China has jailed Hong Kong dissidents who tried to flee by boat, after a hasty purported trial.

The new, more infectious variety of Covid-19 is probably already spreading in the US. That means that the precautions which were sufficient in the past to prevent an increase in cases will be insufficient from now on.

We will need stronger precautions, more firmly enforced.

There is no basis for federal prosecution of the thugs that killed Tamir Rice as he was holding an air rifle.

One article argues that there is enough proof that they lied and they could be prosecuted for that. I don't know whether that is so, but if it is, they definitely should be prosecuted for lying.

Another article says nothing about that point, but explains why the federal government could not prosecute them for the killing.

This is an instance of a repeating pattern in which white thugs shoot blacks after making erroneous snap judgments that they are a threat. Snap judgments are often erroneous, thus many of these blacks are killed for no legitimate reason. This amounts to an aspect of systemic racism — but it is hard to come up with a step in of making a snap judgment that could be defined as a crime. The whole process takes place inside a person's mind.

Defining some action that the thug is required carry out before shooting someone could slow down the snap judgment, thus providing an opportunity to think, and to decide not to shoot. It might also provide a basis for prosecuting a thug who fails to take that action. "Turn on your body camera and study the person and the scene until it clicks, which it does after three seconds" might be a suitable action to require.

The killing of Tamir Rice is an example of another recurrent pattern: losing a piece of crucial information in the dispatch process. I have an idea for how to make that dangerous problem less frequent.

Currently those pieces of crucial information are treated as miscellaneous details. When such a thing is dropped, it does not leave a gap — there is nothing to tell the thugs that they are missing something they needed to know.

Suppose any information suggesting "Person in question is probably not threatening or hurting anyone" were represented by use of a different dispatch code. This distinction could not be lost, because it is impossible to drop the dispatch code, and changing it would go against all habit.

This would not eliminate the tendency to misjudge based on unconscious racism, but could make it happen less often.

Georgia Republicans have closed some polling places (for early voting) in black neighborhoods but kept them all open in white neighborhoods.

It is impossible to convince a nonbiased person that this is not discriminatory. Republicans must be planning to argue that they can lawfully practice racist voter-suppression and no one can stop them.

*Calling Covid-19 Crisis a 'Wake-Up Call,' WHO Experts Warn Next Pandemic Could Be Even Worse.*

If it is worse, we won't have trouble convincing people to take precautions. Rather, the problem will be the danger to essential workers. That could cause collapse.