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Bangkok Orders More Evacuations

A Thai man prepares his boat along a flooded street at Min Buri district in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, Nov. 7, 2011. The water slowly advancing through Bangkok's northern and western neighborhoods is threatening the city's subway system, two key industrial estates and the emergency headquarters set up to deal with the flooding. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

 

Bangkok authorities widened an evacuation order in the city’s northern districts and moved to protect two industrial parks near the main international airport as floodwaters encircled the Thai capital.

Water levels rose yesterday around the Bang Chan and Lad Krabang industrial zones in eastern Bangkok, Industry Minister Wannarat Charnnukul said. Lad Krabang includes a factory operated by Honda Motor Co., which abandoned its full-year profit forecast last week after another plant was flooded.

“We won’t let them flood,” Wannarat told reporters in Bangkok. “We will do our best to give them full protection.”

Government officials gave similar guarantees last month, as floodwaters inundated seven industrial estates north of the capital, crippling global supply chains. The slow-moving pool of water edged closer to Bangkok’s central business district, reaching the northernmost station on the city’s elevated rail system and forcing fresh evacuations.

“A massive amount of water is still creeping into the city,” Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said today. “It’s a catastrophe that we can’t stop all the water, but we will drain as much as we can to minimize the impact.”

Residents were ordered to leave more areas of Bung Kum in the city’s northeast, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration said today. Thirty of the capital’s 50 districts have been flooded, said Anuttama Amornvivat, a deputy government spokeswoman, adding that more than 620,000 families may receive compensation from the government.

PTT, Thai Air

Waters more than a meter (3.3 feet) deep have moved south through Bangkok, forcing Yingluck to evacuate her flood command last week at Don Mueang airport, which sits on the city’s northern edge and mostly handles domestic flights.

The Energy Ministry, where Yingluck relocated the command on Oct. 29, is now surrounded by floodwaters. PTT Pcl, Thailand’s biggest energy company with offices in the same complex, relocated its operations on Nov. 4, and Thai Airways International Pcl began moving staff from its nearby head office as floodwaters rose, the company said yesterday.

Residents in flooded areas of Bangkok’s outskirts have sabotaged dikes protecting the inner city in the past few weeks to try to drain their neighborhoods of water, undermining government efforts to stem the water flow into the capital.

Suvarnabhumi Airport and public transport links are still operating normally. The airport’s perimeter is protected by a 3.5-meter-high dike, Airports of Thailand Pcl said last week.

Victory Monument

Bangkok officials are aiming to halt the water’s advance at the Sam Sen canal, which runs just above Victory Monument, a major traffic intersection northeast of the city center, according to Jate Sopitpongstorn, a spokesman for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. The central business areas of Silom and lower Sukhumvit are protected by two canals where water can drain out through the Chao Phraya River, he said.

Flooding worsened last month, when rainfall about 40 percent more than the annual average filled dams north of Bangkok to capacity, prompting authorities to release more than 9 billion cubic meters of water down a river basin the size of Florida. Bangkok sits at its southern tip.

Flooding this year has affected 64 of Thailand’s 77 provinces, damaging World Heritage-listed temples in Ayutthaya province, destroying 15 percent of the nation’s rice crop and flooding the homes of almost 15 percent of the country’s 67 million people, according to government data. The death toll from the disaster rose to 527, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said on its website today.

Economic Impact

The renewed threat to factories may worsen the impact of floods that have prompted the central bank to slash its 2011 economic growth forecast to 2.6 percent. The disaster is also hitting tourism, which the government estimates accounts for 7 percent of gross domestic product.

“Lower tourist arrivals will also hurt the service sector like restaurants because the floods have come at the peak of the tourist season,” Bank of Thailand Deputy Governor Suchada Kirakul said today, adding that growth may be less than 2.6 percent this year.

Tourist arrivals may fall by as much as 800,000 this year, cutting revenue by 20 billion baht ($652 million), Suchada said. The damage to industry may reach 150 billion baht, she said, compared with an initial estimate of 110 billion baht.

Bang Chan, 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) north of Suvarnabhumi Airport, contains 91 factories, including an ice-cream plant operated by Nestle SA. Unilever, Isuzu Motors Ltd. and Cadbury Plc are among those running 231 factories employing 48,000 workers at Lad Krabang, located 10 kilometers from the airport.

Rehabilitation Plan

Floodwaters have inundated seven industrial estates with 891 factories that employed about 460,000 people, according to the Thai Industrial Estate and Strategic Partners Association.

The government today outlined a plan to rehabilitate devastated areas, revive investor confidence and develop infrastructure to prevent future flooding.

Thailand will seek input from industry groups and the Japanese government to help retain investment, said Virabongsa Ramangkura, the head of the Strategic Committee for Reconstruction and Future Development, without giving details on the cost or duration of any projects.

The Government Savings Bank will provide 15 billion baht of low-interest loans to the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand and companies in industrial zones to improve flood protection. The central bank will help revive the economy “by using monetary policy,” Suchada said. Bank of Thailand policy makers are scheduled to meet on Nov. 30.

Factories in Ayutthaya may reopen starting Dec. 16 as floodwaters recede and drainage efforts begin, Yingluck said after visiting the Rojana Industrial Estate today.

“We will learn from this lesson and make sure this nightmare never happens to Thailand again,” Yingluck said.

–With assistance from Anuchit Nguyen and Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok. Editors: Patrick Harrington, Tony Jordan

To contact the reporters on this story: Suttinee Yuvejwattana in Bangkok at [email protected]; Supunnabul Suwannakij in Bangkok at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Brinsley at [email protected]

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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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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

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