*Humanity Has Degraded or Destroyed Two-Thirds of World's Rainforest.*

* New coalition calls on governments to tackle root cause of emerging infections — the destruction of nature.*

Arkansas has passed a law banning abortions, almost like Honduras.

This is part of a plan for right-wing radicals on the Supreme Court to eliminate or reduce the Roe v Wade decision that established the right to an abortion.

Papua New Guinea is being overwhelmed by Covid-19.

The statistic about the fraction of mothers coming to hospitals to give birth who are infected is interesting because it is is something close to a representative sample. If 40% of them are infected, it suggests that around 40% of the population are infected.

We will see what damage Covid-19 does when there is no way to hold it back.

Many well-known childrens' books were revised to eliminate prejudice.

I think such revisions are a good way to fix the problem. They make the book available without the prejudice.

The bad aspect is that the new edition will have a newer copyright; children reading the new edition shortly after its publication will grow old and die before they can lawfully share copies of it. Beware the >oppressive e-books with DRM! They will have to resort to unauthorized copying.

What publishers should not do is to withdraw the book from publication at the slightest hint of prejudice. That represents the choice to destroy the work rather than fix it.

For instance, Dr Seuss's 1937 book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was withdrawn on account of one small drawing, which depicts a Chinese man dressed in what might be a style of the 1800s and wearing his hair in a queue, as the Manchu conquerors imposed.

I asked a Chinese friend and a Taiwanese friend what they thought of that drawing. Neither one felt offended by it. Nor would I feel offended by a drawing of an American with clothing and hairdo in a style from the 1800s.