Kupwara, May 07: Police on Sunday claimed to have arrested ex-militant turned Militant Associate along with a grenade in North Kashmir’s Kupwara district.
In a handout to GNS, the police said that in a joint action, Kupwara Police along with Army has arrested an ex-militant turned OGW from Kralpora area of the district along with a grenade.
The police spokesman further stated that acting on specific intelligence generated by Kupwara police, a joint Naka was established at Main Market Karlpora by Kupwara Police and Army Camp Panzgam. During the Naka checking, the OGW moving in suspicious circumstances trying to evade the presence of naka personnel was apprehended, from whose possession one grenade was recovered. The OGW was later identified as Rafiq Ahmad Khan son of Habib Ullah Khan, a resident of Waterkhani Drugmulla Kupwara.
Rafiq is a surrendered Pakistan trained militant who is now working as an OGW for militant outfit HM. During preliminary investigations, he has revealed that the grenade was received by him from Chogul area of Handwara and was to be delivered to someone in Kralpora area on the instructions of his Pakistan based HM handler to be thrown at security forces. Case under relevant provisions of UA(P) Act has been registered in Police Station Kralpora and investigations taken up, reads the statement.(GNS)
SRINAGAR: In a joint operation, the Kupwara Police, along with the Army, have arrested an ex-militant turned overground worker (OGW) from the Kralpora area of the district, along with a grenade.
Acting on specific intelligence generated by the Kupwara Police, a joint checkpoint was established at Main Market Karlpora by the Kupwara Police and Army Camp Panzgam. During the checkpoint inspection, the OGW, who was moving in suspicious circumstances, trying to evade the presence of checkpoint personnel, was apprehended. One grenade was recovered from his possession.
The OGW was later identified as Rafiq Ahmad Khan, son of Habib Ullah Khan, a resident of Waterkhani Drugmulla Kupwara. Rafiq is a surrendered Pakistan-trained terrorist who is now working as an OGW for the terrorist outfit HM. During preliminary investigations, he revealed that he received the grenade from the Chogul area of Handwara and was supposed to deliver it to someone in the Kralpora area on the instructions of his Pakistan-based HM handler to be thrown at security forces. A case under the relevant provisions of the UA(P) Act has been registered at Police Station Kralpora, and investigations have been taken up.
In statements touting the news, Braun said the legislation would let farmers “tap into one of the fastest growing agricultural markets” and Tester said that they “don’t need government bureaucrats putting unnecessary burdens on their operations.”
Left unsaid was how the bill had come together.
Interviews with six hemp advocates, company officials and Senate aides reveal that hemp lobbyists and businesses brought the original idea for the legislation to Tester’s office. An email obtained by POLITICO also shows that in February they got a word-for-word early look at the bill that the two senators would go on to introduce weeks later.
“It comes down to the definition of ‘write,’” said Geoff Whaling, chair of the advocacy organization National Hemp Association, when asked if hemp insiders helped write the legislation. “Did they all provide feedback and comments and told the senator’s office: ‘Do we need this changed?’ Absolutely. Part of the legislative process is consultation with stakeholder groups and certainly, like any legislation, that was done.”
Depending on one’s vantage point, the process by which the Industrial Hemp Act of 2023 was put together resembles a thoughtful process or government at its quintessential unseemliness. Either way, it underscores how Congress often turns to self-interested outsiders for help understanding arcane issues and illustrates the blurry line between relying on industry expertise and letting those industry forces craft their own regulations.
The hemp lobby is hardly a D.C. powerhouse on the scale of Big Oil or Big Pharma. It’s only been since 2018 that hemp has been legal, done so as part of that year’s farm bill. It was touted as a potential boon for farmers, particularly in states where tobacco was once a major cash crop. But the market for hemp-derived CBD products has failed to develop as hoped, in part due to continuing legal and regulatory uncertainty. Five years ago, it was supposed to hit $22 billion in 2022, according to the Brightfield Group, which tracks the industry, but instead was less than a quarter of that size last year. That’s led the industry to shift more toward industrial applications for hemp, like textiles and building supplies.
Industry officials have been hoping that lawmakers will use the 2023 farm bill to provide changes to boost the fledgling industry. And they’ve made this case directly to members of Congress and their staff.
Tester’s aides said his office wrote the bill themselves with the nonpartisan Senate Office of the Legislative Counsel in order to help a Montana-based hemp business that reached out with a problem in 2022.
“As a third-generation Montana farmer, Jon Tester will always fight to do what’s best for his state,” said Eli Cousin, a Tester spokesperson. “After hearing directly from Montana small business owners who expressed that government red tape was putting unnecessary burdens on their operations, he did what he always does: took their feedback with him and worked across the aisle to find a solution. He’ll keep fighting until this bipartisan bill becomes law.”
The email obtained by POLITICO, however, suggests more direct collaboration between the senator’s office and the hemp industry Congress is tasked with regulating.
By this February, Tester’s office said, it had been working for a year on the legislation slashing regulations for hemp growers. That month Courtney Moran, who serves as the chief legislative strategist at Agricultural Hemp Solutions, emailed a legislative assistant for Tester, as well as Morgan Tweet, co-founder of that Montana-based industrial hemp company that contacted Tester’s team, IND HEMP; Erica Stark, the executive director of the National Hemp Association; and Cort Jensen, an attorney for the Montana Department of Agriculture.
“CONFIDENTIAL – Industrial Hemp Act, 2023,” read the subject line from Moran.
Moran included a PDF document in the email. It was the bill that Tester and Braun would go on to introduce.
Moran addressed the note to Jensen and thanked him for bringing together the “team” at the Montana Department of Agriculture earlier that week. “We greatly appreciate everyone’s feedback and insight,” she said.
“Attached is the current (and hopefully final!) draft bill language,” she wrote, adding that the legislation was sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture the week prior for a “final review.”
“Appreciate you letting us know if you have any questions or comments after reading the bill,” Moran said. “PLEASE KEEP THIS CONFIDENTIAL at this time, and not share outside of the Department. Really appreciate you!”
It is unclear whether or how Jensen and the hemp industry insiders replied to the email. The document obtained by POLITICO did not include any follow-up. A USDA spokesperson said Tester’s office had sent the legislation to them, not industry officials.
Moran is registered as a lobbyist on behalf of IND HEMP, disclosing this year and last that she lobbied on the issue of industrial hemp to the Senate and USDA. One of her specific lobbying issues cited in 2023 is Tester and Braun’s Industrial Hemp Act.
A spokesperson for Braun said that his office negotiated his co-sponsorship with Tester’s team. They also suggested that they were uncomfortable with the degree to which advocates were involved in the process.
“[O]ur chief of staff called the chair of one of these advocacy groups to tell them we were negotiating directly with the other office and told them frankly we did not want them involved in our process,” said the spokesperson, who spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity. “We support this bill because it doesn’t make sense for industrial hemp crops grown in Indiana to go through the same testing and sampling as cannabinoid hemp.”
How a bill becomes law
According to Tester’s aides, the process by which the bill came together was more nuanced and deliberative than the email suggests. They said Tweet, whose business reports having between 11 and 50 employees, came to the senator’s team in February 2022 with a dilemma: A provision in the 2018 farm bill was creating major headaches for grain and fiber hemp farmers because it treated all hemp the same, whether it was being grown for industrial purposes or for consumer CBD products. Tester’s staffers invited Tweet, who brought Moran, to a meeting to discuss a legislative fix. Moran and Tweet then sent his office a draft legislative proposal in the spring of 2022 that sought to remedy the regulatory issues they were facing.
Between the summer of 2022 and this spring, Tester’s staffers said the bill went through at least five revisions, and that his and Braun’s offices solicited feedback from numerous stakeholders, including the USDA, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the Montana Farmers Union and the Montana Department of Agriculture.
Tester’s aides said their final bill included a number of changes from the original proposal that Tweet and Moran suggested, including different and sometimes stricter penalties for hemp farmers found to be in violation of the law, rulemaking authority provided to the USDA, and the added ability for states and tribes to create their own more stringent protocols for violations.
Asked to assess the differences between the final bill and the original plan by Moran and Tweet, Eric Steenstra, president of hemp advocacy group Vote Hemp, said they are fairly small.
“They were relatively minor in the bigger picture of what the thing was trying to accomplish,” he said. “It’s a few little details about how it was going to be implemented.”
Moran, the hemp lobbyist who wrote the February email, said in a statement that IND Hemp had approached her to represent them to fix their regulatory issues. “They reached out to Senator Tester to relay their on-the-ground challenges, and I helped articulate the issues they are facing. Senator Tester and his office did what any good representative would do – take this constituents’ feedback and work across the aisle to propose a legislative solution.”
Tweet, the hemp company co-founder, said the idea that the bill stemmed from a secretive process “is not true in the slightest,” pointing to the fact that she and others worked on it for 18 months with Tester’s office and “held several calls” with other fellow stakeholders “to garner as much input as impossible.”
“IND HEMP is the largest processor of grain and fiber in the United States,” she said of her company. “I say that so you know that this initiative was created because we know more than anyone else how burdensome and clunky the current hemp program is and how we need congressional language to implement change that would impact those farmers.”
Stark, the National Hemp Association executive director, said that she is “proud to be part of this effort” to get the bill introduced.
“This bill has the power to unlock the full potential of industrial hemp for fiber and grain, creating a host of economic and environmental benefits for our farmers and our planet,” she said.
Jensen, the state attorney who also received the email, said in a statement the “Montana Department of Agriculture always attempts to work with all of our elected officials at the state and federal level when legislation will have an impact good or bad on farms, ranches, and related agricultural industries.” In a brief interview, he added, “I think they [the advocates] definitely wrote some of the language. … People would often bounce bills by me.”
Whaling scoffed at the idea that the bill was a product of lobbyists, calling himself an advocate and noting the small stature of the industry.
“We didn’t need the paid lobbyists that the cannabinoid industry has engaged,” he said. “We’re not Big Tobacco, we’re not Big Marijuana, we’re not Big Alcohol.”
The day that Tester and Braun introduced the legislation, Whaling took to social media to praise the “stellar efforts” by Moran, Tweet and Stark to get it “drafted, negotiated, endorsed and introduced today in the US Senate.”
Congressional experts said it is not uncommon for trade organizations, especially those focused on niche subjects like hemp, to have major sway over bills introduced on Capitol Hill. Two trade industry executives POLITICO spoke with said this is especially common with cannabis because most lawmakers and their staff have never had to work on the issue until recently. The executives were granted anonymity to speak candidly about how cannabis policy gets made in Washington.
“No one knows shit about this on Capitol Hill,” said one of the executives.
The second executive with experience working on cannabis policy on Capitol Hill said they’ve seen multiple pieces of weed-related legislation introduced by lawmakers that were written entirely by trade organizations. Those bills often were never vetted by other outside sources or even lawyers who could determine if they would work correctly, the person said. In Tester’s case, however, aides pointed out that he has been working on hemp legislation for the better part of a decade.
The Industrial Hemp Act of 2023 could soon be a part of a top debate facing all of Congress. Advocates say their goal is to potentially get it into the farm bill.
Natalie Fertig contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Mumbai: A special CBI court here on Friday acquitted Sooraj Pancholi in the abetment of actor Jiah Khan’s suicide a decade after she was found hanging in her Juhu apartment.
Special CBI court judge A S Sayyad said due to paucity of evidence, the court holds Sooraj Pancholi not guilty.
It is, however, not the only case where an actor’s former partner has been accused of abetment of suicide.
Some of the high profile cases that led to legal battles are:
Sushant Singh Rajput: The Bollywood star died on June 14, 2020, at his home in Bandra Mumbai. At the time of his death, Rajput was in a relationship with Rhea Chakraborty, also an actor.
His father, KK Singh, filed an FIR against Rhea and her family members accusing her of abetment of suicide and siphoning off money from the late actor’s account, among others.
After the CBI registered the FIR, a case was lodged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against Rhea to look into the money-laundering angle. The NCB also stepped in after WhatsApp chats revealed that the actor was given drugs. A 12,000-page chargesheet was filed by the NCB in drugs probe. The case is still under investigation.
Tunisha Sharma: The 20-year-old TV actor was found hanging on the sets of a TV serial near Valiv in Palghar on December 24, 2022.
Her co-star Sheezan Khan was arrested the next day for abetment of suicide on a complaint lodged by Tunisha’s mother.
A court in Vasai, Maharashtra gave bail to Sheezan in the case on March 5, 2023, and said there was no need to keep him in jail since the probe was complete and chargesheet filed.
Tunisha and Sheezan were in a relationship but had broken up two month’s prior to the former’s death.
Pratyusha Banerjee: The popular TV star of “Balika Vadhu” fame was found dead at the Mumbai apartment on April 1, 2016. Her parents alleged that she was murdered by her boyfriend, actor-producer Rahul Raj Singh, who later applied for anticipatory bail avoiding arrest in the case. It is reportedly still active in the court.
Vaishali Takkar: A noted TV actor Vaishali Takkar allegedly committed suicide at her house in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, on October 16, 2022. The 30-year-old actor left a note in which she accused her former partner Rahul Navlani and his wife for harassing her.
A case was registered against Navlani and his wife Disha under Indian Penal Code Section 306 (abetment of suicide). He was arrested days after Vaishali’s demise and was released three months later on bail.
Disha went absconding after the incident. However, a court granted anticipatory bail to Disha in November last year. The case is ongoing.
The announcement of the demise of BuzzFeed News last week felt unlike the cavalcade of media closures and layoffs of the past decade. In a sense, it represented the death of an entire era.
BuzzFeed News, launched in 2011, imagined a format which would marry the intense virality and relentless social media focus of digital native publications with the serious reporting of major mastheads. The bet was that the site’s endless fountain of Harry Potter quizzes, viral news stories, celebrity gossip and pop culture gifs could subsidise a serious news operation, which would in turn lend real credibility to BuzzFeed as a whole.
The timing was perfect. Legacy media, already shaky after the financial crisis, was increasingly finding itself at the mercy of Facebook and Google, who had reshaped content distribution and the ad industry in their favour. Digital-only upstarts such as BuzzFeed, Mashable and Business Insider had built themselves to take advantage of those same trends and had secured a dominant share of millennial eyeballs as a result.
Suddenly, BuzzFeed News and a legion of imitators – buoyed by venture capital investment and the seemingly bottomless Facebook audience spigot – were making significant plays into the world of real news reporting; breaking stories left and right and adroitly packaging them for an extremely online audience. In those heady days, you could even imagine I Can Haz Cheeseburger opening a national security desk.
It’s difficult to understate the panic BuzzFeed’s foray into hard news inaugurated among the media old guard. In 2014, The New York Times distributed a “dire” internal report sounding the warning bell about the paper’s struggles to adapt to journalism’s digital revolution, which mentioned BuzzFeed two dozen times. (True to form, the existence of this report was first detailed by BuzzFeed.) Even the most storied news brands found themselves following the BuzzFeed playbook for distribution. Even the NYT was doing listicles!
Over the years, the cracks in BuzzFeed’s model started to show. The grand vision of a serious news organisation precariously balanced on top of a viral content shop was always a challenging one, and the company found it increasingly difficult to build a sustainable business. The venture capital injections weren’t enough, and it didn’t help that BuzzFeed’s advertisers were much happier to see their content run alongside the fun quizzes than, say, the Kevin Spacey exposé.
Another problem was talent. While BuzzFeed served as an incubator for some incandescently skilled young reporters with both a keen eye for the online world and classic reporting chops, it became clear to the old publications that they could simply… poach them. And so they did: the past few years has seen a generation of wunderkinds graduate from the BuzzFeed News universe into the old-school news businesses it once planned to topple.
But the bigger story here is one largely outside BuzzFeed’s control. It, alongside the tranche of other digital media startups of its era, threw in its lot vigorously with Facebook. It heartily embraced the new distribution model which had so frightened old-school publishers, surfing the waves of traffic generated by Facebook and other social apps such as Snapchat – which at one point evinced similar ambitions towards being a news platform.
This worked extremely well right up until it didn’t. While Mark Zuckerberg once saw news content as an excellent way to juice Facebook’s platform credibility and user engagement, escalating scandals eventually turned it into a serious political liability. The axe came down. As the Warren Buffet saying goes: only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked. BuzzFeed needed Facebook far more than Facebook needed BuzzFeed.
BuzzFeed News is ultimately a casualty of that lopsided relationship. It never built a subscriptions business to account for the decline in social media traffic, and its model made less and less sense in an industry that was turning away from social media advertising dollars towards paywalls and good-old-fashioned direct monetary relationships with readers.
It’s quite likely we will remember BuzzFeed News and its ilk not as the revolutionary disrupters of the industry they were once thought to be, but as a decade-long intermission to the whim of the famously mercurial tech titans who briefly offered them patronage.
But that’s the nature of the news business. What BuzzFeed News did very successfully was change the way news was reported for the digital age, and it quite successfully bridged the gap between what was happening in real life and what was happening online. It helped train a generation of journalists who innately understood how those two worlds could speak to one another, and the reverberations of that understanding will be felt through the media for some time to come.
That will be BuzzFeed News’ ultimate legacy, even as its business model turns to dust.
James Hennessy is the co-host of the podcast Down Round, and writes The Terminal, a newsletter about tech culture
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Gangster Atiq Ahmed’s convoy halts briefly in MP’s Shivpuri district on way to Prayagraj.
Prayagraj: Mafia-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf Ahmed were killed on Saturday while being taken for a medical check-up in Prayagraj. This comes days after Atiq Ahmed’s son Asad was killed in an encounter in Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi.
Atiq Ahmed had been accused in the 2005 BSP MLA Raju Pal murder case and also in the Umesh Pal murder case which occurred in February this year.
Asad was killed on April 13 in an encounter in Jhansi along with Ghulam, both of whom were wanted in the Umesh Pal murder case of Prayagraj. The police said that foreign-made weapons were recovered and that each of them carried a reward of Rs 5 lakhs on their heads.
The encounter was carried out by the UPSTF team led by DySP Navendu and DySP Vimal.
Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf were brought to the CJM Court in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh on the same day Asad was killed in the encounter. Further details are awaited.
“My preference when dealing with an issue like this — which doesn’t strike me as particularly ideological — is to address members on a one-on-one basis and figure out what anxieties or concerns they might have,” Young said in a joint interview conducted with Kaine.
Kaine said he’s brought the topic up regularly in Democratic caucus meetings for a decade now, describing himself as a “Johnny one-note” on an issue he first took notice of in 2002 while serving as lieutenant governor of Virginia.
“Congress needs to own these responsibilities. Having a good bipartisan colleague on this just makes the difference,” Kaine said.
Since introducing their first joint war powers repeal bill in 2019, Kaine and Young have taken different tacks with their respective parties on the matter. Kaine said that his challenge hasn’t been winning support from fellow Democrats so much as grabbing the focus of the caucus amid a host of competing national security issues.
“It’s been a long crusade of Sen. Kaine’s,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who recalled his colleague “standing up in our caucus and bringing it up every couple of months.”
On Young’s side of the aisle, pro-repeal Republicans said the passage of time and the growing opposition to prolonged war within their party’s base made it easier to sell axing the authorizations. In addition, only a handful of senators who initially voted for war in Iraq remain in the chamber.
“Each decade we get beyond the end of the war, I think most people are finally figuring out the war’s over,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), describing Young as “very, very good” at rounding up GOP support for the effort.
Other Republican allies said Young’s experience as a former Marine lent credibility to his arguments for repealing the war powers.
“When it comes from Todd, who’s spent years there as an officer, I think it just means a little bit even more. It’s not like he’s a dove,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a repeal backer.
Wednesday’s repeal vote won over the entire Senate Democratic majority, in addition to 18 Republicans who ranged from centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to non-interventionist conservative Paul.
Should the Senate war powers repeal pass the House, the Biden administration has indicated the president would support it. But getting it to Biden’s desk requires House passage — and that won’t be easy. Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) wants to repeal and replace both the 2002 military force authorization and a broad one passed in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks, the latter of which still serves as the basis for counterterrorism activities around the world.
McCaul said this week he wants a “counterterrorism-focused AUMF without geographical boundaries” that would end after five years “so it’s not forever war stuff.”
But McCaul also has made clear that the ultimate decision rests with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and the California Republican is already facing trouble navigating an issue that’s split his conference.
And the strategy Young employed to win over Senate Republicans might not work in the House: The Hoosier said he tailored his arguments depending on the member as he built a sufficient Republican bloc to deliver repeal.
Democrats took notice — especially Young’s colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee, which remains a rare occasionally bipartisan bastion on a bitterly divided Hill. Kaine described the Hoosier as “a natural partner,” while Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said “he’s one of the folks who acts as a glue in the Senate.”
On his own side of the aisle, Young downplayed the idea that his work on war powers repeal created awkwardness with Senate GOP leaders, all of whom except National Republican Senatorial Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) ultimately opposed the legislation. (Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, still away from the chamber recuperating after a concussion, condemned the repeal vote on Tuesday.)
“In this job, we do what we believe is right and in the best interest of our constituents and the country,” said Young, who easily won a second term last fall.
Not every senior Senate Republican, however, took the approach of Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) — who observed of the repeal vote that “sometimes you just have to accept reality.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, spoke for GOP colleagues who fear the repeal of the war powers may only embolden U.S. enemies abroad.
“I’m also worried about how our adversaries will read this,” said Rubio, who opposed repeal. “Will this be used against us?”
Meanwhile, many of Kaine and Young’s colleagues might welcome them rejoining hands to go further still by revamping or even outright repealing the 2001 war powers authorization that McCaul is eyeing, which teed up the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. The duo said in this week’s interview that they’re open to such discussions, but acknowledge that needle will be a difficult one to thread.
“It’ll take some heavy lifting to get there,” Kaine said, suggesting that Wednesday’s vote might create “a little bit of momentum toward exploring how to make sure we have the right authorities.”
Young said he’d want to ensure any revisions to the 2001 war powers measure clarify there will be no gap in existing legal authorities to conduct necessary operations overseas, which he said many members view as a point of vulnerability.
For the moment, pro-repeal senators appear openly grateful to complete work on a substantive bill after the Democratic majority considered more than 10 GOP amendments. As Murphy put it, “people have been hungry for some meaty, bipartisan bills.”
“The country is war-weary and there’s an instinct, which is the correct one, that we can’t be at war forever,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “And there is a beautiful left-right coalition that understands that.”
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wasn’t alone in openly praising the architects of that coalition.
“Give Tim Kaine and Sen. Young credit,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chennai: Actor turned politician, Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) leader Seeman would face fresh charges for speaking against migrant workers, a senior police official said here on Sunday.
A case was registered against the NTK leader by Erode (Karungalpalayam) police on February 22, 2023 for making ‘derogatory remarks’ against a community while addressing a public meeting in the western city on February 13.
“In the same speech he (Seeman) has also spoken against migrant workers threatening foisting of cases against them. Hence, to take legal action in this regard, further sections have been added in this case,” a senior State police official said.
The police action comes days after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin had reassured his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar that all migrant workers in the southern state are safe and the police have registered cases against two journalists including the editor of a Hindi daily for spreading rumours about attacks on migrants.
Republicans are insisting on spending cuts and potentially other concessions as Congress girds for a fight over the imminent need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, while Biden’s party pushes for a clean increase. And the scene in the House chamber grew more tense as, in a nod to those nascent negotiations, Biden said some GOP lawmakers were playing with fire on the nation’s bills.
“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans … want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” Biden said, to more sustained boos from GOP lawmakers.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), sitting in the far back of the chamber and dressed in a white fur coat, leaped to her feet and appeared to yell, “Liar!” (A shout of “bullshit” was also audible from the floor during the debt back-and-forth, though it was not clear whether that came from Greene or another member.)
In response to the frustration, Biden acknowledged that Speaker Kevin McCarthy and others in the GOP have declared they won’t touch entitlement programs during the debt talks — in fact, the California Republican delivered a preliminary rebuttal to the president’s speech that pointedly stated as much.
But Biden went on to reiterate that other Republicans have sent a different message, viewing changes to Social Security and Medicare as up for discussion. As he quipped to Republican lawmakers that “so, we agree” on not touching either program, some GOP members appeared to cheer in affirmation.
Asked after the speech about the cry of “liar” toward the president, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) pointed to “a number of things” Biden said as underpinning it. “He tries to keep spreading this false narrative about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare,” Scalise said.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) described the combative episode more bluntly: “The president was trying to score political points, despite the fact that Republican leadership has made it clear that Medicare and Social Security benefits are off the table. Republicans made clear their dissatisfaction with his ploy.”
And soon after Biden left the chamber, he tweeted what appeared to be a fresh challenge to Republicans on Social Security and Medicare, as the GOP prepares its fiscal blueprint: “Look: I welcome all converts. But now, let’s see your budget.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Monday slammed the anti-encroachment drive, and hit out at the BJP and Jammu and Kashmir administration, accusing them of turning the union territory into Afghanistan by following a “bulldozer policy”.
She said the BJP’s initial call for ‘Ek Samvidhan, Ek Vidhan, Ek Pradhan’ has given way to ‘one country, one language, one religion’, “where there is no Constitution”.
Addressing a press conference here, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief appealed to Opposition leaders in the country not to be a mute spectator to the “atrocities being committed by the BJP”.
“Parties including the Congress, Left, DMK, TMC, Samajwadi Party and others should raise their voices and not remain silent to the atrocities on common people in Jammu and Kashmir,” she said.
When asked about the assurance of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha that houses of poor will not be touched during the drive, Mehbooba said it is an attempt to create a discord between the rich and poor.
The fact is that small houses with tin shed are also being demolished which makes it clear that his message is not being heard on the ground, she claimed.
The People’s Democratic Party Chief alleged the BJP is using its brute majority to weaponize everything and “bulldoze” the Constitution.
“Palestine is still better. At least people talk. Kashmir is becoming worse than Afghanistan the way bulldozers are being used to demolish homes of people. What is the purpose of demolishing small houses of people. Is there a bulldozer policy,” she said.
“The brunt is borne by the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Whatever is happening since 2019 is an onslaught on our identity, on our economy, on our jobs, on our lands,” Mehbooba said.
The former chief minister said the BJP is bulldozing everything including the Constitution. She said it scrapped Article 370 saying it will integrate Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of the country.
“I don’t know about the integration but the destruction is massive. All the institutions including the media have been weaponised. They also want to subjugate the judiciary,” she said.
Mehbooba added she would not say much on the judiciary to avoid a contempt case.
Ruling party members and ministers are free to say anything e.g. Kiren Rijiju who keep speaking against the judiciary and gets away with it, she said
“The laws brought in after Article 370 removal have been weaponised to an extent that when you visit Jammu and Kashmir, it will resemble Afghanistan because the bulldozer is there. After 370 they destroyed our identity, outsourced our jobs, our land, our minerals, our resources. When I said outsourced it means given to outsiders,” she said.
She said all that was left with us is a roof on our heads because Jammu and Kashmir was the only state where people did not sleep on roads.
“The BJP thought that since they cannot bring the entire country to the standards of Jammu and Kashmir so they will bring Jammu and Kashmir to the level of the rest of the country…,” she said.
People taken out of poverty again slipped down the Below Poverty Line after the BJP come to power, and the party wants to replicate it in Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba said.
Mehbooba said that according to the government even the centuries-old Shankaracharya Temple and cantonment built by the erstwhile Maharaja are also on encroached land.
“The latest onslaught is our homes, our lives, our livelihood because houses and shops are being demolished in the name of so-called anti-encroachment drive. This too has been weaponised now.
Till now, the Enforcement Directorate and National Investigation Agency were used against journalists, human rights activists, politicians in the country, but Jammu and Kashmir has a special status where officers have their own units and have competition who can catch and harass more people, she alleged.
“What is happening in Jammu and Kashmir is extreme. Afghanistan which was not the USA’s own territory they bombed in one go but in our state destruction takes place everyday. I don’t think any state would have seen so many bulldozers which are now being moved in Jammu and Kashmir…Irony is crooks, fraudsters, scamsters, conmen have been given 45,000 square meter while land of common people are being snatched,” she said.
Voice of anyone speaking about the Constitution is being crushed, she said.
“Was removal of Article 370 in accordance with the Constitutional provisions?” she asked.
