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Thai Teacher Samadthachai Pungpong on a Mission to Help Poor Children
Samadthachai Pungpong and his students at the Borderless School in Ranong province, Thailand.
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RANONG – Education has been the driving force in Samadthachai Pungpong’s life for as long as he can remember. As a sixth grader, he wept for a week when his impoverished parents told him he had to quit school to help on the family farm. They backed off, but the ultimatum came down again in his high school years: “Forget school, we mean it.”
That time he didn’t cry, he left – on foot with no food other than what he could scrounge along the way and only the train tracks to guide him 250km to Bangkok and, he hoped, a chance at an education.
Samadthachai realised his dreams and went on to dedicate his life to helping others enjoy similar opportunities, as founder of a school for migrant children living along the Thai-Myanmese border.
He calls it the “Borderless School”, the name reflecting his belief that “every human being has a right to an education”.
“Education is the best solution to all problems,” he says. “It can help us avoid doing risky things like prostitution, drugs – anything illegal and harmful. Education enables us to make better choices.”
His faith in education took root early on and remains unwavering in the face of constant teacher turnover, barbs from the “teach Thais first” camp, and the sundry challenges that come with running a school on a shoestring budget.
The Borderless School in Toong Ka village in Ranong province’s Had Sompan sub-district operates as a community learning centre. Its aim is to “reach the unreached” – those out of formal education systems, in an approach advocated by educational experts, including those at Unesco.
Four teachers and a monk teach 64 students, most of them migrants between the ages of three and 17.
Many students are from Myanmar (as seen in the traditional “Thaka” facepaint).
Ideals brought Samadthachai to Ranong; pragmatism enables him to stay. Getting the children to school is a challenge – he has to drive 50km to 70km a day to pick them up from remote settlements, a service which costs US$1,200 a month, less than a tenth of which is collected from parents’ donations.
Despite being constantly stretched for funds, Samadthachai is leery of outside contributions. “I accept donations from NGOs, but they have to be from the heart with no strings attached,” he says.
Instead, Samadthachai and his students farm the large school property and sell what they grow at local restaurants. It’s the only way the school can sustain itself, he says, adding that the “living classroom” approach benefits students.
Bucolic beauty aside, the school’s isolation makes it an unattractive prospect for all but the hardiest teachers.
“Those who come here need to be strong,” he says. “Most teachers come here with big ambitions, but then they find it too difficult and are gone after a month.”
Because of this, depending on the demands of the day, Samadthachai has many roles – including headmaster, teacher, custodian, cook, entertainer, consoler, driver and mediator.
Samadthachai enlisted in the Thai army in his early 20s, which provided him with an income and enabled him to study part-time. While stationed in Ranong in southern Thailand he noticed and felt an immediate empathy with the street children, many of whom were Myanmese orphans, and some abandoned by mothers working as prostitutes in the area.
“They reminded me of me when I was younger and had to rifle through garbage on the street just to eat,” he says. At the age of 17 Samadthachai had already been in school much longer than any of his six siblings, and while he had often missed weeks of classes to help out on the family farm, he could not abandon education completely.
“I didn’t know where Bangkok was, but I knew where the train tracks were that led there and began to follow them,” he says.
“I had no money, no food, just the clothes on my back. I figured that once I got there, there would be opportunities to study.”
When he finally arrived at a Bangkok tour van station, Samadthachai was so weak from hunger, he passed out.
A series of odd jobs later and after enlisting in the Thai army, Samadthachai saw himself in the migrant children and wanted to help.
He returned to Ranong after completing his studies in Bangkok and with the help of a sympathetic abbot welcomed about 130 migrant children into a temple. Many were orphans and were given food and shelter there.
Samadthachai’s first group of students who were taught in a temple.
Border tensions were high at that time and authorities in Ranong were leery of having people from Myanmar on their soil, so the temple had to hide the students.
Over the years, tensions at the border eased and authorities acquiesced, allowing Samadthachai to teach the students and raise funds for a school, eventually amassing three million baht (HK$716,000), much of which came from Myanmese communities in Thailand.
The Borderless School was built four years ago, a colourful and well-kept building springing up on a derelict palm plantation.
A common complaint aimed at Samadthachai, particularly in the early days, was that he should be helping Thais. “They would say, ‘You’re Thai, why are you educating Burmese?’.
“I want people to see that every human being has equal rights, especially when it comes to an education,” he says. “People should understand that everyone is equal and that we should not separate ourselves from others.”
Now in his early 40s, Samadthachai looks back with pride on the nearly two decades he has spent educating mainly Myanmese migrants.
The children from his first class at the temple still check in with their old teacher, he says. Some have taken jobs in companies, others have become teachers themselves.
None, to Samadthachai’s knowledge, has committed a crime – a major source of satisfaction for him given where most began.
“I wanted to show that even though they come from terrible backgrounds, they can be good people,” he says.
When he’s not at the Borderless School, Samadthachai helps establish centres elsewhere, most recently in Kanchanaburi province. That school will target female migrants between the ages of 15 and 18, many of whom are at risk of exploitation.
“Education is endless,” he says, “so wherever there are children out of school, I cannot stop.” – By Noel Boivin
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
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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