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Taliban Bans Female Staff From Working For NGOs

Taliban Bans Female Staff From Working For NGOs

(CTN NEWS) – KABUL – All domestic and international non-governmental organizations in Afghanistan were told on Saturday to stop hiring women, according to the Taliban leadership.

Who claimed that some women workers weren’t properly donning the Islamic headscarf.

Separately, they forbade women from attending religious sessions at the mosques in Kabul, the country’s capital.

The bans come only days after the Taliban forbade female students from attending nationwide universities.

These are the most recent restrictions imposed by Afghanistan’s new rulers against the rights and freedoms of women.

A classroom previously used for girls sits empty in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Since the ban was implemented, Afghan women have protested it in major cities—a rare instance of domestic unrest since the Taliban took control last year. The judgment has also sparked uproar on a global scale.

The NGO directive was issued in a letter from Afghanistan’s Economy Minister Qari Din Mohammed Hanif, who also threatened to cancel the operational license of any organization found to be disobeying the order.

Abdul Rahman Habib, the ministry’s spokesman, verified the letter’s contents to The Associated Press.

According to the ministry, it had been informed of “severe complaints” over NGO female employees who were not donning the “proper” headscarf or hijab.

It was unclear whether the directive applies to all women or Afghan women who work for NGOs.

There were questions about whether the most recent Taliban action was a prelude to a general ban on Afghan women leaving the house.

Therefore, more information was not immediately accessible.

Maliha Niazai, a master trainer with an NGO educating young people about issues including gender-based violence, described the news as “heartbreaking.” “Aren’t we all just humans? Why are they abusing us in this manner?”

The Kabul-based 25-year-old, who works for Y-Peer Afghanistan and supports her family alone, said her employment was crucial because it allowed her to serve her country.

/ BBC

“After this announcement, will the authorities still be on our side? If not, why are they stealing our food out of our lips?” She questioned.

The Norwegian Refugee Council employee, a 24-year-old Jalalabad native, described it as “the saddest moment of my life.”

She declined to provide her identity out of concern for her safety, saying, “The job gives me more than a living; it is a representation of all the efforts I’ve made.”

The UN denounced the NGO order, announcing that it would try to meet with the Taliban leadership to clarify matters.

A U.N. statement stated that “removal of women’s autonomy to determine their course of action, disempowerment, and systematic exclusion from all public spheres.

And political life moves the country backward, endangering attempts for any true peace or stability in the country.”

Afghan university students chant slogans and hold placards during a protest against the ban on university education for women, in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

In a separate proclamation, Fazil Mohammad Hussaini, a Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs spokesman, stated late Saturday that “adult girls” are forbidden from attending Islamic classes in Kabul mosques.

While they may still attend independent madrassas or religious schools.

He did not provide any additional information or clarification on the ages covered by the prohibition or how it would be applied. Additionally, it was not stated why the rule only applies to Kabul mosques.

Eyewitnesses reported that earlier on Saturday, Taliban security forces used a water cannon to scatter women in the western city of Herat who protested the prohibition on women from attending universities.

Witnesses said that some 20 women were on their way to the Herat provincial governor’s residence on Saturday to protest the prohibition, many screaming, “Education is our right,”.

When they were repelled by security personnel using water cannons.

Afghan university students chant slogans and hold placards during a protest against the ban on university education for women, in Quetta, Pakistan, Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

The woman can be seen screaming and ducking into a side street to avoid the water cannon in the video provided to the AP. They then start yelling, “Disgraceful!” as they protest again.

“Between 100 and 150 women, came from various sections of the city and assembled at the demonstration’s focal point in small groups,” according to Maryam, one of the protest organizers.

She hid her last name out of concern for negative repercussions.

She claimed that armored trucks, armed soldiers, and security were present in every square and street. “The Taliban hit us when we first began our demonstration in Tariqi Park by taking branches from the trees.

But we persisted in our objection. They stepped up their security coverage. They pulled out the water cannon around 11 a.m.”

/ Euronews

“Only four or five demonstrators,” according to Hamidullah Mutawakil, a spokesman for the regional governor.

He continued, failing to mention the women’s abuse or the water cannon’s deployment, “They had no objective; they just came here to create a video.”

The university ban has received widespread international condemnation, including from Muslim-majority nations like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

The United States and the G-7 group of major industrial nations have warned that the policy will have repercussions for the Taliban.

Nida Mohammad Nadim, Minister of Higher Education for the Taliban, first mentioned the prohibition on Thursday in an interview with Afghan state media.

He claimed that the ban was necessary to stop the mixing of the sexes at colleges and because he thought certain courses were being taught against Islamic beliefs.

“The prohibition would remain in effect until further notice,” he added.

Since taking control in August 2021, the Taliban have widely imposed their vision of Islamic law, or Sharia, despite initially pledging a more moderate government that would respect the rights of women and minorities.

/ CNBC

They have prohibited girls from attending universities as well as middle and high schools and most occupations.

In addition, women have been told to cover up from head to toe in public and prohibited from using parks and gyms.

Despite being mostly traditional, Afghan society has become more open to girls and women’s education throughout the previous two decades of a U.S.-backed administration.

Dozens of Afghan refugee students protested against the prohibition on female higher education in their country on Saturday in Quetta, Pakistan, and demanded that campuses for women be opened up right away.

One of them, Bibi Haseena, delivered a poem that described the bleak circumstances facing Afghan girls who want to pursue an education.

She expressed regret about receiving her diploma from a foreign nation when hundreds of thousands of her Afghan sisters were denied an education.

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

Google

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.

google

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.

google

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.

google

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

trump

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.

trump

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.

trump

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.

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