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Covid Outbreak Blamed on Partying Government Bigwigs and Thai Elite

Covid Outbreak Blamed on Partying Government Bigwigs and Thai Elite

At the Krystal and Emerald night clubs the Thai government bigwigs and the Thai elite (Phuyai) flaunted coronavirus regulations.  When they arrived at the clubs the Thai elite disembarked from their limousines as young women in tiaras, angel wings and not much more greeted them.

The Thai elite clientele were whisked to the VVIP ( very very important person) rooms, with their padded walls and plush sofas. Thai government bigwigs partied as did diplomats, army officers and business owners. For much of the pandemic, coronavirus restrictions did not apply to them nor did the restrictions stop their fun.

Bangkok’s Krystal and Emerald night clubs turned into the epicentre of what is now Thailand’s biggest and deadliest coronavirus surge, according to health ministry officials.

Scores of people linked to the clubs have tested positive, including an ambassador and a government minister. Police officers and women who worked at the clubs have been infected, too.

For all the mask-wearing rigor and lockdown obedience displayed by many Thais, the abandon of a privileged few catalysed Bangkok’s latest coronavirus outbreak, health officials said. The nightclub cluster also highlights the impunity of the rich in a country with one of the largest wealth gaps among major economies.

Thailand went for months without a confirmed case of local transmission, but the epidemic has now radiated from luxury nightclubs that cater to powerful and wealthy men to the warrens of slums that hug Bangkok’s highways and railroad tracks. In these cramped quarters, social distancing is impossible. Infections have also spread to prisons, construction camps and factories.

“The rich people party and the poor people suffer the consequences,” said Sittichat Angkhasittisiri, a neighbourhood chairman in the capital’s largest slum, Khlong Toey, where the coronavirus has infected hundreds of people.

After recording fewer than 5,000 cases total through November, Thailand racked up more than 5,800 cases on a single day in late May. The total number of infections is now about 175,000. Gone are the days when the World Health Organization praised Thailand for its coronavirus-fighting prowess.

The Phuyai the gilded elite of Thailand

Thailand’s coronavirus surge, happening just as many Western nations approach a semblance of normality, is part of a late-breaking wave that has washed over much of the rest of Southeast Asia. Where access to adequate covid-19 vaccines are largely unavailable.

Thailand is now counting on local production this summer of the AstraZeneca vaccine by a company that has never made vaccines before.

The Phuyai, as the gilded elite of Thailand are known, can book overseas tours to get vaccines unavailable at home; one 220,000 baht jaunt for jabs in Russia is fully booked until July. But the poor struggle.

Many Thai must wait for cots at free government field hospitals set up in stadiums or other areas. The rich with mild cases can convalesce at expensive hotels.

“Society is very, very unequal,” said Mutita Thongsopa, a dairy company employee who came to Bangkok to support her family of farmers from Thailand’s northeast. “The Phuyai destroyed the Covid situation themselves, and we, the small people, we cannot live.”

On April 27, Ms Mutita’s sister, Supatra Thongsopa, a 40-year-old grocery clerk at a Bangkok mall, arrived at a government testing site at 3am to secure a spot. She waited all day, then the next day and the next. As she waited, Supatra texted with her sister to complain of fatigue and stomach problems.

She was finally tested May 1. The result came back positive, and she died five days later. Supatra’s boyfriend, who also developed Covid, is still in the hospital. “People are dying like falling leaves,” Ms Mutita said.

High-profile tycoons or politicians

Although a Bangkok court sentenced the managers of Krystal and Emerald to two months in prison for violating a Covid emergency decree, no one else is facing charges so far. The police say they are looking into whether prostitution, illegal in Thailand, may have occurred at the clubs. Representatives of both clubs refused to comment.

“On the Krystal case, it is still under investigation,” said Maj Gen Sophon Sarapat, commander of a Bangkok Metropolitan Police division. “We are waiting for the suspects to turn themselves in. We have sent a letter to the owner of the club.”

When cases involve high-profile tycoons or politicians, though, investigations in Thailand have a habit of fizzling. Murder charges do not materialise. Well-connected individuals slip into exile. Thailand’s three waves of coronavirus infection have crested in the shadowy zones where the rich profit from questionable businesses and defy Covid protocols.

We can smile and lie at the same time

The first outbreak, last spring, was traced by virologists to a Bangkok boxing stadium operated by the country’s powerful military, which makes money on sports gambling. The second cluster, late last year, was tracked by health officials to a sweatshop seafood business, which depends on immigration officers turning a blind eye to workers trafficked from neighbouring countries. And the third, which has killed about 1,000 people, originated in the nightclubs whose cosiness with law enforcement is an open secret.

“In Thai culture, we can smile and lie at the same time,” said Chuwit Kamolvisit, the anti-corruption campaigner and former member of Parliament. “Maybe to survive in politics, that is OK. But when it’s Covid, this is too dangerous.”

Before he ventured into politics, Mr Chuwit made his fortune through a collection of massage parlours in Bangkok with names such as Victoria’s Secret. He said his business was greased by bribes to the police.

“Krystal is like another Government House, because it’s so popular with those people,” Mr Chuwit said, referring to the Italianate building that holds the offices of the prime minister and the Cabinet.

Khlong Toey community in Bangkok

This year, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, a retired general who staged a military coup seven years ago, warned that if anyone referred to Krystal as an alternate to his offices at Government House, they could face legal consequences.

It is hard to say how the coronavirus infiltrated Khlong Toey, where thousands of people live crowded together in slum communities near railroad tracks and a fetid canal. One origin story traces this spring’s outbreak to a woman who some say frequented various clubs.

Another story connects it to a man who met a friend who had partied in the Krystal neighbourhood. When he started feeling unwell, the man quarantined in his car because he had nowhere else to go, said Mr Sittichat, the neighbourhood chairman.

Still, the man passed the virus to three others, setting off community transmission, Mr Sittichat said.

“Officials talk about quarantine, but that’s for rich people,” he said. “Our houses are too small. We have no space.”

In another Khlong Toey community, about 10% of residents have tested positive for the virus. Neighbourhood officials were forced to isolate the infected behind sheets of plastic at the back of an outdoor community centre.

After suiting up in a plastic raincoat and plastic glasses to deliver water to a new batch of Covid patients, Mariam Pomdee, a community leader, handed out donated meals to residents whose food supplies were waning. With the virus spreading through Khlong Toey’s narrow alleys, employers have been shunning its residents.

Yet, the people of Khlong Toey are vital to making Bangkok run. They deliver the packages and the takeout meals, their motorbikes weaving past Mercedes vehicles tightly sealed from the heat and the haze. They build the glass-sheathed condominiums and the malls that seem to materialise like mushrooms after the monsoons. Their vast market feeds Bangkok its vegetables, fruits and wriggling seafood.

Unemployment, already high because of Thailand’s pandemic-closed borders, has soared in Khlong Toey. To survive, some families have sold the vaccine registration cards they received as residents of a high-risk neighbourhood.

Thailand has yet to fully start nationwide mass vaccinations, and less than 2% of the population is fully inoculated. A few wealthy Bangkok residents have boasted on social media about buying vaccination cards from the city’s most desperate residents.

“The rich who are already privileged are stepping on the poor,” Mariam said. “They believe their money can buy anything.”

Source: NY Times, Bangkok Post

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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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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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