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Why Thailand is a More Attractive Tourist Destination than Vietnam

(CTN News) – Because of its more visitor-friendly visa policy and a wider selection of fun activities, Thailand has surpassed Vietnam as the favorite vacation destination of international travelers.

Aussie Grant Wilson, 61, who has been based in Vietnam for the past six years, boasted of having visited Thailand more than 30 times.

Wilson claims Thailand has been better at developing tourism than Vietnam, particularly regarding the quality of tourism services, despite Vietnam’s gorgeous scenery, great food, and welcoming people.

Westerners will find various stores and commodities reasonably priced in Thailand’s shopping malls and night markets.

Buses, taxis, tuk-tuks, and songtaews (a taxi or buses adapted from pick-up or larger trucks) make it easy for visitors to get around Thailand, the land of smiles and golden pagodas.

However, Grant is only familiar with taking xe om (motorbike taxis) or buses in Vietnam.

The fare for a visitor to ride the train from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport into the city center is 35 baht ($1). Bangkok’s two most reliable public transportation systems are the BTS Skytrain and the MRT Underground.

When it comes to public transportation, Vietnam is lagging behind the times.

The Cat Linh-Ha Dong line in Hanoi, Vietnam’s first metro, opened to the public in 2021; it does not yet serve several of the city’s most popular landmarks. Due to ongoing delays, Ho Chi Minh City’s (HCMC) first metro line has not yet begun service.

Grant continued by saying that whereas Thailand is known for its “red light districts” in Pattaya and Bangkok, Vietnam has a lackluster nightlife scene.

“Vietnam has more magnificent natural vistas than Thailand, but conservation in Vietnam is undeveloped,” stated Grant. “Going to national parks in Thailand is a great way to observe exotic animals up close, including tigers and elephants.

Wild elephants are only sighted in a few locations in Vietnam, with Yok Don in Dak Lak (in the Central Highlands) being one of them.”

Travel writer Leoni Becker from Germany stated that Thailand, with its “diversified travel experiences” like the “full moon party,” an all-night beach party that began in Hat Rin on the island of Ko Pha-ngan in 1985, has been attracting more foreign tourists than Vietnam.

Thailand had 11.5 million foreign visitors, whereas Vietnam only had 3.5 million.

An all-time high of 18 million international visitors and $18.3 billion in revenue were recorded for Vietnam in 2019. These numbers pale compared to Thailand’s 39.8 million arrivals and $60 billion in revenue from international tourism in the same year.

Hanoi’s AZA Travel Co. CEO, Nguyen Tien Dat, lamented that Vietnam lags far behind China in the tourism industry.

Phuket and Pattaya, two of Thailand’s most visited resort towns, are teeming with nightlife options to attract Western visitors.

Bangkok may not have the long, sandy beaches of Nha Trang, Da Nang, or Phu Quoc, but it has a thriving nightlife scene on streets like Nana and Soi Cowboy, packed from midnight till dawn every day.

Backpacker bars and dance clubs in HCMC’s Bui Vien and Hanoi’s Ta Hien must close at 2 a.m., while Hanoi’s walking street is only open on weekends and offers few entertainment options for international visitors.

Many Westerners who want to take extended holidays choose Thailand because of the country’s relaxed visa policy, according to experts in the tourism industry.

Citizens of over 50 nations (including the US and European countries) can enter Thailand without a visa and stay up to 45 days.

Last year, the country with the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia introduced the Long Term Resident Visa, which permits foreigners to stay in the country for up to 10 years with numerous entries.

Tourism expert Pham Hong Long from Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities noted that although Thailand and Vietnam share many physical and cultural traits, the former’s approach to tourism has set them apart.

When many nations were still struggling to recover in 2021 from the pandemic catastrophe, Thailand was the first Southeast Asian country to restart tourism with the help of its “Phuket Tourism Sandbox project,” which relaxed quarantines and Covid restrictions for international visitors.

Statistics presented at the 2018 Vietnam Tourism Summit show that tourists from abroad typically stay in the country for nine days. While Vietnamese tourists spent only $96 per day on average, Thai tourists spent an average of $163.

While Thailand anticipates 30 million international visitors this year, Vietnam has set a goal of 8 million as the government begins efforts to revitalize the country’s tourism industry.

Related CTN News:

Vietnam Targets Only 8 Million Foreign Arrivals as Thailand’s Tourism Explodes

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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.

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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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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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Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

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