Global heating is on track to more or less put an end to winter.

The Taliban have forbidden women to drive, or ride in a car, over 45 miles from home, except with a male relative.

This will make it harder for women who are trapped by other forms of repression to get out of Afghanistan. Perhaps that is its purpose.

Salafi Arabia continues to be even worse.

Giving away a baby is not a simple and painless substitute for abortion. It isn't painless for the mother, nor for the baby's subsequent life.

I wonder to what extent the pain, nowadays, of an adopted child's subsequent life is socially constructed. Was it painful in general 200 years ago to be adopted, if your adoptive parents were not poor and treated you as well as their other children? I don't know. Perhaps in most cases you would know all along who your biological parents were and the reason for the adoption — for instance, because your parents had more children than they could support, or because they had died, or to give a childless relative an heir. But there would have been shame imposed on you if your parents were unmarried.

In my view, making one more human being is not inherently a plus — and even less so nowadays, considering the disaster that any newborn today would be heading for.

Public benefactors have developed an unpatented Covid-19 vaccine and taught various companies around the world how to make it.

If it works against Omicron, it would be a great step forward.

The anti-Covid drug molnupiravir has the potential to encourage the development of new variants.

Only testing it in practice would show whether this happens or not; but if does, the result could be a disaster.

Since the Pfizer treatment is more effective and does not have this risk, we should not use molnupiravir.