Is there any way of narrowing the questions down by country of origin, as there used to be?

Sorry, no. Even if you use the country links on the International link at the bottom left, there is no real difference unless you go to one of the true foreign sites in a different language. All the English language sites are now lumped together in a single stream of questions.

And with that I think I'll bow out, I can't be doing with sorting through dozens of questions about drug tests for the people who actually have a medical problem, or US education questions which are irrelevant to me but fill the entire screen.

Not any more since Yahoo embarked on improving the site