Hyderabad: Actor Ram Charan is back in news with his latest video on Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel, registering massive views. Titled ‘RRR Star Ram Charan Gets Ready for the Oscars’, the video has garnered over 6.5 million views and counting, making it the most viewed video on the channel to date.
The video captures Ram Charan and his wife Upasana in the moments leading up to one of the most special days of of their lives, the Oscars, where his film won an award for the famous and viral song ‘Nattu Nattu’.
The video starts with a heartwarming snippet of Ram spraying hair spray on Upasana in her room, setting the tone for the rest of the video, which is filled with glimpses of their private life. This is followed by a tour of Ram’s hotel room, where he shows off his little religious set up, a testament to his strong faith and beliefs. As Ram gets ready and suits up, his charm and suaveness are on full display.
Meanwhile, Upasana is seen getting draped in her elegant saree and doing her hair and makeup. The two then come out of their respective rooms, looking red carpet ready. They bow down and seek blessings in front of their personal temple set up in the hotel room before they set out for the Oscars.
Mumbai: Veteran Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan has said that his party has agreed not to raise the issue of V D Savarkar since the three Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners hold different views on the late Hindutva ideologue.
He made the statement in an interview to PTI days after former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray gave a warning to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a public meeting last month, saying that the “insult” of Savarkar will not be tolerated. In his speech, Thackeray said he considered Savarkar as his “idol” and hence Gandhi should refrain from insulting him.
Gandhi has often accused Savarkar of “apologising” to the British to get out of jail, and has routinely shot back at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demands for an apology by claiming he was a Gandhi and not Savarkar to seek mercy.
Replying to a query on the issue, Chavan said the Congress has agreed not to raise the issue of Savarkar as there were divergent views on him among the MVA allies. The MVA comprises the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena.
“Let the people decide about the truth of the freedom struggle. There is nothing to be apologetic about. We agreed to disagree and agreed not to raise the issue since our partners hold different views on Savarkar,” the former chief minister said.
On being asked if the Savarkar issue had been put to rest by the Congress after it was given on platter to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Chavan said his party did not provide any issue on platter to the saffron party.
The BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, which are currently in power in Maharashtra, on Sunday started taking out Savarkar Gaurav Yatras in each district of the state to honour Savarkar’s contribution to the country and to counter Rahul Gandhi’s criticism against him.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday quashed the Centre’s denial of security clearance to Malayalam news channel MediaOne, and pulled up the Ministry of Home Affairs for raising national security claims in “thin air” without facts.
A bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud set aside the Kerala High Court order which had upheld the Centre’s decision to ban the channel’s telecast on security grounds.
The top court said critical views of the channel against government policies cannot be termed as anti-establishment as an independent press is necessary for a robust democracy.
“National security claims cannot be made out of thin air, there must be material facts backing it,” the bench said.
The top court was hearing the plea of the news channel against the Kerala High Court’s order which had upheld the Centre’s decision to ban its telecast on security grounds.
New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Sunday said all lawmakers enjoy the “unhindered right” to express their views in Parliament, making a strong rebuttal of Rahul Gandhi’s recent claims that the opposition was not allowed to speak in the House.
Birla was addressing the 146th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Manama, Bahrain.
“In India, we have a robust participatory democracy and a vibrant multi-party system where hopes and aspirations of citizens find expression through the elected representatives. All members enjoy the freedom to express their views and thoughts in Lok Sabha,” he said.
Birla’s remarks come in the wake of Gandhi’s claims at a function in London that the voice of opposition leaders was stifled in Parliament. Gandhi made the comment during an event organised by veteran Indian-origin Opposition Labour Party MP Virendra Sharma in the Grand Committee Room within the House of Commons complex.
In his address, the Lok Sabha speaker said Parliament of India has always held extensive and meaningful debate and deliberations on contemporary global challenges such as climate change, gender equality, sustainable development and the COVID-19 pandemic.
He emphasized that global institutions propagating peace, harmony and justice were crucial for peace, prosperity, sustainability and a just world order.
In this context, Birla said there was a broad consensus among many nations to bring about reforms in the UN Security Council to reflect the realities of a rapidly changing world order.
“Reform of the UN Security Council cannot be delayed any further,” the Speaker added.
He said it was crucial that the subject was included in future global agendas so that “we could contribute more and more in addressing challenges such as climate change, sustainable development, poverty, gender equality and terrorism”.
Highlighting the country’s readiness to fulfil its global obligations, Birla said India carried out the world’s largest vaccination programme against COVID-19 for its citizens.
At the same time, India also helped other nations in their respective fights against the pandemic by providing medical equipment and vaccines under ‘Vaccine Maitri’, he added.
New Delhi: YouTube Shorts, Google’s answer to TikTok, is now averaging over 50 billion daily views, up from 30 billion that was last reported, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced.
Pichai said that this performance will reward creators and help improve the Shorts experience for everyone.
“Our subscription business continues to grow, with YouTube Music and Premium surpassing 80 million subscribers, including trials. Together with our YouTube Primetime channel subscriptions and YouTube TV, we have good momentum here,” Pichai said during the analysts’ call late on Thursday.
In December, the National Football League announced YouTube will pay around $2 billion a year for rights to the “Sunday Ticket”.
According to Pichai, YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket will help acedrive subscriptions, bring new viewers to YouTube’s paid and ad-supported experiences, and create new opportunities for creators”.
YouTube advertising revenue was $7.96 billion — down 8 per cent from $8.63 billion the year prior — in the December quarter.
“Beyond our advertising business, we have strong momentum in Cloud, YouTube subscriptions, and hardware. However, our revenues this quarter were impacted by pullbacks in advertiser spend and the impact of foreign exchange,” said Pichai.
He said there are many opportunities to build on the progress at YouTube over the years, starting with Shorts monetisation.
“Overall, I see this as an important journey to re-engineer the company’s cost base in a durable way,” said Pichai.
Thiruvananthapuram: With the controversy over errors in the PhD thesis of Kerala State Youth Commission Chairperson and CPI-M youth leader Chintha Jerome continuing, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, who is also the Chancellor of state universities, will seek an explanation from the Kerala University Vice Chancellor after receiving complaints in this regard.
This move has come at a time when the CPI-M top brass is mulling a scrutiny of the PhD thesis and has given the nod to the Kerala University to constitute a four-member team to scrutinise it.
This special team will submit its report to the University Syndicate, which will then be passed to the Senate. The Senate, in turn, will advise the Chancellor on what needs to be done.
Jerome’s dissertation is titled “The ideological foundation of Malayalam commercial cinema in the neoliberal times”, for which she was awarded a PhD in English Literature from the Kerala University in 2021.
Detractors of Jerome have come out with a fundamental mistake in her thesis where she has written that Malayalam poem titled “Vazhakkula” was penned by Vyloppilli while it was originally written by another hugely popular poet Changampuzha Krishna Pillai.
Jerome’s principal guide for her thesis was the then Pro V-C of Kerala University P.P. Ajayakumar.
Her fellow youth leaders in the CPI-M are defending her to the hilt by stating that it is just a technical error and spelling mistakes are not a serious issue as this is not the first time such things are happening.
Meanwhile for the first time after this controversy erupted, Jerome broke her silence and admitted that what happened was a human error.
“The reference to mistake that has occurred does not have relevance to the topic of the thesis. It was just said in context. I am thankful to those who have pointed out this error and this is just a human error. I am going to bring my thesis as a book and in it, the necessary corrections will be made,” she said.
Since this issue surfaced last week, every day there are protests and marches being taken out by the student and youth wing of the Congress.
Social media is buzzing with hilarious posts, many of which have become viral now.
Numerous complaints have also surfaced against this and with the Assembly session all set to resume its sitting shortly, all eyes will be on the Congress-led opposition.
Thiruvananthapuram: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday rejected the views of Anil Antony, son of party colleague and former defence minister A K Antony, on a controversial BBC documentary on Gujarat riots and termed as “immature” his argument that it was an infringement into India’s sovereignty.
Anil had tweeted on Tuesday that placing the views of the British broadcaster over Indian institutions would undermine the sovereignty of the nation. He has since resigned from all posts he was holding in the Congress party, citing “intolerant calls” and “abuses” over the matter.
Tharoor, Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram said people of the country have the freedom to watch or not watch the BBC documentary on the 2002 riots and asked who can say the British broadcaster has no right to do a story on the topic.
The Constitution of the country guarantees all rights for us to watch a documentary, he added.
When asked about Anil’s argument that placing the views of the BBC over Indian institutions would set a “dangerous precedence” and “undermine” our sovereignty, Tharoor said he cannot agree with it.
“I feel that this is an immature stand,” he said.
“Because, the sovereignty of our country cannot be affected so easily… will it be affected if a foreign documentary is screened?….whether our national security and sovereignty are so fragile to be affected by a documentary?” he said.
The leader, however, said Anil, who had handled the digital communications of the grand old party for sometime, was a “good person” and he had not discussed the BBC documentary issue with him.
Anil, who is said to be close to Tharoor, specially thanked him for his support in the resignation letter which he sent to the party leadership on Wednesday quitting his roles in the Congress — as the Convener of KPCC Digital Media, and as the National Co-coordinator of AICC Social Media and Digital Communications Cell.”
Anil had on Tuesday tweeted that despite large differences with the BJP, those who support and place the views of the British broadcaster and of former UK foreign secretary Jack Straw, the “brain behind the Iraq war” (involving the US-led coalition in 2003) over Indian institutions are setting a dangerous precedent.
The two-part BBC documentary, which claims it investigated certain aspects relating to the 2002 Gujarat riots when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of that state, has been trashed by the Ministry of External Affairs as a “propaganda piece” that lacked objectivity and reflected a “colonial mindset”.
New Delhi: Law Minister Kiren Rijiju on Sunday sought to support the views of a retired high court judge, who said the Supreme Court “hijacked” the Constitution by deciding to appoint judges itself.
The government and the judiciary have been at loggerheads over the process of appointment of judges to the higher judiciary,
Rijiju shared the video of an interview of Justice R S Sodhi (retd), a former judge of the Delhi Court, saying it is “voice of a judge” and that majority of people have similar “sane views”.
Justice Sodhi said the right to frame laws lies with Parliament.
The law minister also said that “actually majority of the people have similar sane views. It’s only those people who disregard the provisions of the Constitution and mandate of the people think that they are above the Constitution of India.”
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“Real beauty of Indian Democracy is its success. People rule themselves through their representatives.Elected representatives represent the interests of the People & make laws. Our Judiciary is independent and our Constitution is Supreme,” the minister tweeted.
In the interview, Justice Sodhi also said the apex court cannot frame laws as it does not have the right to do so. The right to frame laws belongs to Parliament, he said.
“… Whether you can amend the Constitution? Only Parliament will amend Constitution. But here I feel the Supreme Court for the first time ‘hijacked’ the Constitution. After ‘hijacking’ they (SC) said that we will appoint (judges) ourselves and the government will have no role in it,” Justice Sodhi said in Hindi.
The appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the high courts has become a major flashpoint between the Executive and the Judiciary.
While Rijiju has described the collegium system to appoint judges as something “alien” to the Indian Constitution, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar has questioned the top court for striking down the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act (NJAC)and a related constitution amendment.
Also the chairman of Rajya Sabha, Dhankar had said a law passed by Parliament, which reflects the will of the people, was “undone” by the Supreme Court and “the world does not know of any such instance”.
By bringing the NJAC law, the government had sought to overturn the collegium system which came into being in 1992.
The apex court has questioned the government for delay in clearing the appointments of Supreme Court and High Court judges.
Last week, the Supreme Court collegium had for the second time reiterated the names of two advocates for appointment as judges of the Calcutta High Court “expeditiously”, saying it was not open for the government to repeatedly send back the same proposal.
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Coimbatore: The National Education Policy (NEP) is not a document containing few pages but has lot of new features for the benefit of students, said Union Education and Skill Development Minister Dharmendra Pradhan here on Saturday.
Though education is in the concurrent list of the States, the Centre expects Tamil Nadu to accept NEP, he said.
The Union government is open to ideas and new methods when it comes to NEP, Pradhan said while addressing the 34th convocation of Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women in the city.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emphatically said that all should learn mother tongue and the NEP will help to learn, read and write in mother tongue in foundational years, he said and added that the government has asked the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to publish books in all Indian languages from this academic year onwards.
The holistic development of the children will be better if they study in mother tongue and India’s education focuses on employability, empowerment and enlightenment, he said.
Stating that technology was new disrupter, the Union Minister said millions of people use mobile phones. “Internet and smart phones are basic requirements and we were dependent on foreign technologies like android or ios. However, IIT Madras has developed technology for the indigenous 5G a few days ago,” he pointed out.
Referring to COVID-19 vaccines, Pradhan said, “Indians have taken the vaccine, but no one in the world got certificate within a few seconds after taking it like our country. It is such type of technology we are developing in India.”
Highlighting about women empowerment, the Union Minister said, “Tamil Nadu is much more ahead of rest of the country and the State has highest number of working women in the country. India is the mother of democracy and Tamil Nadu the epicenter.” During India’s G20 Presidency this year, “I expect discussion and deliberation takes place about it in the university,” he said.
Later, replying to a question on decreased budget allocation for NEP, the Union Minister said that it was a wrong information. “The government and Finance Ministry were extending full support to the new education policy and in the next budget more funds will be allocated,” he said.
