In the UK, unemployed people are required to waste 35 hours a week applying uselessly to jobs they won't get. They are required to do this by computer, and those without a computer available find this an expensive struggle. When anything goes wrong, they have to skip the rent or the food.

The overall picture is that people's lives have been made so difficult that an occasion to punish them is sure to arise. The comparable thing in the US is the extractive system of fines and debtor's prison.

It is fine to employ people in jobs that serve the community, as long as we pay them prevailing wages. Otherwise it is merely a scheme to knock down wages.

France will investigate HSBC's global holding company on suspicions of aiding tax evasion.

The video of the shooting of Walter Scott exposed the functioning of the thugs' lie machine, which accuses crimes up to murder by framing the victim.

Europe planned to start 10 trial carbon capture and storage plants this year, but the technology is too hard to master.

I see nothing wrong with CCS in principle, but there is no reason to be confident it will work — and even if it does, I doubt fossil fuels with CCS can compete with renewables on a fair basis.

I think the real motivation for CCS is as an excuse to continue the current highly subsidized use of fossil fuels. They say, "Don't worry about using fossil fuels; CCS will come to the rescue."

If we put a proper tax on greenhouse emissions and eliminate the subsidies, as we ought to, the fossil fuel companies would be welcome to try to make CCS work cheaply enough to compete. We wouldn't have any stake in whether they succeed.

A study suggests that melting permafrost won't create sudden catastrophic global heating — the release is likely to take a longer time.