When President Donald Trump introduced Mark Esper as the new secretary of defense on Thursday, he also introduced a new word into the English language: “Infantroopen.”

It happened while the president was discussing the career of Esper, who was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge for his service in the 101st Airborne Division during the first Iraq War.

However, the president called it the “Combat Infantroopen Badge,” according to Vox.com reporter Aaron Rupar.

In addition, Rupar said Trump also referred to members of Congress as “lawmarkers,” not “lawmakers.”

As you might expect, people had questions. Lots of questions:

Others had theories about the real meaning of “infantroopen.”

One person predicted the White House press office would try to spin the president’s word salad as completely intentional.

It all harks back to May 2017, when Trump tweeted out the word “covfefe.” Yes, it was probably a typo, but it inadvertently ended up becoming the perfect word to describe the world under his administration.

BENGALURU — Karnataka Assembly speaker KR Ramesh Kumar on Thursday disqualified three rebel Congress MLAs under the anti-defection law, in a move that heightened the suspense over government formation exercise in the state two days after the collapse of the Congress-JDS government.

With all attention riveted on the Speaker’s action, Kumar held that the resignation by the three MLAs were “not voluntary and genuine” and therefore proceeded to disqualify them under the anti-defection law with immediate effect till the end of the term of the current House in 2023.

The Speaker said he would decide on both resignations and disqualification pleas pending before him in respect of 14 other MLAs “in the next couple of days”, which may prolong the political turmoil and have a bearing on government formation.

The 14-month-old Congress-JDS coalition government headed by HD Kumaraswamy collapsed on Tuesday after losing the vote of confidence in the assembly in a climax to the three-week-long intense power struggle triggered by the raft of resignations by the rebel MLAs.

Kumar’s pronouncement of the ruling on disqualification pleas by the Congress and JDS and resignations by the MLAs in a phased manner is seen as a tough message to other rebels, who are still camping in Mumbai insisting they would not step back from their decision to quit their assembly membership.

Congress rebel MLAs Ramesh Jarkiholi, Mahesh Kumatalli and Shankar faced the tough action from the Speaker, who made it clear that a member disqualified under the anti-defection law cannot contest or get elected till the end of the term of the present House.

“They have violated the provisions of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution (anti-defection law) and therefore are disqualified,” he told reporters here.

They cease to be members from “this day” till the expiry of the current assembly in 2023, the Speaker added.

Since Shankar, who was earlier recognised as an Independent in the assembly, had ‘merged’ his party KPJP with Congress, he also faced the action as its member based on the petition by the Congress seeking his disqualification, Kumar explained.

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He said the resignation was a “respectable terminology”, while disqualification was “admonishing,” while emphasising that the anti-defection law could not be used as a “monstrous law.”

“No by-election...nothing will work...this is a quasi judicial body (speaker’s office),” Kumar said, adding, “I know these matters will go to the court.“

On the remaining 14 cases, he said he is “holding them back” and it would require a “couple of days” for him to give his verdict.

Kumar said he first decided on the resignation, rejecting them as they were not voluntary and genuine “based on circumstances” and thereafter dealt with disqualification after considering “evidences and other orders.“

Asked if the same yardstick would be used against other rebel MLAs, he said, “wait and see.”

“It is a hypothetical question,” Kumar said, when asked whether the remaining MLAs could still come around and withdraw their resignation.

He said, “It is the responsibility of all political parties that such impasse doesn’t continue and Constitutional crisis is not created and to see that the finance bill is passed.“

The speaker had earlier said that if the Finance bill was not passed by July 31, the “government will come to a standstill and we will not be in a position to even pay salaries, such a necessity has come, what to do?“

Asked if the Finance Bill can be passed by a presidential order if the government is not formed by July 31, he said it cannot be done and either the suspension of the assembly or the invocation of President rule has to be done.

“I don’t know what the calculations or the thought process of the Government of India is,” he added.

Asked if the non-passage of the finance bill would lead to “financial anarchy”, he said, “we are nearing a crisis.“

With their resignations still pending, the 15 rebel MLAs of the Congress and the JD(S) had on Wednesday sought four weeks’ time to appear before the Speaker in connection with the plea for their disqualification from the state assembly.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi in its order on Wednesday last gave the Assembly Speaker the freedom to decide on the resignation of the 15 MLAs within such time-frame as considered appropriate by him.

The Congress and the JD(S) had sought disqualification under the anti-defection law of the rebel lawmakers who, however, were undeterred by it and skipped the assembly proceedings during the crucial confidence vote Tuesday.

Welcoming the speaker’s ruling, KPCC President Dinesh Gundu Rao called it a “victory of democracy.

Meanwhile, as it looked to the central leadership to take a shot at government formation, the BJP camp here was devoid of any major activity barring internal meetings held by party state unit chief B S Yeddyurappa, who is waiting in the wings for a fourth term as chief minister.

A group of Karnataka BJP leaders, including Jagdish Shettar, Arvind Limbavali, J C Madhuswamy, Basavaraj Bommai and Yeddyurappa’s son Vijayendra, met party chief Amit Shah in New Delhi and reportedly discussed the government formation.

Rebel Congress MLA Shivaram Hebbar, who returned home from Mumbai, where the disgruntled lawmakers were holed up, expressed confidence that the speaker who is a senior and experienced person will take right decision on their resignation.

Speaking to local news channels in Yellapuram in Uttara Kannada district, he said “we (rebel MLAs) are not disgruntled, we are helpless. As no one came to help us we came out.“

Stating that there was no change in their decision, Hebbar said he and other rebel legislators stand by their decision (of resigning). “There is no change in it.” 

Responding to a question, he said, he does not fear about disqualification and will face it.

He also said they will take decision on their political future only after the resignations are accepted.

Caretaker Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy said no one can give a stable government in the state in the present political scene.

Senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah rubbished reports he had instigated the rebels to resign and destabilise the coalition government.

Cautioning media houses against peddling “false news”, Siddaramaiah said he would give them a befitting reply if they repeat the allegation in front of him.

According to sources, Siddaramaiah has said that if the government is not formed by July 30 there will be political uncertainty, which may pave the way for mid-term polls, and asked leaders to focus on facing such an eventuality.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed two Independent MLAs from Karnataka to withdraw their plea seeking a direction to the assembly speaker to conduct “forthwith” a floor test on the H D Kumaraswamy government’s trust move.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi took note of the submissions of the senior lawyers representing Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar and Kumaraswamy that they have no objection to the withdrawal of the petition and allowed it on the ground it has become infructuous after Tuesday evening’s floor test.

The Kumaraswamy government lost the vote by 95-105 in a House with an effective strength of 205 members.

You’ve probably heard remarks like, “She could drink me under the table” or “He is a total lightweight.” Those comments, which come with (dubious) connotations of strength and weakness, are rooted in the concept of alcohol tolerance.

So what is alcohol tolerance? The term refers to the ability of some people to consume larger amounts of alcohol before feeling its effects than others, said Peter Martin, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

There are several reasons why this happens, and thus why it seems like some people can drink endlessly without a buzz and others feel tipsy on half a glass of wine. 

Gender, genetics and how much you drink all play a role in tolerance.

Researchers have examined multiple factors to figure out why some people’s bodies appear to handle more alcohol better than others, Martin said.

Gender and body weight clearly influence how an individual tolerates alcohol. Men tend to be able to drink more than women before they appear drunk. Larger people may imbibe more than smaller people without immediate ill effects.

Other biological factors are a bit more complicated. 

“Some think it relates to the enzymes involved in metabolizing the alcohol; others think there’s a varied effect on neurotransmission in the brain,” Martin said.

In the case of the neurotransmitters, the theory is that the brains of some people with high tolerance simply aren’t receiving signals saying, “Whoa there, you should probably stop drinking.”

As for the role of enzymes, “alcohol metabolism is a multi-step process,” explained Brad Uren, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan health system, Michigan Medicine.

“Much of the alcohol processed in the body is initially metabolized by the enzyme ‘alcohol dehydrogenase’ to a compound called ‘acetaldehyde,’” he said. “Acetaldehyde is further metabolized by the enzyme ‘aldehyde dehydrogenase.’”

Some people are deficient in aldehyde dehydrogenase, which can lead to a buildup of acetaldehyde in the blood.

“This can lead to ‘flushing’ of the skin, and worsening or increased symptoms commonly associated with ‘hangover,’” Uren said. “Individuals of Asian descent are more likely to have this enzyme deficiency.”

Beyond that, our brains and bodies tend to adjust pretty quickly to heavy drinking.

The human body “has the ability to adapt to increased alcohol use,” Uren noted. “This can result in more rapid metabolism of alcohol.” And that, in turn, means those who drink alcohol more frequently “may also appear less intoxicated than others that have consumed a similar amount of alcohol.” 

Higher tolerance is not necessarily a good thing.

The first problem with higher alcohol tolerance is that it can give a false impression of just how drunk someone really is. Although you might think someone seems OK to drive a car or ride a bike because they’re not stumbling or slurring their words ― and they might think so, too ― that is not a sound assumption. The amount of alcohol consumed still matters. 

“It is not safe to assume that these individuals are better able to perform tasks that require concentration and reaction time, such as driving a vehicle, as if they had not consumed alcohol,” Uren said. The wiser choice is to take away the keys and call Uber. 

It’s also not safe to assume that someone with high alcohol tolerance, who’s able to drink more without feeling drunk, is not going to see the long-term effects of excessive drinking.

They’re still at risk for complications related to “how much alcohol you’ve consumed in a lifetime,” Martin said. “These include cirrhosis of the liver, brain disease, neuropathy, pancreatitis, and gastritis or stomach cancer.” 

Indeed, “people with a higher tolerance, who have that capacity to drink more, are more prone to develop alcoholism,” he said. 

Relying on your tolerance is particularly dangerous in the summer.

You should be especially mindful of drinking levels during the warmer season, Uren stressed, when people often increase their alcohol consumption.

“Alcohol can lead to dehydration, and should not be used in place of water or other fluids when exercising or outside on very hot summer days,” he said.

Drinking also impairs coordination and judgment. That means you should “separate the use of alcohol from activities that require extra concentration or coordination,” Uren said ― like biking, climbing and a hundred other fun summer sports.

Remember that unsafe alcohol use is not defined by your tolerance but by how much you’ve had to drink.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as “drinking so much within two hours as to raise the blood alcohol concentration to 0.08,” Uren said. “The average woman would likely reach this level with four standard drinks; men will typically reach this level after five standard drinks.”

One standard drink is about five ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. 

More broadly speaking, you should avoid risky or hazardous use of alcohol.

“For men under 65, drinking more than four drinks per day or 14 drinks in a week constitutes risky use,” Uren said. “For women, or men over 65, more than three drinks per day or seven drinks in a week is considered risky.” 

And never, ever, try to keep up with the alcohol-tolerant Joneses.

“Being able to drink someone under the table is so commonly associated with strength, and there’s such a stigma to being a lightweight,” Martin said. But really, the “lightweights” are better off.

MEXICO CITY, July 25 (Reuters) - Lety Perez fell to her haunches, a clenched hand covering her face as she wept, an arm clutching her small 6-year-old son, who glared defiantly at the Mexican National Guard soldier blocking them from crossing into the United States.

The plight of this mother and son who had traveled some 1,500 miles (2,410 km) from their home country of Guatemala to the border city of Ciudad Juarez, only to be stopped mere feet from the United States, was captured by Reuters photographer Jose Luis Gonzalez as twilight approached on Monday. 

“The woman begged and pleaded with the National Guard to let them cross ... she wanted to cross to give a better future” to her young son Anthony Diaz, Gonzalez said. The soldier, dressed in desert fatigues, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, said he was only following orders, according to Gonzalez. The soldier did not disclose his name. One of several images Reuters published of the scene, the photo was picked up widely on social media. It has thrown into the spotlight the role Mexico’s militarized National Guard police force is playing in containing migration, mostly from Central America.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador created the National Guard to bring down record homicide rates, but almost a third of its members are now assigned to patrolling the border to placate President Donald Trump’s demands of stemming the flow of U.S.-bound migrants.

The soldier displayed no overt aggression during the nine-minute encounter with Perez and her son. Still, the power dynamics apparent in the image resonated with criticism of the treatment migrants are receiving during the clampdown by Mexico.

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who retweeted the picture after it was posted by former Mexican ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan, wrote “what a pity, Mexico should never have accepted this.”

Lopez Obrador’s spokesman Jesus Ramirez said the image was an example of the National Guard doing its job of looking after public security. He said the soldier did not impede Perez from crossing but advised her of the dangers of doing so.

“The Guard combats the crime of people trafficking and protects the human rights of the population and of the migrants crossing the country,” Ramirez said.

An official with the National Guard said the soldier ”invited her to avoid putting herself at risk by crossing the river with a minor.”

In June, Lopez Obrador said the National Guard did not have orders to detain migrants crossing the U.S. border. He regularly emphasizes that the clampdown must not violate rights.

Migrant apprehensions on the U.S. southern border fell in June by roughly a third to about 100,000 people, according to U.S. data, after Mexico deployed to its borders some 21,000 National Guard troops, largely drawn from the ranks of the military.

Trump said on Wednesday that Mexico will “probably put up more” troops to its U.S. border. Mexico’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The National Guard troops in Ciudad Juarez, including the soldier in the photo, are equipped with ballistic helmets, body armor and rifles. They are identifiable by small armbands emblazoned with the letters GN, for the Spanish words for ”National Guard.”

Gonzalez said he was making his daily round alongside the dry riverbed of the Rio Grande that separates his native Ciudad Juarez from El Paso, Texas, when the guards apprehended a handful of migrants, including the mother and son duo, on a dusty, dirt road overlooking the river.

That is where she made her tearful plea.

“Her face, that’s a small reflection of all migrants’ suffering,” said Gonzalez. “A lot of people judge migrants, ask why don’t they stay in their country, why do they come here or why are they crossing into the United States. ... Every migrant has a story.”

All of a sudden, seizing the opportunity when the battle-ready soldier glanced away, Perez lunged into the shrubs growing on the side of the river bank, pulling her son with her. They quickly ran across to the other side of the river and out of the guardsmen’s jurisdiction where U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents took them into custody.

“According to information from (U.S.) Border Patrol, the (Guatemalan) national crossed the border into the city of El Paso, Texas at 8:10 pm (on Monday) and was detained. The national and her son are in good condition and are being processed at the Border Patrol station in Lordsburg, New Mexico while her case moves forward,” said Tekandi Paniagua, the Guatemalan consul general in Del Rio, Texas.

In response to a request for information, a spokesman said CBP did not have the resources needed to track the current whereabouts of Perez and her son based on the details Reuters was able to provide.

Depending on the particulars of the case, the two would typically be processed at a Border Patrol station and then handed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or put into a program that returns some migrants to Mexico to await U.S. court hearings, said the spokesman, who asked not to be named.

Full photo essay.

(Reporting by David Alire; additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco, Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City, Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City and Julio Cesar Chavez in El Paso; writing by Anthony Esposito; editing by Frank Jack Daniel, Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker)

NEW DELHI — “There is only one thing that I have to say,” said Varun Bahar, a Bhojpuri and Hindi singer, whose recent song, Jo Na Bole Jai Shri Ram, Bhej Do Usko Kabristan, has people baying for his arrest. 

“I’m a bhakt of Jai Shri Ram,” he said.  “This is all about Hindutva. It is only about Hindutva.”

In a phone conversation with HuffPost India on Thursday, 35-year-old Bahar said that he had written the controversial song, which sounds like an open call for violence. 

It goes like this: “Jo na bole Jai Shri Ram, bhej do usko kabristan. Jitne bhi hain ab Ram virodhi, unko ab dafnayenge. Poore Hindustan ke andar Ram Rajya phir layenge. (Those who do not say Jai Shri Ram,send them to Kabristan. Let’s bury those who oppose Ram. We will get Ram Rajya in Hindustan again).

Kabristan, in common parlance, is used to refer to a graveyard used by Muslims and Christians. 

An image of a graveyard with crosses appears in the video. 

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Bahar, who is presently in Gonda in Uttar Pradesh, said, “Sometimes it takes me ten minutes to write a song, sometimes a day, but it depends on the song. This one took me two days. I’m from a Hindu family. I’m a devotee of Shri Ram. I will not stop singing.”

Bahar’s songs are among the burgeoning soundtrack of hate which, like many other aspects of communal hatred in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-run India, has become commonplace. 

Earlier this week, 49 filmmakers and activists wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressing concern over lynchings in the country. In it, they said that the religious chant of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ has become a “provocative war cry today that leads to law and order problem, and many lynchings take place in its name”. 

For a while now, there have been reports of songs with chilling lyrics targeting Muslims being played on the streets during the celebration of religious festivals. There is little that the police can do to stop it. 

The milder content ranges from praising Modi and bashing Pakistan, while the harsher ones threaten Muslims with violence. 

In Jhansi, The Print reported, hundreds of DJs are mixing Hindutva songs. Some of these tracks have millions of views on YouTube. 

This song isn’t Bahar’s first track exhorting violence. Earlier this year, he released “44 ke badle 444 sur lana hain,” (Instead of 44 heads, get 444 heads), which calls for Pakistan to be wiped off the world map. 44 is a reference to the number of CRPF personnel killed in the Pulwama attack earlier this year. 

When he is not championing “Hindutva” in his songs, this “Ram bhakt” makes misogynistic and raunchy music videos. 

One track, Mummy, Mummy Chillaogi (You will scream Mummy, Mummy), features a woman getting harassed by a group of men as he sings, “Jab UP, Bihar aaogi, Mummy Mummy chillaogi. (When you come to UP, Bihar, then you will scream Mummy Mummy). 

The worst of the lot is Pakistan ki beti hai, border par aakar deti hai. This track is so offensive that HuffPost India has decided not to repeat any of its lyrics. 

When this reporter asked Bahar what he was trying to convey with this song, there was a long pause before he said, “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

This song is no longer available on YouTube. 

In fact, Varun Bahar’s channel, which was populated with music videos till Thursday afternoon, is no longer available. 

There is just one video with a three-minute statement from the singer. “I have not mentioned any caste or religion. I’m in love with my religion, and this song is for my religion. Reporters of big media, the small media, who are after my life... threats are coming in from desh and videsh... I request my Hindu brothers, the Bajrang Dal, Hindu Yuva Vahini, this younger brother badly needs your help.”

He continues, “Please listen to this song and tell me if there is something wrong with it. Its full title is Jo Na Bole Jai Shri Ram, Bhej Do Usko Kabristan… It was launched just a week ago, but it has received over two lakh views.” 

In the video, he introduces another man, Santosh Yadav, as his right-hand man and the songwriter. 

While Bahar adjusts his sunglasses and his hair in the background, Yadav says, “Brothers, those who oppose Ram are saying arrest them, hang them. But we are also ready, even if they hang us, we will keep saying Jai Shri Ram.”

They go on to repeat the title of the song a few times. Bahar adds, “Like the video, share the video and search the video on YouTube.” 

While speaking to this reporter on Thursday, Bahar was clearly aware of the growing outrage against his latest song, and calls for his arrest. 

Journalists from Delhi, he said, had traveled to Gonda to speak with him. Local reporters, too, were contacting him.

Several attempts to reach the producer and director of the music video, Rajesh Verma, failed. Both his phones were switched off on Thursday. 

Verma’s music company, Lucknow-based Janta Musical and Pictures, tweeted out an apology on 23 July.  

During the phone conversation, Bahar sounded worried, claiming that his song wasn’t targeting Indian Muslims. 

“Madame, please listen to me,” he said. “I meant everyone, Hindus and Muslims. Actually, it is about Pakistan, only about Pakistan. It is not against Indian Muslims.” 

When it was pointed out that the word “kabristan” was generally used to refer to graveyards used by Muslims and Christians, while Hindus are cremated, Bahar insisted that unmarried Hindus were buried. 

He was not anti-Muslim, Bahar said, while claiming that he had “many Muslim and Christian friends.” 

Then, in what appeared to be a moment of frustration at not being able to speak his mind, Bahar said, “Anyone who lifts a finger against Jai Shri Ram, I will not stand for it. I will not step back.”

BJP Karnataka chief BS Yeddyurappa says he staked claim to form government in the state and the Governor has accepted his request for oath-taking ceremony after 6 pm on Friday.

A group of Karnataka BJP leaders had met party president Amit Shah on Thursday as the party weighed its options following the fall of the Congress-JD(S) government in the state.

The state BJP led by former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa was keen to stake claim to form the next government but was waiting for the central leadership’s nod for its next move.

The HD Kumaraswamy government in the state fell on Tuesday after it lost the confidence vote, garnering 99 votes against the 105 by the BJP in the assembly, ending the nearly three-week-long high political drama.

The coalition had needed 103 votes in its favour to win the motion as 20 MLAs Congress-JDS (17), BSP (1), Independents (2) skipped proceedings, reducing the effective strength of the House to 205.

(With PTI inputs)

Well, that’s one way to address rumors of a breakup. 

Days after reports circulated that “Riverdale” co-stars Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart had called it quits after two years together, the pair can be found vamping it up on the August cover of W Magazine and slamming the “reliable sources” that spelled their demise. 

The two, who play on-screen paramours Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones on the hit CW soap, have preferred to keep their off-screen romance private. But they reportedly went their separate ways this summer before filming the show’s upcoming fourth season.

According to the magazine story, “the two would part ways romantically” months after the interview, signaling that change is certainly afoot in their relationship.

Yet not only do they look very much like a couple in the cover shot, they have cheekily addressed the speculation on social media and, honestly, it’s harder to follow than a recent episode of “Riverdale.”

“BREAKING: A reliable source has confirmed that none of you know shit,” Reinhart wrote in an Instagram post featuring the cover, in which she’s cozying up to a shirtless Sprouse. 

The former Disney Channel alum, meanwhile, had a little more fun with his post, writing, “UNPRECEDENTED: Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart consume the flesh of ‘reliable sources’ to fuel their bacchanalian sex cult.”

Sprouse and Reinhart insisted that they be interviewed separately for the W article, as they both express discomfort with being seen as an inextricably linked duo.

“We’re not fighting with the idea that people group us together, but we are paired up a lot,” Reinhart told the publication. “We’re acknowledging that we’re in a relationship, but it’s a small part of who we are as people. We want our own separate identities.”

Sprouse added that Reinhart, who’s set to star in the highly anticipated film “Hustlers,” is an “incredibly talented individual who speaks for herself and deserves her own voice box in every single way.”

So while it’s not entirely clear where they stand now, but it’s safe to say that both Reinhart and Sprouse have each other’s back. 

To read the full profile, head over to W Magazine.

This article contains minor spoilers for the final season of Orange Is The New Black.

We may take it for granted now, but when Orange Is The New Black first debuted on Netflix in 2013, streaming was still in its early days, and the idea of settling down to watch a new series on your computer was actually quite the novelty.

The show also broke new ground in other areas, primarily the way it told women’s stories – not only thanks to its seriously impressive female cast, but with the way themes like racism, mental health and transgender issues were explored.

While some were skeptical about whether it was realistic to expect people to watch hours’ worth of television on a screen that wasn’t their TV, the show has gone on to be a huge hit. It has scooped 16 Emmy nominations in total (including four wins), making huge successes of stars like Laverne Cox, Samira Wiley and Uzo Aduba and started important conversations about the justice system and beyond.

After seven years, the doors to Litchfield prison have now closed for good, with the final season now available to stream on Netflix. To mark the occasion, we reflected on some of the show’s biggest and most important moments, with its long-standing executive producer Tara Herrmann...

Piper meets the other inmates 

We meet Piper in episode one, as she enters prison. What was the process like when you were putting the protagonist together?

It’s been said that Piper served as a Trojan horse into this [prison] world, so to speak. We didn’t plan on that being the case necessarily, but we did identify in the book that Piper Kerman wrote that there were characters that were ripe and rich and people that we wanted to explore further… so, going in, Piper was going to be the entrée to be able to dissect a category of women that hadn’t been seen on TV before. 

So the idea was that as Piper meets people for the first time, so do we, and so we make the same judgements as her as she gets to know them?

I don’t know if it was 100% on purpose, but we needed the audience to digest prison in a way that felt familiar, and I think Piper’s eyes were the best way to do that. Throughout the seasons, we dove deeper and deeper and were able to have the audience follow us on that journey, because I think we slowly rolled out the rules and the prison landscape.

The best example of how things have changed is probably the character of Suzanne, and the way she’s been perceived over the years – from when we first met her as “Crazy Eyes” to later series, when we get to know her better. Was that always the plan for her trajectory?

The actress who plays Suzanne, Uzo Aduba, is a star, and just wowed us with her performance. And there’s a world where you can kind of just keep her as a punchline – she delivers funny like nobody – but, we hoped that with all of our characters, that nobody would be just a punchline, we wanted to make sure they were rich and fully developed.

With Suzanne, there was a lot we could get into with mental health and neurodiversity, and we were excited to tell those stories. We presented it throughout the series, but then really dug in in the last two seasons.

Did it surprise you how popular Suzanne has become, considering how the character was portrayed in the first series?

I think great talent is undeniable.

A lot of the criticism towards Piper is that she wasn’t always a likeable protagonist. Was that always the intention?

It’s unfortunate that that’s the case. It breaks my heart for the actress, Taylor Schilling, that she dealt with that in real life, that people had a love/hate relationship with Piper. That was definitely not our intention, but I think given just where we are in the world, and the idea of white privilege, a character like Piper  juxtaposed to people who have dealt with a lot of different sorts of traumas in their life, she was therefore seen as somebody who had it much easier and therefore became unlikeable (to some!).

Did you deliberately amp up this idea of Piper being unlikeable in later seasons as a response?

We try not to really let the audience’s feelings colour how we develop a character. We didn’t lean in one way or the other because of that, but we wanted to take Piper on a journey, and part of it is looking in the mirror and dealing with being truthful and honest to who she is in our society. What a white woman with an upper middle-class background deals with and how that’s different to some of her peers in prison.

The rise and fall of Vee

When you were planning out season two, what made you want to kill Vee off at the end of it all?

I think for Taystee’s story, for her to feel like she was finally free in some ways – I mean, she’s in prison, but Vee was a person that was keeping her down. And it was nice to be able to put that to an end, so that the character could evolve on her own.

Vee was such a brilliant character, does any part of you regret killing her off?

Listen, it’s hard every time we have to kill someone. We don’t love a body count, like some shows might, but we don’t love to do that. So when we do [kill someone off], we want to make sure it’s for good reason. 

Vee was really an ultimate villain that, while Lorraine was amazing and we miss that character just in terms of the evil writing that we got to do, I don’t think any of us were mourning her death, necessarily.

Is there anyone you regret killing off at any other point in the series?

No, I don’t think regret [is the right word]... I mean of course we were sad in season one, with the character of Tricia. We had written that character, we knew what her end was going to be, and then when we cast [Madeleine Brewer] and worked with her and the character developed, we did have a hard time moving forward with what was her inevitable ending.

But those are the stories that resonate, because you love [those characters], and you’re rooting for them. They’re all really hard, but I don’t regret them, because of the stories we were able to tell through them.

Pennsatucky and Big Boo become unlikely friends

I know this is a friendship that’s very popular with fans, how did it come to be that those two characters would find each other?

It’s funny that it’s often pointed out that we do that “unlikely pairing” thing, but I don’t think that we ever sit down and go “oh who would be so interesting or crazy together”? But I know that one of the first moments [between Pennsatucky and Big Boo] was when Pennsatucky was having like a little funeral for all of her abortions, and Big Boo was with her and they were sharing a candy bar, and I think sometimes it happens when we see the dailies or the cut and we go “this is a kismet relationship, let’s keep this going”.

What is it with that relationship that you think people have warmed to?

On both sides, in any other situation those two would hate each other, there’s no reason that they should like each other, and yet they each have a soft spot for one another in their hearts. I think that’s what’s beautiful. 

Did you always have it in your heads that we would end up sympathising with Pennsatucky, because she’s pretty much the villain of season one?

Yeah, I think of all the character arcs I might be most proud of that one, of where we took that character and the truths that she discovered. But sadly, it’s hard to grow past trauma when you’re locked up, and we want to tell as many truthful stories in that regard as we could, we didn’t want to leave the series giving people false hope that this’ll be OK, people will be OK, things are changing, because they’re not.

Poussey’s death

Well on that note, let’s talk about Poussey’s death, which I think is what we’re going to remember the most about Orange Is The New Black. What was the mood like on set filming that scene?

It was brutal. We had told Samira early in the season [that her character would die], so she’d held onto the secret for a long time. And when the script finally came out, she had been able to sit with it and we’d had a lot of conversations with her, but for her peers and friends it was the first they were hearing of it. She was doing more work telling them “it’s OK, I’m going to be OK” because they were all up in arms over it.

But that day was very serious and sombre. You could imagine with all the characters that often set life is playful and dare I say rambunctious at times, but that day was given a lot of respect. It was a long, long day, Matthew Weiner was directing that episode and he just did a beautiful job. We were shooting long into the night, and everybody was there and like I said, it was very respectful.

When Samira left the set what was it like knowing it was going to be for the last time?

Well, it wasn’t for the last time! We did see her again, and that is the beauty of Orange Is The New Black, we flashback and see people again. But the actors especially, those season one OG actors, they’re all so very close, and I think everybody knew that that wasn’t going to change. It was going to be sad to not have Samira around, but it was definitely not going to be, like, a ‘goodbye’.

You mentioned earlier that you don’t want to give characters a happy ending, because this is a prison drama, and that’s not how things work. Was that why Poussey was the character you chose to kill off? She was popular with fans, so it would be a real blow?

Yes, in a lot of ways she was kind of the heart and soul of the series at that point. And pure. So we knew her death would have a big impact. And we definitely wanted to tell a Black Lives Matter story, in our own way.

The prison riot 

Orange Is The New Black’s fifth season introduced the prison riot, spreading the whole season out over three days. Did that make production easier or more difficult?

Oh, so much more difficult! Oh my goodness. You know, that season gets mixed reviews, and it was ambitious… but I’m really proud of it.

What really breaks my heart is that it didn’t get more attention just from a production standpoint. Everything that went into the scheduling and keeping things consistent… there were times when we’d be shooting three episodes, and they were all supposed to be at night time! It’s not easy. I give a lot of credit to our line producer Neri Tannenbaum – that season just about broke her.

Can you tell me a bit more about the hurdles you had to overcome in making a season that was so unique?

Story wise, we just wanted to make sure that you still felt like you were getting stories that would have felt like they took over two months, like a season normally would. We didn’t want to stamp on stories. So that was hard, because it was just a couple of days, how much have people changed really? It was hard to give characters a lot of growth. But we leaned hard on flashbacks in that season and amped up the dramatisation of the riot. Like I said, I’m proud of that season.

My big take-away from that season was how amoral all of the characters were, as it was a situation where no one was really in the right. Was that the intention?

Totally 100% yes. Even in the room, people would be going back and forth on sides, people would be split. It would be a cause for a lot of arguments.

Were there things people wanted to include that ultimately didn’t make it in, for that reason?

That season was tricky, we had a lot of new writers on staff and when you have writers that weren’t there from the beginning and didn’t create the characters, there can be a tendency to… well, I talked earlier about how we don’t always want a high body count, and I think given a riot and wanting to keep the energy and momentum up, you can often rely on killing or hurting people. So we did have to do a lot of holding [the writers] back from killing off more people! Just for the sake of amping up the stakes.

And also we’re talking about women, we wanted to tell the story of a riot, and we wanted them to be taken seriously. And men in this situation do turn violent, they turn on each other often, those are the big news headlines, that it just gets bloody inside among the prisoners. So when we’re telling the story of a riot – women don’t riot that often, but we wanted our characters to do that, and so it’d be easy to go to that side and go ‘let’s just have them all fight amongst themselves’, but we tried to keep things where either you were on the side of the riot or you are a peaceful non-participant. We tried to keep the inner conflicts out of the riot.

The inmates are separated after the riot

After the riot, everyone gets split up, and obviously that was a very controversial decision. Should we expect some reunions in season seven?

Yeah! There are some reunions, and we touch in on a few of the characters that people might have missed. And yes, it was a controversial decision on the inside too. Just like we had to move forward with the riot, there had to be consequences.

What was the thinking behind which characters we stayed with and which were sent off to other prisons?

Frankly, it sort of happened organically that the story led us to put certain characters down in... well, it was actually the pool! And so those were the characters that we saved... It was sort of us coming into that season saying “well, I guess those people went somewhere else”.

Were you surprised by the fan backlash to that decision?

No, not surprised at all. People, especially Orange fans, love their characters! And I get it, I would be pissed too, if one of my favourite shows lost one of my favourite characters. But hopefully we still provided some great entertainment.

Taystee’s trial

Let’s talk about the moment Taystee gets her verdict. I loved the way that was done, with a close-up on Danielle Brooks’ face with no sound. Where did that idea come from?

That was Brian Chamberlayne, who wrote the episode. He had scripted something very close to that, and then we worked back and forth nailing down with the idea that exact sound, and I think it worked so well. The judge definitely reads out the verdict [aloud] and people in the room were uproarious, but the way it was scripted just said “it feels the air has been sucked out of the room”.

From the last seven series, what has been the biggest headache production-wise?

The lake [from the series three finale]. I wasn’t there, but apparently the lake was freezing that day. And in general, we shot in New York and the series really the length of the series only goes about 15 months over seven seasons, so in terms of the weather, we were only technically supposed to go through one winter.

So we did do a lot of fakeVFX, we would add green when it was actually dark. In the lake scene, we had to add leaves to the trees to actually make you believe it was still summer. And it was freezing, and those poor actors were out there wet and cold.

On the subject of the time frame, were there times you’d have to hold back on making pop culture references, since you were supposed to still be in 2013?

We did follow that rule until about season five, we started to get a little looser with it, with books we featured that technically wouldn’t have come out at that time, and then by the final season we just threw it all out the window and said “time is irrelevant on this show”.

The final season of Orange Is The New Black is available now to stream on Netflix.

NEW DELHI — India’s auto parts industry could be forced to slash a fifth of its 5 million or so workforce if the slowdown in vehicle sales continues, the president of the country’s largest industry group for auto parts makers said.

India’s auto industry is in the middle of one of its worst slumps. Passenger vehicle sales fell 18.4% in the first quarter, and monthly passenger vehicle sales in June fell by the biggest margin in 18 years.

The slump has prompted automakers to cut production and automakers and parts makers to cut jobs.

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The drop in production “has led to a crisis like situation in the auto component sector,” Ram Venkataramani, president of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA), said in a statement late on Wednesday. “If the trend continues, an estimated 1 million people could be laid-off.”

The slump in the auto sector, which accounts for nearly half of India’s manufacturing output, has been a major factor behind the slide in economic growth to a five-year low earlier this year.

Venkataramani said investments in the auto sector have been frozen due to a lack of government clarity on its electric vehicles (EVs) policy. He said a government plan to speed up the rollout of EVs would raise India’s import bill and damage prospects for auto components manufacturers.

Venkataramani also called for a cut in the goods and services tax for the vehicles and auto component sector.

NEW DELHI — Former Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, an honorary Lieutenant Colonel, will join the army troops in Kashmir valley by month end and will carry out patrolling, guard duties and similar responsibilities just like other soldiers.

Dhoni, the world cup winning captain, will be staying with his 106 Territorial Army battalion (Para) from 31 July to 15 August and undertake duties with the troops, Army officials said.

The unit is in Kashmir Valley as part of Victor Force.

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Dhoni will be taking on patrolling, guard and post duties while staying with the troops, officials said.

They said the 38-year-old cricketer will carry out the responsibilities during his stay in the battalion just like any other soldier.

“As requested by the officer and approved by the Army headquarters, he will be taking on the duties of patrolling, guard and post duty and would be staying with troops,” said a senior Army official.

Dhoni was accorded the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 2011.

Amid mounting speculation around his international retirement after India’s semi-final exit from the recent World Cup, Dhoni had told the BCCI that he will take a two-month sabbatical from the game to serve his parachute regiment. 

Dhoni had made himself “unavailable” for India’s tour of West Indies but ruled out immediate retirement a day before the selectors met in Mumbai to pick the squads for the upcoming West indies tour, starting 3 August.

The selection committee chaired by MSK Prasad has already discussed it with Dhoni that it’s time to invest in future.

The Territorial Army is a part of the Army. Its present role is to relieve the regular Army from static duties and assist civil administration in dealing with natural calamities and maintenance of essential services.

It’s the season of open letters once again. Earlier this week, a group of filmmakers, activists and artists wrote an open letter to the Narendra Modi government, expressing concerns over the increasing number of lynchings in India. Now, 61 cultural personalties including Kangana Ranaut and Prasoon Joshi have written a letter to counter what they call “selective outrage and false narratives”. 

“An open letter which has been published on July 23 2019, and addressed to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has astonished us. Forty nine self-styled ‘guardians’ and conscience keepers’ of the nation... have expressed selective concern and demonstrated a clear political bias and motive,” the letter read. 

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Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, MP Sonal Mansingh and instrumentalist Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt were also among the signatories to this letter. 

Criticising the open letter that was signed by 49 people including Anurag Kashyap, Aparna Sen, Binayak Sen, Konkana Sen Sharma, Mani Ratnam, Ramchandra Guha, Soumitro Chatterjee, and Shyam Benegal, this one said, “To us, the undersigned, this document of selective outrage comes across as an attempt to foist a FALSE NARRATIVE... to negatively portray Prime Minister Modi’s untiring efforts. The signatories of the ‘open letter’ have, in the past, kept silent when tribals and the marginalised have become victims of Naxal terror, they have kept silent when separatists have issued dictates to burn schools in Kashmir, they have kept silent when the demand for dismembering India were made.”

The letter also accused the signatories of the “open letter” of staying silent when the ‘Tukde tukde’ gang made demands of “dismembering India” and when the marginalised and tribals became victims of “naxal terror”. 

The open letter also goes on to praise PM Modi for his policy of “sabka saath sabka vikas”.   

In Tuesday’s letter, the celebrities had condemned the atrocities committed on marginalised communities. “We were shocked to learn from the NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) reports that there have been no less than 840 instances of atrocities against Dalits in the year 2016, and a definite decline in the percentage of convictions.” 

It added that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ has become a “provocative war cry today that leads to law and order problem, and many lynchings take place in its name”.

There have been several instances of hate crimes since PM Modi returned for a second term. Earlier this month, 25 men, who claimed to be cattle movers transporting cows to Maharashtra, were tied up, thrashed and forced to chant “gau mata ki jai” by cow vigilantes in Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa district. 

In June, 24-year-old Tabrez Ansari was thrashed by a mob in Jharkhand for alleged theft and is seen in a purported video being forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman”.

A new generation of the Pawar family is stepping in to take on its political mantle in Maharashtra. But the transition is far from smooth.

While Rohit, the grandson of Sharad Pawar’s late elder brother Appasaheb, and Parth, son of former Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, maintain there is no rift within the family, party insiders say Rohit’s emergence within the NCP has overshadowed Parth, who had been seen as the heir to the Pawar family legacy. 

Ahead of Maharashtra’s state elections, due in October this year, Rohit Pawar talks to Huffpost India about being a dynast, his equation with Parth, working to reinvigorate the NCP cadre and his vision for his political career.

Why did you decide to come into politics?

My mother and father are completely into social work. My grandfather Appasaheb Pawar (Sharad Pawar’s elder brother) spent the last 25 years of his life as a social worker. Since my childhood, I have seen my parents and my grandfather work in social sectors. When you do social work, it has a great impact but it takes time. To make a bigger impact, the best route is politics, to be inside the system. It gives you a mandate from the people to take a call with the help of government machinery.

Why did you choose the local body route to politics? You could have easily made it to the assembly or parliament?

I started at Zila Parishad. The ZP gives you proper exposure to politics at the ground level.

How do you look at the current scenario? Why did you choose this difficult time to come into politics when you party is out of power?

During difficult times, you understand things better. While in power, you are responsible for everything but while outside of power, you can reach out to people. The BJP is powerful now and that’s the reality. But we can’t just give up. It’s not the end of the world. This is a bad time but this is the time when you realise who is genuinely on your side. BJP has got elected doesn’t mean everyone in the country has voted for them. A majority is against them. While in power, one neglects party structure. This is a testing time but it gives you an opportunity to understand more, because there are people who will talk against you as well. Now I can see people talk against my family, my party, my ideology as well but it gives me time to work on a strategy to counter it and plan on what to do next.

Your cadre is demoralised. Your party is considered a Maratha-centric party. It is often called a bunch of powerful people than a party...

It is just a perception promoted by BJP directly and indirectly. Our problem was that we did not counter it. It is the media’s right to say whatever they want to. There are a lot of people in our party who are from other communities. If the leader of our party is Maratha that doesn’t mean we believe in caste politics or favour only one caste. We are born in that community and we are proud of it but we never used it as a tool for politics.

But your cadre is not as vibrant as Shiv Sena or BJP’s. People are moving away from you?

We are lacking in certain things like communication. We are lacking in a proactive party structure. There is no point in becoming reactive. One has to be proactive. It is then that the cadre and people start believing in you. We do have to work on some things. We have to think of the long term and not be election-centric. We have started working on our cadre base. Our workers are the most important to us and we have to work with them.

What would you blame the downslide of NCP on?

We have people who are aggressive but we are failing to engage with the public. But the engagement has started now. We launched Halla Bol and Parivartan campaign. But in the election, we did not receive as much support as expected. A new factor came in the name of Ambedkar’s grandson. Directly or indirectly it helped BJP a lot.

How did your grandfather fail to sense the public mood?

I don’t think he failed. A unique thing happened in this election when people looked at only one face of one person. Earlier elections would be fought with symbols. Of course, personalities had an impact. Here, PM Modi promoted himself than his party. They began a perception of war, Modi versus who? They played politics even with an attack on the security forces.

It seems that you are facing trouble from inside your family.

That’s a wrong perception. That’s a perception created by media.

What about your political struggle. It seems to have begun inside the family only. You are facing trouble from inside your family. Is it true that your cousin Parth Pawar and his mother were unhappy when you contested the ZP election in 2017? 

No. Till today we are all together. None of us has spoken anything against each other in public ever.

When Pawar backed out of contesting the Lok Sabha election, why did you publish a post on Facebook requesting him to reconsider?

It was his big heart. He didn’t like the idea of three people from the same family contesting the same election. The media made a wrong sense out of it. Parth faced a tough and challenging election. But even Rahul Gandhi lost in this election.

You appear far more confident than Parth.

Maybe because I am three years elder to him.

Parth’s campaign was a disaster.

He only had only 22 days. People created a  wrong perception of his first speech which was wrong. It was people and workers who had forced him to contest.

Are you not claiming the legacy of the Pawars?

My grandfather did help Mr. Pawar but Mr. Pawar had his own charisma and efforts. My style is different. Technically I am the youngest in this generation, which is why people might be saying this. What I am doing is giving my 100%. 

How will you deal with a tag of being a dynast?

I will answer it. Many doctors’ children are doctors, most businessmen’s sons are in business because you learn about your father’s profession naturally while growing up. Since childhood you see politics and people coming to your place and discussion on politics. You start to understand people. You don’t fear them.  Pawar isn’t the only political family, there are many. People target the Gandhi family because it’s a powerful family. It’s not easy to work in a party structure. Politics is not an easy task. It’s really tough to carry on while maintaining balance. I agree that my family’s name did help me in ZP election but what role will it have in assembly elections? People judge you. They look at your behaviour. Our personality should not change with power. 

Do you consider yourself the political heir of Mr.Pawar? People in your party think so.

Party leaders don’t decide political heir. It is the people who decide who is an heir of which politician.

Would you like to be his political heir?

I would like to do something for the society and for the state while being in politics. I want to give more preference to social causes than politics. Politics should be done only at the time of elections.

The uproar over the remarks by Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, who has been known to make sexist remarks, against BJP MP Rama Devi has continued for a second day in the Lok Sabha. 

Union ministers, including Nirmala Sitharaman and Smriti Irani, and Opposition members have condemned his remarks and sought an apology.

“Aap mujhe itni acchi lagti hain ki mera mann karta hai ki aap ki aankhon mein aankhein dale rahoon (I like you so much that I feel like looking into your eyes all the time),” he had said on Thursday, according to ANI.  

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Women lawmakers cutting across party lines demanded that Khan should either apologise or strict action be taken against him. 

During the Zero Hour, Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani said the remarks of Khan in Lok Sabha on Thursday during the debate of Triple Talaq Bill were a “blot” on all legislators, including men.

“This is a blot on all legislators including men. We cannot remain silent spectators to it. We have to speak in one voice that this is unacceptable,” Irani was quoted as saying by PTI.

TMC MP Mimi Chakraborty also said that nobody could stand in the Parliament and tell a woman “look into my eyes and talk”.

“Speaker sir, all women here are expecting something big from you on this,” she added, according to ANI.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, according to ANI, it is very encouraging to see everyone stand up and speak in once voice condemning what happened yesterday.

“We look towards you (Lok Sabha Speaker) for an exemplary action against him.” Speaker Om Birla has said he will call a meeting of all party leaders and take a decision. 

Rama Devi, according to NDTV, also asked Khan to apologise and said that he had no right to stay in Parliament. 

Khan claimed he meant no disrespect to the BJP MP and that she was like a “dear sister”. He also said he had spent a long time in politics and if he had used unparliamentary language, he was ready to resign “immediately”.

He had offered to resign when his objectionable remarks against actor-turned-politician Jaya Prada created an uproar during the 2019 Lok Sabha poll campaign. 

Khan has a history of making sexist remarks. 

- Khan had called Prada a “naachne waali” after after she compared him to Alauddin Khilji from the movie Padmaavat. 

- In 2017, Khan had asked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to reinstate ‘sati pratha’, saying it is part of Hindu culture. 

Malayalam director Adoor Gopalakrishnan had an amusing response for a Kerala BJP leader who hit out at the auteur for signing a letter to the PM Modi against mob lynching.

BJP spokesman B Gopalakrishnan kicked up a controversy in Kerala on Thursday when he said the director was free to shift to the Moon or any other planet if he was unable to tolerate those chanting “Jai Sri Ram.”

“Buy me a ticket,” Adoor quipped on Friday.

Vijayan in a statement said: “None need think that they can oust those having a contrary opinion. There is no question of allowing any such moves.“

Noting that Adoor’s films brought international accolades to the state, he said the “sangh parivar threat” against the renowned film maker was not acceptable and should be condemned.

The cultural society should strongly defend any intolerant moves against such a person, he added.

Well-known director and Kerala Chalachitra Academy Chairman Kamal and award-winning filmmaker TV Chandran were among those who condemned the statement of the BJP leader.

Concerned at the number of “religious identity-based hate crimes” in the county, the group of eminent citizens had said in the letter that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ has become a provocative war cry with many lynchings taking place in its name.

Celebrities from various fields, including Aparna Sen, vocalist Shubha Mudgal, historian Ramchandra Guha and sociologist Ashis Nandy, had signed the July 23 letter.

(With PTI inputs)

A Quentin Tarantino movie is one of the last places you might expect to see Kate Berlant. Tarantino’s scripts are airtight, and Berlant is known for absurdist stand-up comedy and idiosyncratic improvisations. But there she is, popping up around the midway point of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” to deliver her most restrained performance to date.

Berlant plays a clerk selling tickets at a Los Angeles movie theater. The year is 1969, and the theater is showing “The Wrecking Crew,” a spy spoof starring Dean Martin and Sharon Tate. At the time, Tate ― played by Margot Robbie ― was a rising star best known for “Valley of the Dolls” and her tabloid-friendly marriage to “Rosemary’s Baby” director Roman Polanski. She strolls up to the ticket booth and announces that she’s in the film. Berlant’s character balks, but after being convinced, she snaps the actress’ photograph, saying, “Why don’t you stand over by the poster so people will know who you are?” It’s a subtle wisecrack with a grim undertone, considering Tate’s burgeoning it-girl status was cut short when Charles Manson’s disciples murdered her only a few months after “The Wrecking Crew” opened. Now, everyone knows Sharon Tate for all the wrong reasons: less as a promising performer and more as a symbol of the counterculture’s swift demise. Tarantino told Berlant she secured the part because she was the only person who “got the joke.”  

I profiled Berlant last year when she had a hilarious role in the surreal romp “Sorry to Bother You.” After seeing her in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which revolves around a semi-washed-up actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his loyal stuntman (Brad Pitt), I needed to know how her cameo came to be. So she called me to discuss all things Tarantino. We also gabbed (or should I say gagged?) about her standout appearance on “The Other Two,” the clever Comedy Central series about siblings (Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke)whose young brother (Case Walker) becomes a Bieberesque pop phenom. 

I last saw you a little over a year ago, and I did not expect our next conversation to be about a Quentin Tarantino movie.

I know. You can imagine my joy. You can only imagine.

How did you land in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”?

Well, you have to pray for it your whole life. No, honestly, it’s so funny because this is truly the first job I’ve ever gotten from an audition. Everything I’ve ever done has been because someone has seen my stand-up and they asked me to do it. 

Did you audition for Quentin?

No, I went in for just a standard, million-people-in-the-waiting-room kind of thing. I went in for the casting director. I did it once and they were like, “Thank you!” And I was like, “OK, I didn’t get it and that’s fine.” I’ve gotten used to the reality of just never getting things from an audition. Maybe a week went by and I got a call that I was in the final three and he was deciding between those three. 

And then did you go back in after that?

No, that was it. He just watched my tape. Even though emotionally it’s huge, it’s a very small role. And it’s not like an outlandishly comedic role, necessarily. It’s kind of just a simple scene.

It was very surreal. It was kind of stressful because I had been very lucky to be booked on another job, and I was planning to leave town for three weeks for something that would have been more substantial, acting-wise. But to be in a Quentin Tarantino movie is, of course, a life dream of mine, and so I had to do the very unfortunate, rather unprofessional thing of pulling out of something else to do one scene in this movie. I had to.

Did you read the same scene for the audition? 

I did the exact scene. And when I got to set, I was so amazed. He was so incredibly warm with me, and playful. He said, “Yeah, you were the only one that got the joke.” And I was like, “Oh!” He said, “Do exactly what you did in the audition.” I was like, “OK!”

Did he elaborate on what he meant about you being the only one who got the joke?

No, and I didn’t ask [Laughs]. I think it’s the attitude of it. 

There’s a lot of mythology about what Quentin Tarantino is like and what his sets entail. Did he live up to the lore? 

I’m actually overjoyed to say it surpassed my expectation. This was a very long shoot. It’s a huge movie with the most famous living actors, and so I had zero expectations for him to live up to some kind of personality. I just wanted to get there, do my job and that’s it — just keep my head down. But he was so fun. I will truly never recover from his kindness and his playfulness. 

I was there for two days, and the first setup for my scene had this unbelievable production value with all these extras and all these vintage cars. We were in Westwood Village, which is where I used to go when I was 16 years old to see, like, “Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.” We’re there, and he was across the street from where I was in this box-office booth. He stood up before we shot and he screamed across the street, “Kate Berlant, don’t fuck this up!” My heart just, like, broke. I was like, “Oh my god.” It was so generous of him because he knows what it means for someone like me to come onto a Tarantino set for a tiny role. It was really sweet of him. And he was just laughing all day. He was having so much fun, and there was something joyful and boyish about the way he was explaining the references he was making in the script. And when we were doing my close-ups, he turned the monitor around so I could see my close-up, which is so surreal to see close-ups on celluloid in a Tarantino film. 

I was so overjoyed and comforted by his attitude, and everyone on the set was in such a great mood because they were making a Tarantino movie — something people are actually going to see that has this profound cultural currency and a level of nostalgia that is in some ways so inaccessible today unless you’re doing a remake. Even for someone like me who’s coming on to do something so small, it really felt mythological. 

Tarantino projects are known for a certain secrecy. Did you get the full script?

No. God no. I only had my scenes, and that was it. All I knew was that I was in a scene with Sharon Tate. All I’d heard was it was a movie set around the time of the Manson murders. That’s truly the only information I had. 

Did you get the sense that he knew who you were outside of your casting?

No. When I was doing it and everything, he was remarking on it: “You’re so funny” and “Great!” But no, I don’t think so. And in fact, when I went in for my fitting, the amazing costume designer, Arianne Phillips, was incredibly sweet. She knew of my stand-up. I, of course, went onto that set happy to feel like small potatoes. I got a sense from her that he hadn’t seen my stand-up, which in some way made me feel more validated. I got it from just an audition. Of course, I have my own romantic approach to feeling like Julia Sweeney and Kathy Griffin, who had small roles [in “Pulp Fiction”]. It’s a joy. 

What an interesting perspective on it, that’s it’s more validating to have nailed the audition. I assumed he’d seen you in “Sorry to Bother You” or something and plucked you out.

Let’s run with that. That’s a more sexy narrative. But no, the truth is, I just don’t know.

I assume his scripts are airtight, word for word. Did anything about the scene evolve?

I’m very improvisational. I go into every single job hoping and expecting to improvise. This is the first thing I’ve ever done where I did not even attempt to. I felt an obvious sense of reverence and a need to do what was on the page because his scripts are so tight and so musical. I really just did, word for word, what was there. Yeah, sure, maybe in retrospect I’m like, “Oh, he wouldn’t have struck me across the face if I did improv.” But I just plainly was too scared to. And I felt I just had to defer to him. If he said I was doing it, that was good enough for me.

Did you get face time with Brad and Leo?

No, I sadly didn’t see them at all. I was only on set with Margot. I even accidentally sat in her chair and she didn’t mind.

While I have you, I also want to ask about “The Other Two,” a show I adore and wish more people would watch. You were in one episode, but it became a little GIF phenomenon on Twitter. Are you aware of that?

Oh, it is literally a career-defining performance now. Yes, I am very aware of that. I am amazed and delighted by the amount of tweets and GIFs and everything that I’ve received. It’s very sweet to me.

When you are handed a script where you have to say the words “I am gagging for you, faggot,” what’s the first thought that crosses your mind?

With that, the only thing that makes it possible to conceive of is the context of this character. She’s this obnoxious woman who I think is the iconic cultural figure of a woman who treats gay men like Chihuahuas. It was a very clear parody of somebody who has that perspective on a gay person.

There’s something about the delivery of the line that seals it. It’s such a tossed-off remark. You can tell it’s not the first time she’s said those words or words like those. Did the reading feel obvious to you, or did you guys play around with different ways of nailing it?

We didn’t really play around with it too much. Not to brag, but I think we got it almost immediately. You want to make sure you’re doing it in the right way so it’s not just overtly violent. I mean, there is a violence to her utterly obliviousness and entitlement. But the whole thing was pretty quick, so you just get in there and do it. 

How does it make you feel to know that Britney Spears was at the premiere of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and has therefore definitely seen your work?

Well, I guess I would ask you how does it feel to know that she walked the carpet literally moments ahead of me?

Oh, let me redraft my question then. What was it like to walk a red carpet with Britney Spears?

The type of premiere like this really does harken to the heyday of Hollywood. Leonardo DiCaprio, who I think is exquisite and who I’ve loved since “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” is one of those iconic figures. I think he’s a remarkable actor. So to get out of the car and have Britney Spears be the first person I’m seeing and she’s an arm’s reach away is a huge honor. Did she watch the film? Who knows? But the fact that she was there is huge, and to think that Leo has in any way seen my face causes me to lose sleep at this point.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is out now.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

BISHNUPUR, India — Three years ago, police in Assam were looking for a woman named Madhumala Das, who had been declared an illegal immigrant by a local tribunal.

When they reached the village of Bishnupur, they picked up 59-year-old Madhubala Mandal, who was lighting a fire outside her bamboo hut one morning in November 2016 

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Mandal, a frail, Bengali-speaking woman who is just over four feet tall, spent over two-and-a-half years in a detention centre until she was freed last month following a probe conducted by a new police chief in the area.

In a recent interview in her hut, Mandal said she told the police she was not the person they were looking for, that she was Indian and had documents to prove it. But they did not listen.

Local activists and lawyers say such cases are not uncommon in Assam, where a long-simmering movement against illegal immigrants, particularly Bengali-speaking Muslims, has been fanned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. His ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also governs Assam.

BJP’s campaign against people deemed to be foreigners from Muslim-majority and Bengali-speaking Bangladesh, even if they have lived in India for decades, or were born in India but can’t prove it, is about to reach boiling point.

At the end of next month, Assam plans to publish the final version of a register of citizens it has been preparing since 2015. Hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – are likely to be left off the list – meaning they will have to prove their citizenship, or risk detention like Mandal.

This is unlikely to lead to immediate mass arrests because detention centres are full, and Bangladesh has not agreed to accept the people identified as “foreigners”.

But being a non-citizen carries many penalties, including loss of access to government payments, voting rights, healthcare and state education. People could be quickly marginalized.

And this isn’t only an Assam issue.

Last week, Modi’s top lieutenant, Home Minister Amit Shah, who has described Assam’s illegal immigrants as “termites”, said the government intends to go nationwide in identifying and deporting those who don’t have the right to stay.

At the same time, the government has been welcoming Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist migrants, making Muslims feel targeted. Shah said this month that the government wanted to “stop infiltration and push every single infiltrator out of the country”, but would welcome Hindu refugees. 

Worse than convict

When she was arrested, Mandal, a Hindu, was taken to a detention centre in the town of Kokrajhar, in western Assam.

A group from India’s National Human Rights Commission that visited that centre last year said illegal immigrant detainees there were in some ways “deprived even of the rights of convicted prisoners”.

U.N. experts warned in a statement this month that the citizenship drive in Assam risked rendering millions stateless or in prolonged detention, and that the process “could fuel religious discrimination”, adding that the legal system was discriminative and arbitrary.

The office of the chief minister of Assam did not respond to questions sent by Reuters on this story.

Ajoy Rai, a local activist who worked with police to secure Mandal’s release, said there may be many more wrongly detained people in the state.

“Most people are not literate and don’t understand what the documents they have even mean,” he said. “When there are floods or a fire, people lose the documents too.”

Assam, one of India’s poorest states, is ravaged by floods annually, displacing millions, with this year no exception.

Rights activists and lawyers say Assam’s system of ‘foreigners tribunals’, detention centres and its ‘border police’ – a unit in charge of checking illegal immigration - is biased against the poor and against Bengali speakers, who are deemed to be from Bangladesh.

Bengali is the second-most widely spoken language in India, after Hindi. The official language in Assam is Assamese.

A review of orders issued in recent years by Assam’s tribunals - quasi-judicial bodies set up for illegal immigration cases - shows many people of Bengali descent have been declared foreigners because of discrepancies in their names and other details on identity documents.

The tribunal judges’ performance itself, which is evaluated by the government, appears to be at least partly based on the percentage of the people they declare as foreigners, according to their appraisal sheets. Reuters reviewed copies of the appraisal sheets of judges in 79 of Assam’s roughly 100 tribunals.

The documents, which evaluate the judges’ performance over two years until April 30, 2017, show that a majority of judges who declared less than 10 percent of all the people they examined as foreigners got a rating of “may be terminated.”

Despite criticism of the process, Assam is working on setting up some 200 more foreigner tribunals by September 1, growing to around 1,000 eventually, as it scrambles to prepare for the aftermath of the publication of the final register on August 31. Around 245,000 cases are pending at the tribunals, and scores more are likely to be added after the final list is published.

The government has also lowered the eligibility criteria for the post of judges, allowing retired bureaucrats and lawyers with seven years of experience to apply – as opposed to 10 years required earlier.

“It is obvious that these appointments lack judicial independence or adequate separation from the executive, and the judges are being appointed for tribunals with indications that they should lean in favour of declaring people foreigners,” said Sanjay Hegde, a senior Supreme Court lawyer in New Delhi.

There is room for appeal against a tribunal decision through the high court in Guwahati, But that court is swamped with some two dozen new cases of illegal immigration each week, said Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Chaudhry, a senior lawyer in Guwahati.

Santanu Bharali, legal adviser to Assam’s chief minister, dismissed criticism that the tribunals were biased or had targets to declare people as foreigners. He said the judges relied on documents submitted as proof of citizenship and the tribunals’ decisions could be appealed. 

“Create one whole town”

Assam is far from ready to deal with the situation if hundreds of thousands of residents are declared illegal.

The six detention centres there are already overcrowded, said Bharali. They held 1,133 illegal immigrants as of May 25, 2019, the government said earlier this month.

Kula Saikia, the chief of police in Assam, told Reuters there was no clarity on what would be done with those who don’t make it onto the citizenship register. He and other officials say they are awaiting orders from the Supreme Court, which is supervising the process.

“It’s impossible” to detain hundreds of thousands of more people, said Bharali. “We will have to create one whole town for these people.”

Local activists say the fear of being declared an illegal immigrant has driven at least 25 people to suicide since a draft citizenship list was drawn up in July 2018. Reuters could not independently verify the claims, and the police have refrained from linking the suicide cases to the citizenship verification process.

In the case of Madhumala Das, she was first declared a foreigner by a tribunal in 1988, and a fresh order was passed in June 2016 that led to Mandal’s arrest.

Police said the mistake occurred as there were three women with similar names in Mandal’s village.

“They had to follow the tribunal’s orders and find the person,” said a senior officer at the police station near Mandal’s home.

Madhumala Das had died more than a decade earlier. The border police did not know.

TORONTO — Yuvraj Singh’s first outing after international retirement ended in a bizarre way as he walked off the pitch despite being not out during a Global T20 Canada match. 

Leading Toronto Nationals in the opening game of the T20 tournament against Vancouver Knights, Yuvraj could only score 14 runs from 27 balls before he was given out stumped by the square-leg umpire in the 17th over bowled by Rizwan Cheema.

The 2011 World Cup winner got a faint edge which wicketkeeper Tobias Visee dropped but the ball went on to hit the stumps and the umpire ruled him out.

TV replays, however, showed Yuvraj was still at the crease when the ball hit the stumps but by then he had already walked off the field.

Yuvraj’s side went on to score 159 for five in their stipulated 20 overs, which the Vancouver Knights chased down with 2.4 overs to spare for an eight-wicket win.

Yuvraj announced his retirement in June when the ICC ODI World Cup was on in England and Wales.

Fans of “Stranger Things” can be forgiven for thinking there’s a familiar feel to certain elements of Netflix’s hit sci-fi series.

In a new video for Wired magazine, the show’s creators Matt and Ross Duffer reveal about 80% of the main movie references they allude to in the first three seasons of the show ― from “Ghostbusters” and “Gremlins” to “Alien,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Jaws.”

Check out the full video above.

Karnataka BJP President BS Yediyurappa was on Friday sworn in as Chief Minister for the fourth time, two days after the collapse of HD Kumaraswamy-led Congress-JD(S) government.

Yediyurappa met Governor Vajubhai Vala to stake the claim and requested him to administer the oath of office and secrecy Friday itself, following which Vala invited him to form the government.

He will have to prove his majority by 31 July. “I am 101 percent confident of getting the numbers,” he told NDTV.

This will be the fourth stint for Yediyurappa as the Chief Minister — the last one was after the May 2018 Assembly polls.

He had to resign just three days after being sworn in. He was unable to muster majority after staking claim to form the government on the grounds that his party had emerged as the single largest one. 

The Congress-JD(S) government collapsed on Tuesday after 99 MLAs voted in favour of the confidence motion moved by Kumaraswamy and 105 against it. 

(With PTI inputs)

Non-cooperation fervour in Banaras spiked with Gandhi’s visit to the city on 25 November 1920. In the two days he spent here, Gandhi addressed several meetings. He spoke at the Banaras Hindu University, where he was cheered by a huge gathering of students, even as Madan Mohan Malaviya remained in the background. He addressed a meeting at the Town Hall too, where a mammoth crowd of 20,000 people gathered on the afternoon of 26 November to hear Gandhi speak of colonial exploitation, of the imperative to protest, and to boycott British made goods and institutions of the state in order to gain complete freedom based on the principle of satyagraha, or truth-force. The
pursuit of truth, he said, shuns violence against the opponent, who must instead be weaned away from error by patience and compassion.

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Unknown to Gandhi, a group of tawaifs, led by Vidyadhari Bai, had been part of the vast gathering at the Town Hall. They had been informed about the meeting by Prem Kumar Khanna. Disenchanted by the moral hypocrisy of his erstwhile Hindu nationalist allies, he was now a regular visitor in the tawaif localities.

Prem Kumar had lost none of his earlier fervour against the tawaif tradition. His critique of their lifestyle and art practices as immoral and obscene had, however, undergone a subtle transformation. Instead of his earlier feeling of revulsion and hatred, he now nursed a growing sympathy for tawaifs and prostitutes as victims in need of rescue, reform and rehabilitation.

His growing interactions with the many Muslims among them also made him question his previous communal prejudices and biases. Before his contact with the tawaifs, Prem Kumar had little or no acquaintance with Muslims in his city. His visits to Sultana’s home and those of other Muslim tawaifs made him increasingly aware of the ties of common language, culture and history that bound Hindus and Muslims together.

Not surprisingly, Prem Kumar found himself drawn by Gandhi’s inclusive call for Hindus and Muslims to come together and liberate India from the yoke of colonial rule. Unmindful of ridicule from the so called respectable classes of the city, he began to focus his energies upon converting tawaifs to the cause of non-cooperation and nationalism, in the hope that it would lead them to renounce what was, in his view, their demeaning means of livelihood. 

The tawaifs, while amused by his clumsy attempts to make respectable women of them, saw in Prem Kumar Khanna a useful counter to the hostility that came their way not only from nationalist quarters but society at large. Moreover, with time, many among them had begun to nurse a grudging respect, even affection, for their morally didactic, thick-headed but scrupulously honest and well meaning foe-turned-ally. Agreeing to bhai-ji’s suggestion that they attend the Mahatma’s meeting at the Town Hall, Vidyadhari—who had been following with interest news about non-cooperation-inspired defiance of colonial rule in other parts of the country—had organised a group of tawaifs to accompany her to the gathering.

Gandhi’s speech made a great impression upon many of them, especially Vidyadhari. She began performing nationalist songs in every mehfil she was invited to, renounced foreign-made cloth and began wearing only Indian hand-spun fabric.

Over the coming months, Vidyadhari organised a series of smaller meetings at her home to enthuse other tawaifs to the cause of the non-cooperation movement. She was joined in these efforts by Sultana who too had been closely tracking the unfolding political scenario. Prevailing upon Husna Bai to call a meeting of the entire community, they had worked out the details of the agenda in consultation with the choudharayin and Prem Kumar Khanna.

Once Vidyadhari’s song came to an end, Husna Bai addressed the assembly, as planned. After thanking Prem Kumar for taking out time to join the meeting, the old choudharayin spoke with characteristic eloquence of the great challenge facing the tawaif community. Times were changing. And tawaifs too would have to keep pace with a fast-transforming world. Mahatma-ji had unleashed a great and powerful storm that would no doubt blow away the British regime. Tawaifs, always on the forefront in earlier wars against foreign rule, would once again have to step forward and contribute their bit to the nationalist cause. This, Husna Bai said, pausing meaningfully, was not just their duty as daughters of this great land but also the need of the hour if they did not wish to be consigned to the dustbin of history. 

Excerpted with permission from ’Tawaifnama’ by Saba Dewan, published by Context (Westland).