News
Bangkok’s Khao San Road Packed with Thousands of Songkran Revelers

Bangkok’s famous Khao San Road was dangerously congested with Songkran festival revelers on Thursday night, prompting Police to warn that access to Khao San Road must be restricted.
Bangkok Metropolitan Police said visitors can now only approach Khao San Road from Chakrapong Road, and all other routes to Khao San will be used as exits to effectively regulate the number of revelers participating in water activities.
If there are large crowds, authorities will temporarily close Khao San Road to allow some people to leave to prevent overcrowding. Crowd control units would be stationed there to ensure public safety, Police said.
At around 7 p.m. on Friday, local Police temporarily barred entrance to the Khao San route and advised new visitors to wait for people to gradually vacate the 400-meter street in Phra Nakhon district first. The Songkran celebrations were scheduled to take place from Thursday to Saturday.
Visitors in the area were requested to wait about 15 minutes so those inside could depart Khao San Road more easily.
Strict Control of Songkran Revelers
Due to the overcrowding on the Khao San route, authorities stopped entrance to the route at 8.50 p.m. and urged newcomers to visit neighboring Ratchadamnoen Avenue instead.
For public safety, Deputy National Police Chief Pol Gen Torsak Sukwimol stated that Police must severely enforce prohibitions on visits to Khao San Road. “Strict enforcement of regulations is for the public, not the police.” Accidents might sometimes cause harm to the entire population,” he explained.
“In response to concerns about overcrowding, measures were devised based on New Year’s celebrations here.” In an emergency, emergency exits have been constructed for Khao San Road, according to the deputy national police chief.
According to Pol Gen Torsak, official Songkran celebrations on Khao San Road will stop at 10 p.m. each night, although visitors may stay later.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha visited Khao San Road on Friday and participated in a water battle. On Friday afternoon, Gen Prayut, the United Thai Nation Party’s prime ministerial candidate, came with key party figures.
He first spoke with officials about safety precautions when he arrived at the popular Songkran celebration site. That’s when revelers began throwing water at him. The prime minister then ordered a large water gun from a follower.
Songkran Revelers Attack Prime Minister with Water Guns
His supporters tried unsuccessfully to persuade people not to shoot water in Gen Prayut’s face. Some international tourists stopped him on Khao San Road to enquire if he was the genuine prime minister and snapped his picture.
Gen Prayut said this was his first visit to Khao San Road in 15 years. He claimed to be content and to be free of weariness. He stated that the influx of visitors resulted from his attempts to expedite the country’s reopening to revive tourism following Covid-19 outbreaks.
He also stated that he had issued numerous directives to officials to ensure public safety on Khao San Road, which was clogged with visitors during the Songkran event.
Gen Prayut visited many Buddhist temples in Bangkok, including Wat Pichaiyat, Wat Rakhangkhositaram, and Wat Hong Rattanaram, to campaign for votes with local inhabitants.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) believes that up to 18.53 billion baht would be exchanged between Thai and foreign tourists over the three-day event, while the Kasikorn Research Centre estimates that Thai tourists alone will spend up to 23 billion baht.
Despite the blazing heat and pollution, prominent locations such as Tha Phae Gate in Chiang Mai, one of the country’s top Songkran celebration destinations, were packed with tourists. The traditional Songkran parade kicked off the celebrations in this northern region at 2 p.m.
The event began on Wednesday night for a party of roughly 1,000 Chinese visitors who arrived in Chiang Mai and attended a ceremonial welcome hosted by the provincial TAT office.
Tourists Arriving by Car in Northern Thailand
The tourists arrived in Thailand by automobile through Chiang Rai, Loei, Nong Khai, and Nan provinces, and at least 130,000 more are expected to follow throughout the Songkran vacation, contributing more than 1.1 billion baht in tourism-related income, according to Chiang Mai’s TAT office.
Mr. Sanga Ruengwattanakul, president of the Khao San Road Businesses Association said, approximately 50,000 people visited Khao San Road, the capital’s designated Songkran celebration spot closed to traffic.
Hundreds of municipal officials and police personnel were sent to the area to maintain security.
According to a source, being scantly clad, powder-smearing, and possessing high-pressure water cannons, firearms, or alcoholic beverages are all prohibited at this celebration location, as they are at all others.
Silom Road was not intended as a Songkran celebration venue in Bangkok, but because water play is not restricted on the road, it was packed with Thais and tourists yesterday.
Phuket Piers Crowded with Tourists
On Wednesday night, an unauthorized Songkran celebration began on Soi Bang La in the Patong neighborhood of Kathu district, one of the province’s most well-known tourist districts. Tourists, predominantly Westerners, were spotted having a good time and spraying each other with water pistols.
The Ratsada and Ao Chalong piers in Phuket were packed with Thai and foreign tourists beginning early yesterday morning.
Mr. Thiwat Sidokbuap, deputy mayor of Phuket’s municipality, many of the visitors were there for boat services that would take them in and around Phuket, including neighboring Phi Phi island in Krabi.
At 5 a.m. Tuesday, two ferry docks in Surat Thani were overcrowded crowded with tourists eager to board a ferry to the southern province’s most well-known islands, Koh Samui and Koh Phangan. According to a source, most cars spotted at these piers had Bangkok license plates.
During the Songkran period, all flights and train services from Bangkok to Surat Thani have been fully booked, and hotels on the province’s three main islands are about 80% full, according to Wichawut Jinto, provincial governor. He also said that more than Bt1.2 billion in tourism-related revenue is expected in the province.
Songkran celebrations occur day and night in Songkhla’s Hat Yai district, a vital business hub in the Lower South, particularly along Rat Uthit and Sai Sanehanuson roads.
Many of the stores were filled with visitors yesterday who had traveled from Malaysia and Singapore.
Thai, Malaysian, and Singaporean tourists were in Yala’s Betong border district’s landmark clock tower for water play and traditional Songkran events.

News
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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