Portside

Our Planet of the Arthropods is dominated by insects, and when and how insects took over the earth is a question that’s puzzled naturalists for centuries. In an incredible international effort, 100 scientists combined their molecular, computational biology, statistics, paleontology, and taxonomic expertise to uncover some surprising conclusions about when major groups of insects evolved.

Shrinking the financial sector will make us all richer.

Your job contract or cellphone agreement could have secret language that ruins your life. Here's how it works

I think this is a good time for all of us—Tribune included—to stop pretending that Rauner was the nobody from nowhere as depicted in his campaign commercials as opposed to a consummate insider whose firm once made millions managing state pensions funds during Governor Blago's reign.

There are more than forty thousand Chinese restaurants across the country—nearly three times the number of McDonald’s outlets. The restaurants, connected by Chinese-run bus companies to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, make up an underground network—supported by employment agencies, immigrant hostels, and expensive asylum lawyers—that reaches back to villages and cities in China, which are being abandoned for an ideal of American life that is not quite real.

"It no longer surprises me when extremist state legislators try to restrict our voting rights. I don't like it and we fight against it, but I'm no longer surprised by it." "What surprises and outrages me is that yesterday a Supreme Court Justice said that the protection of the right to vote is a 'perpetuation of racial entitlement.'" Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO, NAACP

Repeal Sequestration to Disarm Hostage Takers

Recent Problems with Portside Delivery. Readers' Comments on: Roots of Poverty; Israel, Palestine and the Oscars; Friday Nite Videos; `Demographics' Are Not Simply Passive Numbers; Do You Know Genetics; Big Labor's Lock 'Em Up Mentality; Oscar Nominee `Invisible War'; Portside should use Facebook page more. Announcements - upcoming events in New York, Bay Area, Chicago and Washington, DC

"The A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest federation of unions, has issued an apparent endorsement of the Keystone XL oil pipeline," writes Steven Greenhouse in the NY Times. Following the NY Times' article, Portside gives you the federation's official statement followed by the official AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department's unequivocal interpretation of the AFL-CIO Executive Council's decision.

Margrit Adler Pittman, an activist journalist with a lifelong commitment to the fight for peace, democracy and social and economic justice, died February 4 in New York City at the age of 93.