News
Thailand’s $28 Billion Landbridge Plan Aims to Reroute Chinese Trade, Faces Skepticism

(CTN News) – In an effort to attract investors, Thailand is promoting the construction of a “landbridge” across its southern neck. This would shorten the time it takes for cargo to travel from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and increase Thailand’s strategic importance by giving Chinese trade an alternative route that does not involve Singapore or the Straits of Malacca.
However, the $28 billion plan has detractors, and China has not formally commented. Taking a deep-water route across Thailand similar to the Suez Canal has long been Beijing’s chosen option.
A strategist, China is. Prof. Sompong Putivisutisak of Chulalongkorn University, who has researched the landbridge extensively, stated that the company will not readily reveal its position until it meets with other investors.
According to him, “two reasons that China would invest” (VOA). First, monetary gain, and second, international relations. Although the idea is not economically viable, it could be strategically intriguing if China were to gain control of both seas.
“It’s a matter of how badly it wants that access to both seas,” according to him.
The Thai prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, has promoted the landbridge idea in San Francisco and Beijing. It involves shipping containers to ports on either side of a road and rail line approximately 90 kilometers long.
From Chumpon province on the Gulf of Thailand to Ranong on the Indian Ocean, goods would be transported via high-speed rail and roads across southern Thailand according to the concept. Ships would then be waiting to receive them.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2030 if the present feasibility study is approved.
Thailand has stated its openness to investment from any source, even those reliant on the existing flow of Middle Eastern oil and consumer products across the Straits of Malacca to China and East Asia.
Reports of possible German interest have appeared in the Bangkok Post and Deutsche Welle. After meeting with Japanese lawmakers and businesspeople about the concept during a recent trip to Japan, Thailand’s prime minister stated, without providing details, that the initiative was receiving interest.
During his speech at the APEC CEO summit in San Francisco on November 15th, Srettha praised the landbridge as a “very important project, not just for Thailand, but for the world.”
He said it would “connect the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean without requiring ships to sail down along the tip of Singapore, known to experience congestion and would cut transport duration.”
Although no specific investors have been announced as of yet, Thai transport minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit has stated that around ten American companies, including e-commerce behemoth Amazon, have shown interest.
As a logistical hub for Asia, Thailand aspires to become a major player. It must provide faster transit times to compete with Singapore, which hosts the busiest transshipment port in the world.
Analysts agree that obtaining support from the United States is crucial if Thailand wants to keep from giving Chinese corporations preferential treatment regarding funding, building, and using the new route.
According to Termsak Chalermpalanupap, a visiting fellow and coordinator of the Thailand Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, “If China indeed supports and invests in the landbridge, China can gain more economic presence in southern Thailand — and this will benefit the Chinese side in the competition with the U.S.”.
“This is why PM Srettha is also trying to sell [it] in San Francisco recently,” he added in an emailed reply.
A long-sought landbridge seems to have put an end to plans for the so-called Kra Canal, an idea that has been mooted for generations: to construct a deep waterway across southern Thailand, akin to the Suez Canal, through which huge ships could travel, so reducing the sailing time over the Straits of Malacca by at least a day.
Cost, possible environmental harm, and the physical partition of the country are among of the reasons why that idea, which has been advocated for years by Chinese lobbying groups in Thailand, has never taken root.
Landbridge vs. Kra Canal: A Shift in Priorities
The then-chief of the Thai army, Prayuth Chan-ocha, established the so-called Thai-China Strategy Research Center after the 2014 coup to investigate the viability of the Kra Canal. A Chinese holding limited business registered in Thailand also supports this center.
Thai officials have instead suggested connecting the land route to the high-speed rail lines already being built in Thailand to Singapore as a component of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
While in Beijing for a BRI forum in October, Srettha made notes and sketched a preliminary route map, which he later shared online. According to a Thai government official, the project has garnered interest from China Harbour Engineering Co., the country’s leading infrastructure developer.
According to its website, the company already has dredging and port contracts in the country.
If China’s ships cannot use the Straits—a very busy but limited maritime passage across Singaporean, Malaysian, and Indonesian waters—due to conflict or geopolitical tensions, most likely with the United States, the landbridge might provide an alternate route for freight.
Some in Thailand think it won’t be able to handle the volume of goods and military vessels entering the Indian Ocean, and they also think it will be too expensive and won’t have China’s full support.
“It’s nothing short of another dreamy project,” said Somboon Kamhang, chairman of the Coordinating Committee on Development, a group that supports community development and has, for a long time, researched plans for trade routes in the south.
The landbridge project does not interest China. “Constructing a landbridge would be an extremely expensive and labor-intensive undertaking, but China could support the canal proposal, giving it greater regional influence,” he told VOA.
As a central tenet of a development plan implemented over 20 years ago by Prayuth’s administration—a few of whose close associates are now in Srettha’s cabinet—the domestic political motivation for turning Thailand into a logistics powerhouse is also strong.
One worry is that in the haste to sell Thailand’s connection, the country could wind up with a costly “white elephant” project that fails to meet the needs of either China or the US.
“Thailand needs to be able to read the game. Otherwise, it’s setting itself up for failure,” said Somboon.

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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