Denmark has become the latest European country to dictate what a woman can and can't wear. Its parliament passed a new law imposing a penalty of 1,000 Kroner on anyone who wears a garment that hides the face in public.

Although couched in anodyne terms, the law is really aimed at the burka and niqab as revealed by its legislative history and parliamentary intent.

Given the trivial number of women who wear the burka in Denmark (in the low hundreds), what is really animating this costly exercise in lawmaking?

The Justice Minister, Søren Pape Poulsen, claimed that covering one's face in public is "incompatible with the values in Danish society", and "disrespectful" to others.

What exactly are these Danish values? What about the laws being disrespectful of the basic individual liberty of a person's right to wear clothes of their choice?


The Justice Minister claimed he did "not want police officers pulling items of clothing off people - burkas or otherwise," and that, "if they live nearby, they will be asked to go home".

Pope Francis has accepted the resignations of a Chilean bishop he robustly defended earlier this year despite claims of a cover-up of clerical sexual abuse, a move that later forced the pontiff into making a public apology.

In his continuing efforts to show he has grasped the extent of the Catholic church's sexual abuse scandal, and intends to deal with those embroiled in it as perpetrators or colluders, Francis accepted the resignations on Monday of Juan Barros, as well as his fellow bishops Gonzalo Duarte and Cristián Caro.

They were among 34 Chilean bishops who offered to resign last month after Francis said the country's religious hierarchy was collectively responsible for "grave defects" in handling sexual abuse cases and the church's resulting loss of credibility.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor who has been a vocal critic of Barros and repeatedly called on the Vatican to take action, said: "A new day has begun in Chile's Catholic church.

The so-called Goldwater rule, established by the American Psychiatric Association after certain psychiatrists commented publicly on the sanity of 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, makes it unethical for mental health professionals to publicly remark on whether a public figure whom they have not themselves treated has a mental illness.

(Of course, they couldn't usually remark on whether a public figure they have treated has a mental illness, but the message is obvious: It's not their job to publicly discuss whether anyone has a mental illness.)

The strictures of the Goldwater rule don't carry over to mere members of the media, but that shouldn't usually be an issue. After all, there's no circumstance I could think of in which a member of the Fourth Estate, not being of the mental health community, would be speculating on the cognitive state of a public official.

But, this being the Trump administration and all ethics more or less having been jettisoned upon the golden altar of viewership, I present to you John Harwood, the chief Washington correspondent for CNBC.

One of the world's longest gas pipelines, the Power of Siberia, which aims to deliver Russian natural gas to China, is nearly 85 percent complete.

According to the Russian energy giant Gazprom, the section from the Chayandinskoye field (Yakutia) to the border with China is already built. The second tunnel of the underwater crossing of the pipeline through the Amur River is also complete, it said.

The Power of Siberia pipeline which is also called the "Eastern Route" is one of the major projects between Russia and China. Analysts say it could help Russia become one of China's main providers of natural gas as demand in the country increases.

If Brexit has been good for one thing it's threatening newspaper front pages emblazoned with Union Jacks. Now, as MPs prepare for the next big EU referendum debate, Brexit-backing editors everywhere have gone into overdrive.

The Sun - whose tagline is 'For a greater Britain' - published a detailed collage of all things British. These ranged from Stonehenge, the Houses of Parliament, a double-decker bus, a football; right down to stranger additions like the make-believe Loch Ness monster, a random rollercoaster, and a seagull. The dog's breakfast of Britishness is topped with the headline 'Great Britain or Great Betrayal' - taking not-so-subtle aim at the vote that will take place in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

The front page was soon roundly mocked by the Twitterati, with some asking what on Earth motivated The Sun's picture editors to include some of the more obscure landmarks. "I like how they ran out of iconic British landmarks and just though 'F**k it, we'll put on a roller coaster,'" one Twitter user observed. "I'm more worried by the giant Loch Ness monster," another posted. "The cooling towers are an odd choice too."

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you've heard about the impending death of net neutrality. Well, after much debate and consternation, that day has finally arrived. Net neutrality is dead.

But wait. What exactly is net neutrality?

Net neutrality is - or was - the rule that ensured telecommunications companies would treat all internet traffic equally, could not speed up or slow down certain websites and could not charge more for using certain services. It also meant that companies could not give preferential treatment to their own content; for example, Comcast, which owns NBC, could not treat the content from NBC more favourably than that of a competitor.

The law was repealed in December by the Federal Communications Commission, but it only came into effect today.

A fierce debate has surrounded the concept of net neutrality. Opponents of the net neutrality law - including big broadband providers like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast - argued that getting rid of net neutrality would lead to new investment and a more open and competitive internet.

Up to the 21st of May, Israel had murdered at least 112 people and injured 13,190 during the protests of the Great March of Return in Gaza. One of Israel's latest crimes was the killing of 21 year-old volunteer nurse Razan al-Najjar, who was shot by a sniper as she walked towards a wounded protestor with her arms in the air and wearing a clearly visible medical white coat. In the middle of the PR disaster this created for Israel, did the authorities admit to the crime, apologize, prosecute the sniper, compensate the victim's family and cease all aggression towards the civilian demonstrators? No. Instead, they spread on social media this highly edited video designed to smear the victim:

As an excuse for her murder, it is both malicious and ludicrous. We see her throw an already activated smoke bomb away from people and a mere few meters into an empty field. The apparent suggestion is that she is a violent person in the habit of throwing bombs - perhaps even a Hamas agent - when the most likely scenario is that she was trying to spare the people around her from the effects of an Israeli tear gas canister, probably dropped from a drone.

We also hear her declare that she was acting "as a human shield". But the video cuts abruptly before we can hear the rest of the sentence: "...as a rescuer for the injured on the front lines." In that context, what she meant was that she was trying to protect the people. Indeed, the practice of human shields is morally reprehensible only when people are forced into it by armed forces which seek extra protection. In contrast, if one volunteers to be a 'shield' for injured civilians, then one is in fact a hero. The IDF video is trying to make a reference to the Israeli government line that civilian casualties are the responsibility of Hamas that seeks to attack Israel while hiding behind civilians.

The question is not whether the IDF claims are valid - they are evidently not - but why do they think that anyone apart from hardcore Zionists would take seriously such a poor attempt at misrepresenting the facts? Don't they realize that rather than helping their case they are hurting it further?

Italy has reportedly sent troops to Deir Ez-Zor city in eastern Syria to support the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers a terrorist group for its links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), according to local sources.

Troops have been dispatched around a week ago to areas controlled by group in the region near the Iraqi border, the sources speaking on anonymity told the state-run Anadolu Agency.

According to the sources, the Italian soldiers arrived last week to the city of al-Hasakah coming from Iraq before heading to Deir Ez-Zor.

On the morning of June 12 1962, a loud, shrill siren began wailing from the top of a rock in San Francisco Bay.

Few, if any, had ever before heard it sound in anger. It was the escape siren on the supposedly inescapable island prison of Alcatraz.

Fifty-six years ago on Tuesday, an early morning bed check revealed that three inmates were missing from their cells.

Julian Assange remains cut off from the world in Ecuador's London embassy, shut off from friends, relatives and thousands of supporters, leaving him unable to do his crucial work, as John Pilger discusses with Dennis J. Bernstein.

In a recent communication between Randy Credico, an Assange supporter, comic and radio producer, and Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, Assange's fear of arrest and extradition to the US was confirmed by the leader of the Russia-gate frenzy.

Credico received the following response from Schiff after meeting the the Congressman's staff, in which Credico was trying to connect Assange with Schiff: "Our committee would be willing to interview Assange when he is in U.S. Custody and not before."

Dennis Bernstein spoke with John Pilger, a close friend and supporter of Assange on May 29. The interview began with the statement Bernstein delivered for Pilger at the Left Forum last weekend in New York on a panel devoted to Assange entitled, "Russia-gate and WikiLeaks".