The UK government stops unemployment benefits for people who can't prove they are spending 35 hours a week looking for nonexistent jobs.

What is the sense in requiring the unemployed to spend 35 hours a week this way? It's not going to find them jobs. It seems to be designed specifically to make sure they have no more free time than if they were employed.

Wouldn't it serve that purpose just as well to let them volunteer for a nonprofit organization? Then their 35 hours would at least serve some constructive purpose.

Australia plans to require phone companies to engage in massive data collection about the public.

UNESCO rejected the Australian government's plea to remove 270 square miles from the Tasmanian world heritage forest in order to chop it down.

Medicins Sans Frontieres says that the outbreak of ebola virus is spreading and that it has run out of resources to send teams to new sites that have sick people.

Now that videos of force-feeding prisoners in Guantanamo threaten to embarrass the US government, it has stopped making videos of this.

What grounds can the US government offer for declaring these recordings a state secret? Obviously the only reason is that they are proof of the state's wrongdoing. For a state to keep secrets for that reason is prima-facie wrong.