Al Jazeera correspondents in Egypt have been arrested for interviewing members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

When a government accuses someone of publishing "false news", or says it is illegal to interview someone because he's been declared a terrorist (or even convicted in a fair trial of a terrorist act), that's manifest tyranny.

The US-backed government of Yemen did something similar to Abdulelah Haidar Shaye, imprisoning him at Obama's request for interviewing people in al Qa'ida.

The UK censorship filter blocks more than porn. It blocks access to sex education sites, even help-lines.

It also blocks many free software sites, and even amnesty.org.

These schemes always make mistakes, and this is proof that that continues to happen. But let's not be distracted by the mistakes. Even if they could fix all the mistakes, which they can't, that would not make censorship acceptable. Fixing 90% of the mistakes, which maybe they could do, would not make it acceptable either. Down with censorship and the tyrannical rulers that impose it!

Psychological evidence shows that plain paper packs, not covered by "cool" branding, make cigarettes less attractive and encourage quitting.

That is supported by a study in Australia which compared smokers that got plain packs with smokers using the same cigarette brands in attractive packs.

There is no direct evidence yet about whether it reduces cigarette consumption. That would take more time. However, it is unlikely to hurt.

A federal judge ruled that the NSA's collection of phone records is lawful.

This directly contradicts another judge who ruled it was an Orwellian violation of 4th amendment. Either or both could be overruled on appeal.

The reference to the September 2001 attacks is mistaken, because we know for a fact that phone surveillance would not have been necessary for preventing the attacks if the US government had been paying attention. The US government had various warnings, including the flight student that wasn't interested in learning to land the plane, but ignored them. Dubya had told the FBI to reduce the resources into counterterrorism.

It is also irrelevant as a reason. If the state were allowed to monitor everything and search everything, it could prevent many kinds of crimes, as well as many kinds of dissent and whistleblowing, but that doesn't invalidate the 4th amendment.

Egyptian thugs stormed the country's main university, attacking students and burning a dormitory.