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Thailand Extends Annual Hotel Business Fee Waiver to Aid COVID-19 Recovery

Thailand Extends Annual Hotel Business Fee Waiver to Aid COVID-19 Recovery

(CTN News) — Thailand’s cabinet agreed to extend a two-year waiver on operating costs for hoteliers. The cabinet stated that this demonstrates support for the resurgence of the country’s tourism industry.

From July 2024 to June 2026, the government will lose 54 million baht (US$1.47 million) in revenue because the annual levy of 40 baht per hotel room will be waived. Waiving the fee will minimize expenses for hotel operators still recuperating from the COVID-19 outbreak.

Marriott International has partnered with Makris Group to open the first Luxury Collection resort on the Australian continent. The Marina Mirage Gold Coast, a Luxury Collection Resort, will open in 2027.

The hotel, which will have 122 keys, is set to open in the Marina Mirage mixed-use development. The Makris Group, which has owned the resort since 2013, is leading its development.

Thailand Supports Tourism Recovery by Waiving Hotel Fees

The resort will feature a variety of local award-winning restaurants and boutiques, wellness, health, and beauty facilities, a new cutting-edge marina, and a limited number of villas and homes.

The Luxury Collection facility will join existing Marriott International properties on the Gold Coast, such as the JW Marriott Gold Coast Resort & Spa and Sheraton Grand Mirage Gold Coast.

Melbourne Airport will soon welcome its first new hotel in 20 years, with 464 three—and four-star rooms. The $230 million hotel will open on July 1, eliminating the need for a shuttle to check in and out and to the airport.

Melbourne Airport has a total area of 2,741 hectares, larger than Kingsford Smith and the proposed Western Sydney location and includes all terminal buildings under one roof.

Radisson Hotel Group has signed 10 new South Asian hotels in only four days. The signings span over Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson Individuals, and Radisson Individual Retreats. The group plans to open internationally branded hotels in five new markets: Jawai (Rajasthan), Sagar (Madhya Pradesh), Yavatmal (Maharashtra), Ooty (Tamil Nadu), and Calicut (Kerala).

The Radisson Blu Hotel at Nathdwara Stadium in Rajasthan will include 234 elegant rooms, making it India’s first Cricket Stadium Hotel. 75% of the rooms provide unparalleled views of the main cricket field.

Radisson Sagar and Radisson Mohali are new Radisson brand properties, while Aaramgarh Jawai Resort and Spa and Nilgiris Ooty Resort are new Radisson Individuals Retreat properties.

Radisson Individuals brand offers three conversions in Yavatmal, Udaipur, and Gwalior. Radisson Hotel Group operates and develops around 180 hotels in India.

AppleOne Group is collaborating with Radisson Hotel Group to establish the first five-star hotel and international branded homes in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. The Radisson Blu Cagayan de Oro Hotel and Residences, with 717 rooms, will be in the city’s uptown region.

AppleOne’s hotel portfolio now includes the Sheraton Cebu Mactan Resort in Cebu, Mahi Center, Fairfield by Marriott Cebu Mactan, and JW Marriott Panglao Island Resort and Residences in Panglao.

This is the first 5-star luxury hotel and condominium in Bohol province. AppleOne stated that this is their first collaboration with Radisson Hotel Group, although they are in talks for another project.

India Hotels Company has signed a greenfield agreement to build a Taj-branded hotel in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The 150-key hotel in the city’s heart will have an all-day dining restaurant, two specialty restaurants, a bar, and J Wellness Circle Spa.

The hotel will also feature more than 10,000 square feet of banqueting space. IHCL will now have 26 hotels in Uttar Pradesh, including 13 under development.

Frasers Hospitality, the hospitality branch of Frasers Property, has opened Fraser Residence Taipei, a premium serviced apartment complex with 200 units. The site in the Beitou District, north of Taipei City, near Tianmu, will be completed in 2027.

It is 30 minutes from Songshan International Airport. The planned features include a heated pool, fitness center, yoga studio, recreational meditation rooms, conference spaces, and a business center. Frasers Hospitality’s expansion spans Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company owns and manages over 100 serviced apartments and hotel flats in over 20 countries.

Dusit International has partnered with VillaCarte Group, a real estate development company based in Phuket, Thailand, to manage a luxury hotel and apartment complex at their Layan Verde Project on Phuket’s west coast. The property is located 800 meters from the Dusit Thani Laguna Phuket resort, which has operated for over 30 years on Bang Tao Beach.

Layan Verde has 108,000 square meters and includes 15 mid-rise structures. The Dusit Collection – Layan Verde hotel spans five buildings and has 398 rooms. It is the first property signed under Dusit’s new luxury brand, the Dusit Collection. The company will operate five buildings with 388 rooms under Dusit Residences – Layan Verde.

Star Entertainment Group has appointed Steve McCann, former CEO of Crown Resorts, as its new CEO and Managing Director. The company is attempting to persuade regulatory bodies in Australia to renew their casino licenses following years of mismanagement and rule-breaking.

McCann led Crown Resorts’ rehabilitation efforts for a year before being acquired by Blackstone Group. He is the second former Crown executive hired by Star, following Jeannie Mok’s appointment as Group COO. McCann will join Star on July 8.

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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.

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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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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

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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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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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