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China’s Huge Dam Projects Choking the Mekong River

The upper basin falls mainly within China’s borders and its upstream location effectively allows for a chokehold on the river’s lower riparian states.
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A river is born high in the Tibetan Plateau, before snaking its way 3,000 miles south and emptying itself into the South China Sea. On its journey, it passes through six countries, sustaining their ecosystems and local economies, its fisheries providing a lifeline for 60 million people in its lower basin.
The Mekong changes names as it ventures southward through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and finally Vietnam. Its English title, from the Lao-Thai Me Khoong, or “Mother River,” emphasizes its life-giving nature. It has had a profound influence on the cultural traditions of the 95 ethnic groups who make their homes along its shores, and its basin is second in biodiversity only to the Amazon.
Water is the world’s most important resource, providing economic, agricultural and transportation benefits. This is especially true for the developing countries of Southeast Asia, who rely on rivers like the Mekong to spur economic growth and support local industries. But although the Mekong was the lifeblood of Southeast Asia long before modern-day borders were delimited, it has been at the root of acute political turmoil in recent years.
As the supply of water fit for irrigation and maintaining ecologies becomes increasingly scarce in the region, upstream countries that control vital transboundary resources, like China, wield an enormous amount of power. Although all of the Mekong’s riparian countries harness or plan to harness its waters for hydropower, extensive damming in China’s section has had the severest effects on downstream states.
The Mekong River is divided into upper and the lower basins. The upper basin falls mainly within China’s borders and its upstream location effectively allows for a chokehold on the river’s lower riparian states. China’s effects on the river are most evident in its extensive dam projects—hydropower is second only to coal as the country’s largest energy source.
This represents a larger shift by the government toward renewable energy in the wake of rapid environmental decline and social unrest due to air pollution in recent years. Luckily for China, authoritarian governments have a much easier time than democracies commissioning dams, which often cause mass displacement of populations and destruction of local ecosystems. China currently has seven dams completed in the upper basin, with another 20 set to be finished in the near future.
Chinese dam-builders are incentivized by the fact that the vast majority of the Mekong’s drop in elevation occurs within China’s borders in the southwestern province of Yunnan, creating a powerful downstream flow ideally suited for hydropower. However, this region is also famous for being one of China’s most biodiverse, and this damming comes at great harm to local ecosystems. Not surprisingly, hydropower projects in Yunnan have been met with fierce resistance, sometimes violent, by local environmental organizations.
But perhaps the gravest concern surrounding Chinese dams is their potential for an international crisis—studies in recent years have increasingly shown that China’s many dams are likely having serious effects on the countries in the lower basin who share the Mekong.
By changing water temperatures and altering sediment loads that are carried along the river, China’s dams pose a serious threat to fisheries downstream, the yields of which provide the major source of protein to the region’s inhabitants. More noticeable are the severe droughts and floods brought by a change in water flow caused by the dams. In March last year, China was approached by a desperate Vietnam asking that the Jinghong hydropower floodgates be opened to quench a downstream water shortage.
Mitigating a water crisis in the region is an issue the international community has sought to address for decades. In 1997, China was one of three countries that voted against the United Nations Watercourses Convention, an agreement establishing the non-navigational uses of transboundary waterways.
Since the 1960s, China’s per capita renewable internal freshwater resources have diminished by half thanks in no small part to explosive population growth and rapid industrialization; the country’s available water per person in 2017 is one-third of the world’s average. And this water crisis, compounded most recently by pollution, is likely a major factor in China’s close guarding of water resources within its boundaries.
Although Beijing has sought out less comprehensive regional initiatives with Southeast Asian countries to moderate the Mekong, these are difficult to enforce without the backing of the international community.
And unfortunately, the potential for crisis isn’t limited to the Mekong. China controls the “Water Towers of Asia”—the lofty sobriquet given to the Tibetan glacial plateau. The Mekong, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra and the Salween all begin as trickles in these mountains before spilling across China’s borders to eager downstream riparian states. Getting first call on how these waterways are manipulated means that China poses a severe security risk to its neighbors.
China controls the life essence of eastern Asia: The towers within its domain provide water to 1.3 billion people. Up until now China has been compliant in releasing water when requested by downstream states, but the country’s water supplies are drying up. And as they do, assertions by recent scholars that 21st-century wars will be fought over water are becoming increasingly convincing.
Mr. Rechtschaffen is a graduate student at the University of Washington in China Studies, and a former editor at Sixth Tone.

News
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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’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.
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.
SOURCE | CNN
News
2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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.
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 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.
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.
SOURCE | AP
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(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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