Fertilizer runoff has led to a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie.

The waste of fertilizer will haunt us too, as supplies of some chemical fertilizers are running out.

A class-action lawsuit against Facebook for violating privacy adds up to 8 million euros.

I agree with the plaintiffs in spirit, but the victory they aim for would take the form of limiting the use of giant data bases. That isn't enough to give us privacy where we really need it. We need to prevent the accumulation of giant data bases about people.

In particular, don't be a used of Facebook at all.

Most of the chicken sold in the UK is contaminated with campylobacter, which causes stomach illness that is sometimes fatal. Hygiene standards are evidently not good enough.

Either it is the same in the US, or it would be the same if standards are lowered. This is part of the reason why the US proposal to reduce inspection standards

Abbott proposes a broad attack on human rights in Australia in the name of "fighting terrorism".

Unemployed Britons describe the impossible hoops of the "jobcenters" that were set up to create excuses to punish them.

I think they would advance their rights more if they got together and held a sit-in in front of a jobcenter, demanding to be put in prison. Civil rights protesters showed their contempt for unjust law by filling the jails; why not the unemployed?

But they have to refuse to do any work while in prison that the state would profit from.