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Rats Bring Threat of Disease in Bangkok

Colds and skin diseases of the feet caused by contact with dirty water are the main complaints treated at evacuation shelters

 

Bangkok officials began paying residents to clear trash after doctors reported more cases of a potentially lethal rat-linked disease in flood-stricken areas.

The municipal government said it will pay 300 baht ($9.70) a day starting yesterday for 60 days to remove garbage in a city that normally produces 8,000 tons of waste daily. Concern that uncollected food scraps may be harboring vermin increased after Health Minister Wittaya Buranasiri said Nov. 9 seven people were being treated for leptospirosis, a bacterial infection spread in water contaminated with rat urine.

“We don’t want the rats to walk around finding food,” said Porntep Siriwanarangsun, director general of Thailand’s Department of Disease Control. “We have to take care of the garbage immediately.”

We don’t want the rats to walk around finding food- Rats in Bangkok Food Area

The specter of infectious epidemics is increasing as the battle to overcome the nation’s worst flood since 1942 stretches into the 15th week. Medical workers treated 4,684 people for influenza, 828 for diarrhea and 246 for conjunctivitis in 127 state shelters the past month in Ayutthaya, Nonthaburi and Pathum Thani provinces, the health ministry said this week.

“We are sending more mobile teams to cope with and combat infectious diseases,” Porntep said in a Nov. 8 interview.

Colds and skin diseases of the feet caused by contact with dirty water are the main complaints treated at evacuation shelters so far, he said, adding that leptospirosis is a key concern because the bacterium may persist in water for a month.

Anti-Garbage Campaign

“We are now in a campaign to get rid of garbage because this will attract rats, and the rat urine will leave the disease on small puddles of water on the ground,” Porntep said.

Humans become infected through direct contact with the urine of rats and other infected animals or with a urine- contaminated environment, according to the World Health Organization. The bacteria enter the body through cuts or abrasions on the skin, or through the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose and eyes.

In the early stages of the disease, symptoms include high fever, severe headache, muscle pain, chills, redness of the eyes, abdominal pain, jaundice, hemorrhages in the skin and mucous membranes, vomiting, diarrhea, and rash, the Geneva-based agency said.

Aid workers are delivering pre-prepared meals to displaced families to try to mitigate the risk, said Varabhorn Bhumiswasdi, director of the Priest Hospital in central Bangkok, who is leading a mobile medical team in Rangsit, a flooded area 20 kilometers (13 miles) north of the city center.

At a temporary shelter in Rangsit, villagers set up an outdoor kitchen, storing rice, raw fish and other food items in plastic bags. Trash was piled in a corner of the compound, which was shared with dogs and ducks.

No Cooking

“We tell people not to cook their own food at the shelters because we’re very worried about the garbage,” Varabhorn said. “We also warn them not to buy food from vendors because it may be unhygienic. That’s why we have to supply fresh cooked food three times a day, to prevent food poisoning and diarrhea.”

Varabhorn’s six-person team set up a makeshift clinic on a concrete bridge above the now-submerged village of Lak Hok. Patients are examined on an abandoned bed and dispensed medicines from the back of a truck.

“We’re mostly getting patients suffering from chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease,” she said. “Hospitals are flooded so they need continuing care from us.”

Floods increase the risk of water-borne diseases, including typhoid fever, cholera and hepatitis A, according to the WHO. Stagnant water may also encourage mosquitoes that can spread malaria and dengue fever, the United Nations agency says.

Bed Nets

The UN Children’s Fund is providing 20,000 insecticide- treated mosquito nets to help protect families evacuated to temporary shelters and living in other flood-ravaged areas in Thailand from dengue fever, it said on Oct. 27.

More than 530 people have died because of the floods, which inundated parts of 64 of Thailand’s 77 provinces and affected more than 11 million people, the government said yesterday. Twenty-four provinces are still affected.

“This is an urban emergency in a mega-city of about 10 million people,” said William Aldis, an assistant professor of global health at Bangkok’s Thammasat University and a former WHO representative to Thailand. Aldis said cholera, a life- threatening diarrheal disease spread by Vibrio cholerae bacteria, posed a particular public health threat.

“It’ll just take one person with cholera excreting millions of Vibrio cholerae into the floodwater and potentially into the drinking water, and then you would end up with a serious outbreak,” Aldis said over the telephone from his home in Nonthaburi, on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Cholera Threat

“We’ve seen cholera in cities before, but cholera in the midst of massive flooding within a city — and where the drinking water is compromised — the conditions are ripe for a major urban cholera outbreak,” he said. “I don’t know if anybody is prepared for that.”

Water supplies may have already been compromised after flood barriers were torn down by residents angry at being caught behind them, allowing floodwater to flow into canals used to produce tap water.

“So far it’s not very bad because infectious diseases are under control,” said Porntep at the Disease Control Department. “We have not seen salmonella or Vibrio cholerae in any of the flooded areas, and there hasn’t been any serious bacterial infection in diarrhea cases, just from food poisoning.”

Residents without access to safe, potable water are advised to boil publicly supplied tap water to kill any pathogens, he said.

“The tap water may be safe now, but we don’t know if the tap water will stay safe,” Porntep said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Daryl Loo in Bangkok at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jason Gale at [email protected]

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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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