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“Dog-Meat Mafia” Fuels Thailand’s Canine Trade – Video

Thai authorities are struggling to stop an estimated 200,000 dogs every year being exported alive in this international racket.

CHIANG RAI – An exclusive video report following Thailand’s illegal live-export trade in dogs — from rounded-up strays to stolen pets — destined for human consumption in Vietnam.

Thai authorities are struggling to stop dogs from being stolen and smuggled to northern Vietnam, where one million dogs are eaten each year.

Stray dogs and pets are being illegally snatched, bought, or even bartered for household items, then smuggled to Vietnam, where they are sold, butchered and eaten.

With bribery at border checkpoints, apathy in the transit country of Laos, and northern Vietnam’s appetite for one million dogs a year, Thai authorities are struggling to stop an estimated 200,000 dogs every year being exported alive in this international racket.

Smugglers pay helpers, often poor farmers, to comb rural areas and towns, buying dogs, grabbing strays or stealing pets.

Dogs are collected throughout the northeast of Thailand, then taken to holding pens in the provinces of Nong Khai, Bueng Kan, Nakhon Phanom and Mukdahan.

In transit, conditions for the animals are horrendous. The dogs are loaded by the hundreds onto open-sided trucks, starving and dehydrated, and stacked on top of each other, suffering from bite wounds and broken bones — some even dying en route.

According to Tuan Bendixsen, director of Animals Asia Foundation in Vietnam, the slaughter process is particularly traumatic for the dogs. Dogs are often killed at or near restaurants, or at stalls where restaurant owners picks the dogs they want before they are slaughtered.

“Dogs are highly intelligent animals, so when you kill a dog and you have a whole cage of dogs next to the one that is being killed, obviously those dogs that are being killed next, they know what is going on,” Bendixsen told The Global Mail.

“Okay, culturally there is an issue about dog eating, we need to work on that, but up to the point where the dogs are being killed, obviously these dogs can be treated much better in terms of animal welfare,” he said.

Thailand’s maximum penalty for illegal export of animals, including dogs, is two years in prison and a $3,000 fine, but activists say nobody has been jailed under the law. Focus within Thailand is on reducing the stray dog population, but while dog meat remains at a premium in Vietnam, the trade continues to flourish.

Transcript

CRAIG SKEHAN: Pet shows are a new trend in much of Asia, with well-groomed, expensive dog breeds crowd favourites. While pet ownership is on the rise, the practice of eating dogs continues in many places. An insatiable appetite for dog meat in Vietnam, coupled with huge numbers of stray dogs in Thailand — and a racket of stealing pets — fuels a cruel and illegal cross-border dogs-for-slaughter trade, with dogs packed for days like sardines in steel cages, up to a thousand on a single truck. Dogs are collected throughout the northeast of Thailand, then taken to holding pens in the provinces of Nong Khai, Bueng Kan, Nakhon Phanom and Mukdahan. Within Thailand, efforts are being made to over-time reduce the stay dog population.

TOON WERATHUMJUMRUS, Soi Dog Foundation: We stress upon the sterilization program because we think the stray dog problem in Thailand starts with uncontrollable populations of the dogs.

CRAIG SKEHAN: And Thai celebrities are popularising the issue.

KAE CHOLLADA, model and television presenter: We are the mercy country and I believe that we love dogs because dog’s still are man’s best friend. So we should not eat them, at all.

CRAIG SKEHAN: On Thailand’s northern border with Laos is a government shelter for dogs rescued from smugglers. When pressure from campaigners resulted in raids being stepped up in 2011, such shelters were unable to cope and a high proportion of the dogs died from contagious diseases and other causes.

CHUSAK PONGPANICH, head of the national government’s Nakhon Phanom Province Dog Shelter: We try to stop dogs being carried out of the country in response to the big demand outside Thailand. The foreign consumption of dog seems to be much bigger these days.

CRAIG SKEHAN: A major highway runs through the dusty northern Thai town of Ta Rae where many Mr Bigs of the Thai dog export business are based. Mainly Catholic migrants from Vietnam brought the habit of dog-eating with them. Now a so-called “dog-meat mafia” pays catchers — including poor farmers — to comb rural areas and towns, buying dogs, grabbing strays or stealing pets. Household items such as plastic buckets can be offered for dogs that local people may consider a nuisance. But if nobody is around to see, just about any dog can be treated as fair game. The holding pens they are taken to are increasingly at secret locations to avoid detection. At one such pen many dogs were found to be weak or dead, and stolen pets there were recovered. The maximum penalty for illegal export of animals, including dogs, is two years and a $3,000 fine, but activists say nobody has been jailed and and there is usually just a small fine. Conditions for the animals are horrendous.

TUAN BENDIXSEN, PhD, animal scientist and Vietnam director of Animals Asia Foundation: These dogs will be starving, they will be dehydrated, because they are not getting enough water. So broken bones is quite normal, and they have a lot of bleeding injuries because during the trip obviously when you get dogs stacked on top of each other, they start biting — against each other.

CRAIG SKEHAN: Thailand has been doing more to intercept the dog smugglers’ trucks, but bribery remains a problem. And there is no specific co-ordination with neighbouring provinces in Laos and little government-to-government co-operation.

MONTHON TIPAYACHANT, Bueng Kan Province police major-general: Now here, on this matter, we don’t really know what the legal standing of these dogs is in Laos.

We can act firmly in our country, but beyond the Laos border we have no control.

Stop the dogs going to Laos – that’s the best thing!

CRAIG SKEHAN: Dogs are smuggled out of Thailand across the Mekong River and again loaded onto trucks. Once on Route Eight, the trucks have a virtually free run through Laos — where the trade has not yet become a significant public policy issue. Campaigners say they have never heard of a dog truck being stopped in Laos. At the Vietnamese check-point at Cau Treo, vehicles are searched for contraband, but the dog trucks just go through after paying a per head livestock tax without proper checks for diseases such as rabies and cholera.

TUAN BENDIXSEN: And once that closed population on that dog truck reaches a populated human area and those dogs are distributed to different areas, then you have no idea where the infection is going to go next.

CRAIG SKEHAN: Once in Vietnam, the open-sided trucks travel with their living cargoes north along Highway One to the capital, Hanoi. Here they are sold to middlemen according to their weight. By then, their value has tripled from about $10 for each dog in Thailand — and that can be doubled again by the time they are killed, butchered, cooked and served to restaurant patrons. In Duc Thuong — on the outskirts of Hanoi — restaurant owner, 48-year-old Hong Hiep, the father of five children, says he was taught the trade by his grandfather and has been killing dogs for 30 years, these days at a rate of several thousand a year.

HONG HIEP, dog meat restaurant owner: I’m a cook of a Vietnamese speciality, just like a job in any other country. This restaurant is my main income. It’s very normal, cooking food, serving my customers.

We hit the dogs on the head to kill them so that they can come back in another life.

CRAIG SKEHAN: It is widely claimed that dogs are regularly killed slowly in Vietnam, so that adrenaline is pumped into their bodies to make the meat more tender.

TUAN BENDIXSEN: I heard that from China in the early days, but I think now that, from what we gather, is that the dogs are being killed quickly. But despite that it is very cruel, the way they are killed. Well, I mean, dogs are highly intelligent animals, so when you kill a dog and you have a whole cage of dogs next to the one that is being killed, obviously those dogs that are being killed next, they know what is going on. Okay, culturally there is an issue about dog eating, we need to work on that, but up to the point where the dogs are being killed, obviously these dogs can be treated much better in terms of animal welfare.

CRAIG SKEHAN: Now anti-dog-smuggling groups are pushing for a high-level regional conference to tackle the issue. Thai raids are gaining momentum. And, as the country between the supplier and consumers, Laos is geographically well placed to act. Slowly changing cultural attitudes towards dogs in Vietnam could, over time, reduce demand. However, many Vietnamese owners of pet dogs continue eat the meat of other dogs. And while there is still a ready market, dog smugglers in Thailand will look for new ways to ply their trade. –By Craig Skehan

For further information and to learn how to help stop the illegal dog trade in Thailand visit the Soi Dog Foundation’s site:

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

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

News

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