Portside

Voters in fifteen states—many with tight races—will face new restrictions at the polling booth for the first time in November.

Losing the sense of smell predicts likelihood of death within five years, according to new research.

Despite the warning signs all around us, the Departments of the Treasury and Transportation appear to be running headlong into a crash - and not just the kind of crash that takes place on a highway. The Obama administration appears to have bought into Public Private Partnerships spinning straw into gold.

An expansive lawsuit against the Kern County school district in the heart of California's Central Valley alleges widespread disparities in the discipline meted out to Latino and African-American students. The lawsuit accuses California's second largest school district with "rampant racial and ethnic disparities" in suspensions and expulsions. The Kern High School District's student body is 62 percent Latino and six percent African-American.

The political manipulation of the irrational fear of immigrants spreading disease is part of an historic pattern in United States. The recent calls for a blanket prohibition on travel from West Africa is prejudice, plain, and simple: prejudging an entire group of people, based on the sickness of a small handful. They echo the kind of bigotry directed at other immigrant groups arriving in this country since the 1800s.

Three years after the Fukushima disaster, 25,000 people evacuated from the region closest to the nuclear reactor station have been told that it will take 120 years before they can return safely to their homes. Tens of thousands of other evacuees who lived outside the most contaminated area, and who the government says will be able to return soon, say they will never return because of the ongoing danger of nuclear contamination.

The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC), the regulatory commission responsible for the stewardship of that state's natural resources and the environment, has sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin is bankrolling anti-fracking activists in the United States, and in particular those working in Denton, Texas, where voters will be deciding on the state's first proposed city-wide fracking ban November 4.

Protests, including those that often turn violent, have become a common feature in the Ukrainian capital, and more are expected as the October 26th parliamentary elections approach. On Tuesday, violence broke out when protesters from the ultra-right wing Svoboda and Right Sector parties marched on parliament to demand recognition and rehabilitation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was allied with Nazi Germany during World War II.

Mesches is an artist who has illuminated -- in the style of medieval manuscripts -- his own FBI file. “I loved the way they looked, those black strokes, like Franz Kline color sketches. I also thought, ‘This is history, and, hey, this is my history.’”

Artist Nickolay Lamm, inspired by his own and his relative’s struggles with body-image issues, wondered what Mattel’s Barbie doll would look like if she weren’t such an anatomical freak.