Portside

The wealthiest Americans—those who earned $200,000 or more—reduced the share of income they gave to charity by 4.6 percent from 2006 to 2012. Meanwhile, Americans who earned less than $100,000 chipped in 4.5 percent more of their income during the same time period.

What if the most popular hypothesis is wrong? Plenty of fringier theories exist.

From the crime novel's mainstream inception in the early 20th century in the United States, numerous authors have explored a wide range of politically charged themes, including class distinctions, government corruption and the oppression of women and people of color.

Why doesn’t North Carolina want people to vote?

Investment of public money needs transparency and accountability. The CalPERS decision to end hedge fund investments should be a clarion call for pensions to re-examine their relationship with these and other nontraditional investment instruments. Trillions of dollars of public money as well as the retirement security of millions of workers are at stake.

The Obama administration’s war plans in Iraq and Syria are illegal, ill-conceived, and destined to fail. With scarcely a whisper of serious debate, Obama has become the fourth consecutive U.S. president to launch a war in Iraq—and in fact has outdone his predecessors by spreading the war to Syria as well. Here’s everything wrong with the White House’s so-called War on the Islamic State. And here's what should be done instead.

Forty leading Jewish Studies Professors have denounced the pro-Israel group, AMCHA, for degrading the "currency of academic freedom." AMCHA is circulating a list of 218 professors it charges with "an anti-Israel bias" or "antisemitic rhetoric." The Jewish Studies Professors in North America said AMCHA's monitoring of university lectures and conferences is "deplorable " and "strains the basic principle of academic freedom."

The massive demonstrations in Hong Kong are an enormous test for China's commitment to its complex "one country, two systems" approach to Hong Kong, implemented after Britain's return of the region to Chinese sovereignty in 1984. Student demonstrators and others are challenging China's decision on how the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong will be selected and the very meaning of the "high degree of autonomy" promised to Hong Kong's residents.

The number of Texas clinics providing safe abortion services to women were reduced to eight overnight. On Thursday, the conservative judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed an earlier court decision that had allowed 13 other clinics to remain operating in the country's second largest state. According to one clinic operator, Texas now "faces a health care crisis, brought on by its own legislators.”

Last February British Columbia's Civil Liberties Association filed a complaint demanding to know why the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) considers critics of Canada's petroleum industry a threat to national security. But, last week the CSIS said the association's complaint was "overly broad," and took steps to limit the inquiry into why the agency was spying on environmental groups and sharing its information with the oil companies.