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Parents in Afghanistan Forced to Sell their Children for Food

A mother battling to save her daughter in an encampment of mud-brick buildings in western Afghanistan, displaced by drought and war.

Aziz Gul’s husband sold their 10-year-old without telling her, taking a down payment in order to feed their family of five. They would starve otherwise, he told her. They would starve if he did not sell his young daughter into a forced marriage.

The growing number of destitute people in Afghanistan is making desperate decisions as the country spirals into poverty.

When the Taliban seized power in mid-August during a chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops, Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy was already on the brink. Afghanistan’s assets abroad were frozen and funding was halted by the international community, unwilling to work with a Taliban regime that had once been known for brutality.

A country suffering from war, drought, and the Coronavirus pandemic has suffered devastating results. The government has not paid employees for months. Most of the inhabitants face acute food shortages, and aid groups report that malnutrition stalks the most vulnerable.

Children Suffering in Afghanistan

Children, in particular, are suffering in Afghanistan, said Asuntha Charles, national director of World Vision in Afghanistan. World Vision runs a health clinic for displaced people near Herat, a western city. Seeing the families selling their children to feed other family members breaks my heart today.”

In the region, very young girls are often married off. In most cases, the groom’s family pays money to seal the deal, and the child stays with her parents until she is at least 15 years old. While many can’t afford even basic food, some say they’re willing to let grooms take very young girls, and some are even trying to sell their sons.

It is unusual for Gul to resist in this deeply patriarchal, male-dominated environment. Her daughter, Qandi Gul, is her only daughter, and she says that if her daughter was taken away, she would kill herself.

“My heart stopped beating” when she heard her husband had sold Qandi. “I wanted to die at that time, but maybe God did not want me to die,” said Gul, peering shyly from beneath her sky-blue headscarf with Qandi by her side. “There are many times when I remember that night … like dying and coming back to life.”

When she asked her husband why he sold one, he said it would have saved the others. She told him that death was much better than what he had done.

Forced marriages banned

With the help of her brother and village elders, Gul obtained a “divorce” for Qandi, on condition she repays the $100,000 (roughly $1,000) her husband received. But she does not have the money.

In fear that Gul would denounce him to authorities, her husband fled. Forced marriages were recently banned by the Taliban. She is unsure how long she can fend off the family of the prospective groom, a man of around 21.

“I’m so desperate right now. She said that if she couldn’t pay these people and keep her daughter by her side, she would kill herself. “But then I think about the other children.” she continued. And what about them? “Who is going to feed them?” Her oldest is 12 and her youngest is just 2 months old.

Hamid Abdullah, a father of four who has four daughters, was also forced to sell his young daughters into arranged marriages for money to take care of his chronically ill wife, who was pregnant with their fifth child.

He said he cannot repay the money he borrowed for his wife’s treatments. He received a down-payment for his eldest daughter Hoshran, now 7, when she was arranged to marry an 18-year-old.

When Hoshran is old enough, the family that bought her will settle the full amount and take her home. Abdullah, who is in need of money now, is arranging a marriage for his 6-year-old daughter Nazia for 20,000-30,000 Afghanis ($200-$300).

“We don’t have enough to eat,” and his wife’s doctor can’t be paid, he said. It was a difficult decision, said Bibi Jan, his wife. “I felt like a body part had been taken from me when we made the decision.”

Children crying with hunger

Another displaced family in neighbouring Badghis province is considering selling their son, 8-year-old Salahuddin.

Salahuddin’s mother, Guldasta, said that after days without food, her husband advised her to take Salahuddin to the bazaar and sell him so the others could eat.

The 35-year-old said, “I don’t want to sell my son, but I have to.” The mother said, “No mother should do this to their child, but when there is no other choice, you have to do it.”

The children had been crying for days from hunger, said Shakir, his father, who is blind in one eye and has kidney problems. Three times he decided to take Salahuddin to the bazaar, and three times he failed to do so. Suddenly he felt he had no other choice.

The practice of buying boys is less common than buying girls, and when it occurs, it appears to be families without sons. She thought perhaps such a family would want an 8-year-old.

The desperation of millions is evident as more and more people face hunger, with some 3.2 million children under 5 years old facing acute malnutrition, according to the United Nations.

Charles, the national director of World Vision for Afghanistan, said the country desperately needs humanitarian aid funds.

“It is great to see the pledges,” she said. However, the pledges “shouldn’t stay as mere promises, they must be seen as a reality.”

Source: The Associated Press

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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

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

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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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.

shkreli

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