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How a 23-Year-Old US Soldier Defected into North Korea

US Pentagon officials in Washington, have reported that that the US soldier that fled the airport and joined a tour group before crossing into North Korea have no new information on the soldier.

Travis T. King, a U.S. Army private, was being led to the airport after completing his imprisonment in South Korea. He would most certainly be subject to disciplinary action once returning home. However, he never arrived to his plane.

Instead, one official claimed that he went through security by himself, made it to his departure gate, and then took off. King informed airline staff that he couldn’t board his aircraft because his passport was gone, according to a report Reuters that was based on an airport official.

From there, King, 23, joined a tour for civilians in the tightly guarded demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating South Korea and the North, where he fled on Tuesday as American and South Korean security forces yelled “Get him!” in vain.

So started a strange journey that has given Washington’s interactions with the nuclear-armed regime a new challenge.

While refraining from calling King a defector, the U.S. military was frantically trying to ascertain King’s fate and motivation on Wednesday in the wake of what authorities claimed was a willful, unauthorized border crossing that resulted in an active-duty American soldier ending up in North Korean hands.

Even though there are still many unanswered questions, investigations by officials from Seoul to Washington and witness reports have started to piece together a picture of King and what happened.

King, a member of the Korean Rotational Force who enlisted in the U.S. Army in January 2021, had previously worked as a Cavalry Scout as a part of the long-standing U.S. security commitment to South Korea. His honors include the Overseas Service Ribbon, the Korean Defence Service Medal, and the National Defence Service Medal. But legal issues hampered Kings’ posting in South Korea.

Destroying Public Property

According to a South Korean court decision, King admitted to assault and destroying public property related to an incident in October and was fined 5 million won ($4,000) on February 8. The lawsuit was resolved, but the verdict claimed that King had struck a man in the face on September 25 at a club.

Then, on October 8, police responded to a report of another altercation involving King and attempted to question him, but he persisted in his “aggressive behaviour,” the court found, kicking the door of a police car he was put in and yelling profanities.

Under the condition of anonymity, U.S. officials said King had been expecting military punishment upon his return to Fort Bliss, Texas. If that was associated with the October incident remained unclear.

What caused King to behave in the manner he did on Tuesday is still a mystery.

Carl Gates, King’s uncle, indicated that he had been upset by the loss of his 7-year-old cousin earlier this year from a rare genetic disease.

Gates, who referred to himself as King’s “father figure,” claimed to have been one of the last individuals to speak to King on the phone before he entered North Korea in an interview with The Daily Beast. According to news accounts, King is a native of Racine, Wisconsin.

Eye Witnesses Accounts at South and North Korea DMZ

Details of the tumultuous situation at the border on Tuesday are now starting to surface. “It all happened pretty quickly,” remarked Sarah Leslie, a New Zealander who was on the same tour in the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the DMZ. She was one of about 40 tourists who were wandering the area and taking pictures just before King sped off to North Korea.

She claimed that King, who was wearing jeans, a black shirt, and a black cap with the letters “DMZ” printed on it, suddenly sprinted between the buildings towards the North as the party was about to leave one of the famous blue buildings that spans the border between the two Koreas and is used for discussions.

According to her, “I don’t think anyone who was sane would want to go to North Korea, so I assumed it was some kind of stunt,” she told Reuters. He was already on the north side of the border when South Korean guards and American soldiers chased after him shouting, according to Leslie.

The precise location of King is still a mystery, as is what will occur next.

Analysts and a former North Korean ambassador said North Korea is likely to use the border crossing by a U.S. soldier for propaganda purposes but won’t likely be able to exert political influence.

Holding someone like King might cause problems for the North if it goes on too long.

According to former North Korean ambassador Tae Yong-ho, who is currently a member of South Korea’s parliament, North Korea is required to set up a security and surveillance squad, as well as arrange for an interpreter, a private vehicle, a driver, and housing for U.S. soldiers who defect.

According to Andrei Lankov, director of the Seoul-based Korea Risk Group, Pyongyang has an established procedure for treating American and other Western detainees or defectors well in order to prevent political backlash. Otto Warmbier, a college student from the United States, was a remarkable exception; he passed away in 2017 not long after being released from a North Korean prison.

According to Lankov, detainees are frequently kept in the North Korean equivalent of a four-star hotel.

The length of King’s stay in North Korea, however, may be considerable, according to observers.

“I am not sure that will be the case,” said Victor Cha, a former U.S. official and Korea expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s always good to resolve these ASAP, but I am not certain that will be the case.”

He claimed that historically, “the North holds these people for weeks, if not months, for propaganda purposes (especially if this is a U.S. soldier) before a coerced confession and apology.”

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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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

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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.

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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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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