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Publisher, 98 Dies from Stress After Police Raid on Local Newspaper

Publisher, 98 Dies from Stress After Police Raid Newspaper

Marion County police in Kansas defended their unusual raid on a newspaper office and the publisher’s house on Saturday by citing a provision in federal law that shields journalists from searches and seizures.

On Friday, police raided the Marion County Record, confiscating laptops and personal telephones of reporters as part of an investigation into the suspected identity theft of a restaurant owner who had a rivalry with the newspaper. Officers also raided Eric Meyer’s home, where he resided with his 98-year-old mother, Joan who was a co-publisher of the newspaper.

Joan Meyer, who was “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief,” collapsed and died, according to the newspaper.

The publication stated that it intended to file a federal lawsuit. Attorneys representing the free press and advocacy groups questioned the police justification for the raid.

“It appears that the police department is attempting to criminalize protected speech in order to circumvent federal law,” said Jared McClain, a libertarian legal firm’s attorney.

“The First Amendment ensures that publications like the Marion County Record can conduct investigations without fear of retaliation,” McClain said. “When police raid a newsroom, storm reporters’ homes, seize their property, and gain access to their confidential sources, it chills the important function of journalism.

” That is why we must hold officers accountable who retaliate against citizens who exercise their First Amendment rights.”

Newspaper withheld Publishing Story

The Marion Police Department recognised Saturday on its Facebook page that the federal Privacy Protection Act protects journalists from searches. The law, however, does not apply when journalists are accused of criminal activity, according to the department.

“The victim requests that we do everything within the law to ensure that justice is served,” the statement stated. Kari Newell, the alleged victim, operates a restaurant in Marion and was attempting to secure a liquor licence.

Newell declined to comment for this article, but linked to a statement she published on her personal Facebook page on Saturday. She claimed that someone obtained her driver’s licence number and date of birth by intercepting letters addressed to her from the Kansas Department of Revenue. This information was then used to search KDOR’s website for her driver’s licence history.

The newspaper’s publisher, Eric Meyer, stated a private source had produced paperwork proving Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and driving without a licence in 2008. A reporter utilised the KDOR website to confirm the accuracy of the material, but the newspaper decided not to print a story on it.

Instead, Eric Meyer stated that he notified local authorities of the issue. Marion police, working with state officials, initiated an investigation and notified Newell. They secured a search order from Magistrate Judge Laura Viar to look for evidence of identity theft and unlawful computer activity.

“Basically,” Eric Meyer explained, “all the law enforcement officers on duty in Marion County, Kansas, descended on our offices today and seized our server, computers, and staff members’ personal cellphones all because of a story we didn’t publish.”

Abuses of the newspaper’s legal rights

According to Newell’s Facebook post, the newspaper has a “reputation of contortion,” and “media is not exempt from the laws they blast others for not following.” “The victim shaming culture is sad and an injustice,” wrote Newell. “I’ve gotten fake reviews, nasty hateful messages and comments, and borderline threats.” The sheer volume of slander and defamation is astounding.”

The raid on Friday drew national notice and drew censure from free speech organisations.

According to Shannon Jankowski, head of PEN America’s journalism and misinformation program, law enforcement should be held accountable for abuses of the newspaper’s legal rights.

“Journalists rely on confidential sources to report on matters of vital public concern,” stated Jankowski. “Law enforcement’s sweeping raid on the Marion County Record and seizure of its equipment almost certainly violates federal law and jeopardises the paper’s ability to publish news.” Such brazen attempts to influence with news reporting cannot go unpunished in a democracy.”

According to Max Kautsch, president of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government, if evidence exists to justify an exemption to federal statute shielding journalists from searches, it will be included in the affidavit that supports the search warrant.

The Kansas Reflector petitioned Marion County District Court on Friday for a copy of the affidavit. The court has 10 days to either produce the requested document or deny the request.

“There is no reason to withhold that information,” Kautsch added. “Once the public has access to the search warrant application, it can decide for itself whether the search was justified, rather than taking the word of the agency that carried out the search.”

Eileen O’Reilly, president of the National Press Club, and Gil Klein, head of the organization’s Journalism Institute, issued a joint statement saying they were “shocked and outraged by this brazen violation of press freedom.”

“A law enforcement raid on a newspaper office is deeply upsetting anywhere in the world,” they explained. “It is especially concerning in the United States, where we have strong and well-established legal safeguards ensuring press freedom.”

Major news media outlets condemn police action

According to the Marion County Record, Joan Meyer, the publisher’s mother and co-owner of the daily, was unable to eat or sleep after officers arrived at her home.

“She wept as police carted away not only her computer and an Alexa smart speaker router, but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investment statements to photograph them,” the newspaper stated.

Joan Meyer had been “in good health for her age” before to the raid, according to the report.

The Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press also condemned the police search and demanded that all seized materials be returned.

“There appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search – particularly when other investigative steps may have been available,” the committee said in an open letter to Cody.

The letter was signed by more than 30 major news media outlets, including Reuters, the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

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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.

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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.

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.

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