Portside

Different palaeolithic populations around the world might have developed a crucial toolmaking skill independently. No mysterious migration required to explain how chipping technique appeared in different continents.

Drug possession is the No. 1 reason people were in Cook County Jail last year. That’s been the case for the better part of the past decade. Since 2006, people have been booked and released more than 100,000 times for possession, according to jail records. And during that same time period, taxpayers have spent $778 million jailing people on the lowest-level possession charges.

So far, 121 countries have signed the treaty, and 154 voted in favor of its adoption in April 2013 in the General Assembly. The successful entry into force of the ATT will be a big win for arms control campaigners and NGOs, who have been fighting for the regulation of the arms trade for more than a decade.

Roughly 20 to 25 percent of all union contracts have recently contained some kind of two-tier payment. Such arrangements, often made in response to threats of plant closures or job losses, can turn into strategies for long-term suppression of wages. They can also generate conflict and resentment among workers making vastly different amount of money and undermine solidarity.

Edward E. Baptist’s brilliant book, The Half Has Never Been Told, soars because of the author’s decision to root his analysis in the human dimension.

UNITE HERE and the Teamsters have been quietly negotiating a contract with Harrah's Hotel and Casino in New Orleans for the last six months that, when inked, would double the size of organized labor's tiny footprint in the New Orleans tourism economy.

27,000 home health care workers vote to unionize and join the Service Employees International Union. This is one of the largest organizing efforts in Minnesota since the great depression.

Israel and the Palestinians agreed Tuesday to a plan to end the fighting in Gaza after 50 days of combat in which more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, 64 Israeli soldiers and five civilians in Israel were killed. In addition to a cessation of hostilities, other immediate steps include the opening of some of the Gaza border crossings closed by Israel and Egypt. Further indirect discussions are to take place within a month.

The chaos enveloping U.S. foreign policy stems from President Obama’s unwillingness to challenge Official Washington’s power centers which favor neoconservatism and “liberal interventionism”, writes investigative reporter Robert Parry. Obama's failure to confront "neocon absolutism" and "liberal interventionists" has resulted in a foreign policy that is unrealistic, hypocritical, and deadly.