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The Mekong Delta is Heading for Troubled Waters

Cai Rang, one of the largest floating fruit and vegetable markets in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, is a popular tourist attraction

LOWER MEKONG – Lush greenery in the lower Mekong region sprawls as far as the eye can see, an illustration of just how fertile the delta is.

The endless green fields scored by the river’s nine tributaries, which the Vietnamese call “Nine Dragons”, explain why this area is one of the world’s major food baskets.

It houses the richest inland fishery and accounts for more than a fifth of the world’s rice exports, although looks can be deceptive.

Encroaching sea water from the south, a proliferation of hydro dams in the north and large-scale sand mining are endangering the delta, officials warn.

As a result, an alarming 500 hectares (5 km2) of land is being lost to soil erosion every year, they say.

“The sea level rise is bringing up water so fast that our defenses against it have failed,” said Ky Quang Vinh, director of the Climate Change Coordination Office, a government agency in Vietnam’s Can Tho, the most populous city in Mekong.

“We’ve stopped growing mangrove trees on the coast because they only grow if the sea level rise stays below 1.6mm (0.06in) a year, and our work shows that in Vietnam it’s going up by 5mm (0.2in).”

“Several of our sea dykes have collapsed too.”

Many rice farmers are turning to saltwater shrimp farming as rising waters from the South China Sea threaten are wiping out the rice crop

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Unstoppable Sea Water

As inland river water gets saltier, rice farmers across the lower Mekong delta are responding by switching to shrimp farming or growing reeds.

Salt water has been found 60km (37.3 miles) inland

According to the Southern Irrigation Research Institute, saltwater intrusion destroyed more than 6,000 hectares (60 sq km) of rice field last year.

“Nearly half the delta population now has no access to fresh water and that’s serious,” says Le Anh Tuan, deputy director of the Research Institute for Climate Change.

Scientists at the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body, also warn that if the sea level continues to rise at its projected rate of around one metre by the end of the century, nearly 40% of the delta will be wiped out.

The MRC covers four countries in the lower Mekong region: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The Mekong Delta produces more than half of Vietnam’s grain and 90% of its exports

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Runaway Dams

In the north, it is the pace of dam expansion that is causing most concern.

Several dams upstream are already accused of disturbing the ecology of the river, which stretches nearly 5,000 km ( 8,047 miles) from Tibet in China to the sea.

According to International Rivers (IR), an organisation working on trans-boundary rivers, China has built six “mega dams” on the river and is planning another 14 over the next 10 years.

“China’s dam construction on the Upper Mekong has already had an impact downstream, especially along the Thai-Lao border where communities have suffered declining fisheries and changing water levels that are seriously affecting their livelihoods,” the IR says in one report.

“By changing the river’s hydrology, blocking fish migration and affecting the river’s ecology, the construction of dams on the Lower Mekong will have repercussions throughout the basin.”

Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam are planning to follow China’s lead by building a dozen more dams on the lower Mekong.

The Don Sahong hydro dam project in Laos is especially controversial in Cambodia and Vietnam, the two countries at the basin’s southernmost tip.

Cambodian activists were dismayed when Laos approved the Don Sahong Hydropower Dam near the border

There is also evidence that new dams retain vital nutrient-rich sediments which replenish the river bed and which marine life depends on to survive.

According to the Mekong River Commission, roughly 85 million fewer tonnes a year of pebbles, boulders and sand are deposited in the river today than in 1992, mainly due to the construction of hydropower dams and reservoirs upstream.

“Less water and sediment from the north mean more saline intrusion from the sea in the south and more losses for the delta and its inhabitants,” says La So Sinh of the Vietnamese government’s natural resources and environment monitoring agency.

Even though the MRC coordinates water resources development between its member countries in the Mekong basin, critics say it is not doing enough to resolve dam disputes and their consequences.

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Heads in the Sand

There is a third disturbing development: the tens of millions of cubic metres a year of sand being mined from the lower Mekong river that flows through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

A World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) study suggests most extractions are happening in Cambodia and Vietnam.

“In the Vietnamese part of the delta, over 150 sand mines, spread across 8,000 hectares (80 sq km) of the river’s surface, have been licensed by 13 Mekong Delta provinces,” it says.

China, whose Nuozhadu hydroelectric dam went online in 2012, houses roughly half of the world’s tallest dams

“One billion cubic metres (35.3 billion cubic feet) of sand would be needed by 2020 to fulfil the demand for construction materials in the Mekong Delta region.”

Environmental campaigners in Vietnam say the government is aware of the ecological cost of allowing the mining but does not act.

“It cannot ask local authorities to withdraw licenses because private companies will then demand compensation,” says Duong Van Tho from the Vietnam Mining Coalition.

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There is a Further Risk

“Some parts of the river within our territory are just five metres (16.4 feet) deep, so big ships just can’t sail through them,” says Phan Thanh Tien, general director of the Cai Cui port in the lower Mekong.

“But to expand our navigation capacity here and abroad, our only option is to dredge the river bed.”

A third of the Delta is marsh or swampy forest, and to the north lies a flat, grass-filled basin which in the wet season can be up to three metres deep

With both government agencies and private companies involved in dredging, riverside communities are left feeling more vulnerable.

“After such dredging, big ships have started entering smaller tributaries and canals, which causes big waves of water that break our embankments and flood our homes,” says An Binh’s community leader Pham Vam Xuong.

Experts say erratic rainfall patterns have made floods worse during the wet season.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long warned that the Mekong delta will feel the effects of climate change.

Its latest assessment report says: “National climate change adaptation plans have been formulated in all four Lower Mekong Basin countries, but trans-boundary adaptation planning across these countries does not exist.”

Just when they could have joined forces to combat climate change, experts say, the countries in this region are embroiled in dam development disputes.

And the deeper their differences, the bigger the fears for the delta become.

By Navin Singh Khadka – BBC

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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

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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