Log In | Subscribe | | |


The US Surpreme Court has granted an order of certiorari which sends back to the district court the case of National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Xavier Becerra for review. California's bizarrely named Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act is defended by Becarram California's Attorney General. and the plaintiff is a campaigning group claiming that the FACT act is unconstitutional. The case has made a monumental decision, at federal level, about religion and abortion and contraception.

If you are planning to spend money for the Alibaba-inspired "Singles Day" on 11 November, be warned. Fraud happens and when it does, you have little or no recourse from any of the companies behind the scheme, and little or no help to try to recover your losses. But even more than that, the case shows how mobile payments are inherently risky and are ready channels for fraudsters to use.

When Miss B, a resident of Shanghai, posted an advertisement on Xianyu, the Alibaba-owned equivalent of e-Bay, and a division of Taobao, she was delighted to receive a response almost immediately. Someone wanted to buy her barely-worn designer shoes for the asking price. Then the fraud started and Taobao / Xianyu, WePay and AliPay have failed to act, leaving her substantially out of pocket when, had they acted promptly, her losses would probably have been recoverable.

There are endless difficulties in definitions. Here's an excellent example.

The USA is undertaking research into crime against and within ethnic racial groups. It is trying hard to define groups. Here's a quote: " If issuing specific guidelines for the collection of detailed White race and ethnicity data, should OMB adopt the NCT format, which includes separately German, Irish, English, Italian, Polish, and French?"

It's not the fault of the US Government that it's confused. We, the English, have the most tangled ethnicity imaginable. The only effective classification for us is "unclassifiable."

The announcement by the National Health Service in England that General Practitioners (family doctors, known as GPs) are to be required to ask patients if they are heterosexual, homosexual/lesbian or bisexual has both support and opposition from across the spectrum. One specific comment by someone interviewed on a tv news programme caught our attention: people from sexual minorities, she said, suffer from a higher incidence of mental health problems than the heterosexual majority and therefore collecting data is valuable for that reason alone. That begs the question: are those mental health problems a symptom, a cause or a result of being part of a sexual minority?

The USA went into shock and meltdown and it continues to suffer from the after effects of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and other targets on 11 September 2001. It continues to use so-called Islamic Terrorism as an excuse for ever-tighter restrictions on its population and on visitors. And yet, while its people are being murdered in unprecedented numbers by Americans, for whom any affinity with Islam is rare, the USA Government refuses to entertain any view that there must be control over weapons in the hands of people.

Across much of Europe, late night TV viewers can often find themselves channel surfing and subjected to pornographic "teasers" for even more outrageous material as paid-for services. Thai women (girls, mostly) often feature on these promotional videos, sometimes alone, sometimes with another girl. Thailand has a new law about on-line obscenity and has brought the first charges against two women who engaged in very mild acts using Facebook Live.

Annabelle Natalie "Belle" Gibson, an Australian, claimed that she was 20 years old when, in 1999, she was told she had cancer. But that was a lie: she was only 8 years old in 1999. That was just the first in this shameful tale of exploitation of those who suffer from the disease. She's been convicted and fined. Many people think this is not enough.


The tendency to create child-free zones is growing. Some people strongly applaud the fact that they have the choice to be in an environment where they are less likely to be disturbed by children but others consider it a restriction on their freedom. But surely there should be one over-riding principle - my place, my rules, says Nigel Morris-Cotterill

USA: Deaths from opioid overdose continue to rise - and the problem has spread outside the USA

Almost anything we can write as a first sentence about this subject sounds flippant and that is absolutely not the impression we want to give. For sure, a recent press briefing from Tom Price, the Secretary for Health and Human Services is written in such poor English that at times one has to re-read it to work out what he is trying to say, and that's ignoring all the superfluous verbiage as he tries to sound interesting. But cut through the mass of chatter and vague statements and the hard facts are far more than merely interesting, they are disturbing: every year, the number of Americans who die from an overdose of legal pain-killers is more than the previous year and the numbers are big enough to become genuine statistics. For example, in 2015, approx half of all drugs overdoses resulting in death in the USA were from opioids. And that's not even the most fascinating fact, as other information shows.

Many people, especially those making statements on behalf of companies, are afraid to say "sorry" in case it becomes an admission of liability that brings with it adverse consequences. It's time for change.


London's fire brigades are busy and there are several types of fire that happen more often than they should. One of those is kitchen fires some of which are caused when cooking is left unattended. It's easy to do that when so many devices these days have timers built in but, London Fire Brigade says "You should never leave cooking unattended – if you have to leave the room or the house, make sure to turn the heat off before you do.”

It's issued a list of safety measures that are applicable no matter where you live (except, of course, to change to emergency number to that of your country)

Malaysia's National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency has banned sales of several products produced by "Dr Vida," who has become wealthy selling, amongst other things, Qu Gebu AP Krim.

It's a year since the EU's Tobacco Products Directive came into force in the UK but its full effects were not required until a grace period to allow a run-out of stocks in the distribution pipeline. So as from now, the way products are marketed and, even, produced.