Various Pacific island countries are having a diplomatic conference in Nauru, which always tightly restricts the press.

It appears that Nauru does so on behalf of the Australian government, to help Australia evade press coverage of the immigration prison that Australia pays Nauru to run.

Giant digital tech companies including Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are getting big tax breaks from US cities and states that compete to take jobs away from other US cities and states.

These amount to almost 2 billion dollars a year.

We need a federal law to stop cities and states from competing to kowtow to business.

Poland's Supreme Court justices decided to resist the government's attempt to exclude 1/3 of them, then appoint lots more.

Scotland plans to limit marketing of foods that lead to obesity.

This does not include prohibiting foods, only stopping businesses from certain methods of encouraging people to buy them. So I think this is a legitimate policy. It remains to be seen whether it is effective; I hope so.

Senator Duckworth, a more or less establishment Democrat, said that Socialists such as Ms Ocasio-Cortez could not get elected in the Midwest.

However, I don't know the Midwest very well, so I cannot say whether that claim is right or wrong. But I see a reason to suspect that the statement is at least partly wishful thinking on Ms Duckworth's part.

She is sponsoring an amendment to make it difficult for the US to withdraw any troops from South Korea. I have a suspicion she is connected with the military-industrial complex.