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Protesters Waving Russian Flags Attack French Embassy in Niger

On Sunday, thousands of supporters of the Niger revolution marched through the streets of the city waiving the Russian flag, protesting France, the country’s former colonial power. Protesters tried to set a door at the French Embassy on fire until the army broke up the crowd.

Demonstrators in Niger openly oppose France, and some view Russia as a powerful option. The degree of Russia’s involvement, if any, in the rallies is unclear, but some protestors have carried Russian flags and posters saying “Down with France” and praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Wagner, a Russian mercenary outfit, is working in neighbouring Mali, and Russia’s influence in West Africa has grown under Putin. The officials of the new junta have not stated whether they aim to align with Moscow or with Niger’s Western friends.

targets on France and its interests, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, will not be accepted, and anyone who targets French individuals will face an immediate retaliation.

Niger

Niger a Former French Colony

Niger, a French territory until 1960, was regarded as the West’s last solid ally in the fight against Islamists in Africa’s Sahel area. France has 1,500 soldiers in the country who work along with the Nigeriens on joint missions. The United States and other European countries have aided in the training of the country’s forces.

The West African group known as ECOWAS declared an emergency meeting on Sunday, suspending relations with Niger and authorising the use of force if President Mohamed Bazoum is not reinstated within a week. The African Union has given the Niger junta a 15-day deadline to reinstall the democratically elected government.

According to the Chadian state radio station, Chadian President Mahamat Deby landed in Niger shortly after the ECOWAS meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, to spearhead mediation efforts.

In the past, ECOWAS has struggled to have a lasting impact on the region’s political challenges, but Bazoum was democratically elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence from France in 1960.

Members of the Niger military removed Bazoum on Wednesday and designated Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani as the country’s new leader on Friday, adding Niger to a growing number of military governments in West Africa’s Sahel region.

Rising extremist violence

Some mutiny leaders said they deposed Bazoum because he was unable to secure the country against rising extremist violence. However, some observers and Nigerians believe that this was merely a pretext for an internal power struggle-driven takeover.

“We couldn’t expect a coup in Niger because there’s no social, political, or security situation that would justify the military seizing power,” University of Niamey professor Amad Hassane Boubacar told The Associated Press.

He stated that Bazoum wished to succeed Tchiani as chief of the presidential guard. Tchiani, also known as Omar, was loyal to Bazoum’s predecessor, which caused complications, according to Boubacar.

The security situation in Niger is not as terrible as it is in neighbouring Burkina Faso or Mali, which are both fighting an Islamic insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State organisation. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, Niger was the only one of the three to witness a decrease in violence last year.

Some attendees at Sunday’s event warned outsiders to stay away.

“I would also like to say to the European Union, African Union, and ECOWAS, please, please stay out of our business,” Oumar Barou Moussa said during the protest. “It’s time for us to take charge of our lives and work for ourselves.” It is time for us to discuss our freedom and liberty.”

Given the millions of dollars in military aid it has received from overseas, Niger has the most at stake of any Sahel country if it rejects the West.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that ongoing security and economic cooperation with the US is contingent on the release of Bazoum, who is still under house arrest, and “the immediate restoration of democratic order in Niger.”

Macron stated on Sunday that he spoke with Bazoum and his predecessor. France froze all development and financial help to Niger on Saturday.

Niger

The EU’s reaction to Niger Coup

The 15-nation ECOWAS bloc has tried in vain to restore democracy in countries where the military has recently taken power. In West and Central Africa, four countries are ruled by military administrations, and there have been nine successful or attempted coups since 2020.

While the bloc has struggled to make a significant impact, the penalties imposed on Niger on Sunday demonstrate the urgency of the problem, according to Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow at the Clingendael Institute.

“The strenuous measures they have put in place or threatened to put in place show not only how seriously they are taking this crisis, but also the urgency that the regional body and larger international community feel in trying to force a return to normalcy that will likely prove elusive,” he said.

The EU’s reaction to Niger differs from how it handled recent coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, which did not involve the threat of military intervention if constitutional order was not restored.

It has dispatched soldiers into member countries a few times in the recent few decades.

ECOWAS engaged in Liberia during its civil conflict in the 1990s. It intervened in The Gambia in 2017 to prevent the incoming president’s predecessor, Yahya Jammeh, from disrupting the power transition. According to the Global Observatory, which provides analysis on peace and security issues, approximately 7,000 troops from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal invaded.

Economic sanctions might have a significant impact on Nigeriens, who live in the world’s third poorest country, according to the most recent United Nations data. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the country imports up to 90% of its power from Nigeria. The sanctions will halt all economic and financial dealings between ECOWAS member states and Niger.

Col. Major Amadou Abdramane, one of the soldiers who evicted Bazoum, accused the gathering of devising a “plan of aggression” against Niger and declared the country will defend itself in a televised statement Saturday.

“Tensions with the military remain high. “There could be another coup after this one, or a stronger intervention from ECOWAS, possibly with military force,” said Tatiana Smirnova, a researcher at the Centre FrancoPaix specialising in conflict resolution and peace missions. “Many actors are also trying to negotiate, but the outcome is unclear.”

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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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