Portside

Medicare is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year by failing to rein in doctors who routinely give patients pricey name-brand drugs when cheaper generic alternatives are available.

A group of 133 developing nations have walked out of a key part of the climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, amidst a conflict over how countries who have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases should be held financially responsible for some of the damage caused by extreme weather in nations with low carbon emissions. The United States, Australia, Canada and other industrialized countries are pushing for the issue to be put off until after the 2015 climate talks.

This week, more than a decade after congress passed PREA in July 2003, those standards went into effect. Among them: No inmate under 18 may be placed in a housing unit where contact will occur with adult inmates in a common space, shower area or sleeping quarters.

Young farm workers are falling ill from “green tobacco sickness” while the industry denies it and government lets it happen.

An interview with Seattle's new socialist councilmember, Kshama Sawant.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer first reported on the food drive, which has sparked outrage in the area.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would strip our constitutional rights, while offering no gains for the majority of Americans. It's a win for corporations

As unrest simmers in the Middle East and the United States edges toward detente with Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia are trying to ride out the storm together.

Seattle pauses surveillance plans; Journalists on the move; Google wins book-scanning decision; Supercomputer Watson for all; Writers persecuted for digital media use; Google bigger than print industries.

With an awareness of climate change growing and as intensifying floods, fires, droughts, and storms become an inescapable feature of daily life across the planet, more people are joining environmental groups and engaging in increasingly bold protest actions. Sooner or later, government leaders are likely to face multiple eruptions of mass public anger and may, in the end, be forced to make radical adjustments in energy policy or risk being swept aside.