Brazilians go to the polls to elect a new president in October. But under a 1997 law, that socialist country forbids TV and radio stations from making fun of candidates in the final three months of the campaign. No late-night TV monologues. No radio DJs doing impersonations or satirical songs.

 

Whatever you think of Michael Moore, the millionaire filmmaker who dresses like a blue-collar shlep, you can’t deny his popular success. He directed the most lucrative documentary of all time, Fahrenheit 9/11, and three other liberal polemics in the documentary top 10. 

 

Canada’s trade with China has never been bigger, and it’s never grown faster. According to the latest statistics, we now exchange $53 billion in goods and services with them each year, making China our second-largest trading partner after the United States.

Threatening to undo Johnny Depp’s public relations efforts, Somali pirates have gone on a hijacking spree. Even freighters carrying food aid for their fellow Africans are not immune to their ransom efforts.

How would censorship work in the Internet age? Australia gives us a sneak preview of the gong show that ensues when medieval thinking is applied to a wired world.

Within days of his inauguration, President Barack Obama issued an executive order shutting down the prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay — but only after another year of operation.

There’s a constitutional battle raging in America. It’s over saggy pants.

There is no greater punishment the state can mete out than seizing a child from a parent.

Acting on a tip from a frightened girl, Texas police raided a ranch belonging to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, seizing 437 children. A 16-year-old named Sarah had phoned for help, saying she had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband. 

Britain’s new Corporate Manslaughter Act has a terrifying name. The law creates a tort by which an organization can be held liable for a death “if the way in which its activities are managed or organized” is a “gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organization to the deceased.”