Portside

An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus.

Each stage in Afghanistan’s tragic 40-year history of intervention-- the 1980s covert war, the 1990s civil war, and the U.S. occupation since 2001 --- helped transform this remote, landlocked nation into the world’s first true narco-state --where illicit drugs dominate the economy, fuel corruption and determine the fate of foreign interventions. Afghanistan can only progress when it is no longer a client narco-state with its rural areas dependent upon the opium crop.

The H-1B visa program is supposed to have safeguards against abuse, including rules designed to ensure that guest workers are not a significantly cheaper option for companies looking to save a buck. But Costa says 83 percent of the H-1B recipients are paid wages below the average for that occupation, because of flaws in the system.

There's a perverse form of American exceptionalism circulating around the Clinton camp: just because things work in other countries doesn't mean they can work here. As Hillary herself put it, "We are not Denmark. I love Denmark, but we are the United States of America." True enough, but that has no bearing on why single-payer couldn't work here. The only obstacles are political -- elites, which include Hillary and Starr, don't want it.

"Black Art Matters." If there were a way to sum up the thrust of this essay in one very brief sentence then that would be it. W.E.B. DuBois is one of those thinkers who needs very little introduction: lifelong socialist and Black liberationist, founder of the N.A.A.C.P., author of what is still to this day one of the definitive books on Black Reconstruction in the south. What is often overlooked is how central art was to DuBois' ideas about Black freedom in the U. S.

Reformist partners also secured surprise gains in parliament in early results that could accelerate the country's emergence from years of isolation.

This campus building at Middle Tennessee State University is named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. These students are demanding that the name be changed. Can they make it happen?

In the primaries held so far this year, many more Democrats are identifying as liberal than in the past, powered by dramatic changes in the views of young voters. Is the Republican Party undergoing a similar shift to the right? Yes, but the picture is a little more complicated.

At Thursday’s debate, Rubio slammed Trump University for being a “fake school” that only left students with a “cardboard cutout of Donald Trump.” But Rubio’s hands are not clean either. He has supported a for-profit college chain that has hurt far more students than Trump University has.

Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon have been making remarkable progress in artificial intelligence. Recently they have released much of their work to the public for free use, and adaptation. This seems bizarre: why would companies reveal the methods at the core of their businesses? And what does their embrace of open-source AI say about the current state of artificial intelligence?