The World Bank cancelled a large loan to Tanzania, to improve secondary education, because of the policy of prohibiting pregnant girls from studying, as well as other forms of repression.

I support the decision to protect girls' right to an education, and to punish repression. However, I have doubts about the basic idea of asking a poor country to pay for education with loans. How would it repay ever these loans? By pushing more people into poverty?

Sex education and contraception aid might be a more efficient way to use funds to reduce future poverty in Tanzania.

A plan to drill for oil off Alaska's coast is being thwarted by an insufficiency in sea ice.

If it is blocked for two years, can the saboteur's successor block it for good and all?

Amazon in Germany hired "security" guards from a company of Nazi sympathizers to repress foreign workers. Reporters came to cover this, and the guards tried to arrest them and take their cameras.

Amazon's compete-to-subsidize-us competition gave the company information about city governments and their plans, that it can profit from in many ways, including taking advantage of them.

North Korea has several missile bases, and continues to work on them. But how important is that?

I think a peace treaty to end the Korean War would be a good thing, regardless of whether North Korea has nuclear weapons. The US and South Korea are at peace with nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, not to mention China and Russia. Why shouldn't they be at peace with nuclear-armed North Korea? Peace would make an actual nuclear war less likely.

The fact that North Korea is horribly repressive, even worse than China, doesn't change that conclusion.