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China Warns US of Conflict if Biden Doesn’t Change Course

China Warns US of Conflict if Biden Doesn't Change Course

China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang warned Tuesday that if the United States does not change course, Beijing and Washington will face “conflict and confrontation,” striking a combative tone when relations between the rivals are at an all-time low.

Beijing’s harsh language appeared to defy the Biden administrations predictions that China would abandon its aggressive diplomacy as the two countries clashed over technology and trade, Taiwan, human rights, and Ukraine.

The Biden administration’s China policy has “completely deviated from the rational and soundtrack,” Qin told reporters on the sidelines of China’s rubber-stamp legislature’s annual meeting.

“If the Biden administration continues down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails will prevent derailing, and there will undoubtedly be conflict” said Qin.

Qin’s remarks echoed leader Xi Jinping’s remarks in a speech to legislators on Monday.

“Nato countries led by the US have implemented all-round containment, encirclement, and suppression of China, posing unprecedented grave challenges to our nation’s development,” Xi Jinping was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

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He said that China must “remain calm, maintain concentration, strive for progress while maintaining stability, take active actions, unite as one, and dare to fight” in the face of this.

When asked about Qin and Xi’s remarks, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stated that the United States policy toward China has remained consistent.

“There has been no change in the United States’ posture in this bilateral relationship,” Kirby said. “The president believes that while those tensions must be acknowledged, they can be resolved. And, once again, we seek competition rather than conflict.”

Officials in the United States have grown increasingly concerned about China’s expansive political and economic goals and the possibility of war over Taiwan. Many in Washington have called for the United States to better counter Chinese influence abroad.

Concerns about China’s spying on the US and Beijing’s influence campaigns in the country have risen in recent weeks, and officials from both countries have frequently traded accusations.

After shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over American territory, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a planned visit to Beijing. The FBI has recovered the massive balloon and its payload, which included electronics and optics, from the ocean floor.

Then, last week, China reacted angrily when US officials asked whether a lab leak caused the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s Foreign Minister accused the US of “politicizing the issue” to delegitimize China.

Qin, who served as ambassador to Washington and gained a reputation as the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman for his harsh criticism of China’s critics, addressed these issues on Tuesday.

He chastised Washington for shooting down the balloon, claiming that its appearance in American skies was an accident.

“In this case, the United States perceptions and views of China are severely distorted. The US sees China as its main rival and the most significant geopolitical challenge,” Qin said. “This is like putting the first button on a shirt backward, and the result is that US-China policy collapsed.

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Qin referred to the issue as the red line that must not be crossed in Taiwan. In 1949, China and Taiwan split due to a civil war.

While the United States does not advocate for either unification or formal independence for Taiwan, federal law requires Washington to ensure that Taiwan has the means to defend itself if attacked by China.

“The United States bears undeniable responsibility for causing the Taiwan situation,” he said. Qin accused the United States of “disrespecting Beijing’s one China policy by providing the island with political support and weapons.

“Why does the Biden administration ask China not to supply weapons to Russia while continuing to sell arms to Taiwan?” Qin inquired.

Taiwan’s Defense Minister said in Taipei that the armed forces were not seeking outright conflict with China’s military but would not back down.

“It is the responsibility of the nation’s armed forces to mount an appropriate response,” Chiu Kuo-cheng told legislators.

Beijing has also accused the West of “fanning the flames” by arming Ukraine to repel a Russian invasion. China claims to be neutral in the war, but it also claims to have a “no-limits friendship” with Russia and has refused to criticize — or even refer to — Moscow’s invasion.

A Chinese call for a cease-fire in Ukraine, lauded by Russia but dismissed by the West, has done nothing to reduce tensions, as US officials have repeatedly accused China of considering providing weapons to Moscow for use in the war.

“Peace talks have been repeatedly sabotaged. “There appears to be an invisible hand pushing for the conflict’s protraction and escalation and using the Ukraine crisis to serve a specific geopolitical agenda,” Qin said.

Qin’s news conference came two days after the National People’s Congress convened for its annual meeting, a mostly ceremonial body assembled to approve government reports and, this year, a new slate of top-level appointments. This is expected to include Xi’s unprecedented third five-year term as president, as he has abolished all term limits to rule indefinitely.

Source: AP

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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.

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.

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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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