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Thailand Celebrates the Coronation of King Maha Vajiralongkorn
BANGKOK – Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn was officially crowned Saturday amid the splendor of the country’s Grand Palace, taking the central role in an elaborate centuries-old royal ceremony that was last held almost seven decades ago.
The coronation represents a renewal of the monarchy’s power after the October 2016 death at age 88 of Vajiralongkorn’s revered father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
After completing the rites, Vajiralongkorn issued his post-coronation royal command, which is supposed to set the tone for his reign. It closely echoed the words of his father’s first command.
“I shall continue, preserve, and build upon the royal legacy and shall reign with righteousness for the benefit and happiness of the people forever,” the king said, according to an unofficial translation.
The 66-year-old Vajiralongkorn has served as king for more than two years since assuming the throne. On Saturday, he received his crown from the chief Brahmin, a Hindu priest who played a guiding role in the mixed Buddhist-Hindu ceremony, which was televised live across the nation on all channels.
The king, known as Rama X for being the 10th monarch in the Chakri dynasty, then placed the crown atop his head. The “Great Crown of Victory,” said to date from 1782, is 66 centimeters (26 inches) high, weighs 7.3 kilograms (16 pounds) and is ornamented with diamonds set in gold enamel. It was one of several pieces of royal regalia, including the Royal Sword of Victory and the Royal Fan and Fly Whisk, presented in homage to his power.
Absolute rule by kings ended with a 1932 revolution in Thailand that ushered in a constitutional monarchy. Nevertheless, Thai kings are regarded as almost divine and have been seen as a unifying presence in a country that has seen regular bouts of political instability as it rotates between elected governments and military rule.

Thai people watch television broadcasting that Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn, is officially crowned king at the Grand Palace, Saturday, May 4, 2019, in Bangkok, Thailand.
Vajiralongkorn since taking the throne has tightened control over royal institutions and acted to increase his influence in his country’s administration. The powers he acquired centralize royal authority in his hands and make explicit his right to intervene in government affairs, especially in times of political crisis.
Like kings before him, Vajiralongkorn is protected by one of the world’s strictest lese majeste laws, which makes criticism of him and other top royals punishable by up to 15 years in prison and has dampened open debate about the monarchy’s role in society.
Vajiralongkorn began Saturday’s coronation proceedings wearing a simple white robe as he entered a small pavilion where he was briefly showered with water from several holy rivers and ponds and other sources. Other water was poured on him from old royal water vessels. The rite, known as the Royal Purification Ceremony, took place amid music from drums, conch shells and other instruments. Outside the palace, artillery was fired in a salute to the monarch.
A second rite, the Royal Anointment Ceremony, completed the consecration portion of his coronation, giving him the legitimacy of being a fully sovereign king. Vajiralongkorn — having changed into gold-embroidered royal vestments — was seated on an octagonal throne, with the sides representing the cardinal points of the compass, and a dignitary seated at each point. Each poured holy water over the king’s hand, along with a ninth representing the heavens.
That rite ended with the monarch being presented with a nine-tiered white umbrella of state, symbolizing his full consecration.
“This ceremony is significant to Thailand because the monarchy … is a very important institution of our country and is the soul of our nation,” said Naowarat Buakluan, a civil servant. “If you ask why the ceremony is being held this year when his majesty has already ascended the throne, it’s because this is the right moment. Previously we Thais were mourning the loss of our beloved late king.”

Thai people watch television broadcasting that Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn is officially crowned king at the Grand Palace, Saturday, May 4, 2019, in Bangkok, Thailand.
Vajiralongkorn inherits a nation in political turmoil, with the powerful army entrenched in government for five years after staging a coup in 2014. An election held in March has been widely seen as rigged through convoluted election laws to favor the military and its preferred candidate, Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led the coup and has headed the government since then.
Vajiralongkorn, said prominent intellectual and social critic Sulak Sivaraksa, “doesn’t like ceremony himself, personally, but when it is performed he wants it to be proper.” When his father was cremated in 2017, Vajiralongkorn “insisted that everything had to be done properly.”
“Likewise the coronation has to be done properly and he doesn’t mind the expense, but it has to be done properly,” Sulak said.
Vajiralongkorn presented his wife with the traditional regalia of a Thai queen as one of his first acts after being crowned. On Wednesday he appointed Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya to be the country’s queen. His father Bhumibol married his bride, Sirikit Kitiyakara, just a week before his own coronation, at which he named her his queen. Now 86 but ailing, she survives him.
After the 2 ½ hours of ceremonies ended, Vajiralongkorn stepped from his throne, walked in front of other royal family members and scattered in his path tiny flowers of silver and gold, representing heavenly gifts for them to collect.
Despite not being able to see the king in person, civil servants in uniform and members of the public wearing garb in the royal color of yellow gathered outside the Grand Palace to pay their respects.
“I feel glad and hopeful that the king ascends the throne after his father, King Rama IX, to be a guardian and the hope of the Thai people,” said onlooker Amornrat Wangpan from Uttaradit province, 433 kilometers (269 miles) north of Bangkok. “It will be a civilized era having many things. I feel that Thailand is now opened to the light and now civilized.”

Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida sitting inside a royal car drive past people Saturday, May 4, 2019, in Bangkok, Thailand.
Later Saturday, the king held an audience for members of the royal family, the Privy Council and the Cabinet, among other senior officials, where they vowed their allegiance to king and country, and he promised to work with them for the nation’s benefit.
Some carefully vetted members of the public admitted to the palace grounds got a thrill later when Vajiralongkorn was carried on an ornately decorated palanquin to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha — usually considered Thai Buddhism’s holiest site site — by a specially trained contingent of soldiers dressed in colorful ceremonial uniforms who marched in strict precision. The king, like his predecessors, made the short journey to vow to defend the Buddhist faith, the religion of more than 90% of Thailand’s people.
On Sunday, there will be a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) royal procession involving 343 men, in which the king will again be carried on his palanquin through nearby city streets to visit four important temples and allow the public to pay homage to him.
Monday will see the king greet the public from the balcony of the Grand Palace in the late afternoon and then hold a reception for the diplomatic corps.
By Grant Peck
The Associated Press
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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