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North Korea Launched Cruise Missiles Towards The Sea As Allies Stage Drills

Cruise Missiles

(CTN NEWS) – South Korean military claimed North Korea launched cruise missiles towards the sea on Wednesday, three days after the North carried out a simulated nuclear attack on South Korea in protest of military manoeuvres with the US.

North Korea has increased its nuclear testing, claiming that it is in retaliation to ongoing South Korean-US military exercises that it regards as an invasion rehearsal.

Experts believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plans to expand his arsenal to gain bigger exterior concessions while also attempting to project a strong leader image amid domestic economic woes.

The 11-day drills between South Korea and the United States are set to conclude on Thursday.

But, North Korea is expected to continue its nuclear tests, since the US is allegedly planning to send an aircraft carrier to South Korea for another round of military drills in the coming days.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea stated they had detected “multiple” cruise missile launches from the North’s eastern coastline town of Hamhung.

It said the missiles went into waters off the North’s east coast, and that South Korean and US intelligence officials were investigating further.

The launches represent the North’s sixth round of missile tests this month and the fourth since the United States and South Korea began large-scale military drills, which include field exercises and computer simulations, early last week.

Since 2018, this has been the largest field training of its sort.

U.S. And South Korean Forces Began Large-Scale Military Exercises

The Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that the South Korean military would maintain its readiness and successfully finish the remaining drills with the US.

North Korea maintains a large stockpile of ballistic missile systems, the testing of which is prohibited by successive United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Because of North Korea’s previous ballistic missile and nuclear test explosions, the United Nations has authorized eleven rounds of sanctions against the country since 2006.

The United Nations Security Council has not barred North Korea from conducting cruise missile tests.

Nonetheless, experts believe they continue to represent a severe threat to their neighbours since they are engineered to fly at a lower height to avoid radar detection.

According to experts, the primary goal of North Korean cruise missiles in the event of a conflict is to target US aircraft carriers or other large enemy ships.

North Korea has referred to certain of its cruise and ballistic missiles as “strategic” weapons, implying that it intends to equip them with nuclear warheads.

International experts disagree on whether the North has cleared the remaining technological challenges required for operational nuclear missiles.

North Korea’s state media did not immediately confirm the launches on Wednesday.

It did, however, include a statement by senior Foreign Ministry official Jo Chol Su protesting recent US diplomatic efforts at the UN Security Council to pressure the North to denuclearize.

North Korea, according to Cho, will regard any outside attempt to force it to hand over its nuclear weapons as a “declaration of war.”

North Korea Tested 2 Cruise Missiles On March 12 From A Submarine

He stated that North Korea will respond sternly to such an attempt by its escalatory nuclear strategy.

North Korea has prolonged its provocative run in military demonstrations in 2023, launching roughly 20 missiles in 10 separate events, following more than 70 missile launches last year – the highest amount for a year.

This year’s tests comprised short-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles capable of targeting South Korea and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of attacking the United States mainland.

North Korea tested two cruise missiles from a submarine on March 12, the day before the South Korea-US drills began.

North Korea launched four long-range cruise missiles last month, demonstrating the ability to strike targets 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) distant.

On Sunday, Kim oversaw the launch of a short-range ballistic missile from what appeared to be a silo built into the earth.

State media described it as a mock nuclear attack on unspecified South Korean locations intended to deliver a “stronger warning” to the US and South Korea about their drills.

According to North Korean propaganda, a dummy nuclear warhead mounted on the rocket detonated 800 metres (2,600 feet) above ocean, an altitude some experts believe was chosen to maximise damage.

North Korea Intended To Threaten South Korea And the United States

Although North Korea has previously claimed to have undertaken simulated nuclear strikes on its competitors, this was the first time it publicly disclosed such an altitude for detonating a nuclear warhead.

By sharing such information, North Korea intended to threaten South Korea and the United States.

Kim told state media last week that the country’s longest-range Hwasong-17 ICBM test was aimed to “strike dread into the adversaries.”

The North’s testing spree suggests that Kim is emboldened by his growing nuclear arsenal. North Korea passed legislation last year authorising the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

South Korea and the United States have responded by increasing joint military exercises.

The Defense Ministry in Seoul announced earlier Wednesday that South Korea and the United States are planning a large-scale live-fire exercise in June.

As part of ongoing joint exercises, South Korean and US troops conducted live-fire training near the North Korean border on Wednesday.

According to Col. Brandon Anderson, deputy commanding officer of the 2nd Infantry Division, the drills were defensive.

“We’re going to keep doing it,” he remarked. “That is what we expect to accomplish and be good at in conflict.”

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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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