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Army Launches Programme to Rehabilitate Violent Students

A Thai soldier holds a cobra as teenage students take part in Thai army bootcamp training at a military camp in Lopburi province

 

Chiangrai Times – Sweat dripping from their foreheads as they complete a set of press-ups, students at a Thai army boot camp are momentary allies, but a spate of gang shootings suggests it is an uneasy peace.

Deadly rivalries between student gangs have seen several teenagers gunned down in Bangkok since the start of the school year in May, leaving the kingdom’s authorities scrambling for answers to a decades-old violent tradition.

The 150 students doing fitness drills at the army camp north of the capital come from vocational colleges — schools notorious for incubating ruthless gangs who fight for the perceived pride of their institution.

Thai teenage students take part in Thai army bootcamp training at a military camp in Lopburi province. Sweat dripping from their foreheads as they complete a set of press-ups, students at a Thai army boot camp are momentary allies, but a spate of gang shootings suggests it is an uneasy peace. AFP PHOTO / PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL

“I stabbed a student in the head,” says Pond, a pimply 18-year-old who escaped prosecution for the assault but was fined a few dollars for carrying a knife. “Sometimes I feel bad about it, but it’s what happens. We do it because it’s a legend, passed down from the seniors in our school. We do it for pride.”

The colleges prepare teenagers for a life of manual work, rather than going on to university, and the students are often viewed as low status by a society with a keen sense of hierarchy.

An epidemic of violence strikes at the start of every new school year, leaving ordinary Thais on guard for the appearance of students in public spaces, where disputes can lead to tragedy.

A bystander died after she was hit by a stray bullet in June as a group of students opened fire on a Bangkok bus in an attack that killed a rival gang member.

Guns, machetes and even improvised grenades were among an arsenal seized in a subsequent police crackdown, but the death toll has risen unabated with at least three more students killed and several others wounded since.

Bangkok police recorded more than 1,000 cases of students fighting between January and July this year, and the nationwide tally is likely to be much higher.

Desperate for a solution, Thai authorities established the boot camp, where the worst offenders are sent after consultation between their colleges and their parents.

Once there, they are forced to follow orders from no-nonsense army trainers and must live cheek-by-jowl with their sworn enemies.

Dressed in a blue jumpsuit and canvas sneakers, his hair cropped close like his peers, Pond — a nickname — explains that he was blacklisted by his school for persistent fighting and sent to the camp to reform.

He says the 5:00 a.m. wake-up calls, regular meal times and fitness drills have brought some discipline to his chaotic life, but is frank about his prospects of following a new path.

“At the moment I don’t want to fight anymore… but when I am back out there I will protect myself,” he says, fidgeting with the catch on his army-issue baseball cap.

For Zoom, a scrawny, jittery 18-year-old, fighting for school pride delivers a sense of power, belonging and respect from younger pupils.

He says trivial insults about each other’s school are enough to spark confrontation and chillingly recalls a fight last year which started after rivals swore at him from a motorcycle.

As the students passed by he reached for his knife “and slashed one of them across the head,” he says, in a description betraying no hint of remorse.

The camp interns, several marked with gruesome scars from similar knife slashings, miss cigarettes, junk food and other home comforts, but generally appear engaged and willing to team up with erstwhile rivals in tasks such as abseiling or cooking.

Their instructors have 10 weeks to break down resentment between them and hope team-building exercises and group discussions will foster friendships that last once the camp ends in September.

But after decades of brawling between the colleges, the instructors are realistic.

“Ten percent of the students are not good when they come to the camp,” explains Lieutenant Colonel Wanchana Sawasdeem, an army spokesman.

“When they leave they still won’t be good — they don’t accept the system at all. But for 90 percent it will work, even if it just means they hesitate before fighting… at least the camp will have made them think.”

While the vocational colleges churn out many success stories, a hardcore among each year gravitates towards the hyper-violence of the gangs, impressed by the tales of older pupils and even former students whose influence lingers.

“Winning fights is their way of life,” says Montree Sintawichai, a former senator and now an expert on young people’s issues who works for a charity called the Child Protection Foundation.

“The students think their victims are weak… they have little respect and little forgiveness,” Montree says.

Boot camp instructor Colonel Wijak Kesuda is happy with the bond established between the pupils and the army trainers and says that, after initial resistance, instilling a sense of discipline was a relatively easy task.

“The hard part is making them respect themselves, other people and society,” he says.

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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.

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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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