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China’s Former President Jiang Zemin Dies at 96

China's Former President Jiang Zemin Dies at 96

Jiang Zemin, China’s former leader who led the country through a transformational era from the late 1980s to the new millennium, died Wednesday at the age of 96, according to China’s state news agency.

Jiang took power in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and guided the world’s most populous country to its emergence as a global powerhouse.

“Jiang Zemin died on Wednesday at the age of 96 due to leukemia and multiple organ failure in Shanghai at 12.13pm on Nov 30, 2022,” Xinhua reported.

When Jiang took over as President in 1989, China was still in the early stages of economic modernization.

During his presidency, China’s economy grew at a 9% annual rate, with military spending increasing at a 15% annual rate.

Jiang also presided over Hong Kong’s return to China from Britain in 1997, after more than 150 years of British rule, despite the fact that the territory’s return had been negotiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1984.

By the time he stepped down as president in 2003, China had joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and was well on its way to becoming a superpower.

Analysts believe Jiang and his “Shanghai Gang” faction remained influential in communist politics long after he left the top job. His wife Wang Yeping and two sons survive him.

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China’s 70th anniversary of founding

Jiang was last seen in public in October 2019, alongside other former leaders, at Tiananmen Square for a military parade commemorating the People’s Republic of China’s 70th anniversary of founding.

Under Jiang’s leadership, China weathered the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, joined the WTO in 2001, and won the bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Jiang counted the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 after more than 150 years of British rule as one of his proudest achievements, even though the territory’s return had been mediated by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1984.

More significant was most likely his “Three Represents,” a progressive theory with an enigmatic name that helped shape modern China by inviting entrepreneurs – once regarded as the running dogs of capitalism – to join the party.

On the invitation of the late monarch, then-President Jiang Zemin paid a state visit to Thailand in 1999. (Photo courtesy of Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)

Despite rumors that he wanted to stay in power, Jiang stepped down as party leader in 2002.

He handing over the reins to Hu Jintao in China’s first bloodless leadership transition since the 1949 revolution.

His guests, who expected a polished, urbane president, were met instead by a gregarious ex-automobile factory manager who would occasionally burst into song, recite poems, or play musical instruments.

“He had a unique sense of style that could be a little too extravagant at times. I believe he was a better human being than Hu Jintao “Jean Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, agreed.

“Jiang Zemin was more willing to be natural, even if it could be perceived as vulgar and not very sophisticated at times.”

Deng chose the Soviet-trained technocrat, who was serving in Shanghai at the time, to take over the reins of power.

Jiang was widely regarded as a centrist candidate when he took over for reformer Zhao Ziyang, who had been deposed by hardliners for sympathizing with the democracy movement crushed by the army around Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

Many compared Jiang to Mao’s chosen successor, Chairman Hua Guofeng, who was deposed by Deng in the late 1970s after only a few years in power. But Jiang persisted, adding the presidency to his resume in 1993.

Jiang, eager to persuade neighbouring, self-ruled Taiwan to accept Chinese sovereignty, threatened the island with war games and missile tests in the run-up to its first direct presidential election in 1996, severing bilateral relations for more than a decade.

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Jiang travelled to the United States for the first time in 1997.

“American poet Longfellow once wrote, ‘But to act that each tomorrow finds us farther than today… Act, act in the living present,'” he said in English to then-US President Bill Clinton.

“We should follow the trend of the times, respond to people’s will, and continue our march forward toward the establishment and development of a constructive, strategic partnership,” he said.

Jiang oversaw crises in Sino-US relations following the 1999 NATO bombing of Beijing’s embassy in Belgrade and the 2001 collision in Chinese airspace of a Chinese jet fighter and a US spy plane, which brought bilateral ties to their lowest point since diplomatic contact was re-established in 1971.

Jiang was one of the few world leaders to meet US President George W. Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch in 2002.

– The economy is booming, but unrest is looming –

Jiang’s transformation of China was fraught with difficulties. Political reform stalled, and liberties were restricted.

Year after year, Jiang presided over spectacular growth, but the wealth gap widened, corruption worsened, and social unrest grew, forcing his successor, Hu, to champion society’s have-nots.

On December 2, 2002, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, right, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. (AFP photo)

China’s Falun Gong spiritual group declared a cult by Jiang

On Tibet, Jiang was hesitant to deal with the exiled spiritual leader of the region, the Dalai Lama, who had appointed a six-year-old boy as the second most senior monk in Tibetan Buddhism.

In 1995, China placed the child under house arrest and appointed another boy as the 11th Panchen Lama.

Jiang also declared the Falun Gong spiritual group a cult in 1999, following a siege of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing by 10,000 of its members.

Jiang took many cues from the late Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China.

He didn’t do much to dispel the comparison. Floats carrying giant portraits of Mao, Deng, and Jiang passed Tiananmen Square during the People’s Republic’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 1999.

Mao demonstrated his fitness by swimming in the Yangtze River in 1966. Jiang visited the United States in 1997 and went swimming at Hawaii’s Waikiki beach.

Many Chinese regard Mao as a gifted poet. In 1999, one of Jiang’s poems was featured on the front pages of several newspapers.

Jiang, like Mao, wore his pants above his waist and brushed his hair back.

He enjoyed singing and would occasionally engage in spontaneous sing-alongs with foreign leaders. He could also lose his cool.

In 2000, the usually jovial president chastised Hong Kong journalists for questioning whether the territory’s then-leader, Tung Chee-hwa, was “the Emperor’s choice” to serve a fifth five-year term.

“Do you know that the media needs to improve its knowledge? Your questions are overly simple, even naive!” Jiang yelled.

While China was economically successful under Jiang, it was politically stagnant. Fear of instability following the Tiananmen Square protests and the collapse of the Soviet Union stifled reform debates in the 1980s.

Nonetheless, he earned a place in China’s socialist pantheon. In 2002, his “Three Represents” theory was incorporated into the party constitution, alongside the revered Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

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Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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