News
Price for Methamphetamine Pills Plunges to B2 Each in Thailand

Methamphetamine pills, which once cost up to 300 baht in Thailand, may now be purchased for as little as two baht, according to authorities in central Thailand.
The revelation came after a sting operation in Lop Buri on Thursday, where undercover detectives paid a 24-year-old dealer 4,000 baht in exchange for a plastic bag carrying 2,000 Methamphetamine pills.
The transaction came after two other suspects were apprehended with 168 methamphetamine pills at a residence in Muang district on Thursday.
After questioning the first two suspects, authorities pursued the third, subsequently identified as Wiraphat “Mac” Saelee.
He is now being held at the Lop Buri police station alongside Manus Chanta and Bangorn Chanchampa, the first arrest suspects.
According to (UNODC) the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the price of methamphetamine has been falling in Thailand due to “extreme amounts” produced in the Golden Triangle, a lawless enclave of Myanmar and Laos .
According to new research from UNODC, the synthetic drug trade in East and Southeast Asia is expanding, with manufacturing and trafficking reaching record levels in 2021.
The paper “Synthetic Drugs in Southeast Asia: Latest Developments and Challenges 2022” shows that large quantities of methamphetamine are created, trafficked, and used in the region and that the synthetic drug trade is diversifying.
“Over the past year, organized crime syndicates and armed groups have used the pandemic and political instability in Myanmar’s Golden Triangle and border areas to expand production.”
Methamphetamine Labs
Very few drug labs are left in the Triangle region, the supply continues to grow, and governments and agencies continue to report the same source.” Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, remarked.
Lao PDR has developed into a key transshipment hub for trafficking into Thailand and other regions of the Mekong and Asia Pacific, while Malaysia has also been heavily used for transit and trafficking to Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
“The scale and reach of the methamphetamine drug trade in Southeast Asia is staggering. Furthermore, it can continue to expand if the SE Aisan region does not change its approach and address the root causes.
Root causes that have allowed the illegal trade from the Golden Triangle and market demand,” Regional Representative Douglas added.
Organized crime has all the ingredients they need to keep the business growing, including territory to produce, access to precursor chemicals, trafficking routes and relationships to move products, and a large population with spending power to target – they focus on the region and see potential and profits.”
Throughout 2021, almost 172 tons of methamphetamine were seized in East and Southeast Asia, with over 1 billion methamphetamine pills being reported for the first time.
Methamphetamine Seized
The number is seven times greater than it was 10 years ago, when just over 143 million tablets were seized, and more than 35 times higher than it was nearly 20 years ago when 28 million were seized.
In addition, about 79 tons of crystal methamphetamine were seized in 2021, somewhat less than the 82 tons in 2020 – nearly eight times the 10 tons seized a decade before.
In 2021, the supply of Golden Triangle methamphetamine spread farther into South Asia.
Crystal methamphetamine in distinctive Golden Triangle packaging and tablets has been increasingly seized in northeastern India, mirroring a trend in Bangladesh a few years ago.
The cost of both tablets and crystal methamphetamine continues to fall throughout Southeast Asia. As supply increased, wholesale and street prices in Malaysia and Thailand fell to all-time lows in 2021.
“The decrease in the price of crystal methamphetamine is especially worrying because it has become considerably more accessible and affordable to those who could not previously afford it.”
“The societal repercussions of growing usage are severe, and health and harm reduction facilities across the region remain insufficient,” said Kavinvadee Suppapongtevasakul, UNODC Analyst for the Global SMART Program.
“It is also possible that use has been substantially underestimated for years because most regional governments do not track or investigate drug demand,” she added.
Global SMART Program
Although methamphetamine is the primary worry of police throughout the region, other synthetic chemicals that can cause substantial harm to drug users, most notably ketamine, are also freely available.
“While dealing with the meth situation is a top priority for the Thai government and the region, other synthetic drugs and drug combinations have arisen in recent years, and warning is more important than ever,” Thanakorn Kaiyanunta, Deputy Secretary-General of the Narcotics Control Board, said.
“We are collaborating with UNODC, international and regional partners to update our laws and policies, build critical forensic, data, and operational capabilities, and target priority such as chemical trafficking.”
Through the Global SMART Program and the Mekong MOU on Drug Control, UNODC is closely collaborating with countries in East and Southeast Asia to monitor the drug situation and provide advice on cooperation, detection, precursor chemical control, and public health strategies, as well as to assist countries in collaborating on joint and cross-border operations.
Click here to learn more about the UNODC’s Regional Program for Southeast Asia.

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.

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 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
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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News
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.
Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.
The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.
Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli
Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.
Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.
He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli
Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.
“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.
Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.
SOURCE | AP
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