of the society’ in this drive against child marriage.
The state cabinet had recently approved a proposal to book men who have married girls below 14 years of age under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
Cases under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 will be registered against those who have married girls in the age group of 14-18 years, the cabinet decided.
The offenders will be arrested and the marriages declared illegal.
Assam has a high rate of maternal and infant mortality, with child marriage being the primary cause, according to reports by the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
New Delhi: The BJP will start a 12-day nationwide campaign on Wednesday to make people aware of the “pro-people” measures that are to be announced in the Union Budget, party leaders said.
The campaign will be coordinated by senior BJP leader Sushil Modi and conclude on February 12, they said.
BJP president J P Nadda has formed a task force comprising nine members, including party general secretary Sunil Bansal and heads of its farmer and youth wings, to organise discussions, press conferences or seminars on the Union Budget in all districts of the country, they said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget for 2023-24 in Parliament on Wednesday.
A day after the Union Budget is presented in Parliament, chief ministers of all BJP-ruled states, as part of the campaign, will hold press conferences, party leaders said, adding that in states where the party is not in power, BJP unit heads and leaders of opposition in the assembly will hold press conferences.
In 50 major cities of the country, ministers of the Narendra Modi government will hold press conferences to highlight the “pro-people” measures announced in the Union Budget, they said.
After the budget is presented, the BJP is also expected to hold a meeting of its spokespersons.
To finalise programmes and decide the blueprint of the BJP’s campaign on the Union Budget, the task force constituted for it met at the BJP headquarters here on Monday.
This Union Budget will the last full-fledged budget of the second term of the Narendra Modi government as the general elections will be held in 2024. Hence, the ruling BJP at the Centre wants to make the most out of this campaign.
Earlier too the BJP has organised nationwide public awareness exercises to make people aware about various reforms and initiatives announced by the Modi government in its budgets.
Los Angeles: The Biden administration has announced it plans to end the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) on May 11.
The COVID-19 national emergency and PHE were declared by the Trump Administration in 2020. They are currently set to expire on March 1 and April 11, respectively.
The Biden Administration’s plan is to extend the emergency declarations to May 11, and then end both emergencies on that date, according to a statement of the White House, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The statement came in opposing two House bills that would end the emergency declarations sooner.
The public health and national emergencies have enabled US hospitals to respond more flexibly when faced with patients spikes during COVID-19 surges.
Ending the emergency declaration could have implications for funding for tests and vaccines as well as impact other pandemic-related policies, the National Public Radio (NPR) reported.
“We’re preparing because that should be a Democratic seat. And we’re going to make sure that whoever gets the Democratic line is in a position to win,” said Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), a Queens party boss. “We have no shortage of individuals that could run and win. That seat will go back into the Democratic column.”
Both parties have begun drumming up a wish list of potential contenders to run for the Nassau County-based seat in 2024 — or sooner. While Republicans are hamstrung on the national level by Santos’ status as a sitting member, intense jockeying has kicked off among local officials. Some of the GOP’s possible prospects include an Ethiopian Jewish refugee-turned county legislator; a state senator who just ousted a sitting Democrat; and a gay woman who spent decades with the New York Police Department.
House Democrats have been even more aggressive behind the scenes, desperate to flip the seat back after a humiliating 2022 showing. Several sitting members have begun phoning possible candidates, including their onetime colleague, former Rep. Tom Suozzi. (He declined a run last November in favor of a failed gubernatorial bid.) Another local official, a Nassau County legislator, has already declared, while others could join, including several candidates who have previously run for the seat.
Democratic optimism isn’t misplaced. They’ve controlled the turf since it was created in 2012, losing it only last November in a Republican surge, propelled by voter angst over rising crime, that reddened the length of Long Island — from its New York City commuter neighborhoods to the ritzy Hamptons. And Joe Biden’s party will be even more favored next year, in a presidential cycle; he carried the seat by 9 points in 2020, and no Republican besides Santos has won there since the seat was created.
Multiple Democrats began making calls even before Santos was sworn in, shortly after the New York Times penned the first major story on his fabulism in late December. Lawmakers across the Democratic caucus have since made entreaties to Suozzi, who left Congress last year, though he has mostly been noncommittal about running for the seat, according to multiple people who have spoken with him.
Some of those Democrats wager that Suozzi would be more likely to run for a special election — if one were to happen — than seek a full term in the seat. Suozzi, when reached by POLITICO, said he had no comment on his plans, though he has drawn attention for a Jan. 3 New York Times op-ed calling for Santos to be removed from office.
There is also chatter about Robert Zimmerman, the Democrat who lost to Santos in November. Zimmerman is interested in running in a special election and would consider a 2024 run, according to a person close to him. (The Zimmerman-Santos race marked Congress’ first general election race between two openly gay candidates.) While Zimmerman has faced some local criticism for failing to dig into his GOP opponent’s fabricated resume, others have blamed those missteps and lack of resources on party leaders.
“When you look at the people, they’ll want to vote for somebody they know,” Meeks said, pointing to Zimmerman, Suozzi and “several others that have shown interest.”
Other possible candidates include Anna Kaplan, an Iranian Jewish refugee who recently lost a state Senate seat, as well as Jon Kaiman and Josh Lafazan, local legislators. Kaplan, Kaiman and Lafazan have all made bids for the seat in past cycles.
Lafazan, who has filed for the seat, told POLITICO he is not yet entertaining questions about the race: “I currently serve as Nassau County Legislator, and fully intend on serving my term and running for re-election in this position. That is the only election I am thinking about.”
Santos has refused to resign and has not made clear whether or not he will run for a second term in 2024, a decision that complicates the decision-making of national Republicans. The National Republican Congressional Committee does not move against incumbents, nor does the Congressional Leadership Fund, a big-spending super PAC closely aligned with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
But that might not matter thanks to Long Island’s machine-like politics, where local organizations are dominant and often act as a clearinghouse, interviewing potential contenders and working to unify the party. The Nassau County GOP has disavowed Santos and vowed to field a different candidate. (Should Santos decide to mount another run, the county party can stymie him further by denying him support in helping him gather the large number of signatures required to get on the ballot in New York State.)
“The Nassau County Republican Committee, and our chairman has made it very clear that George is not welcome in our party,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a fellow first-term Long Island Republican who flipped a seat adjacent to Santos’. “And he is not going to be the nominee of the Nassau County GOP in two years.”
The Nassau County GOP’s open hostility to Santos gave local Republicans cover to begin considering possible new standard bearers. Among the names floating in Republican circles: state Sen. Jack Martins; Andrea Catsimatidis, the daughter of billionaire radio host and businessman John Catsimatidis; Elaine Phillips, Nassau County comptroller and former New York state senator; and Alison Esposito, the openly gay 2022 lieutenant governor nominee who spent decades in the NYPD.
Yet another Republican to watch: Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County legislator and Ethiopian Jew who was airlifted to Israel during Operation Solomon. She married an American and later moved to the United States.
While all six of Santos’ fellow GOP freshmen in the New York delegation have demanded he step aside, party leaders have sidestepped the topic of a possible resignation amid a chaotic few weeks running the House chamber. Those resignation calls have mostly stayed within the Empire State delegation, though at least one more Republican, Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, has also joined in.
And McCarthy stressed to fellow Republicans this week that Santos would remain on committees until or unless he is charged with a crime. Whether that happens remains to be seen, with both federal and local officials probing his long record of fabrications.
The list of Santos probes is lengthy: A federal investigation led by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York is looking into his financial matters, while the district attorney’s offices in Nassau County and in Queens are doing their own work, as is the state attorney general. The House Ethics Committee is also reviewing a complaint filed by a pair of Democrats, though that panel has not disclosed any separate investigation.
Campaign finance inquiries can take years to yield an indictment, and members often continue serving in Congress while federal prosecutors compile a case.
For example, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (D-Neb.) was indicted in October 2021 for alleged straw donations that were solicited in 2016. He resigned in March after being convicted of multiple felonies.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: Left-affiliated Students’ Federation of India (SFI) Wednesday announced it will screen the controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Jamia Millia Islamia campus at 6 pm.
The university administration, however, said no permission has been sought for the screening of the documentary and “we will not allow” it.
The SFI’s Jamia unit has issued a poster informing the documentary will be screened at 6 pm at the MCRC lawn gate no 8.
When contacted, a Jamia official said, “They did not ask for a permission for the screening and we will not allow the screening. If students go out of their way to do something then strict action would be taken against them.”
The screening at the Jamia campus comes a day after a similar screening was organised at the Jawaharlal Nehru University during which students claimed that power and internet were suspended and stones were thrown at them.
“We don’t have a Fox News in Spanish, and that’s what Americano intends to be,” said the network’s CEO and founder Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo. He said he has listened to Hispanic Republican leaders lament for 25 years about the need for something like it, but no one ever took serious action.
Garcia-Hidalgo, who worked as a Hispanic surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign after a career in telecommunications with Tyco, AT&T and Sprint, said he wants to “blow up” the traditional ways in which conservative Hispanics interact with the media, which he said consisted of going on liberal-leaning networks to “apologize for being Republican, bow your head and take a beating for an hour.”
Americano started with a suite of radio shows out of Miami, where it remains headquartered, but plans to have a presence on television and radio in battleground states across America in the next year, in addition to driving Spanish-speaking audiences to its online and streaming platforms.
To date, Americano Media has raised $18 million from its first three investors, and is set to complete its first and only round of equity investment this spring to generate another $30 to $50 million, Garcia-Hidalgo said. Thomas Woolston, a northern Virginia patent attorney, and Doug Hayden, a San Jose, Calif.-based investor, were the first to provide capital; Americano declined to disclose the third investor.
Americano is taking every opportunity it can to build a profile in conservative political circles. The network aired live from CPAC Dallas in August. In December, they set up a massive booth on radio row at Turning Point’s AmericaFest, featuring a “No mas fake news” display that delighted attendees at the Phoenix Convention Center who lingered nearby to watch a cast of conservative celebrities give interviews. As a sign of their growth, the network has scored recent interviews with Trump and several top elected Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Mike Lee (Utah), and Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Steve Saclise (La.), along with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Ultimately, however, the Spanish language network’s intended audience isn’t the type of conservative diehards who attend political conferences or tune into Steve Bannon’s “War Room.” It’s working-class Hispanic people living in America, who prefer to speak Spanish, aren’t particularly ideological and who lack options for commentary on the news of the day.
“Hispanics are normies,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a GOP strategist who led the 2020 Trump campaign’s Hispanic marketing efforts.
Strategists behind Americano’s expansion efforts say they believe there is a limit to the GOP’s gains with Latinos in recent years. The low-hanging fruit has already fallen, they say, requiring Republicans to do a bit more work to pick off remaining centrist voters, something Americano intends to do by offering a combination of fairly straight news, mixed with conservative commentary and eventually entertainment offerings.
Democratic operatives, who have long warned that the absence of more robust investments in Spanish media could have boomeranging effects, acknowledge that targeting that type of niche audience could be a highly effective plan.
“There is an information war in Latino and bilingual communities in this country,” said Tara McGowan, the founder and publisher of the Democratic-aligned Courier Newsroom network, who has been vocal about the left needing to build new, progressive media outlets. “It’s a very smart and very alarming move by conservatives to double down on their investment in Americano Media.”
Americano’s venture mirrors that of the liberal Latino Media Network, which in June announced the purchase of 18 Latino radio stations around the country. One of those stations, Miami’s Radio Mambi — a longtime fixture in the conservative Cuban-American community — lost several prominent hosts to Americano Media after the sale was announced. Lourdes Ubieta, Dania Alexandrino and Nelson Rubio are among those who made the switch to Americano. Most of Americano’s hosts, producers, directors and technicians came from Univision, Telemundo and CNN en Español, according to network officials.
Mayra Flores, the Republican who flipped a South Texas congressional seat in a June special election, becoming the first female Mexican-born House member, has recently signed a contract to become one of Americano Media’s senior political contributors. Flores lost reelection in November after redistricting made the seat more Democratic.
Other top executives at the startup include Michael Caputo, a longtime GOP operative who advised Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and briefly served as an official at the Department of Health and Human Services at the start of the Covid pandemic, and Alfonso Aguilar, who led George W. Bush’s citizenship office, is serving as Americano’s political director.
After years of trying to get a news network off the ground and creating a lineup of podcast talk shows, Garcia-Hidalgo launched Americano in March as a partnership with Sirius XM’s Latino variety station. The strategy, he concedes, was not to reach the small number of Latinos listening to satellite radio, but to grab the attention of investors and top radio network executives. Americano pulled its lineup from the satellite channel in October and moved over to a Miami-based Audacy radio station.
The network’s ambitions are broad. By the end of this year, Americano plans to be on 25 radio stations. They’ve added content to every major streaming platform, and have built a digital news website and phone app. They’ve spent several million dollars building studios to launch new television programs, with plans underway to be on cable in every major battleground state ahead of the 2024 election, and in Puerto Rico in the coming weeks, Garcia-Hidalgo said.
“The most underserved news consumer is a center-right Spanish speaker,” Flores said in an interview, noting that many of those fairly conservative Latinos in South Texas have traditionally voted Democratic, though some have begun to leave the party, data show.
While heavy on conservative commentary, Americano does feature liberal guests. On one show, Democrat Jose Artistimuño, a former Democratic National Committee press secretary who worked in Barack Obama’s administration, debates Republican Jimmy Nievez each evening. The network says they’re in the process of adding more Democratic commentators to their roster.
“It’s definitely a space that needed to be filled, and I’m saying that as a Democrat,” Artistimuño said of the lack of Republican-versus-Democrat talk shows in Spanish. “I may not agree with all the policies that Americano supports, but that’s OK. In order for democracy to work, both sides need to talk to each other and debate.”
Latinos in America are still more likely to favor Democrats. But those margins have shrunk dramatically in recent years.
CNN exit poll data in November found that Democrats’ lead with Latino voters has narrowed by nearly 10 percentage points since the 2018 midterm election, with 60 percent supporting House Democratic candidates this fall and 39 percent GOP. Four years ago, 69 percent of the Latino electorate backed Democrats and 29 percent Republicans, the exit polls found.
“The biggest challenge Republicans have had is they usually engage Hispanics from a perspective of electoral politics, just to get their vote, and they usually do it three months before an election,” said Aguilar, Americano’s political director. “It’s very difficult to build confidence in a community when you arrive so late.”
One of the problems still facing Republicans has been reaching Latinos who primarily speak Spanish.
Sopo, whose work includes GOP advertising to Latinos, noted that his firm, Visto Media, conducted a poll for a client this fall that found Democrats held a 40-point lead on the midterm ballot with Hispanics who receive all or most of their news in Spanish. That number fell to a 13-point lead with Hispanics who prefer English news sources.
There are also challenges to successfully capturing an audience of Latino viewers hailing from different countries, Sopo said. Content that appeals to Cubans in Miami isn’t always what Mexicans in Texas are interested in. A mix of culture, news and conservative commentary, Sopo said, is likely a “formula for success with Hispanics,” and something that isn’t widely available.
“If they want to broaden out and grow the tent, the programming has to look more like Fox and less like Newsmax and OAN,” Sopo said, referencing two further-right TV news channels. “Straight news, combined with conservative commentary, and you add some entertainment, which they’ll need for that demographic.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
