Italy plans to charge five Egyptian government agents with the murder of graduate student Giulio Regeni in Cairo.

Unsurprisingly, Egypt's repressive government says it has no idea who was responsible for the murder.

Regeni's studies involved interviewing people that were on bad terms with the state. [pol note about this point]

*Wildflower meadows to line England's new roads in boost for biodiversity.*

Nice try, but it is far better to avoid building new roads than to build them and put meadows alongside them.

A bipartisan proposal might unlock Covid-19 relief funds in the Senate.

For the most part, this compromise has to be better than nothing. However, one provision is potentially extremely harmful: shielding businesses from liability for making workers work in conditions that expose them to Covid-19.

This could enable businesses to get away with gratuitously increasing the workers' risk.

If you play Minecraft on an Xbox, can you tell me the answer to these questions?

* Which version are you using?

* Does it force you to save your own worlds only on Microsoft servers? Does it default to saving them on Microsoft servers?

* Can you play without without having anything to do with Microsoft servers?

* Can you export your data from Microsoft servers and take them to some other server?

* Can you play Minecraft solitaire without identifying yourself?

* Can you play Minecraft solitaire saving your data and worlds on a server hosted by you?

* Can you play Minecraft solitaire without using any a server?

Regardless of the answers, Minecraft is nonfree software. I urge you to switch to the free program Minetest and reclaim your freedom.

One good thing about Biden: he advocates abolishing the death penalty in the US.

He also wants to legalize marijuana and eliminate privatized prisons and mandatory minimum sentences. I haven't checked every item in this long list, but the ones I have looked at seem good.