Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ Anthony Scaramucci may be out at the White House, but the shortlived former communications director says his political career is not over. Scaramucci said in an interview that although he has not spoken to President Donald Trump in over a month, he talks to members of the president’s inner circle “regularly” and sees himself working for Trump in the future. “I have very good relationships there still, and you have to remember we were a team for 18 months, and so we all had different roles. And so I’m still playing my role frankly. I’m an advocate for the president, media surrogate when I need to be,” Scaramucci said. Scaramucci, a member of Trump’s campaign and transition teams, was appointed White House communications director in July. But he was fired after just 11 days on the job after he gave an expletive-laced interview to The New Yorker and made derogatory statements about several members of the Trump administration. Scaramucci is in Israel this week as a guest of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, a U.S.-based group that works with professionals, politicians and community leaders to stimulate business opportunities and influence public policy. While he’s now focused on his business dealings, an outside role in politics is on the table. ■ A member of India’s Hindu nationalist ruling party has offered a $1.5 million reward to anyone who beheads the lead actress and the director of the yet-to-be released Bollywood film Padmavati over its alleged handling of the relationship between a Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler. On Sunday, Suraj Pal Amu, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader from the northern state of Haryana, offered the bounty against actress Deepika Padukone and filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The film’s producers postponed the release of the film, which was set to be in theaters Dec. 1, the same day. Padukone plays the role of Padmini, a legendary queen who committed “jauhar,” the medieval Rajput practice in which women of royal households walked into funeral fires to embrace death rather than being taken captive. Most of the anger toward the film stems from allegations that Bhansali distorted history by filming a romantic dream sequence between the film’s main protagonists. Bhansali has denied the allegations.