 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup with People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from across the globe. Let's take a look at today's headlines. News outlet ordered to shut down as a part of police crackdown in Thailand. Tunisian government receives flak over media bill. Russia expresses willingness to freeze nuclear arsenal. Oil giant expected to cause widespread damage to lives and environment in East Africa. Google exposed of illegally protecting monopoly by U.S. Justice Department. Voice TV, a Thai news outlet, has been ordered to shut down because of its coverage of the popular protests in Thailand. Voice TV was one of the four outlets against which Thailand's police have announced a probe earlier this week. The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society alleged that the media outlets published in broadcast material that violated computer crime laws and the emergency decree. The decision immediately followed the order to probe into more than 300,000 URLs on social media and other digital platforms that the police have identified to be in violation of Thai laws. The foreign correspondents club of Thailand expressed deep concerns over the government's actions. The four media outlets have been broadcasting live footage of a Facebook during the protests. Despite the police crackdown, the protests have continued unabated. On Sunday, massive protests were witnessed across the national capital. The police estimates of the number of protesters show participation of over 20,000 people at various demonstrations in Bangkok. Protesters could be seen occupying media intersections and landmarks of the city. Moving on to our next story on Tuesday, a large protest was staged in front of the Tunisian Parliament against the newly proposed media bill. The bill significantly relaxes licensing rules for media operations in the country. Over 300 journalists and activists participated in the protest in their slogans against the proposed media bill. The bill includes provisions for removing the requirement for television and radio channels to obtain official licenses to operate in the country. Protesters also opposed another clause in the bill which stipulates that the parliament can appoint new members to the media regulatory body by a simple majority instead of the current requirement of a two-thirds majority. Protesters accused the government of deliberately allowing powerful domestic and external players to take advantage of the new rules. The bill could give possible rise to the spreading of extremist propaganda as well as unfair collusion between the government and the media. Meanwhile, those in support of the bill claim that it will benefit the country's media sector leading to a growth in the number of TV and radio channels, media content and jobs. Supporters of the bill include Prime Minister Hitcham Mechichi, head of the Karama Coalition, Seth Adin Baklouf, and a moderate Islamist in other party. However, critics have raised concerns about allowing foreign influence in the social and political life of the country. The bill would give foreign powers and companies the means to further their selective interests or those of their Tunisian allies at the cost of a free and fair press. Now going to Russia on Tuesday, the extension of the new Strategic Arms Control Treaty or START was revived after Russia offered to freeze the number of its nuclear warheads along with a one-year extension of the deal. In a statement, Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russia has ready to take on a political commitment with the United States to freeze the number of nuclear warheads both sides have for this period. The US State Department immediately welcomed the offer and declared that negotiations to settle the details will start soon. The treaty was first signed in 2010 between President Barack Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The future of the treaty was uncertain after Trump had refused to talk about its extension, demanding that China should also join the treaty. China has refused to be a part of the deal. The treaty caps the number of nuclear warheads to 1,550 for both Russia and the US. It also restricts the kind of deployment of the nuclear warheads by both countries. If not extended, the treaty would expire on February 5th next year. The one-year extension would give both the countries enough time to discuss the future of the deal. As per the treaty, both countries can extend the treaty for a maximum of five years without rectification from the Congress. The US had rejected last week's condition offered to extend the treaty for one year, demanding that it announces the freeze on the number of warheads as well. Russia has agreed to do the same on the condition that the US should not put any other conditions. George W. Bush had pulled out from the Inter-Bilalistic Missiles Treaty in 2002. It is feared that the demise of all these treaties will create a new nuclear arms race in the world, increasing the threat of a nuclear meltdown. According to a report released by two French campaign groups, the lives of thousands of people in Uganda and Tanzania and biodiversity of the region is facing a threat from the oil projects of French oil giant Total in the East African region. The company has threatened more than 100,000 people's livelihoods and created conditions for the displacement without proper compensation. The project, which involves oil extraction and a Python project in Uganda and Tanzania also threatens the crucial environmental balance and biodiversity of the region. The campaign groups are seeking a court order in France to force it to disclose the details of measures taken by it to address the grievances of the people directly and indirectly affected by the project. According to the report, the company has even intimidated the local residents to force them out of their lands and threaten those who have voiced concerns and opposed it. Total is also failed to provide proper compensation to all those who would be displaced due to the project. The oil project expected to produce 200,000 barrels of oil each day once completed also includes a 1,445 km long East African crude oil pipeline which will carry the oil produced in Uganda to Tanzania. The report also blames the company for violations of environmental safeguards in collaboration with the local administration. Finally, on Tuesday, the US Justice Department accused Google of illegally protecting its monopoly over internet search and search advertising. The move is seen as being reflective of the bipartisan distrust towards big tech in the US. New slicks for Beepool Kaisal speaks more on this issue. So if you look at what Google started as when they talked about its search engine, it said the search engine is what gives you quickly what you want to know, it transits you to other spaces, other websites very quickly. Now that's not what seems to be happening. In fact, the figures are very, very startling. They effectively says that people more or less, in fact, the figures are more than 50% of the people do not go to any other site after searching in Google, which means Google retains those people. How do they retain them? The various ways Google finds it to retain the people, one is of course go to only Google properties. If you're looking for a mapping information, Google maps, but that's only one example. The N number of other Google sites, which are Google properties, which are there, if it's videos, it can be YouTube. So effectively Google retains those search results by promoting its own search properties, own properties, which may match with some of the requirements in search may not be the best. It doesn't follow the criteria of the ranking. Google properties do not follow Google's criteria for ranking. So it promotes those. That's only one part. The second part of it, and this has also become quite dangerous these days, is the fact that you are beginning to see that the information on the sites, which my query when I search Google might have raised, Google tends to fetch the answer from those sites in a way that people then don't go any further. So of course, people may still go, but most people are looking for specific information. It's there. And they said, okay, that's all I really need. So that harvesting of the site in this particular way means even Wikipedia's search results, the people don't go to Wikipedia after that. So increasingly the practices that Google has followed over the last three, four, five years have seen increasingly the number of clicks resulting from the search actually forming. So this is one part of it. And if you look at the anti-monopoly case just launched against Microsoft, that was because it was the Windows was the primary platform, mainly because Microsoft Windows had become the de facto choice for most people buying laptops. And most laptop vendors had also bundled Microsoft Windows as a part of the product itself. So that was the agreement between Microsoft Windows and a lot of the laptop vendors at that stage. Then they started bundling other things with it, Microsoft Explorer. That was one of the things. So the search engine, et cetera, comes up when you have already a web browser. So the web browser monopoly was what was Microsoft intention because they had a monopoly on the Windows operating system, which was the de facto operating system for the personal computers. So that is what the antitrust case in this Microsoft was. And they have to allow for other browsers to be either bundled by the laptop vendors, not only Windows, not only Microsoft products, but also that this led to the close integration between the Microsoft products, which have competition with the Windows operating system that had was what was really attacked. And that is where Microsoft had to let that go. So they said, no, no, we're not using our monopoly on our operating system to force the laptop vendors to buy all our other products and give all our other products. At that point, Explorer was actually free. So give all our other products. But this is open for anybody to use and operate, use other products as well. So this is where Microsoft founded. And this is also seems to be the one which is now has got Google in trouble because Google's promoting its own properties, a, and also retaining the searches on this platform. There are two of the things that we are talking about that there could be many more things we could talk about. But these are the two things which have made increasingly over the last five to 10 years, which has seen increasingly clicks resulting from Google search decreasing. And that is all the time we have for today's episode of the International Daily Roundup. For more such stories and videos, visit our website, people.spash.org. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching. Bye.