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The Hindu
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
A banker who stepped into the silver screen to captivate millions
Veteran actor Kota Srinivasa Rao, known for portraying characters of diverse shades on screen, led an equally multifaceted life off-screen. He began as a science student to fulfil his father's dream of seeing him become a doctor, before stepping into the world of banking. Even while working as a banker, his heart belonged to the stage, and he actively pursued theatre. Eventually, driven by passion and purpose, he took the final plunge into the Telugu film industry, where he went on to leave an indelible mark with his extraordinary performances. Born in Kankipadu village, a suburb of Vijayawada, on July 10, 1942, Kota Srinivasa Rao initially pursued a course in Bachelor of Science to fulfil his father Seetha Ramanjaneyulu's desire to see his son following his footsteps and become a doctor like him. But the pull of acting proved irresistible, and he was drawn to the theatre. 'I spoke to him over the phone just a few days ago. If only I had known the end was near, I would have lingered a little longer and told him how much he meant to me and the industry,' said founder of Telugu Cinema Vedika and vice-president of Andhra Pradesh Film Chamber of Commerce Vijay Varma Pakalapati. Mr. Varma was the executive producer of the film Premalo Pavani Kalyan, in which Kota Srinivasa Rao played the heroine's grandfather. The actor married Rukmini and the couple had three children, two daughters and a son. Their son, Kota Venkata Anjaneya Prasad, who also acted in J.D. Chakravarthy's film Siddham and alongside his father in Gaayam 2, died in a road accident in Hyderabad on June 20, 2010. Though life treated him harshly on the personal front, with his wife's chronic illness, a daughter suffering a serious accident and the loss of his son to a tragic mishap, Kota Srinivasa Rao never allowed grief to eclipse his craft. 'He would at times share his emotional burdens. But once the camera rolled, he transformed. The pain, however deep, never touched his performance. He gave every scene his fullest, every character his heart. Be it a villain, a comedian, a stern father, or a politician, he lived his roles with unwavering commitment,' recalls senior director Devi Prasad. Recalling his experience of working with Kota Srinivasa Rao, he said in the film Rajdoot he played the hero's father and Kota Srinivasa's son. 'Venkatesh-starrer Shatru, released in 1991 brought him fame, he said, adding that the film was directed by Kodi Ramakrishna and he was the associate director. 'There was a gap of a few years after his first film Pranam Khareedu. Then came Pratighatana and Vande Maataram and after this, there was no turning back for Kota Srinivasa Rao,' says Mr. Prasad. In Pratighatana, use of the Nizam's slang by himstruck a chord with the audiences and he won their hearts. 'He brought a definite charm and authenticity to every role, he said, adding: 'How I wish we had more of him'.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DOGE's Complicated Story
DOGE update: Last week, some 220,000 probationary workers—those who'd been at their agencies for under a year or two—started getting laid off, a process that should result in 4 percent of the federal workforce being axed once all is done. Many critics have lingered on the fact that 300 of those probationary workers cut were from the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency tasked with ensuring safe travel through the skies, which has been having a mighty bad year given the January 29 plane crash over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people. But it's hard to tell what roles exactly these workers were performing; Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took to X to claim that "zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go" and that the preceding administration had "failed for four years to address the air traffic controller shortage and upgrade our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system." Useful functions grinding to a halt: CNN filed some Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests about Elon Musk's security clearance, as well as the clearances received by those within the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) who have been granted access to classified or otherwise restricted networks. "Good luck with that, they just fired the whole privacy team," an Office of Personnel Management staffer responded. (Of course, the government tends to spend an awful lot of time selectively denying FOIA requests under the guise of lots of different excuses; this might be true, or it might be the excuse flavor of the day.) But the haphazard nature of the layoffs is affecting real, useful government functions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, accidentally let go of staffers working on containing the bird flu outbreak. Big picture: DOGE, though off to a good start, appears to be sputtering. The executive order authorizing it says it ought to be terminated by July 4, 2026, at the latest; Musk has echoed that the department will "delete itself" then. Musk has claimed that they can and will cut $2 trillion in useless spending, later hedging by saying that if they set out to target that amount, they will probably end up closer to $1 trillion (implying that the outcome would also be pretty good, which is fair). Many wonks have countered that the discretionary budget totals about $1.7 trillion. For Musk to get close to that $2 trillion target, he will probably need to look outside of the easy discretionary spending targets alone. But the progress he has made so far hasn't really been good enough or fast enough to meet his goal. The headline number is $55 billion; that's what Musk and DOGE claim to have saved already with their cuts. But the total for canceled contracts equals about $16.5 billion—half of which came from one single contract cut which had unfortunately been miscounted as $8 billion when it was in fact a contract for merely $8 million. (The dollar-amount error had been present in federal documents dating back to at least 2022, so it's good that DOGE found this error, at minimum. But there's some brewing controversy that DOGE has been trying to cover their tracks for this mistake and hide it from the public.) The next-largest items are three USAID contracts for $655 million each. The only issue is that they're a specific type of contract that has been triple-counted, so the savings are unfortunately not massive. Another consistent theme emerging: Counting the amount designated by a contract's total, but ignoring the fact that in many cases, 70 or 80 percent of it has already been spent, so the actual amount saved is less than it would seem. A perfectly defensible counter to all this is: They're coming under intense partisan scrutiny for the cuts they're making, and it's unwarranted. Of course cutting the federal government down will involve making cuts people don't like, and of course the backlash will be enormous. Musk is overly ambitious, but it's better to begin by acknowledging that federal spending is out of control and setting a huge goal than to aim for a more modest overhaul. They're new at this all and they can't get everything right. Is there a way to do this that's not chaotic? Isn't it worth it in the end? I think this way of looking at it is probably correct. But the ineptitude and mistakes also ought to be documented; we're calling balls and strikes here, are we not? Agreeing to start working on a solution: Yeah, you heard that right. The U.S. and Russia have come to an agreement that they will start to begin to work on a solution for winding down the Ukraine war—kind of an odd step given that Ukraine had no seat at the negotiating table, and given European uneasiness surrounding what type of assistance may be expected from the rest of the continent. (Again, file this under better than nothing!) But the talks, which took place between top diplomats in Saudi Arabia, were broadly successful. They agreed "to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks, and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation," per the Associated Press. "The meeting marked the most extensive contact between the two countries since Moscow's Feb. 24, 2022, invasion. [Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey] Lavrov and then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked briefly on the sidelines of a G-20 meeting in India nearly two years ago, but tensions remained high." Following up on our definitely-not-corrupt politicians: "New York's highest court on Tuesday rejected efforts by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to dismantle a state ethics commission that had been investigating a $5.1 million book deal he had received, ruling that the body's creation was constitutional," reports The New York Times. Populist leaders in Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Poland have all dismissed the option of committing peacekeeping troops to Ukraine if any sort of deal is reached to end the war, per Bloomberg. "Pandemics might not initially seem to cash out in any particular political direction," writes The Atlantic's Derek Thompson. "But political science suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific authorities. One cross-country analysis published by the Systemic Risk Center at the London School of Economics found that people who experience epidemics between the ages of 18 and 25 have less confidence in their scientific and political leadership. This loss of trust persists for years, even decades, in part because political ideology tends to solidify in a person's 20s….Young people who cast their first ballot in 2024 were 'more jaded than ever about the state of American leadership,' according to the Harvard Political Review. A 2024 analysis of Americans under 30 found the 'lowest levels of confidence in most public institutions since the survey began.' In the past decade alone, young Americans' trust in the president has declined by 60 percent, while their trust in the Supreme Court, Wall Street, and Congress has declined by more than 30 percent." The Free Press' Bari Weiss details the ways the far left destroyed the center-left in America (and abroad) and asks: Is the far right now in danger of destroying the center-right? Is OpenAI actually struggling to convert free users to paid users? A popular post circulating on Hacker News throws cold water on some of the ChatGPT-related buzz. ("300 million monthly active users would mean a conversion rate of less than 4%, which is pretty piss-poor, especially as subscription revenue for ChatGPT Plus (and other monthly subscriptions) makes up the majority of OpenAI's revenue," writes Edward Zitron.) "The crimes against the Bibas family are indeed the symbol of the anti-civilizational menace that is Hamas—but also of the cowardice of the political and cultural leaders of the enlightened West," writes Seth Mandel in Commentary. Pope Francis, who is 88 years old, has developed pneumonia in both of his lungs. California is finally beginning to tackle its real problems: Companies that sell anti-aging skincare products to willing buyers who happen to be teenagers. Very cool: The post DOGE's Complicated Story appeared first on
