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Rain Pounds New Zealand’s Largest City, Killing 3 And Leaving 1 Missing
(CTN NEWS) – WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Authorities reported three fatalities and one person missing after unprecedented rainfall battered New Zealand’s largest metropolis and caused significant inconvenience.
After a state of emergency was declared in the area, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins boarded a military aircraft and departed for Auckland.
According to Hipkins, our top goal is to ensure that Aucklanders are secure, have a place to live, and can access the key services they require.
He warned that a major clean-up was coming to the city and advised residents to stay inside if possible. He warned that a break in the weather might only be temporary because more torrential rain is expected.
Hipkins declared that this incident was unparalleled in recent recollection.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Hipkins sit in a military plane Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023 bound for Auckland to assess the rain and flooding damage. Torrential rain and flooding continued to cause widespread disruption to New Zealand’s largest city. (Ryan Benton/Pool Photo via AP)
The amount of rain that would ordinarily fall throughout the summer fell on Friday, making it the wettest day ever recorded in Auckland.
Some areas received more than 15 cm (6 inches) of rain on Friday night in just three hours.
Highways were stopped, and residences were flooded. At Auckland Airport, hundreds of passengers were left overnight after all flights were canceled, and some terminal areas experienced flooding.
The bodies of two men were discovered, according to the police, in flooded ditches and parking lots. After a house in the Remuera suburb was destroyed by a landslide, it was reported that rescue personnel discovered a third body.
According to authorities, one person carried away by floodwaters is still missing.
Hipkins reported that while most areas had power again, roughly 3,500 homes were still without it.

Emergency workers and a man wade through flood waters in Auckland, New Zealand, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. Torrential rain and wild weather in Auckland causes disruptions throughout the city and an Elton John concert to be canceled just before it was due to start. (Hayden Woodward/New Zealand Herald via AP)
Chest-deep water was visible in certain locations in an online video.
A video of water pouring into homes was released online by legislator Ricardo Menéndez. He wrote, “We just had to leave our house as the water was rising quickly and aggressively.”
More than 2,000 emergency calls were received, according to Fire and Emergency New Zealand, and firefighters attended to more than 700 incidents in the area.
According to district manager Brad Mosby, “We had every available career and volunteer crew on the road responding to the most serious occurrences.”
126 persons who were trapped in homes, cars, or who had been in traffic accidents, according to Mosby, were rescued by rescuers.
Despite not knowing when international flights would restart, Air New Zealand said on Saturday afternoon that it had resumed domestic flights into and out of Auckland.
Auckland Airport has been assessing the damage to our international terminal and unfortunately determined that no international flights can operate today. We know this is extremely frustrating but the safety of passengers is our top priority.
— Auckland Airport (@AKL_Airport) January 28, 2023
The airline’s chief operational integrity and safety officer, David Morgan, stated that the flooding “has had a tremendous impact on our Auckland operations.”
“We’re striving to deliver passengers to their final destinations while repositioning our employees and aircraft. Getting everything back on track can take a few days.”
After hundreds of people spent the night at the terminal, Auckland Airport reported in a series of updates on Twitter that individuals were permitted to depart the airport early on Saturday for their homes or other accommodations.
It’s been a long and difficult night at Auckland Airport; we appreciate everyone’s perseverance, the airport tweeted.
The airport noted that we can now not return your checked bags due to earlier flooding in the baggage hall. “Your airline will set up its return at a later time,” was the statement.

A truck is stopped by flood water near Auckland, New Zealand, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. Torrential rain and wild weather in Auckland causes disruptions throughout the city and an Elton John concert to be canceled just before it was due to start. (Jed Bradley/New Zealand Herald via AP)
A Friday night Elton John concert was also postponed moments before it was scheduled to begin owing to the storm. John’s second scheduled performance at the stadium on Saturday night was also postponed.
Each concert at Mount Smart Stadium was anticipated to draw around 40,000 spectators. On Friday night, thousands of people had already arrived at the venue when organizers decided to postpone just before John was scheduled to take the stage at 7:30 p.m.
The decision hadn’t been made hours before, which infuriated many concertgoers who had withstood the weather.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown rejected allegations that his administration failed to adequately convey the gravity of the issue and delayed announcing an emergency until Friday night at about 9:30 p.m.
He said that professionals advised on the timing of the emergency declaration.
Brown answered, “We’ll go over everything that happened. We must confirm that our coordination and public consultation were proper.”
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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue
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’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.

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 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.
SOURCE | CNN
News
2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
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.
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 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.
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.
SOURCE | AP
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.
(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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