*Brazilians fear return to dictatorship as "deranged" Bolsonaro trails in polls.*

Like the wrecker in the US, Bolsonaro has talked about refusing to hand over power peacefully.

People fear he will try to organize mobs on Brazil's independence day to overthrow democracy, perhaps arranging a false flag attack on them as an excuse.

*Nebraska teen and her mother charged for aborting and burying fetus.*

Some of the charges are about doing things with a "dead body". It is absurd to consider a fetus a dead body, but antiabortionists push for anything that classifies a fetus as a human being for any specific purpose in any specific circumstance, regarding that as a step closer to classifying abortion as murder.

Roe v Wade did not legalize abortion after 6 months except with certain specific grounds. I wonder if any of those grounds applied here — and also why she did not have an abortion earlier.

China is going all out to intimidate US support for Taiwan, even "breaking off" discussions on curbing global heating.

Not that China was cooperating very much anyway: it continues to build new coal-fired generating plants, and its target for (the weak goal of) "net zero" is 2060.

China has recently experienced disastrous floods and faces the danger of fatal weather in the North China Plain.

China's rulers are arrogant but not crazy. The only thing that can convince them to try hard to decarbonize is awareness of what will happen if they don't.

The US is also doing far too little to decarbonize, though the just-passed climate, welfare and tax law is a step forward.

A Republican candidate for attorney general of Michigan is accused of plotting to tamper with voting machines after the 2020 election.

China's missile interdiction of seas near Taiwan was such a large exercise that it was probably planned for months.

Pelosi's visit was a convenient excuse, an opportunity to put the blame on her.

The great danger is that it shows that China can cut off Taiwan's maritime trade just by firing missiles. To prevent that requires some way of making it cost China more than it costs Taiwan.