Portside

“Non-competes (agreements) create a Balkanized labor force where you’re not a sandwich maker, but either a Jimmy John’s or Subway sandwich maker. Workers, in other words, are being forced to pledge fealty to companies that can still fire them at will. The payoff, of course, is that workers who, practically-speaking, can’t switch jobs are workers who can’t ask for raises.”

Thirty years since the Union Carbide gas leak tragedy, Bhopal is a city defined—and divided—by the disaster. Authorities labeled 36 wards gas-affected and 20 wards gas unaffected. Today, the contrasts between these areas are clear. The gas-affected areas are home to shanty towns where the deaths took place. They surround the now-dilapidated factory. It is in these towns that the legacy of the 30-year-old gas disaster lives on.

The US now is less equal and socially mobile than Europe. Many say education is key to addressing this growing inequality. But the American education system is an offshoot of an increasingly class-driven society, where Americans from different class backgrounds are living in what are effectively becoming different countries. And this inequality threatens to perpetuate itself "almost automatically."

With the acquittal of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on all charges of murder and corruption, the military-backed regime of former General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is sending a strong message that Egypt’s authoritarian rulers and their repressive institutions are not accountable for their actions. But, Mubarak’s actual conviction took place three years ago in Tahrir Square when millions of Egyptians condemned his repressive 30-year rule.

President Obama's new policing task force is a welcomed first step, but bolder change is needed to fix the broken relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. The Administration's current proposals are not enough to significantly transform policing nationally or ensure the country learns the right lessons from the tragedies in Ferguson and New York.

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+.

PARIS — French labor unions and business leaders struck a deal to overhaul labor laws. The changes include more flexibility for employers to reduce hours to prevent lay offs in times of "economic distress." Employers will pay a higher tax for using temporary labor. In exchange for flexibility, unions secured improvements to unemployment benefits and health insurance, as well as seats on the board of large companies.

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 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.

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.