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Russians Choosing a New Life in Thailand as the War in Ukraine Rages

Russians Choosing a New Life in Thailand as the War in Ukraine Rages

As the war continues to escalate between Russia and Ukraine, many Russians have moved to Thailand to invest in the kingdom’s real estate sector after spending time in the Kingdom, especially on the resort island of Phuket.

According to Thailand’s Immigration Bureau, over 370,000 Russian tourists have visited the Kingdom since January.

According to the Royal Thai Police, despite the influx, there has been no evidence that Russian criminal figures have entered the country and that most legal issues involving Russian citizens in Thailand were minor offenses such as traffic violations.

According to the Bangkok Post, Phuket, Koh Samui in Surat Thani, and Pattaya have been popular with Russian visitors, and authorities have not detected the presence of any Russian citizens who could threaten national security.

Some Russians have been convicted of minor offenses like shoplifting and traffic violations, but they are not a major issue. On the other hand, those with serious criminal records are prohibited from entering the Kingdom.

According to an Immigration Bureau insider, some Russians are staying in Thailand to avoid the fallout from the Ukraine conflict, while others may be visiting for a different reason.

Accommodation providers must notify their local immigration office of any foreigners staying there, which assists police in locating those wanted in other countries, according to Tourist Police Bureau (TPB) commissioner, Pol Lt Gen Sukhun Prommayon.

He stated that no Russian organized crime rings had been discovered amid the recent influx of visitors. Most Russians visiting Thailand are wealthy vacationers who prefer to visit seaside provinces,” he explained. A large number of tourists will benefit the economy as well.

Russians Thailand

Phuket is Popular with Russians

According to Phatthanan Pisutwimol, president of the Phuket Real Estate Association (P-REA), the real estate market in Phuket has quickly recovered because the island is popular with foreign tourists looking to escape the cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

He stated that the prospects for pool villas and horizontal property projects are improving, and condos are popular among foreign investors.

“Russians are visiting Phuket in large numbers, which has benefited the local tourism industry. They stay for one week to six months and prefer to rent pool villas, “He stated.

“Many people prefer to buy and live in pool villas rather than rent them. Tambon Choengtalay [in Thalang district], Tambon Kamala [in Kathu district], and Tambon Rawai [in Muang district] are the most popular zones.

“Many Russian investors have also purchased and resold them or rented them out to others,” Mr. Phatthanan explained.

“Russian tourists’ spending has boosted the local economy in Phuket. Local tourism-related businesses affected by Covid are quickly recovering,” he said.

Some Russians have also purchased automobiles and motorcycles and rented them to their countrymen.

According to Boon Yongsakul, vice-president of the P-REA, Russian tourists enjoy Phuket’s sea and beaches.

According to him, many Russian families are wealthy and can afford to rent houses in the island province for two to three months rather than condos with limited space.

“Rental homes on the island have been almost completely occupied since the Russians arrived. This benefits hotel maids, gardeners, swimming pool cleaners, and restaurants.

“The downside is that many foreign arrivals may cause traffic congestion, accidents, and minor law violations,” he said.

Mr. Boon also stated that Russian investors want to invest in the Phuket real estate sector because some have lived there for several years and are familiar with Thai law.

He says some are interested in investing in horizontal property projects, condos, and mixed-use property projects.

Russians Thailand

Thailand’s Weather a Plus

According to Bhunanan Patanasin, president of the Pattaya Business and Tourism Association, approximately 300 Russians arrived each day after Thailand reopened its borders and eased travel restrictions late last year, and the number has since increased to 500-700.

He says many Russian tourists spend 10-20 days in Pattaya.

“Russian tourists flock to Jomtien and Wong Amat beaches. They’re all over Pattaya. “The majority of tourists in Pattaya are Russians,” he said.

“Russian tourists spend between 3,000 and 5,000 baht daily in Pattaya. The majority of them visit beaches and go shopping. “In Pattaya, there are many signs in Russian,” he said.

Mr. Bhunanan added that many Russian tourists stay and rent condos in Pattaya for extended periods and that no Russian mafia have been discovered in Pattaya as authorities have increased crackdowns on illegal activities.

According to Mr. Bhunanan, the number of Russian tourists will decrease after this month or April as many will return home, and tourists from China and India will replace them.

He claims that the main reason Russians visit Thailand is to escape the cold weather in their home country and that the Russia-Ukraine war has little bearing.

“I organized a roadshow in Moscow, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan to promote Thai tourism, and the war had no effect. “Russia is a huge country, and the fighting scenes are far away and have little impact on the rest of the country,” he explained.

Russians were among the first foreign visitors to return to Thailand after the country reopened, according to Damrongkiat Pinitkarn, secretary of the Entertainment & Tourism Association of Pattaya City.

“Russians were the third largest group of foreign visitors to Thailand in February, according to immigration officers,” he said.

“They come in large groups to escape the cold weather and can afford to pay for travel and lodging, and Thailand can meet their needs,” he said.

According to Chayapol Intarasupha, the chief of Surat Thani’s Koh Samui district, more than 100,000 foreign visitors visited Koh Samui in January, generating more than 1.3 billion baht in revenue. According to him, Russians were the most numerous foreign tourists.

According to Ratchaporn Poolsawad, chairman of the Tourism Association of Koh Samui, Russian investors have invested in real estate, hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, and other tourism-related businesses in Surat Thani’s Koh Samui and Koh Phangan.

“Their operations are beginning to harm Thai-owned businesses by stealing foreign customers,” Mr. Ratchaporn said.

In January, approximately 8,885 Russian tourists visited Koh Samui, the highest number of foreign visitors.

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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.

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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

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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