Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, warned that if Israel continues to halt humanitarian aid to Gaza, France will have to take a tough stance on it. He reiterated France’s support for a two-state solution and urged Israel to allow food, water, and medicine.
While facing a crucial shift to artificial intelligence (AI) that might undermine its position, Google has been back in federal court to defend its internet empire.
In a legal proceeding that will decide the company’s plans to change after its dominant search engine was declared an illegal monopoly by US District Judge Amit Mehta last year, one of the key issues raised on Friday were the key issues being discussed during the closing arguments of the case.
Justice Department attorneys are trying to persuade Mehta to pass a radical change that includes a ban on Google paying to lock its search engine in as the default on smart devices and an order requiring the company to sell its Chrome browser in response to the brandishing evidence presented during a recent three-week stretch of hearings.
As alternative, conversational search options are emerging from AI startups hoping to use the Department of Justice’s four-and-a-half-year-old case to gain the upper hand in the next technological frontier, Google lawyers claim only minor concessions are necessary.
Mehta hints that he was looking for a middle ground between the two camps’ proposed remedies by using Friday’s hearing to question both sides’ attorneys and pose probing and pointed questions.
The judge remarked, “We’re not trying to kneecap Google,” adding that the goal was to “kickstart” rivals’ ability to challenge the search giant’s dominance.
Mehta will spend the majority of the next few months considering a decision before Labor Day in the US (September 1), following the daylong closing arguments. Google has already made a promise to challenge the court’s ruling, which would require it to seek redress before the judge grants a ruling in its search engine monopoly.
Both sides of this showdown agree that AI will have an impact on how the industry will evolve in the future, but they disagree on how Google will react.
The Justice Department contends that Google’s power cannot be stifled by AI alone, and that the parent company’s $2 trillion parent company, Alphabet Inc., is one of its biggest shareholders.
Mehta stated in a court filing on Friday that he was still unsure about whether to include AI’s potential to disrupt the search industry in his upcoming ruling. Mehta’s opening statement, “This is what I’ve been struggling with,” was.
Justice prosecutor David Dahlquist urged the judge to appoint forward-thinking remedies that wouldn’t allow Google to use its monopoly to profit unfairly from the AI race.
Despite opposition from OpenAI and Perplexity, Google has already been using AI to transform its search engine into an answer engine, which has so far helped maintain its position as the internet’s main gateway.
The Justice Department contends that Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai’s nearly 20-year-old contribution to the development of the Chrome browser would be one of the most successful countermeasures to stop Google from amassing sizable amounts of browser traffic and personal data that could be used to keep its grip on the AI era.
If Mehta orders the sale of the Chrome browser, executives from OpenAI and Perplexity testified last month that they would be eager bidders.
Google should “get to work” on its own products, according to Google’s attorney John Schmidtlein, who spoke on Friday.
Apple, mobile app developers, legal experts, startups, and other parties have voiced their opinions regarding Google’s future.
Apple filed briefs opposing the Justice Department’s proposed 10-year ban on such lucrative lock-in agreements, claiming that it collects more than $20 billion annually to make Google the default search engine for the iPhone and other devices.
Apple told the judge that the contract ban would make Google even more powerful because it would be able to hold onto its money while consumers would still choose its search engine. The company also claimed that the company would lose money by investing in its own research. Additionally, the Cupertino, California-based business claimed a ban wouldn’t force it to create a rival search engine to Google.
A group of legal experts claimed in other filings that the Justice Department’s proposed divestiture of Chrome would be an improper penalty that would cause unwarranted government interference in a company’s operations.
Meanwhile, former FTC officials James Cooper and Andrew Stivers expressed concern that another proposal, which would require Google to share its data with rival search engines, “does not account for the expectations users have developed over the years regarding the privacy, security, and stewardship” of their personal information.
Due to the negative effects the proposed changes would have on the tech sector, the App Association, a group that mostly represents small software developers, also advised Mehta against adopting them.
While Israel is waging a Gaza-related war, it is expanding its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The largest number of illegal settlements ever to be constructed simultaneously is reported by Israel as being in the occupied West Bank.
According to far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, the settlements are meant to halt the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In the meantime, the Israeli army is expanding its offensive, destroying homes, roads, and facilities like hospitals and waterways, basically making the West Bank uninhabitable.
According to the UN, settler violence against civilians, including destroying crops and removing trees, is at an all-time high.
Europe has reacted by threatening sanctions against the development of more illegal settlements. Can they actually have an impact, though?
What does this mean for Palestinians of all kinds? And is it nearly impossible to create a Palestinian state right now?
Presenter: James Bays
Guests:
Xavier Abu Eid – Former PLO negotiation team adviser and political analyst
Israeli author, academic, and political commentator Ori Goldberg
The decision on Friday applies to the hundreds of thousands of people who were granted humanitarian bail under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Due to their immediate humanitarian needs, including instability, violence, and political repression in their home countries, they were granted the right to enter the US.
However, the Supreme Court’s decision raises the possibility of deportation for those who received humanitarian parole before a final decision on whether their immigration status was revoked.
The top court’s decision reverses a lower court’s temporary ban on Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans from obtaining humanitarian parole after the ruling, which is dominated by conservatives by six to three judges.
The Supreme Court’s decision did not provide a justification. Two liberal justices, however, expressed their disagreements in front of the panel.
The outcome, according to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, “undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”
She noted that some of the people who were impacted by the court filings had stated in court documents that their humanitarian parole would be revoked.
In an effort to restrict immigration into the US, Trump has targeted programs like humanitarian parole. Trump has claimed that Biden was lax with immigration and that he oversaw the “invasion” of the US from abroad, accusing his administration of “broad abuse” in his appeal for humanitarian parole.
Trump’s administration has also indefinitely suspended asylum applications and other types of immigration relief since taking office in January.
If the defendants were forced to leave the country and were denied entry to other immigration channels, the plaintiffs in Friday’s humanitarian parole case warned the Supreme Court they could face life-threatening conditions.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs claimed that “many will face serious risks of danger, persecution, and even death” if they were deported “to the same despotic and unstable countries from which they fled.”
About 350, 000 Venezuelans living in the US were also given the option of ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which the Supreme Court granted earlier in May. TPS permits non-citizens to remain in the country while the conditions there are still unrest or instability.
The Supreme Court’s decision on TPS, like the case from Friday, gave the Trump administration the ability to continue with removals while a Trump policy dispute is being heard in lower courts.
Biden had advocated for humanitarian parole and TPS as alternatives to illegal immigration into the US.
For example, humanitarian parole granted two-year residents of the United States the right to reside and work. That time frame would be shortened by Trump’s attempts to end it.
Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti are all examples of serious economic and political crises that have occurred recently in these nations.
For instance, in Venezuela, critics have accused President Nicolas Maduro of detaining and disappearing political activists, and a collapse in the country of causing hyperinflation, which left many Venezuelans without the means to get the basic necessities. In recent years, millions of people have fled the nation.
Since the assassination of President Jovenal Moise in 2021, Haiti, one of the other nations, has experienced a rise in gang violence. Since then, there haven’t been any federal elections, and gangs have used violence to fill the power vacuum.
Ishaq Dar, the foreign minister of Pakistan, stated in a statement on Friday that his visit to Kabul in April had improved relations with Afghanistan. I’m pleased to announce the government of Pakistan’s decision to raise the charge d’affaires in Kabul to an ambassadorial level, he said, “to maintain this momentum.”
Amir Khan Muttaqi and Wang Yi met at a trilateral meeting in Beijing, and Dar’s announcement comes a week later.
Dar expressed hope that the decision will boost bilateral trade, boost economic cooperation, and boost cooperation in battling terrorism.
After my extremely fruitful visit to Kabul with the Pakistan delegation on April 19, 2025, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are on a positive note. I’m pleased to report the government of Pakistan’s decision to raise the level of its Chargé…
The Pakistani government’s claims that Kabul, which is known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, are an allies of the Afghan Taliban have long strained tensions between the two nations.
Since the Afghan Taliban’s resurrected four years ago, TTP is a distinct organization that has boosted its popularity.
Kabul did not respond to the most recent development right away. Pakistan had earlier indicated that the two countries were thinking about improving diplomatic relations.
The presence of Afghan refugees and migrants in Pakistan is another crucial factor. According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM), Islamabad has increased forced mass deportation, with some tens of thousands crossing the border in April to give way to an uncertain future in Afghanistan.
After Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif revealed a three-phase plan to send Afghans back to their home countries, nearly three million of them are currently facing deportation. Many of them have been there for decades as wars have plagued their country.
Although Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban currently have embassy bases in each other’s capitals, charges d’affaires, or ambassadors, are in charge.
Pakistan, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan are the only other nations to design an ambassador to Kabul.
Foreign powers have threatened to not recognize the Taliban administration until it changes its mind regarding women’s rights, but no country has done so.
On Friday, Israeli airstrikes struck homes in Gaza City, causing families to flee through rubble and smoke. Hamas is currently reviewing a new US-backed ceasefire, but Hamas has claimed that its current terms will lead to “the continuation of killing and famine” in Gaza.