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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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“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.
– BBC
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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