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The Supreme Court Friday agreed to hear on April 15 a plea challenging the Election Commission’s ban on the release of a biopic on Prime Minister Narendra Modi till the general election is over. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it will hear the plea filed by the biopic’s producers.
The poll panel had on Wednesday banned the screening of the biopic during the current poll period, saying any such film that subserves purpose of any political entity or individual should not be displayed in the electronic media. The Commission, in a separate order, had also directed the producers “not to exhibit the film titled ‘PM Narendra Modi’ till further orders. The Commission’s order came on April 10, a day before it was to be released, coinciding with the first phase of Lok Sabha elections. Votes for all 543 seats will be counted on May 23 after the end of the seven-phase polling on May 19.
Acting on the complaints of political parties, including the Congress, the poll panel had asserted that any biopic material with the potential to disturb the level playing field should not be displayed in the area where Model Code of Conduct was in force. The copy of the order was also sent to the Central Board of Film Certification chairman and Secretary, Information and Broadcasting ministry.
“It is claimed that such creative contents are kind of surrogate publicity by the candidate or the political party during the period of model code. Though the display materials claim to be part of creative content, it is contended that these have propensity and potentiality to affect the level playing field which is not in consonance with the provisions of the model code of conduct,” the EC had noted.
The order had specifically stated that in view of the admitted acts and material available on record, this film being a biopic on Narendra Modi, “prime minister and a political leader and a prospective candidate in the current general elections” can not be exhibited in view of Commission’s order.
The EC order came after the apex court on Tuesday disposed of the petition filed by a Congress activist seeking stay on the release of the biopic, saying the poll panel was the right forum to decide the issue. The Modi biopic, starring Vivek Oberoi and directed by Omung Kumar, tells the story of PM Modi’s rise to power from his humble beginnings.
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Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she owns a gun and called it a “false choice” that the only two gun control options are complete, unrestricted access or a desire to seize everyone’s guns.
The senator from California told reporters after a campaign event in Iowa that she is a gun owner. She says, “I own a gun for probably the reason that a lot of people do: for personal safety.”
The 2020 White House hopeful says that Americans “are being offered a false choice, which suggests you’re either in favour of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.”
She says she supports “smart gun-safety laws,” such as universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.
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US President Donald Trump’s controversial ban on transgender Americans in the military comes into force on Friday following a protracted legal battle.
Trump’s administration has insisted that there is “too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality” to allow transgender people to serve — reversing a policy enacted under his predecessor Barack Obama.
The Pentagon says the restrictions are not a blanket ban, but they would bar many if not most people who identify as transgender from enlisting in America’s armed forces.
The policy — which has undergone various iterations since Trump first announced it on Twitter in July 2017 — has been widely criticized by rights activists and has been repeatedly challenged in court.
The US Supreme Court ultimately ruled in January that the policy could take effect pending the outcome of ongoing litigation.
Under the latest version of Trump’s policy, no one who has transitioned to another gender, been diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” or who requires hormone treatment will be able to enlist.
But currently enlisted troops who have already transitioned or have requested gender reassignment surgery prior to Friday will be allowed to remain in the military.
For Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a research institute focusing on sexual minorities in the military, the policy amounts to a transgender ban.
“When (the Department of Defense) disqualifies all applicants with a history of gender dysphoria (unless they renounce transgender identity for years) and all applicants who have ever received treatment for gender dysphoria, that is a ban,” Belkin said.
The policy “depends on directly banning the transgender people who are immediately identifiable and threatening the rest, forcing them to remain silent and invisible,” he said.
“It is ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ all over again,” said Belkin, referring to the policy under which gay service members had to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal from the military.
Under the Obama-era policy, transgender recruits were to start being accepted by July 1, 2017. The Trump administration postponed that date to January 1, 2018, before deciding to reverse the policy entirely.
The Pentagon estimates that 9,000 people who identify as transgender are currently serving in the military, out of a total of 1.3 million active-duty personnel. Of this figure, a thousand say they have undergone gender reassignment surgery or want to do so.
But according to transgender rights activists, the figure is higher.
“As many as 15,000 transgender service members stand to lose their jobs,” Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King, who is transgender, told ABC News this week.
“For those of us who are grandfathered in because we’ve already come out and we already have a diagnosis, there’s the possibility for systematic discrimination,” King said.
The new policy is “indefensible,” Meghan McCain, daughter of the late senator John McCain, wrote on Twitter.
“This discriminatory policy will lead Transgender service members, patriots who have decided to serve their nation, to live in the shadows,” she wrote.
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Greg Craig, a former White House counsel in the Obama administration, was charged on Thursday with lying about work he performed in 2012 for Ukraine in a case that grew out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Craig, 74, faces up to 10 years in prison for charges of making false statements and violating a lobbying law.
He is accused of lying to the Justice Department about his work on a 2012 report aimed at justifying the prosecution of a political enemy of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-aligned president of Ukraine at the time.Craig’s lawyers declined immediate comment.
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, the New York law firm that produced the report, agreed in January to turn over the USD 4.6 million it was paid and retroactively register as a foreign agent, as part of a settlement with the Justice Department
Skadden produced the 187-page report at the behest of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign who is currently serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence for lobbying violations and financial crimes.Manafort was apparently happy with Craig’s work
“You are ‘THE MAN’”, he wrote Craig in an email after the report received favourable media coverage, according to the indictment.The report was meant to be an objective review of the Ukrainian government’s prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, the country’s former prime minister who was convicted in 2011 on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years in prison.
It was used by Yanukovych’s government to justify Tymoshenko’s pretrial detention to the European Court of Human Rights and influence U.S lawmakers
Yanukovich was one of Manafort’s main lobbying clients.According to the indictment, Craig covered up aspects of his work in order to avoid registering as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a rarely enforced law that was enacted in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda.
Had Craig complied with the law, he would have been forced to reveal that the report was funded by a private Ukranian citizen, not the government, and disclose that Skadden was simultaneously helping out with Tymoshenko’s prosecution on other charges
“That would do enormous damage to the credibility” of the report, Craig wrote in an email to other Skadden attorneys, according to the indictment.Craig privately had reservations about Tymoshenko’s treatment but left them out of the report, the indictment said.”Evidence of criminal intent – i.e., that she intended to commit a crime – is virtually non-existent,” he wrote in a memorandum that was not included in the report, according to the charges.The case stems from Mueller’s 22-month investigation into whether Trump’s presidential campaign worked with Russia to influence 2016 election.
That probe led to charges against 34 people, including Russian agents and former key Trump allies, but Attorney General William Barr said last month that Mueller did not find enough evidence to charge Trump or others with criminal conspiracy.Barr also said that he decided there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice
He is expected to release a redacted version of Mueller’s final report to Congress next week.
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Hitting out at the BJD government in Odisha, BJP president Amit Shah said on Friday the state is rich in natural resources, but its people continue to remain poor under the Naveen Patnaik-led dispensation.
Addressing a rally here, Shah said the BJD rule in the state was marked by misrule and corruption. Taking a jibe at the chief minister, Shah said, “Even after 19 years of rule in Odisha, Naveen (Patnaik) babu cannot talk to his people in Odia.”
He asserted that people across the country are raising slogans in favour of the BJP. “From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Odisha to Gujarat, people are raising slogans in favour of Narendra Modi.
We can hear Modi… Modi… chants everywhere,” Shah said. Slamming the opposition Congress, Shah said: “Rahul Baba’s party ruled the country for 70 years, but could not eradicate poverty.”
“The BJP-led government, on the other hand, launched an era of development in the country, marked by speedy and concrete steps to eradicate poverty,” he insisted.
Sharing his plans for the tribal-dominated district, the BJP chief said a steel plant will be set up here if the saffron party is re-elected to power at the Centre.
“Under District Mineral Fund, Rs 1600 crore has been allocated to this district. If the BJP is voted to power again, all forest produces will be procured from the tribals at Minimum Support Price (MSP) and no GST will be levied on tendu leaves,” Shah added.
