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Burmese Refugee Census

A boy carries a bag as Myanmar refugees arrived in a temporary camp set up at a police base on the border town of Mae Sot

 

Oblivious to the rain in the afternoon, six boys chase each other near the fence of road in Mae La, the largest of nine refugee camps along the border between Thailand and Burma.

“Please, no pictures of people,” implores a man who was nearby shelter against the wall of one of the thousands of wooden shacks along the road. Three of the children are his, but he refuses to give his name, saying only that he crossed into Thailand from Burma Karen State “more than a year ago” and has limited the field since.

View inside Mae La Camp

Acting under orders of provincial governor, Samart Loifah Tak, Thai authorities began with a staff of Mae La and Nu Mai Umpiem Pu-the other two camps in Tak province. The census is underway, with approximately 40 percent of some 140,000 Burmese refugees in Thailand are not registered.

The Thai government allowed the detection and recording of newcomers in 2005, meaning that there are around 60,000 registered refugees now inside Burma, Thailand, according to Sally Thompson, the Consortium of the border between Thailand and Burma (TBBC), a grouping of 12 NGOs to help Burmese refugees in camps in the border.

Overall, Thailand is home to a little over 96,000 registered refugees, according to figures released by the United Nations Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in its report Global Trends 2010, which was released Monday to mark the World Refugee Day. Pakistan, Iran and Syria have the largest populations of refugees worldwide at 1.9 million, 1.1 million, one million, respectively, with numbers swollen due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In general, Global Trends 2010 report says that “43.7 million people are displaced throughout the world – about entire populations of any equalingthe Colombia, South Korea and the Scandinavian countries and Sri Lanka combined.” Of this total displaced, are shown as 15.4 million refugees, 27.5 million people internally displaced by conflict, and about 850,000 are asylum seekers, according to new report.

Thailand has long been a haven for Burmese affected by oppression and war at home, with the actual number of 140,000 refugees, a figure that includes non-registered refugees, along with about three million Burmese migrants economic working in Thailand. In 2010, a total of 11. 400 refugees in Thailand were resettled in third countries, especially in the West, so that Thailand, the second highest refugee resettlement breakpoint after Nepal. Of these, 10,825 were from Burma, according to UNHCR spokeswoman Kitty McKinsey Asia.

Burma is ranked as the fifth largest country in the world’s supply of refugees, occupying about Colombia and Sudan. As the Burmese refugees in Thailand, the total output of refugees from Burma is given by UNHCR to 415,700 and “includes an estimated 200,000 unregistered people in Bangladesh,” Most Muslim Rohingya Arakan State in western Burma .

In the census of refugees Tak current governor’s comments Samart Thai and other senior officials in recent months on sending refugees back to Burma have caused consternation in the camps.

However, calls for Burmese refugees to be repatriated are premature, according to people familiar with the situation on the ground in ethnic minority regions near the border with Thailand.

“There is a conflict between the Council of State [the military dictatorship of Burma before the creation of a new civil nominally government earlier this year] and the armed ethnic groups in many regions,” said Mahn Mahn, head of the pack Health workers team, which deployed nearly 2,000 physicians and associated personnel in conflict affected regions of Burma, places where health facilities are thin on the ground, or nonexistent.

The latest wave of fighting in the northern state of Kachin has forced about 10. 000 people from their homes near the Burma-China border, while in some parts of Karen State, the source of most refugees in the neighboring province of Tak in Thailand, “the army has a shooting at sight policy, which affects both civilians and militia fighters, “said Mahn Mahn.

Since November 2010, when elections in Burma were accompanied by fighting in Karen State between the Burmese Army and various Karen factions, more than 30,000 people have been displaced, according to Sally Thompson.
“Around 6,000 of these are in temporary sites around the border,” she says, referring to new locations outside of the nine main camps.

Extensive de-mining in Karen State and in Burma’s other ethnic regions will be necessary before refugees can return to their homeland, says Saw Maw Kel, a former Karen rebel who lost part of his left leg in 1986 after standing on a landmine. He says that Karen rebels themselves plant landmines close to army locations, but the rebels tell civilians where the mines are located. He claims this is in contrast to the Burmese Army’s mines which are laid indiscriminately, affecting villages and making it dangerous to farm or work in forests.

Saw Maw Kel now runs the prosthetics department at the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, close to the Thailand-Burma border. “I have more than 200 referrals a year here,” he says, pointing to a whiteboard on the clinic wall which shows that the majority of his caseload to be landmine victims from inside Burma.

Not all of the cases he deals with are Karen or from the country’s other ethnic minorities. Than Tin, an ethnic Burman from Pegu Division, is one of the latest landmine casualties to visit Mae Tao. He lost half his right leg last January.
“I was lucky I had some friends with me,” he recounts. “One of them tied up my leg with a longyi and they all carried me to Myawaddy Hospital.” The improvised tourniquet likely saved Than Tin’s life, allowing him be taken across the border to Mae Sot for treatment.

Pointing down to his bandaged leg-stump, he says, “it is not safe in many places across the border. I went out with colleagues for a day’s work, and have not been able to work since. I nearly died.”

By SIMON ROUGHNEEN

[Press Release]

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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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.

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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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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

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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.

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

SEE ALSO:

Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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