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Promises Unmet as Thailand’s Junta Vows to Reform Shrimp Industry

Human-rights and media reports documenting abuse in Thailand’s $7 billion annual seafood export industry

SAMUT SAKHON – Facing international pressure for failing to stop human trafficking in the seafood trade, Thailand’s Military Junta promised almost a year ago to assure victims of slavery were compensate and vowed to bring all shrimp processing in-house.

That hasn’t always happened. Instead, some formerly enslaved shrimp peelers have been deported. And some shrimp peeling sheds are being inspected and authorized to keep operating.

Tin Nyo Win, who escaped slavery and alerted police to abuses, was deported to Myanmar this month, along with his pregnant wife and a half-dozen others, after being held almost a year in a Thai government shelter. Authorities said that although the couple were victims of modern-day slavery, they had illegally entered Thailand to begin with.

Tin Nyo Win, centre, smiles as he is reunited with his wife, Mi San, in Samut Sakhon, Thailand in November. Photo: AP

“They don’t treat us like humans. They treat us like dogs,” Tin Nyo Win said hours before Thai authorities took them away. “They just try to bully those of us who are victims already.”

Nattamon Punbhochar at the Thai foreign ministry said the couple never requested compensation and were deported in accordance with a memorandum of understanding Thailand has with Myanmar.

“They don’t want any wages from their employer,” he said. “They just want to return to their home.”

Win denies this. He said he is broke, he tried to get compensated, and would have actually appreciated a decent job processing seafood in Thailand.

The Associated Press also found that while some Thai companies that export shrimp to the U.S. have given formerly entrapped workers better jobs in-house, others still use middlemen who employ laborers in remote, guarded warehouses. That’s despite industry vows to end outside shrimp processing by the end of last year after human trafficking was exposed in the sheds.

Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation searches a room at the workers’ living quarters during a raid on a shrimp shed in Samut Sakhon, Thailand. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

Shed owners frequently break environmental, labor or safety laws. Seventy-five percent of the 109 inspected so far this year were cited for violations, and 24 were ordered to close.

Human-rights and media reports documenting abuse in Thailand’s $7 billion annual seafood export industry have brought international pressure. Last year, the AP reported on fishermen locked in a cage on the remote Indonesian island village of Benjina and traced their catch to Thailand, then on to the U.S., leading to more than 2,000 slaves being freed .

The Associated Press also focused on slavery inside the Gig Peeling shed outside Bangkok in Samut Sakhon, where Tin Nyo Win, 22, and his wife were locked inside and forced to work 16 hours a day, ripping guts, heads and tails off shrimp that entered supply chains of most major U.S. supermarkets and companies including Red Lobster, Whole Foods and Wal-Mart.

Win was a whistleblower – he ran away and told police, who raided the factory and rescued more than 100 people.

Burmese workers are escorted by soldiers and police officers as they leave a shrimp shed after a raid conducted by Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation in Samut Sakhon, Thailand. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

In response, the Thai government said victims and witnesses of human trafficking could stay and work in Thailand for up to one year while their cases were investigated. This year the U.S. State Department commended Thailand for reforms and took the country off a global human trafficking blacklist .

Those Thai reforms – on paper – include paying whistleblowers like Win as much as $2,800, and providing victims compensation, education, employment and other assistance. Empty promises, said Win, who said he and his wife weren’t even given food sometimes.

Col. Prasert Siriphanapitat, Samut Sakhon deputy police commander, said five people including a shed owner have been charged in Tin Nyo Win’s case. All are out on bail.

Last year, facing a boycott over abuses, major seafood groups and certifiers decided to protect workers by moving all labor in-house, banning outsourcing of shrimp pre-processing. Yet dozens of pre-processing sheds continue to operate, doing work for at least some of those exporters.

The shrimp-peeling sheds are hidden in plain sight. Some are large factories, others nothing more than a large garage. Labor advocates say workers can become mired in debt by paying for the jobs in the first place and then being charged room and board. There’s little oversight to ensure they’re not being forced to work.

The AP recently visited a handful of Samut Sakhon shrimp sheds – some now rebranded as shrimp factories – buzzing with workers hand-peeling truckloads of shrimp on residential streets or behind walls.

“We prepare many tons of shrimp here every day,” said Boonchai Seafood director Taweesak Suralertrungson. “We’re following rules 100 percent.”

AP recently visited a handful of Samut Sakhon shrimp sheds – some now rebranded as shrimp factories (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

Documents at Boonchai show it processes shrimp for May Ao Food Co., one of Thailand’s leading exporters to the U.S. May Ao touts major U.S. importers as customers, including Aqua Star and H&N Foods International. May Ao’s own “May Brand” shrimp has been sold at Kroger and other supermarkets.

Boonchai on this day had 107 shrimp peelers who were gutting, deveining and tearing heads off shrimp in icy buckets; Taweesak said each is paid the daily minimum wage of 300 baht ($8.50). Standing in a cooled warehouse, workers in gloves, aprons and boots worked at stainless-steel tables.

With new government oversight, Boonchai’s workers this year got insurance, housing support and hourly pay, Taweesak said. But a colleague complained that once workers get legitimate papers, most leave.

“They don’t want to work in this wet and smelly place if they don’t have to,” said assistant Jamras Goyari.

Boonchai’s operations passed a government inspection. But the industry had vowed to eliminate middlemen.

Shrimp peeled by Boonchai which enters the supply chains of seafood exported by May Ao carries the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices certification – which says “peeling and heading of shrimp must occur in facilities owned by and completely controlled by” the processing plants. May Ao is also a member of the Thai Frozen Foods Association, which promised last year “to eradicate third-party pre-processing.”

Officials at May Ao and TFFA initially insisted that all shrimp peeling is in-house. When pressed, TFFA President Poj Aramwattananont said May Ao’s factory is too small to handle all the labor. He said there’s nothing illegal about pre-processing in independent warehouses, and that the media has unfairly singled out his industry.

“We are not 100 percent clean. You will always find some problems, but those are rare,” he said.

Global Aquaculture Alliance president George Chamberlain said his organization is gravely concerned and asked for more details for further investigation.

“Clearly, this is a difficult long-term issue, but we take it very seriously, and we are working hard on it,” he said.

At May Ao, an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media said that while Boonchai isn’t “in-house,” they are allowed to do business with each other because they are part of the same association. Boonchai officials said they weren’t yet TFFA members but were taking steps to join.

Clearly some Thai seafood exporters have improved working conditions. One of the biggest, Thai Union, opened a large, clean peeling warehouse at its packing and exporting facility. The 1,200 workers get subsidized meals and opportunities for bonuses.

“I have more rights. I like it,” said Thet Paing Oo, 23, a migrant from Myanmar having lunch in Thai Union’s cafeteria. He said he spent six years working 15-hour shifts at shrimp sheds without a day off.

Now his salary has increased, and he gets one day off a week.

Thai soldiers search a room at the workers’ living quarters during a raid on a shrimp shed in Samut Sakhon, Thailand. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

Yu Wa, 35, also from Myanmar, teared up at the memory of her previous shed, where she was locked inside and paid by the kilogram no matter how long the work took. Now she gets a daily wage.

“Workers don’t need to buy our gloves and uniforms. We have a shuttle pick us up for work,” she said. “I am treated well and the boss is good. It’s much better.”

Thai Union was among the companies found last year to be getting their shrimp peeled at Gig Peeling shed, where Tin Nyo Win and others were enslaved.

Thai Union spokeswoman Whitney Small said Thai Union offered everyone at Gig positions, accommodations, food and money. She said none of those workers ended up at Thai Union. She didn’t know why.

Tin Nyo Win, reached by phone back in Myanmar, said life is difficult. They have no money, and his wife is about to give birth.

When AP tried to call him back, a woman answered. She said he had pawned the cellphone to her. She didn’t know where he had gone.

By MARTHA MENDOZA

—

Associated Press writers Esther Htusan in Yangon, Myanmar, and Natnicha Chuwiruch, Jason Corben and Tassanee Vejpongsa in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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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