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Morocco’s Earthquake Death Toll Surpasses 2,800, Hunt for Survivors Continues

The death toll from Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in more than six decades has risen to over 2,800, with rescuers racing against the clock to locate survivors. While King Mohammed of Morocco was in France on a private visit.

Search and rescue teams from Spain, the United Kingdom, and Qatar were assisting Moroccan efforts after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake slammed the High Atlas Mountains late Friday, with the epicenter 72 kilometres (45 miles) southwest of Marrakech.

According to state television, the dead toll has increased to 2,862, with 2,562 people injured. The traditional mud brick buildings that were common in the area, according to rescuers, limited the odds of locating survivors because they had disintegrated.

The first response to the earthquake, which some survivors regarded as overly slow, looked to be picking up on Monday, with tent camps developing in some spots where people were ready for a fourth night outdoors.

The authorities have not published any estimates for the number of individuals missing because much of the seismic zone is in difficult-to-reach places.

Morocco’s cultural legacy has suffered progressively. Buildings in Marrakech’s old centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, suffered damage. The quake also severely damaged the historically significant 12th-century Tinmel Mosque.

Residents of Tinmel, a small town near the epicentre where 15 people were killed, said they had been sharing food, water, and medicine but were in severe need of tents and blankets to keep warm through the chilly mountain evenings.

According to the US Geological Survey, it was the worst earthquake in the North African country since 1960, when a tremor killed at least 12,000 people, and the mostMorocco

Government spokesperson Mustapha Baytas defended the government’s response in a televised broadcast on Sunday, claiming that every effort was being made on the ground.

The army said it was bolstering search-and-rescue teams, giving food, tents, and blankets, and supplying drinking water.

On Monday evening, a main road connecting the High Atlas Mountains to Marrakech became impassable as heavy vehicles and volunteers carrying relief supplies made their way to some of the severely impacted communities in remote sections of the mountains.

Moroccan volunteers and residents, with the assistance of some foreigners, directed traffic and cleared the road of rock debris.

Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch informed local media that the government will pay victims, although he didn’t go into specifics.

According to two officials acquainted with the arrangement, the Moroccan government intends to proceed with the International Monetary Fund-World Bank annual meetings set for next month in Marrakech.

Morocco has received aid from Spain and the United Kingdom, which both dispatched search-and-rescue teams with sniffer dogs, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. According to state television, the administration may accept rescue proposals from other countries later.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco

King Mohammed of Morocco Living the life in France

Meanwhile, Morocco’s King Mohammed was on a private vacation to France when the terrible earthquake struck on Friday, and he issued a statement only after returning to Rabat the following day.

His absence drew attention on his lavish lifestyle in France, where he frequently spends time. In 2020, he purchased a property in Paris’s trendy 7th arrondissement, near the Eiffel Tower, from Prince Khalid bin Sultan Al Saud, a member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family and a former deputy defence minister.

The price was never disclosed, but the property was estimated to be worth €80 million (£68.6 million). At the time, Marie-Hélène Lundgreen, the manager of the estate agency Belles demeures dé France, an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate, told Le Figaro that it could have sold for more.

The ten-bedroom estate, built in 1912, contains a swimming pool, a games room, a spa, a hair salon, a conference room, a 3,300-square-foot garden, and a large terrace with a spectacular view of Paris.

The king also owns the Château de Betz, which is located approximately 35 miles northeast of Paris. The 18th-century property, purchased by his father, King Hassan, in 1972, was reconstructed during the First World War and features a walled park and gardens regarded as among the most beautiful in France.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco

According to residents, Mohammed visits the château frequently, perhaps multiple times per year. They rarely see the monarch himself, but his retinue and bodyguards are always visible.

He keeps thoroughbreds at the chateau’s stables and occasionally enters them in races at neighbouring Chantilly.

Despite the king’s visits to France, Paris and Rabat have had a strained relationship in recent years, and Morocco has declined offers of earthquake relief from its former colonial power.

The French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, played down the possibility of a schism, emphasising on Monday that it was up to Morocco to seek assistance.

The country’s ambassador post in Paris has remained vacant for months, and President Macron’s visit to Rabat has been postponed multiple times.

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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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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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