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Pakistan High Court Delays Ruling on Imran Khan’s Appeal

Pakistan High Court Delays Ruling on Imran Khan's Appeal

The High Court in Pakistan’s capital postponed an important verdict on the recent conviction and three-year term in a fraud case against former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The Islamabad High Court will begin proceedings on Khan’s appeal on Friday, according to his lawyers.

A lower court convicted and imprisoned the former Prime Minister and prominent opposition leader on Aug. 5 for allegedly hiding assets after selling state gifts he acquired while in office. A charge Khan’s supporters say is politically motivated by the military and the United States State Department.

Imran Khan’s legal team demanded his release, claiming that the trial court punished him too quickly. The 70-year-old Khan, who was deposed in an April 2022 no-confidence vote, is currently being imprisoned at the high-security Attock prison in eastern Punjab province.

Even if Khan’s conviction is overturned, his release is improbable because other courts have revoked his bail in several cases. He has disputed the allegations of corruption, claiming that he did not break any laws.

Khan’s defence team, which includes Babar Awan, Latif Khosa, and Naeem Haider Panjutha, ended their argument during Thursday’s hearing. The court hearing was adjourned when the prosecution’s lawyer, Amjad Pervez, stated that he required three hours to oppose Khan’s appeal.

Earlier, Panjutha, Khan’s lawyer, took to X, a platform formerly known as Twitter, to express his confidence about Khan’s impending release. Khan is well-liked in Pakistan, despite his conviction and sentence. In the next elections, his opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is likely to give political opponents a difficult time.

Pakistan's Former Prime Minister Imran Khan Jailed in High-Security Prison

Unless his appeal is accepted and he is released from prison, Khan will be unable to participate in the election.

Earlier this month, Pakistan’s Election Commission barred Khan from running for office for the next five years due to his conviction and imprisonment. According to Pakistani law, no convicted individual is eligible to lead a party, run in elections, or hold public office.

Since his departure in 2022, Khan has claimed that his expulsion was the result of a plot by Washington, his successor Shehbaz Sharif, and the Pakistani military, claims that all three dispute. Sharif resigned this month after the parliament’s mandate expired.

Khan’s legal team has also petitioned Pakistan’s Supreme Court for his release. However, the Supreme Court stated that it would not hear the case until the Islamabad High Court ruled on Khan’s appeal.

The developments on Thursday come amid escalating political turbulence. The approaching election has been hampered further after the electoral supervision board announced on Aug. 17 that elections must be postponed for four months in order to redraw constituencies to reflect the recently held census.

The constitution calls for a referendum in October or November, and caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar is in charge of day-to-day operations.

Pakistan's Courts Have Hit Imran Khan With 150 Lawsuits

Imran Khan was born in Lahore to a wealthy Pashtun family and educated at prestigious schools in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, including the Royal Grammar School in Worcester and Aitchison College in Lahore.

His family included several great cricketers, including two elder cousins, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, who both served as leaders of the Pakistani national team.

Imran Khan began playing cricket in his teens in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, and he continued to play while studying philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford.

Khan made his debut for Pakistan’s national team in 1971, but he did not become a permanent member of the squad until after graduating from Oxford in 1976.

In 1996, he co-founded and led the Pakistan Movement for Justice, often known as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI). The PTI’s aspirations were to bring democracy, growth, and expertise to a country that had long been held back by military meddling, if not outright rule, and the supremacy of a few powerful political families.

Khan began to adopt a nationalist agenda that drew largely on Islamist and anti-western narratives while he stayed in political opposition for almost a decade, rebranding himself as a devoted Muslim and drawing a clear line beneath his earlier persona as a westernised continental playboy. He spoke out against the US “war on terror” and ran for office with an anti-corruption platform, but in 2014, he was accused of corruption by the co-founder of his party in a case that is still ongoing.

Many believe Khan came to power with the support of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which had dominated the country for decades – both directly through military coups and behind the scenes as the country’s political puppet masters.

The military had grown tired of the dynasties that dominated the country’s political landscape and began to hunt for a new face to rally behind. According to people in his party, Khan became the “blue-eyed boy” of the military, and by 2018, he had been elected prime minister with a small majority. Khan denies any involvement of the military in his election.

The military “called the shots” during Khan’s first few years in power, according to people within his government. Generals were given control of key elements of the government, pro-military policies were enacted, and the media was strictly regulated. Khan’s opponents were also heavily repressed, with many imprisoned.

However, cracks began to appear in the partnership in 2021. An emboldened Khan began to detest military rule and tried to fight it, claiming that his administration was being “blackmailed.” Meanwhile, the military was dissatisfied with Pakistan’s deteriorating economic status. Khan’s government openly weakened as they began to withdraw their support secretly.

Despite Khan’s best efforts to avoid a vote of no-confidence in April 2022, first by unconstitutionally dissolving parliament and then by declaring martial law, he was deposed after scores of PTI MPs dropped their support.

Read: Over 100 Arrested in Pakistan after Churches and Homes Burned

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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