Burma's military rulers have made an excuse to sentence Aung San Suu Kyi to prison for five years.

This won't change anything in practice, since she was already in prison. It just means there is an official excuse for that.

A proposed new coal mine in Australia could have "far-reaching impact" on the Great Barrier Reef.

That is in addition to the grievous blow to the Earth's future climate.

Given predictions that the market for Australia's coal exports is going to disappear in a few years, starting another coal mine will be a waste of money as well. That's less important for the world, but might help convince some not to start it.

Bogus Johnson threatened to privatize the UK passport office because it is not keeping up with applications.

Privatizing it would in theory enable the same amount of money to hire more workers. But some of those funds would be diverted to profits. Meanwhile, those workers would be inexperienced and desperate. Overall I think this would result in worse service. But it would result in more profits, which is what a neoliberal really wants.

In Australia, poor people need to pay for funeral insurance. A company that insured many indigenous people turned out to be a fraud, and now those who paid for the insurance can't have funerals.

Poor people should not have to pay for funerals -- not at all. A reasonable, non-luxurious funeral should be the norm, and the state should pay for that.

The lavish and expensive funerals that are usual in the US are not fraudulent like Youpla, but they are predatory. Your dead relative won't notice what the coffin is made of, and a well-embalmed and sculptured corpse won't be any more alive than one which decays.

Let's resist the social pressure for this and other sorts of competitive conspicuous consumption, and spend money on goods and services that are actually useful for the living. For instance, the opportunity for the relatives and friends of the deceased to meet and talk is the part of a funeral that serves them rather than a business.

This article presents the argument that the "go back to Mexico and wait" policy at the border with Mexico can't be terminated by the executive branch because it was somehow required by Congress.

Does anyone know more details? Is it true? If so, what exactly was it that Congress did?