A school in Wales punished a student who shaved his head to raise money for charity, until 250 other students went on strike to defend him.

Bravo for all these students.

The school head claims that this punishment was a matter of maintaining "high standards". He said nothing to explain how a shaven head is less "high" than an unshaven one. Is he measuring "height of standards" based on the height of the student's hair? Perhaps that school would be better off if its head were shorn.

Haitian cholera victims and relatives have sued the United Nations, which was responsible for introducing cholera to Haiti.

They are suing in the US. I fear that the US court will find an excuse to dismiss the case.

Members of Congress were arrested along with other protesters supporting immigration reform.

I support most of these immigration reforms in principle, but part of the plan is something I oppose: an increased surveillance requirement placed on employers.

Bangladesh has installed a million solar power systems, and is installing hundreds of thousands of new ones per year.

"One solar energy system every four minutes" in the US sounds impressive, but it amounts to only some 130,000 a year — far below what we could achieve if policies were set up to encourage it instead of obstructing it.

California electric utilities are trying to obstruct local solar electric generation.

The excuse that the utilities give is incoherent. Suppose someone did get energy from the grid to charge a battery, and sold it back later. If the prices are unvarying, he'd lose money on the deal, because the utility would sell it at a higher price and buy it back at a lower price. Therefore, the systems would be designed to avoid this.

If, however, the price of electricity varies from moment to moment according to usage and availability (which is a recommended practice), people would have an incentive to charge their batteries when electricity is cheap and sell the electricity back to the grid when electricity is expensive. And this is exactly what society needs to reduce the problem of peak demand.

"Revitalizing" cities through gentrification does not help the poor inhabitants — rather, it pushes them out to someplace further away.

I like it when cities are pretty and safe, and have lot of places to buy little luxuries such as cupcakes, but that must not erase the issue of poverty from our minds. We need a society where everyone can enjoy those treats. We need to tax the rich more, and use the money to lift people out of poverty.