*Political attack on human rights is a "dangerous" assault on UK democracy, says HRW director.*

*She says that government actions regarding asylum seekers, climate activists and pro-Palestine protesters are starting to "look very much like authoritarianism."*

*Wisconsin supreme court to hear high-stakes case challenging [gerrymandered] legislative maps.*

The UK is replacing all copper-wire phone lines with digital connections that won't function during a power outage. This is asking for trouble for people outside the "usual case" that everyone is supposed to fit into.

That includes people like me, who don't have a mobile phone.

The US has more or less done the same, so copper-wire phone lines are now quite expensive. When I moved here I couldn't afford that, so I had to accept a phone connection that depends on local AC power. I obtained a UPS, a gift from a friend who didn't need it any more. But it can only keep the phone connection running for a few hours.

Pakistan is holding for ransom some 45,000 Afghan exiles to whom the UK and US want to give asylum, charging $830 to allow each of those exiles to leave Pakistan.

That puts Pakistan in the amazing self-contradictory position of demanding they leave and blocking them from leaving.

The only other case of demanding ransoms for people to leave was when the Soviet Union agreed to allow Jews to emigrate, and charged a ransom for each "exit visa".

Do the US and UK give Pakistan any foreign aid? It would be natural to threaten to deduct these exit ransoms from that aid.

The Netherlands has designated a PFA called "GenX" a hazardous, so it can't be disposed of there. So it is paying a subsidiary of Dupont to import GenX "waste" into the US and do something or other with it in North Carolina. However, people there fear it will be leak, or leak slowly after being dumped in of "deep wells", so they convinced the EPA to block the shipment.

Banning PFAs is the first crucial step towards ending that form of pollution, but we will still need to find a safe way to dispose of the stocks of PFAs that already exist.