News
Tour Packages in Thailand Jump 20% as Chinese Tourists Arrive

Days after Chinese tourist started arriving in Thailand after a 2 year hiatus, tour packages for Chinese visitors have increased by 20% siting a lack of tours and high demand, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand
According to Chuwit Sirivejkul, TAT’s regional director for marketing in East Asia, with pent-up demand from the Chinese market, most tourists will opt for independent travel as the Chinese government continues to prohibit tour operators from conducting outbound group tours.
According to him, the limited number of tour packages is due to fewer flight connections between the countries and unprepared tour agents in China. According to Mr Chuwit, package prices are 20% higher on average than before the pandemic.
Many airlines, he said, are working to increase flights in the first quarter.
According to Mr Chuwit, there are currently 344,446 confirmed seats with an 85% load factor on each flight from China, which could help carry 320,397 Chinese tourists to Thailand by March.
He stated that tourism operators in secondary cities could benefit from Chinese tourists, particularly repeat visitors looking for new destinations.
Mr Chuwit stated that challenges remain in terms of preparedness, such as developing a positive attitude toward Chinese tourists, Chinese language skills, and online payment platforms that are compatible with Chinese users.
“Today is an excellent opportunity for us to develop our supply ahead of competitors,” he said.
The TAT intends to launch a tourism campaign dubbed “China is Back” in order to attract more wealthy tourists.
Mr Chuwit also stated that the agency wishes to collaborate with popular Chinese travel platforms such as Trip.com, Fliggy, and Qunar in order to stimulate the market.
Use of Chinese Social Media Sites
The Thai Hotels Association (TAT) urged Thai hotels to prepare by using Chinese social media for direct sales, such as WeChat and Douyin, and enabling online payment services such as Alipay, UnionPay, and WeChatPay, at an online conference hosted by the TAT.
According to Nonglux Yooyendee, director of TAT’s Shanghai office, more Chinese tourists are looking for all-inclusive packages that include local experiences, lodging, and flights.
According to Boonrapee Damrongrat, director of TAT’s Guangzhou office, hotels must redesign their services to meet individual demand, particularly the family segment, by developing hotel apps that can customize services for each guest and preparing activities such as game rooms and children’s playgrounds.
According to Rungtip Bookkhuntod, director of TAT’s Kunming office, a number of Chinese tourists will visit by land and sea via caravan tours, river cruises, and high-speed trains.
The agency is assisting Chinese tour operators in offering caravan and cruise tour packages, as well as those taking the Kunming-Vientiane high-speed rail in the second quarter, when Beijing is expected to permit cross-border train travel.
Meanwhile, according to the Department of Disease Control, the arrival of more Chinese tourists in Thailand is unlikely to result in an increase in the number of new Covid-19 infections (DDC).
The department stated that it will assess the situation with coronavirus infections in two weeks.
Chinese don’t pose Covid threat
The average caseload is currently 900 per day, with the number of Covid-19 patients in critical condition and requiring a respirator decreasing, according to DDC director-general Dr Tares Krassanairawiwong on Wednesday.
According to him, the virus is now killing eight people every day in the country. Furthermore, the number of cases after the New Year’s holidays has been lower than expected, he said.
Tourism businesses have been preparing for an influx of Chinese tourists since the country lifted quarantine measures over the weekend. They and their employees have been fully vaccinated and have been following the universal prevention measures, according to Dr Tares.
Because a large number of Chinese are expected to visit religious sites, the DDC is collaborating with the Ministry of Culture and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to ensure that safety precautions are in place.
Body temperature scanners have been installed at international airports, and disease control personnel have been deployed to provide health advice to travelers who are infected or suspected of being infected with the virus, he said.
Dr Tares stated that the same Covid-19 measures imposed on air travelers will apply to other foreign and Thai nationals entering Thailand by land through border provinces such as Chiang Rai.
Tourists from countries such as India and China, where a negative RT-PCR Covid-19 test is required before they can return home, must still have health insurance that covers at least US$10,000 (335,400 baht) in Covid-19 treatment costs before entering Thailand, he added.
The DDC has designated at least two Covid-19 vaccination centers in Bangkok, as well as one in each of Phuket, Chon Buri, and Chiang Mai.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is estimated to cost 800 baht and the Pfizer vaccine is estimated to cost 1,000 baht.
According to Dr Tares, 300,000 Chinese tourists are expected to arrive in the next three months, accounting for about 5% of international arrivals.
Suksan Kittisupakorn, deputy clerk, stated that the BMA and the Ministry of Public Health have prepared over 10,000 hospital beds for new Covid-19 patients.

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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