Portside

The Arab democratic uprisings were world-historic, yet their outcome remains uncertain. It is premature to conclude that the rise of the Islamists is necessarily a permanent feature of the politics of these countries. There are, however, certain points to note as we reflect on the results of these uprisings and the road forward.

Why are the French once again firing into a continent? First, France has major investments in Niger and Mali. At bottom, this is about Francs (or Euros, as it may be). Some 75 percent of France's energy needs come from nuclear power, and a cheap source is its old colonial empire in the region (that besides Mali and Niger included Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Chad, Algeria, and the Central African Republic).

U.S. citizens suffer from poorer health than nearly all other industrialised countries, according to the first comprehensive government analysis on the subject, released Wednesday. Of 17 high-income countries looked at by a committee of experts sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the United States is at or near the bottom in at least nine indicators.

Huge banks must be restructured and their access to the safety net scaled back, Mr. Fisher said, because neither regulators nor market participants have proved effective in monitoring risks at these institutions.

The consequences for the mentally ill of the gun control push are not yet fully clear, as the full content of the president’s executive actions have yet to be released. And advocates will watch closely as congressional deliberations unfold over the vast parts of gun control that the president can’t do alone. But for now, it appears things are moving forward with some distance between proactive plans to improve mental health care and those to prevent mass murder.

A new study in mice suggests that Leprosy employs a bit of biological trickery to do its damage: It reprograms certain nerve cells to become like stem cells and uses them to infiltrate the body's muscle and nervous systems.

The new Portside: better communication, a more usable web site, hyperlinked text, photos, brighter pages, better typography and formatting, integration with Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Cases like that of Weldon Angelos, who was given a fifty-five-year sentence for selling marijuana, cry out for mercy. But calls for clemency have fallen on deaf ears...So why hasn't Obama done the right thing? Could it be that Angelos has just gotten lost in the shuffle? Possibly-but if that's the reason, there would be evidence that Obama has used his pardon and commutation powers wisely in other cases. Unfortunately, that's not true.

Just how long the songs will go on is anyone's guess. One person who isn't worried is Ballard, Chorus director, who credits Occupy Wall Street with raising awareness of labor issues."Very few young people would stop and listen to us, but now they do," said Ballard, who's confident that interest will spur a new generation to sing. "They'll be the next people who carry the torch."

This much is clear: the teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School reacted with astonishing courage to the unthinkable, the terrifying intrusion of a man intent on murdering them and their students. With no thought of their own safety, they defended their children. Everyone of them is a hero, those who died and those who survived....All at Sandy Hook Elementary School displayed courage. They did their jobs.