When it was started Facebook served a useful social service in allowing families and friends to keep up with the people dear to them. So far so good. We all know people for whom Facebook is an important part of their lives. These people far outnumber the wreckers, trouble-makers, haters and liars. Recently, however, Facebook …
“It is frustrating for remainers ( anti-Brexiteers) who still crave a moment of vindication, when the fraud is proved beyond doubt and the tide of opinion turns. But for that to happen, Brexit would have to be measured in terms of trade and diplomacy. Those aren’t the leavers’ metrics. They long ago swapped economic argument …
Watching the opening weeks of the Biden administration are Europeans filled with relief and optimism? Not exactly. Four years of Trump has, it seems, battered our trust, convincing us that Joe Biden, liked as he is, can’t fix a “broken” America, that the US is an unreliable ally, and that within a decade China will …
The world’s most robust study of universal basic income has concluded that it boosts recipients’ mental and financial well-being, as well as modestly improving employment. Finland ran a two-year universal basic income study in 2017 and 2018, during which the government gave 2000 unemployed people aged between 25 and 58 monthly payments with no strings …
Most would-be reformers of social media want to rewrite Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which largely exempts social media companies from legal liability for what users post on their sites. But attempts “to ‘fix’” Section 230 would massively backfire, forcing Twitter, Facebook, et al. to heavily censor all controversial posts on all …
Continue reading ‘Reining in social media and it’s abusers’ »
The Scotch whisky industry is worth more than £5.5bn to the UK economy. The sector employs 11,000 people in Scotland, while the related supply chain supports a total of 40,000 jobs across the UK. Exports of Scotch whisky to the US have dropped by more than a third since the Donald Trump administration imposed tariffs just over …
Oklahoma is trying to return its $2 million purchase of hydroxychloroquine and get a refund from the manufacturer. Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt ordered the purchase of the malaria drug in April, when President Trump was promoting it as a “miracle” treatment for Covid-19. Studies, however, have found the drug inappropriate (actually useless, to be honest, except …
There is an allegation that Federal officials misused money set aside in the biomedical research fund in the years before the coronavirus emerged. Officials overseeing the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, an arm of the federal health department, used millions of dollars from the fund to pay for unrelated salaries, administrative expenses and even …
New Zealanders recently voted to legalize euthanasia for the October general election ballot paper. The results are binding and the Act will come into effect 22 months from the final results on 6 November 2021. The vote makes New Zealand the seventh country in the world to legalize assisted dying. On the other hand, New …
Continue reading ‘Legalizing assisted dying (but cannabis remains illegal)’ »
When you read about desperate refugees crossing the English Channel in dinghies, do you ever ask yourself why these people left home in the first place? Few give it much thought. To most, migrants seem just a fact of life. But the reality is they’re “the thin edge of the wedge of a vast exodus” …
Continue reading ‘The cataclysm caused by the war on terror’ »
Lisa Montgomery was executed in Indiana last Wednesday morning, becoming the first woman to die under the federal death penalty in nearly seven decades. Her sentence was carried out after the Supreme Court lifted one stay and declined to grant another last-minute request for a delay from her attorneys. The court’s three liberals, Justices Stephen …
Continue reading ‘The disgraceful execution of Lisa Montgomery’ »
In January, the World Economic Forum, backed by US president Donald Trump, announced the One Trillion Trees to plant or protect a trillion trees by 2030, bolstering the estimated 3 trillion that already exist. The scheme joins existing reforestation efforts such as the “Trillion Trees” project launched by conservation groups in 2017. “One Trillion Trees” …
Continue reading ‘What happened to all the tree-planting plans?’ »
( I will not comment on the coup attempt itself- it has had excellent coverage. What interests me is the historical parallels) The last four years (and yesterday was culmination) has shown the underbelly of the nation, what happens when jobs are scarce and insecure, education is dreadful unless you have a lot of money, …
Since 2016, the District of Columbia has spent more than $40 million to settle police misconduct lawsuits, according to the records released by the Office of Attorney General . The records did not include several other settlements for lawsuits which, the police department told the council, cost taxpayers $805,000. About $33 million detailed in the …
I would like to wish every reader a happier and calmer 2021! Meanwhile I am having to note what I think is a dubious start. I refer to the fact, firstly, that the UK has officially left the EU (groan for the future of the grandchildren! The disaster has finally come to pass!). Secondly, some …
