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Thousands, Including More than 800 Children Flee Fighting Myanmar

Thousands, Including More than 800 Children Flee Fighting Myanmar

Thai officials and aid workers have reported that more than 5,000 people have fled from eastern Myanmar into Thailand in recent days as combat between Myanmar’s army and armed resistance groups has risen along the border.

According to Thai PBS, at least 5,428 civilians, including more than 800 children, crossed the border from Myanmar’s Myawaddy district to seek sanctuary in Thailand’s Tak province on Wednesday night, citing an unidentified security officer.

It said they fled as ethnic Karen insurgents linked with pro-democracy People’s Defense Force guerrillas attacked two Myanmar government outposts near the border. Regular army forces are aided by members of the Border Guard Force, which is made up of ethnic minority militias affiliated with the military administration.

Myanmar’s ethnic minorities have been striving for more autonomy for decades, but the country’s armed conflict erupted dramatically when Myanmar’s army deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratic government in February 2021. In several parts of the country, widespread opposition to the coup shifted to violent resistance as pro-democracy forces joined forces with various armed ethnic minority organizations.

Clashes and air attacks along the border have resulted in a sporadic outflow of Myanmar peasants into Thailand’s border regions, where they are frequently provided temporary refuge before being sent home. Streams of refugees from western Myanmar have also arrived in India.

Villagers Flee Myanmar

According to an officer from Thailand’s border district of Mae Sot, fighting on Myanmar’s side of the border continued Thursday, and shooting could be heard from the Thai side. The official, who not to be identified because he was not allowed to divulge information, estimated that at least 5,000 migrants are currently in Thai authorities’ care.

“We are providing them with shelter, food, and water on humanitarian grounds,” he explained. “We’ll wait until things settle down.” We’ll send them back when the fighting stops.”

According to the Bangkok Post, around 1,000 individuals escaped across the border into Thailand on Thursday at two different locations.

Thailand’s Thai-Myanmar Border Command Center stated in a statement a day earlier that officials in Tak province had given 10 temporary shelters to house refugees in two border districts, including Mae Sot, a significant crossing site.

According to Tak province’s Public Relations Department, the battles happened at two locations within Myawaddy province around 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the border, resulting in “several injuries and deaths for soldiers on both sides.”

civilian deaths myanmar

Civilians dying at an alarming rate in Myanmar

According to sources on the Thai side, thousands of people escaped across the Moei River, which marks the border, to escape fighting on Thursday, according to the website of Myanmar’s Eleven Media Group.

It claimed they were attempting to flee violence in Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko region, which has a semi-autonomous economic zone with a casino and alleged criminal operations in which people duped into working are employed in large-scale computer scams.

According to its assessment, the current wave of violence in the area began on March 25.

Civilians are dying at an alarming pace in Myanmar’s civil conflict, dying in airstrikes, artillery shelling, and incarceration, according to data supplied by an armed ethnic group opposing the regime.

According to the Progressive Karenni People’s Force, 447 civilians have been slain in the eastern state of Kayah, which borders northern Thailand, since the military took control of the country in a coup two years ago.

According to an official with the group who talked to Radio Free Asia on the condition of anonymity due to security concerns, almost two-thirds of them were killed after being kidnapped by military, while the others perished while feeling conflict.

“Civilians were killed because they were hit by the junta’s… artillery fire,” he explained. “Another reason is the junta’s airstrikes against civilians.”

“Some were killed by military forces after they were arrested, and others died due to a lack of medicine to cure them,” he explained.

According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, the junta killed 3,206 individuals across the country during the same time period. (Burma).

Since the February 2021 coup, the region has been at war. According to him, the Burmese army has clashed with the ethnic Karenni Army and the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force up to 650 times.

Myanmar Military War Crimes

According to Banyar, director of the Karenni Human Rights Organization, Junta soldiers have progressively broken the rules of war and perpetrated atrocities that amount to war crimes.

“We are witnessing open war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the military council,” he stated. “Civilian deaths have risen because the junta is committing crimes against innocent civilians rather than protecting them.”

Banyar noted that the anti-junta People’s Defense Force paramilitary group has slain people it accuses of functioning as military informers in several cases.

The Progressive Karenni People’s Force has stated that it is preparing a list of human rights violations done by the military and would submit it to international human rights organizations in an effort to hold the junta accountable.

Along with civilians, the group claimed that at least 252 resistance fighters and 1,883 junta soldiers were killed during the fights, while Radio Free Asia (RFA) could not independently confirm the report.

RFA’s calls to the junta’s social affairs minister and Kayah state spokesman, Aung Win Oo, went unanswered Monday.

On Armed Forces Day last Monday, junta head Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing pledged to “crush” ethnic armed groups supporting the People’s Defense Forces and the shadow National Unity Government.

Meanwhile, the conflict has forced roughly 200,000 people to flee their homes in Kayah state since the coup, according to the Karenni Human Rights Organization.

According to Phu Maw, a volunteer offering medical support to refugees in Kayah state, the displaced face food shortages and, in some cases, lack access to clean water, resulting in diarrhea and other water-borne illnesses.

According to her, the majority of the refugees have mental health difficulties.

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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.

google

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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