*Increase in invasive species poses dramatic threat to biodiversity.*

*Sudan is to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), cancel prohibitions against religious conversion from [102]Islam and permit non-Muslims to consume alcohol in a decisive break with almost four decades of hardline Islamist policies, its justice minister has said.*

Hooray for this rejection of imposed religion.

Plutocratists funded pressure campaigns to reopen US businesses quickly.

Australia may consider modifying its law that authorizes it to secretly menace any software developer in the world with punishment for refusing to insert a backdoor on Australia's command. The decision not to menace employees individually would remove one of the many menacing aspects of this law.

Nonetheless every free software contributor would still be a target.

For this reason, I urge all free software developers to stay away from Australia.

A country willing to prosecute a whistleblower secretly and conceal his name cannot be trusted to follow any norms of decency.

Glenn Greenwald leads a discussion about the moral and practical issue of violence in protests.

Here is what I think. It may be inevitable that people who are long-oppressed and then suddenly angered by violence break out in violence. But it is crucial for their movement to organize itself to reject that violence, so that repressive forces can't use that violence to smear the cause and repress the protests.

In case the black bloc shows up, protesters should train in advance to insist it is not welcome and not part of their protest. Besides, surely some of the black bloc are provocateurs, perhaps thugs without uniform, and their aim is to harm the cause.