News
China Releases Wuhan Covid-19 Whistleblower from Prison

China has finally released Fang Bin a citizen journalist, who chronicled the initial Covid epidemic in the Chinese city of Wuhan, after three years in prison. Fang went missing after sharing videos of sights in Wuhan, the pandemic’s epicenter.
After going missing in February 2020, he was sentenced to three years in prison at a secret trial in Wuhan, according to China’s state media.
He was freed on Sunday and is said to be in good health. He returned to his hometown of Wuhan.
The video that drew the most attention was one in which he counted eight body bags outside a Covid hospital in five minutes. He stated that he was jailed that night but later freed. Then came a video with the message, “All people revolt – return government power to the people.” That was the final video he posted.
Although activists applauded his release, they are concerned about the fate of another whistleblower, Zhang Zhan, a 39-year-old former lawyer who was arrested in May 2020 and sentenced to four years in prison in December 2020.
According to the BBC, she, like Mr Fang, was convicted for “picking quarrels and causing trouble,” a vague charge that has frequently been employed against critics of China’s government. Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua, two additional citizen reporters, also went missing in Wuhan in February 2020, but reappeared months later.
Wuhan China Ground Zero
Their videos offered a rare glimpse into Wuhan in early 2020. Cases were piling up, and lockdowns were in effect, but information from officials was scant. Wuhan was severely strained during its 76-day lockdown, which inspired the country’s draconian zero-Covid approach.
After hearing about a resident’s experience, Ms Zhang, who lived in Shanghai, flew to Wuhan in February 2020 to report on the outbreak. She was active on YouTube and Twitter, both of which are prohibited in mainland China, and she continued to share videos despite allegedly receiving threats from local officials.
“Perhaps I have a rebellious spirit… I’m simply recording the truth. “How come I can’t tell the truth?” She stated this in an interview with an independent filmmaker obtained by the BBC.
According to the Free Zhang Zhan group, she went on a hunger strike shortly after her detention and was sometimes force-fed as her weight dropped to under 40kg (88lb). It’s unclear whether she’s still on hunger strike. Her family is unaware of her predicament.
Her brother posted images of a letter written by Ms Zhang in now-deleted tweets in December. He explained that she drew flowers on the letter to reassure their mother.
Ms Zhang’s message was largely concerned with her mother, who had recently undergone surgery and chemotherapy. She went on to say that she was treated kindly by the authorities.
Torturous lockdowns
Mr Fang’s release occurred quietly and without warning, as China attempts to recover from the pandemic. Years of torturous lockdowns and rigorous Covid restrictions took their toll, but their abrupt end late in 2022 triggered a disastrous Covid tsunami.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the country has reported 120,000 deaths since the outbreak began. Almost half of those were recorded between December 8, 2022 and January 12, 2023. However, the figures do not accurately reflect the true toll.
The Chinese Communist Party’s top authorities declared a “decisive victory” over Covid in February, boasting the world’s lowest fatality rate. They also called the country’s escape from Covid a “miracle.”
A new history textbook describes how the government “achieved major achievements in co-coordinating pandemic prevention and control.”
And, because of China’s swift and effective censorship machine, the videos and accounts shared by people like Mr Fang and Ms Zhang will likely fade from memory, if they haven’t already.
“I visited China in March, and my observations were that people there want to move forward and leave the past behind,” says Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
China’s Zero Covid Policy
“They had to put up with the draconian zero-COVID for a long time, and they now long for a return to a more normal way of life.” However, he adds, the desire to move on is also motivated by a lack of public discussion or debate.
Nobody in Wuhan has forgotten how things was in early 2020.
One 31-year-old local, who did not want to be identified, said he had never heard of Fang Bin but remembered Li Wenliang, a doctor who sought to warn the world about the coronavirus but died after contracting it. Mr Li was probed for “spreading rumours,” but he was eventually apologised to by local authorities.
He claims he frequently discusses the pandemic with his pals, even though he realises they may be in the minority.
“Society is revising the memory of this time period,” he argues. During the lockdown, he indicated he lived with his parents. His mother would be so worried that she would wash her hands so frequently that her hands cracked.
“My mother is still confused about the virus.” If the media begins to report on the virus again, she will wear a mask. She is quite terrified.”
Others, like Yang Min, lost their only child to Covid in January 2020. She believes that if officials had issued an early warning, her daughter could have been rescued.
Three years later, she is still working to hold people accountable and is attempting to sue the local government.
She is being watched, but she is not terrified, she told the BBC earlier this year.
“I’ve already lost the most valuable thing in my life.” What else is there?

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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