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Gaza, Syria, and the West Bank are struck as Israel fights Hamas on other fronts

Gaza, Syria, and the West Bank are struck as Israel fights Hamas on other fronts

(CTN News) – As the two-week-old confrontation with Hamas threatened to escalate into a wider conflict, Israeli aeroplanes attacked targets across Gaza overnight and into Sunday, as well as two airports in Syria and a mosque in the occupied West Bank purportedly used by militants.

Since the start of the war, Israel has exchanged fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group on an almost daily basis, and emotions are high in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli soldiers have battled militants in refugee camps and carried out two airstrikes in recent days.

For days, it appeared like Israel was about to launch a ground invasion in Gaza in retaliation to Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 massacre. Tanks and tens of thousands of troops have gathered at the border, and Israeli authorities have hinted at an unspecified next stage in operations.

Gaza, Syria, and the West Bank are struck as Israel fights Hamas on other fronts

Israel issued new requests for residents to leave northern Gaza, including by dropping leaflets from the sky. It is estimated that 700,000 people have already evacuated, while hundreds of thousands remain. Any ground operation would be more likely to result in huge civilian casualties as a result.

According to Israeli military authorities, Hamas’ infrastructure and subterranean tunnel system are centred in Gaza City to the north, and the next round of the offensive would use tremendous force there. Israel claims it intends to defeat Hamas, but officials have also mentioned the possibility of establishing a buffer zone to discourage Palestinians from approaching the border.

On Saturday, 20 trucks of humanitarian aid were allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt via the Rafah crossing, the first time anything had entered the region since Israel imposed a total siege two weeks ago.

Gaza, Syria, and the West Bank are struck as Israel fights Hamas on other fronts

Aid workers claimed it was much too little to handle Gaza’s spiralling humanitarian crisis, which has displaced half of the territory’s 2.3 million people. According to the United Nations‘ humanitarian organisation, OCHA, the convoy delivered just 4% of a typical day’s imports before the war and “a fraction of what is needed after 13 days of complete siege.”

The Israeli military declared the humanitarian situation “under control,” while OCHA requested 100 trucks each day. Hospitals are running low on medical supplies and generator fuel, forcing doctors to do surgery with sewing needles, vinegar as a disinfectant, and without anaesthesia.

According to the World Health Organisation, at least 130 premature babies are at “grave risk” due to a lack of generator fuel. It stated that seven hospitals in northern Gaza had to close owing to damage from attacks, a lack of power and supplies, or Israeli evacuation orders.

Shortages of key supplies, such as ventilators, are causing doctors to restrict care, according to Dr. Mohammed Qandeel of Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital. As hospitals conserve electricity for intensive care units, dozens of patients continue to come and are treated in congested, shadowy halls.

Gaza, Syria, and the West Bank are struck as Israel fights Hamas on other fronts

“It’s heartbreaking,” Qandeel said, according to The Associated Press. “Every day, if we receive 10 severely injured patients we have to manage with maybe three or five ICU beds available.”

Palestinians in UN-run schools and tent camps are running out of food and drinking contaminated water. A power outage has rendered water and sanitation systems inoperable. According to OCHA, incidences of chicken pox, scabies, and diarrhoea are on the rise due to a lack of clean water.

Heavy airstrikes were reported over Gaza, especially in the southern portion of the coastal strip, where Israel has warned residents to flee. Several dead wrapped in white shrouds were lined up on the ground outside the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, south of the evacuation queue.

As the sound of a nearby bombing rang behind him, hospital spokesman Khalil al-Degran claimed more than 90 bodies had been brought in since early Sunday. He stated that 180 injured persons had come, the majority of whom were children, women, and the elderly who had been relocated from neighbouring places.

Israel’s military has stated that it is targeting Hamas members and installations but not civilians. According to the military, Palestinian militants fired over 7,000 rockets towards Israel, with Hamas claiming to have struck Tel Aviv early Sunday.

The military says it would increase airstrikes ahead of the “next stages of the war,” but does not elaborate.

More than 1,400 Israelis have been murdered in the conflict, the majority of them were civilians killed during the initial Hamas attack. At least 212 persons, including men, women, children, and the elderly, were apprehended and taken back to Gaza. Two Americans were released on Friday as a humanitarian gesture by Hamas.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, over 4,300 people have been murdered in Gaza. This contains the contested death toll from a hospital explosion.

Meanwhile, Syrian state media stated that Israeli airstrikes had targeted international airports in Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s northernmost metropolis. According to the report, the impacts killed one person and damaged the runways, rendering them inoperable.

Since the start of the war, Israel has carried out multiple raids in Syria, notably on airports. Individual strikes are rarely acknowledged by Israel, but it claims to be acting to prevent Hezbollah and other violent groups from getting in arms from their benefactor, Iran, which also supports Hamas.

Hezbollah reported six of its fighters were killed in Lebanon on Saturday, and the group’s deputy commander, Sheikh Naim Kassem, warned that Israel would pay a severe price if it launched a combat operation in Gaza. According to the military, Israel hit Hezbollah targets early Sunday in response to rocket firing.

Israel has announced evacuation plans for 14 more towns along the Lebanon border. Kiryat Shmona, a city of about 20,000 inhabitants, was ordered to evacuate last week.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in battles with the Israeli military, arrest raids, and attacks by Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli forces have restricted border crossings and checkpoints connecting cities, claiming that the restrictions are intended to prevent attacks.

Israel claims to have detained over 700 Palestinians since October 7, including 480 suspected Hamas members. The internationally recognised Palestinian Authority controls sections of the West Bank and works with Israel on security, but it is profoundly unpopular and has faced violent Palestinian protests.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israeli soldiers killed at least five civilians in the West Bank early Sunday. Two people were killed in an airstrike on a mosque in Jenin, which has seen intense gunfights between Palestinian militants and Israeli troops in recent months.

According to the Israeli military, the mosque compound belonged to Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had carried out numerous recent attacks and were plotting another.

According to the Health Ministry, the deaths on Sunday pushed the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank to 90 since the conflict began on Oct. 7. Most appear to have been slain in clashes with Israeli police or during violent protests.

Thirteen Palestinians, including five youngsters, and an Israeli Border Police officer were murdered last week in a skirmish in a refugee camp in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, during which Israel also launched an airstrike.

Magdy contributed reporting from Cairo, and Krauss from Jerusalem. Amy Teibel in Jerusalem, Samya Kullab in Baghdad, Bassem Mroue in Beirut, and Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria contributed to this report.

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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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