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Hamas Fighters And Israeli Forces Clash In Gaza As Conflict Escalates

(CTN NEWS) – Hamas fighters and Israeli forces clashed in limited engagements within Gaza on Sunday as the Israeli military intensified airstrikes on the Palestinian territory, preparing for what it described as the “next stage” of its conflict with the militant group.
Hamas reported that its fighters had destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush near Khan Younis in Gaza, forcing Israeli troops to withdraw without their vehicles.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that its forces had been operating within Gaza during the incident and that an IDF tank had struck militants who fired on its troops.
This episode appeared to be one of the first ground skirmishes between the two sides inside the Gaza Strip since the conflict began following Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7, resulting in over 1,400 casualties.
These clashes occurred as the IDF amassed a significant number of troops at the Gaza border and continued relentless airstrikes on the densely populated enclave in the past two weeks.
Hospitals in Gaza reported being overwhelmed with casualties on Sunday, with one describing the day as “bloody.”
Another hospital had to reduce dialysis treatments due to shortages of electricity and fuel.
Since Israel’s response to the Hamas attack more than two weeks ago, over 4,600 people in Gaza have lost their lives, according to the Gazan health ministry.
The situation has become so dire that some parents in Gaza have resorted to writing their children’s names on their legs to aid in identification in the event of their deaths.
A CNN journalist documented the heartbreaking scenes at the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where a toddler and three children were seen lying lifeless on stretchers with their names written in Arabic on their calves.
It remains unclear whether the parents of these children also survived.
The US government has urged Israel to postpone its ground operations in Gaza, with the aim of facilitating the release of more Hamas hostages and providing humanitarian aid to Gaza.
This request comes in the wake of Hamas releasing two Americans who had been held captive.
There are around 200 hostages believed to be in Hamas’ custody following the militant group’s recent attacks.
While Israel has not provided a specific timeline for a potential ground offensive in Gaza, military officials have made it clear to troops that an incursion is imminent.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari announced on Saturday that Israel would increase its airstrikes, reduce the risk to its troops, and intensify the strikes in preparation for the next stage of the conflict.
An IDF soldier died during preparations for the Gaza ground operation, and three others were injured, according to an Israeli Defense spokesman.
The US and its allies have advised Israel to be clear and strategic about its objectives during any ground operation in Gaza, emphasizing the need to avoid a prolonged occupation and minimize civilian casualties.
The leaders of Spain and the Netherlands spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, expressing support for Israel while calling for restraint.
UN independent experts have raised concerns that Israeli actions in Gaza could lead to “crimes against humanity.”
They highlighted the complete blockade of Gaza, along with unfeasible evacuation orders and forced population transfers, as violations of international humanitarian and criminal law.
The experts described these actions as unspeakably cruel in a statement issued on Thursday.
Increasing Violence
Israel’s military conducted a series of airstrikes on Hamas targets in northern Gaza late on Sunday, marking one of the most sustained bombardments in the region.
According to CNN’s Nic Robertson, who has been reporting from southern Israel for the past two weeks, this escalation was notable.
While the US and Qatar have been working on efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, a senior Israeli official firmly rejected the possibility of a ceasefire, emphasizing that humanitarian efforts should not deter the mission to dismantle Hamas.
Violence has also flared in the occupied West Bank.
On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched an airstrike on the Al-Ansar mosque in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, citing its use by militant groups for planning an “imminent terror attack.”
This incident, if confirmed to be from a fighter jet, would be the first such strike in the West Bank in nearly two decades.
According to Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an IDF spokesman, the military had intelligence suggesting that a joint Hamas and Islamic Jihad squad was preparing for an imminent attack from an underground command center beneath the mosque.
The strike resulted in the death of three people, as reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on Sunday.
Additionally, clashes in the West Bank cities of Toubas and Nablus led to two fatalities, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The IDF also acknowledged an accidental incident in which an Israeli tank hit an Egyptian post near the two countries’ border, resulting in minor injuries to Egyptian border guards.
The IDF expressed regret for the incident and is conducting an investigation.
Kerem Shalom, one of Israel’s border crossings with Gaza, remains closed due to a “complete siege” imposed by Israel since the beginning of the conflict.
The area was previously targeted on October 7 when Hamas militants engaged in violence against civilians after breaching the Gaza border.
Since the outbreak of the conflict, Israeli authorities have imposed further restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, leading to a surge in attacks by Israeli forces and settlers.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that at least 90 individuals have been killed in the occupied Palestinian territory since October 7.
Telling Hospitals To Evacuate
In Gaza City, the IDF dropped leaflets written in Arabic, urging residents to evacuate southward to avoid potential association with the terrorist organization, Hamas.
The IDF confirmed the distribution of these flyers but emphasized that there was no intent to label those who hadn’t evacuated as members of the terrorist group.
The IDF clarified that it distinguishes civilians and does not target them.
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have resulted in significant destruction, including schools and mosques.
Israel contends that it is targeting Hamas facilities and alleges that the group uses civilians as shields.
As of Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that Israeli airstrikes had caused the deaths of 4,651 individuals, including over 1,900 children and 1,023 women. More than 14,245 people have sustained injuries.
In northern Gaza, over a million residents received instructions from Israel to relocate to the south.
Additionally, Israel has ordered the evacuation of over 20 hospitals in northern Gaza, where thousands of patients are receiving treatment.
Humanitarian organizations, such as the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent, argue that these orders could effectively be a death sentence for those patients, as they lack the means to safely relocate critically injured individuals.
The IDF maintains that it does not target hospitals, but international organizations like the UN and Doctors Without Borders assert that Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
Dr. Iyad Issa Abu Zaher, Director General of Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza, described the dire situation, characterizing it as a “bloody day.”
The hospital received a substantial number of bodies and admitted more than 300 injured individuals.
Dr. Abu Zaher noted the overwhelming number of injuries, limited space, and the catastrophic situation, with injured patients waiting for medical attention outside operating theaters and piled on top of one another.
insufficient Aid
CNN observed that at least 14 relief aid trucks, backed by the Egyptian Red Crescent and the United Nations, entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Rafah crossing on Sunday evening.
A Palestinian Red Crescent Society official in Gaza confirmed that the trucks were allowed entry, and their contents were offloaded to proceed to UN storage facilities in Gaza.
However, the trucks did not transport fuel, which is essential for operating hospitals and water treatment facilities in the isolated territory, according to UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma.
This delivery follows the initial convoy of 20 trucks that carried food, water, medicine, and medical supplies into Gaza on Saturday.
While this aid is essential, aid workers and international leaders emphasize that much more is needed to address the “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis in Gaza, home to over 2 million people.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has emphasized that the aid Gaza has received falls far short of its actual needs.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza noted that the initial aid convoy accounted for only 3% of the daily health and humanitarian requirements that used to enter Gaza before the conflict.
One UN official warned on Sunday that the UN’s fuel supply in Gaza will run out in three days, threatening water, hospital operations, and food distribution.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) stated that it urgently requires $74 million to sustain its emergency response in Gaza for the next 90 days, citing severe shortages of food, water, power, and medical supplies pushing civilian lives to the brink of catastrophe.
Wider Conflict
As the Israeli military prepares for the next stage of the conflict, they have issued warnings to regional actors not to become involved in the ongoing conflict.
IDF spokesperson Conricus emphasized that the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is “playing a very dangerous game” that could potentially draw Lebanon into a war with no benefit.
Hezbollah has been reportedly attacking Israeli positions near the Lebanon border, resulting in civilian and military casualties.
In response, the IDF has launched counterattacks utilizing tanks, drones, artillery, and infantry to target Hezbollah infrastructure and squads operating anti-tank missiles.
Furthermore, Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the IDF have expanded a state-funded evacuation plan to include 14 additional communities in northern areas near the Lebanon border.
The voluntary evacuation plan, initially rolled out for 28 communities, had already led to the evacuation of approximately 123,000 civilians from their homes in northern and southern Israel by Friday.
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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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