government s role in supporting role. the key step has come at a dramatic time. it was super early this morning in the senate, 4:00 a.m. eastern time there in washington on this crucial test vote for the democrats, $3.5 trillion safety net plan. biden add the democrats winning the party line vote. on this vote, the yas are 50. the nahs are 49. and the concurrent resolution as amended is agreed to. [ applause ] you can hear the smattering of unusual applause on the senate floor. the mix there of people being obviously quite tired, having pulled basically an all nighter to 4:00 a.m. but also some jubilation from the democrats who carried the vote. it comes hours after the senate passed something we reported on yesterday that is a big deal that would be a multiweek story by itself, something that didn t happen in the past four years, despite much talk about it. joe biden getting an infrastructure bill and getting it on a bipartisan basis. today the president saying this. i
welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. in pakistan, journalists who ask awkward questions of people in power need to watch their backs. in the last year, there have been a string of attacks on reporters. the perpetrators remain unknown and unpunished. the government insists pakistan is a bastion of media freedom. well, my guest is hamid mir, a high profile columnist and tv presenter, survivor of several past assassination attempts, currently facing accusations of sedition. is the pakistani state out to silence independentjournalism? hamid mir, in islamabad, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, stephen sackur, for inviting me on your show. well, it s a pleasure to have you on this show. clearly, you can talk to me in london from pakistan, but it seems you cannot speak to your own tv audience inside your own country. your show is currently banned, and indeed, your newspaper column seems to have been suspended too. why is that? yes, i am banned on my tv channel and i cannot write m
matter. we have 35,000 employees that are going to start school in two days and our students will be here next week. and i i don t think that threat is going to scare them. they re strong women and they care about their students. they were elected by us and they ve heard from us and the vast majority wants them to make sure that we re all protected. do you think, anna, that the governor is punishing teachers for political reasons? i you know what, i can t answer what the governor is doing this. he just gave everybody a thousand dollars bonus, classroom teachers and principals, and now he wants to act like our lives don t matter. it s just something that is got everybody confused and trying to figure out where is he coming from? why is he doing this for masks and keeping protocols in place that have kept the spread, you know no spread happened in broward county public schools for multiple protocols and one of them was the mask-wearing. tonight a spokesman for the g
well, my guest is hamid mir, a high profile columnist and tv presenter, survivor of several past assassination attempts, currently facing accusations of sedition. is the pakistani state out to silence independentjournalism? hamid mir, in islamabad, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, stephen sackur, for inviting me on your show. well, it s a pleasure to have you on this show. clearly, you can talk to me in london from pakistan, but it seems you cannot speak to your own tv audience inside your own country. your show is currently banned, and indeed, your newspaper column seems to have been suspended too. why is that? yes, i am banned on my tv channel and i cannot write my regular column in my newspaper. this is not the first time. when pervez musharraf was in power, he also banned me on tv. but you see, he was a military dictator. he only banned me on tv. he never banned me on newspaper. now mr imran khan is the prime minister of pakistan, and unfortunately, i am not only on tv, bu
now on bbc news hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. in pakistan, journalists who ask awkward questions of people in power need to watch their backs. in the last year, there have been a string of attacks on reporters. the perpetrators remain unknown and unpunished. the government insists pakistan is a bastion of media freedom. well, my guest is hamid mir, a high profile columnist and tv presenter, survivor of several past assassination attempts, currently facing accusations of sedition. is the pakistani state out to silence independentjournalism? hamid mir, in islamabad, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, stephen sackur, for inviting me on your show. well, it s a pleasure to have you on this show. clearly, you can talk to me in london from pakistan, but it seems you cannot speak to your own tv audience inside your own country. your show is currently banned, and indeed, your newspaper column seems to have been suspended too. why is that? yes, i am banned on my tv ch