Portugal requires residents to have a biometric ID card for many purposes, including medical care, employment and travel. This is an injustice to everyone that is compelled to have the card; it is also a practical disaster for the resident foreigners who can't get one.

The government seems to be using those foreigners as hostages to an international dispute, but we should not let this distract us from the injustice those cards present to people who DO have them.

South Dakota has an optional Indian alternative justice system which aims for healing rather than punishment.

In the 1970s, US courts and prisons aimed for rehabilitation of criminals, but that was all discarded in the 1980s under the malign influence of the "war on drugs".

China is going all-out to remind us that it is a military threat to Taiwan.

which reinforces that the US must stand firm with Taiwan.

China's "live fire exercises" close to Taiwan amounted in effect to a temporary blockade of Taiwan.

The price Biden wants to pay Manchin for approving spending is a permanent change to environmental rules for damaging projects.

Sanders lambasted Manchin's planet-roasting demands,

which were elsewhere described by "Exxon CEO Loves What Manchin Did for Big Oil in $370 Billion Deal."

The UK will test a system that uses photos of drivers of passing cars to detect those who are not wearing seat belts, or are holding phones in their hands.

Detecting the use of a snoop-phone while driving is a good thing, in itself, because that practice is dangerous. But I wonder what else these photos could (and will) be used for. Will the state use them to identify every driver by facial recognition? And ever passenger, too?

There should be technical safeguards in the system to ensure it can't be used for this