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India row after LGBTQ Couple Marry in Sikh Temple

(CTN News) – The recent wedding of an LGBTQ couple in the northern state of Punjab has made news and sparked controversy as India awaits the ruling of the Supreme Court on legalising same-sex marriage.
Dimple, 27, who prefers the masculine pronoun, and Manisha, 21, who prefers the feminine, wed on September 18 with the approval of their families in the city of Bathinda; this is extremely progressive in a country like India.
What made their union even more extraordinary was that it was performed in a gurdwara, a Sikh temple, with the bride and groom carrying out all of the customary ceremonies.
Some religious officials, including the highest priest in Sikhism Giani Raghbir Singh, have spoken out against the wedding, arguing that same-sex marriage is against Sikh ideals.
He called the marriage of two women in front of the holy Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, “a severe moral and religious violation” and ordered the Bathinda gurdwara committee to temporarily remove Hardev Singh, the priest who performed the ceremony, and three others from their positions at the gurdwara.
Hardev Singh has been demoted since then. He justified his actions by saying he didn’t notice the bride and groom were both women because one of them was wearing a turban.
Dimple has disputed this, saying that they had shown the gurdwara copies of their identification documents, thus they should have known who they were.
Dimple is from the Mansa district, and Manisha is from Bathinda; both are rather out-of-the-way places where LGBTQ+ issues are not commonly discussed. They met at a garment factory in Zirakpur, a town near Punjab’s capital Chandigarh, where Dimple, an upper-caste Jatt Sikh, and Manisha, a Dalit Hindu, were both employed.
They were much like any other newlyweds I’ve ever met when I ran into them a few days after their wedding. Nearly seventy of the couple’s closest relatives attended the Anand Karaj (the Sikh wedding ceremony), as the pair told me.
Dimple wears a maroon turban and a flower garland for his wedding, as is common for Sikh grooms. Manisha, Dimple’s bride, wears a maroon and gold tunic, salwar pants, a silk scarf and several red bangles.
Dimple, who wears largely shirts and pants and keeps his hair short, claims that his parents supported him and ‘extended their support, expressing satisfaction in his happiness’ when he told them he wasn’t interested in boys.
He considered gender reassignment surgery as a child but ultimately decided against it after consulting a doctor and hearing his parents’ fears about the potential outcomes.
He first learned about the LGBTQ+ community in 2017 after relocating to Zirakpur for work. “There, I met like-minded friends who understood my situation, and I also gained awareness from YouTube,” he explains.
Dimple claims that Manisha wasn’t his initial romantic interest. For five years, I was in a committed relationship with a woman. We ended things earlier this year. After that relationship ended after three to four months, I dated someone else.
Manisha, a friend and coworker at the time, mediated conflicts between him and his girlfriend frequently.
It was then that I realised Manisha might be the ideal life mate for me. I think she liked me since we became closer and had more in-depth conversations. So, as of a month ago, we’re a couple,” Dimple explains.
Manisha claims that he proposed to her over the phone three or four days into their relationship, and that she enthusiastically accepted. To paraphrase Helen Keller, “A woman needs a life partner who understands her, respects her, showers her with love, and treats her like a child.”
However, it took some convincing before her parents would agree to her marriage to Dimple.
My mum said it’s impossible to find a girl to marry. Eventually, I was able to persuade her that if she truly cared about my happiness, she would agree to my choice of spouse. When she finally gave in, she even convinced my dad.
The wedding date was set after the parents of the couple got together. Dimple’s parents claim that they contacted the gurdwara priest in order to arrange a wedding according to Sikh custom because their son is a practising Sikh.
The couple claims they have always been open about their relationship and presents the marriage certificate issued by the Bathinda gurdwara committee as proof.
Although homosexuality was legalised in India this year, same-sex marriages are still not legally recognized. Multiple applications for marriage equality have been heard by the Supreme Court, and a decision is forthcoming.
While experts agree that it is not a crime, the lack of legal recognition for same-sex marriage in India means that Dimple and Manisha do not have the same legal protections as heterosexual married couples.
However, the Sikhism’s highest religious organization, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, claims it is looking into the possibility of infractions of religious regulations.
ORIGINAL STORY: Breaking Boundaries: LGBTQ Couple’s Sikh Temple Wedding Sparks Controversy In India

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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