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Indian Tax Department Searches BBC Offices For 2nd Straight Day

BBC

(CTN NEWS) – NEW DELHI – According to some employees, tax inspectors in India conducted a second day of office searches and questioned staff about the BBC’s commercial activities in the nation on Wednesday.

After they could leave the office on Tuesday night, BBC management instructed editorial and other employees to work from home, according to colleagues who spoke on the condition of confidentiality as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The searches were conducted a few weeks after the BBC in the UK aired a program that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Investigators searched several employees’ PCs despite earlier instructions not to use their phones and to set them aside, according to staff members, who said there was no overnight break in the investigation.

Private security guards close the gate of a building housing the BBC office in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Since the searches were started at the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday morning, Indian income tax officials have not released any statements.

According to the Press Trust of India news agency, the officials were reportedly creating copies of the organization’s financial data on paper and in electronic form.

Rights organizations and opposition parties criticized the Income Tax Department of India’s action as an attempt to intimidate the media.

The national broadcaster of Britain, which is publicly funded, stated that it cooperated with law enforcement and intended “to have this problem handled as soon as possible.” The BBC said employees were still present at the two locations late in the evening.

It added: “Our output and journalism continue as normal. Many staff members have left the building, but some have been asked to stay and continue to comply with the ongoing inquiries.”

Media personnel report standing outside a building housing BBC office in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023.(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

We are aware of the search of the BBC headquarters in Delhi by Indian tax authorities, according to U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Tuesday. However, the British government has not yet issued a statement.

“We believe that a free press should exist everywhere. We never stop emphasizing the value of freedom of speech and freedom of religion or belief as fundamental human rights that support and build democracies all around the world.

This country’s democracy has been strengthened as a result. India’s democracy has grown stronger as a result; Price told reporters in Washington.

The income tax “surveys” conducted at the BBC offices drew criticism from India’s News Broadcasters and Digital Association.

The group stated that while it “maintains that no institution is above the law, it opposes any attempt to gag and intimidate the media and interfere with the free functioning of journalists and media organizations.”

India: The Modi Question

According to Gaurav Bhatia, a spokesman for Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the BBC shouldn’t be concerned as long as it abides by Indian law.

Without providing further details, he stated that the broadcaster’s history is “tainted” and “full of hatred” towards India and corrupt.

Last month, the documentary “India: The Modi Question” was aired in the U.K. It focused on the prime minister’s involvement in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, a western state, in 2002 while he was Gujarat’s chief minister.

In the fighting, more than 1,000 people died.

The Supreme Court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges against Modi, despite his denials of claims that the authorities acting under his watch permitted and even encouraged the violence.

The court dismissed a Muslim victim’s appeal challenging Modi’s dismissal last year.

The BBC website states that the second part of the two-part program “examined the track record of Narendra Modi’s government following his re-election in 2019.”

An armed security person stands stand guard at the gate of a building housing BBC office in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

The program immediately garnered criticism from the Indian government, which used emergency powers granted to it by the country’s information technology laws to prevent it from being broadcast there.

Local law enforcement rushed to halt planned screenings at Indian institutions, while social media sites like Twitter and YouTube agreed with orders from the government to take down links to the video.

The documentary, according to the BBC at the time, was “rigorously researched” and featured a variety of viewpoints.

The Indian Government was allowed to respond to the issues brought up in the series, but it declined, according to the statement.

According to India’s Foreign Ministry, the documentary was an unobjective “propaganda work aimed to sell a particularly discredited narrative.”

In recent years, there has been a continuous deterioration in press freedom in India. According to Reporters Without Borders’ 2022 Press Freedom Index, the nation dropped eight spots to position 150 out of 180.

Private security guards stand outside a building housing BBC office, in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Media watchdog organizations claim that the Modi administration has silenced social media criticism by a broad internet law that places Twitter and Facebook directly under the executive branch’s control.

Tax searches have been carried out on a few media outlets that criticize the administration.

On the same day in 2021, police raided the offices of the left-leaning website NewsClick and the independent media outlet Newslaundry

In 2021, tax authorities also charged the Dainik Bhaskar newspaper with tax evasion after it ran articles on mass funeral pyres and floating corpses that questioned how the government handled the COVID-19 outbreak.

When it conducted a raid on the premises of New Delhi Television, a channel noted for its liberal slant, in 2017, the government’s investigation department claimed to be looking into cases of loan defaults.

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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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