A year after signing the US-Korea free exploitation agreement, US exports to Korea have gone down 10%.

In other words, this treaty failed even to provide the benefit the US was supposed to get. Of course, it did the other harm these treaties always do.

You can pretty much count on a free exploitation agreement to boost profits and reduce wages. Nowadays they also directly attack the rights of the citizens of both countries, with "investor-state" provisions that privilege foreign companies over the country's citizens.

In response to many public complaints, the USDA has decided to do a full environmental impact study on proposed multi-herbicide-resistant GMO crops, rather than approve them without one.

A right-wing politician embarrassingly acknowledged the real motive for austerity in the UK.

Some Newtown officials voted to tear down and rebuild Sandy Hook elementary school at the cost of 57 million dollars. In these days of austerity, surely there is something more useful to do with that money.

I think that it was a mistake to move the students to another building after the shooting, because that encouraged them to feel they should be unable to cope with being in that building, which is why people are considering spending 60 million dollars replacing the building. When you fall off the horse, you should get right back on it, and that applies here too.

A woman in El Salvador has asked the Supreme Court to let her have an abortion, because otherwise she is likely to die from her pregnancy.

The sacred fetus that the Catholic Church would kill her to save cannot survive anyway, because most of its brain is missing. But even if it were healthy, she should not be forced to bear it.